Counter-Currents
  • Private Events
  • T&C
  • Contact
  • Webzine
  • About
  • Books
  • Podcasts
  • Videos
  • Donate
  • Paywall
  • Crypto
  • RSS
    • Main feed
    • Podcast feed
    • Videos feed
    • Comments feed
  • Advertise

LEVEL2

Donate Now Mailing list
  • Webzine
  • About
  • Books
  • Podcasts
  • Videos
  • Donate
  • Paywall
  • Crypto
  • RSS
    • Main feed
    • Podcast feed
    • Videos feed
    • Comments feed
  • Advertise
  • Recent posts

    • The Union Jackal, September 2023

      Mark Gullick

      1

    • The Metapolitics of “Woke”

      Endeavour

    • The Matter with Concrete, Part 2

      Michael Walker

    • Remembering Martin Heidegger: September 26, 1889–May 26, 1976

      Greg Johnson

    • The Worst Week Yet: September 17-23, 2023

      Jim Goad

      25

    • Paper Boy: The Life and Times of an Ink-Stained Wretch

      Steven Clark

    • Richard Hanania’s The Origins of Woke

      Matt Parrott

      4

    • The Matter with Concrete, Part 1

      Michael Walker

      1

    • The Virgin Queen Chihuahua Has Spoken!

      Jim Goad

      4

    • Pox Populi and Endeavour on the Latest Migrant Invasion

      Greg Johnson

    • Crowdsourcing Contest! Our Banner

      A. C. C. Reader

      41

    • Adult Cartoons Are a Disaster for Western Civilization, Part 2

      Travis LeBlanc

      17

    • Having It All: America Reaps the Benefits of Feminism

      Beau Albrecht

      8

    • The Captivity Narrative of Fanny Kelly

      Spencer J. Quinn

      7

    • The Virgin Queen Chihuahua Has Spoken!

      Jim Goad

      52

    • Adult Cartoons Are a Disaster for Western Civilization, Part 1

      Travis LeBlanc

      40

    • Plastic Patriotism: Propaganda and the Establishment’s Crusade Against Germany and German-Americans During the First World War

      Alex Graham

      9

    • Race and IQ Differences: An Interview with Arthur Jensen, Part 2

      Arthur Jensen

      1

    • Donald Trump: The Jews’ Psycho Ex-Girlfriend

      Travis LeBlanc

      13

    • Bad to the Spone: Charles Krafft’s An Artist of the Right

      Gunnar Alfredsson

      1

    • Independence Day

      Mark Gullick

    • The Unnecessary War

      Morris van de Camp

      1

    • Bad Cop! No Baklava!

      Beau Albrecht

      7

    • Counter-Currents Radio Podcast No. 552 Millennial Woes on Corporations, the Left, & Other Matters

      Counter-Currents Radio

      6

    • Remembering Charles Krafft: September 19, 1947–June 12, 2020

      Greg Johnson

    • Marx vs. Rousseau

      Stephen Paul Foster

      4

    • The Worst Week Yet: September 10-16, 2023

      Jim Goad

      22

    • The Tinkling Cherub of Mississippi

      Beau Albrecht

      2

    • A Deep Ecological Perspective on the Vulnerability of Eurodescendants

      Francisco Albanese

      3

    • Remembering Francis Parker Yockey: September 18, 1917–June 16, 1960

      Greg Johnson

      1

    • The Counter-Currents 2023 Fundraiser: Idealism Alone Can’t Last Forever

      Pox Populi

      3

    • Ask Me Anything with Millennial Woes

      Greg Johnson

    • Most White Republicans at Least Slightly Agree with the Great Replacement Theory

      David M. Zsutty

      13

    • Field of Dreams: A Right-Wing Film?

      Morris van de Camp

      2

    • Rich Snobs vs. Poor Slobs: The Schism Between “Racist” Whites

      Jim Goad

      99

    • Memories of Underdevelopment: Revolution & the Bourgeois Mentality

      Steven Clark

      2

    • Diversity: Our Greatest Strength?

      Greg Johnson

      2

    • Jon Stewart’s Irresistible: An Election in Flyover Country

      Beau Albrecht

      2

    • Apocalyptic Summertime Fun

      Gunnar Alfredsson

      1

    • Genius Loci: The Rise and Fall of the Great Comedian Peter Cook

      Mark Gullick

      12

    • Counter-Currents Radio Podcast No. 551: Ask Me Anything with Matt Parrott

      Counter-Currents Radio

      2

    • It’s Time to Wind Down the Empire of Nothing

      Morris van de Camp

      1

    • Should Whites Turn Their Backs on the US Military? A Response to Padraig Martin of Identity Dixie

      Spencer J. Quinn

      47

    • Counter-Currents Radio Podcast No. 550: Catching Up with Matt Parrott

      Counter-Currents Radio

      5

    • Race and IQ Differences: An Interview with Arthur Jensen, Part 1

      Arthur Jensen

    • Otázka ženského masochismu

      F. Roger Devlin

    • The Worst Week Yet: September 3-9, 2023

      Jim Goad

      33

    • Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s The Real Anthony Fauci, Part Two: The HIV Swindle

      Jef Costello

      33

    • Born Innocent

      Travis LeBlanc

      6

    • The Counter-Currents 9/11 Symposium

      Greg Johnson

  • Classics Corner

    • Why Race is Not a “Social Construct”

      Greg Johnson

      19

    • Remembering T. S. Eliot:
      September 26, 1888–January 4, 1965

      Greg Johnson

      2

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

      Greg Johnson

      22

    • Leo Strauss, the Conservative Revolution, & National Socialism, Part 2

      Greg Johnson

      3

    • Leo Strauss, the Conservative Revolution, & National Socialism, Part 3

      Greg Johnson

      13

    • Remembering H. Keith Thompson
      September 17, 1922–March 3, 2002

      Kerry Bolton

      1

    • Be All You Can Be: On Joining the Military

      Ash Donaldson

      22

    • Transcript of FOX News’ Banned Report on Israel & 9/11

      Spencer J. Quinn

    • The Banned FOX News Report on Israel’s Role in 9/11

      Spencer J. Quinn

      12

    • The Psychology of Conversion

      Greg Johnson

      43

    • Animal Justice?

      Greg Johnson

      18

    • Uppity White Folks and How to Reach Them

      Greg Johnson

      6

    • Lord Kek Commands!
      A Look at the Origins of Meme Magic

      James J. O'Meara

      7

    • Major General J. F. C. Fuller
      (September 1, 1878–February 10, 1966)

      Anonymous

      5

    • Remembering Johann Gottfried von Herder
      (August 25, 1744–December 18, 1803)

      Martin Lichtmesz

      2

    • Moral Seriousness

      Greg Johnson

      13

    • Columbus Day Special
      The Autochthony Argument

      Greg Johnson

      8

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

      Greg Johnson

      8

    • Sir Reginald Goodall: An Appreciation

      Greg Johnson

      3

    • 7-11 Nationalism

      Richard Houck

      28

    • Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? as Anti-Semitic/Christian-Gnostic Allegory

      Greg Johnson

      7

    • Eraserhead:
      A Gnostic Anti-Sex Film

      Trevor Lynch

      17

    • Remembering Revilo Oliver
      (July 7, 1908–August 20, 1994)

      Greg Johnson

      17

    • Lars von Trier & the Men Among the Ruins

      John Morgan

      16

    • Heidegger without Being

      Greg Johnson

      17

    • Junetarded Nation

      Jim Goad

      8

    • Counter-Currents Radio Podcast No. 338
      Ted Talk

      Counter-Currents Radio

      3

    • Hegemony

      Greg Johnson

      11

    • Cù Chulainn in the GPO:
      The Mythic Imagination of Patrick Pearse

      Michael O'Meara

      5

    • Remembering Dominique Venner
      (April 16, 1935 – May 21, 2013)

      Greg Johnson

      11

  • Paroled from the Paywall

    • A Call For White Identity Politics: Ed Brodow’s The War on Whites

      Dave Chambers

      6

    • The Fiction of Harold Covington, Part One

      Steven Clark

      21

    • Death by Hunger: Two Books About the Holodomor

      Morris van de Camp

      4

    • A Child as White as Snow

      Mark Gullick

      6

    • Jonathan Bowden’s Final Lecture on Video: Charles Maurras, Action Française, and the Cagoule

      Jonathan Bowden

      1

    • Who Was Lawrence R. Brown? Biographical Notes on the Author of The Might of the West

      Margot Metroland

      16

    • California Discontent, Part 2: Frank Norris’ The Octopus

      Steven Clark

      1

    • California Discontent, Part 1: John Steinbeck’s East of Eden

      Steven Clark

    • 12 More Sex Differences Due to Nature

      Richard Knight

      4

    • Counter-Currents Radio Podcast No. 545 Pox Populi and Morgoth on the Age of Immigration and More 

      Counter-Currents Radio

    • When White Idealism Goes Too Far: Saints of the American Wilderness

      Spencer J. Quinn

      10

    • A Compassionate Spy?

      Beau Albrecht

      11

    • Counter-Currents Radio Podcast No. 544 Pox Populi, American Krogan, & Endeavour on the Metaverse

      Counter-Currents Radio

    • Nietzsche and the Psychology of the Left, Part Two

      Collin Cleary

      2

    • Thoughts on an Unfortunate Convergence: Doctors, Lawyers, and Angry Women

      Stephen Paul Foster

      5

    • Against Liberalism: Society Is Not a Market, Chapter I, Part 3: What Is Liberalism?

      Alain de Benoist

    • Against Liberalism: Society Is Not a Market, Chapter I, Part 2: What Is Liberalism?

      Alain de Benoist

      1

    • Against Liberalism: Society Is Not a Market, Chapter I, Part 1: What Is Liberalism?

      Alain de Benoist

      1

    • Misrepresentative Government: Why Democracy Doesn’t Work, Part IV

      Kenneth Vinther

      2

    • Misrepresentative Government: Why Democracy Doesn’t Work, Part III

      Kenneth Vinther

      1

    • Counter-Currents Radio Podcast No. 543 Greg Johnson on Plato’s Gorgias, Lecture 4

      Counter-Currents Radio

    • Misrepresentative Government: Why Democracy Doesn’t Work, Part I

      Kenneth Vinther

      1

    • Jack London’s The Iron Heel as Prophecy, Part 2

      Beau Albrecht

    • The Scottish Mr. Bond? An Interview with Mystic

      Travis LeBlanc

      2

    • Counter-Currents Radio Podcast No. 542 Greg Johnson on Plato’s Gorgias, Lecture 3

      Counter-Currents Radio

    • The Bard Across Three Reichs: Germany, Shakespeare, and Andreas Höfele’s No Hamlets, Part II

      Kathryn S.

      4

    • The Bard Across Three Reichs: Germany, Shakespeare, and Andreas Höfele’s No Hamlets, Part I

      Kathryn S.

      3

    • Against Liberalism: Society Is Not a Market, Introduction, Part III

      Alain de Benoist

    • Against Liberalism: Society Is Not a Market, Introduction, Part II

      Alain de Benoist

    • Against Liberalism: Society Is Not a Market, Introduction, Part I

      Alain de Benoist

      1

  • Recent comments

    • Liam Kernaghan

      The Worst Week Yet: September 17-23, 2023

      A very encouraging commentary - you write well and your observations on demographics and social...

    • Lord Shang

      The Union Jackal, September 2023

      Why are the British people so indifferent to their government-engineered replacement? America has a...

    • james Smith

      Having It All: America Reaps the Benefits of Feminism

      Reflection, by John Guzziferno

    • james Smith

      Having It All: America Reaps the Benefits of Feminism

      The destruction of marriage is not woman's fault, but men's. Men are the chief legislators in this...

    • Hamburger Today

      Plastic Patriotism: Propaganda and the Establishment’s Crusade Against Germany and German-Americans During the First World War

      These travesties occur because we let abstractions like 'patriotism' and 'loyalty' and 'America'...

    • Gallus

      The Matter with Concrete, Part 1

      What a superb review of a subject I never thought would be remotely interesting. Living in the UK...

    • Hamburger Today

      Crowdsourcing Contest! Our Banner

      I fixed the link. The essence of the issue is emphasis. Is the pro-White movement about...

    • Hamburger Today

      Crowdsourcing Contest! Our Banner

      If you’re kind enough to validate the feelings of other whites by making them not feel so alone in...

    • Bear

      Metapolitics and Occult Warfare

      History is both linear and cyclical. Christianity usually gets credit for the linear however I think...

    • J Webb

      Having It All: America Reaps the Benefits of Feminism

      I'm glad the NY Post covered the woman looking for liberal guy to take care of her. The comments on...

    • Mike Bennett

      The Worst Week Yet: September 17-23, 2023

      The white man’s burden is the Roman Catholic Church…. Christianity in general! it is a carry-over...

    • Liam Kernaghan

      The Virgin Queen Chihuahua Has Spoken!

      There was an audio video from around about the back end of last year, or maybe very early this year...

    • heymrguda

      Richard Hanania’s The Origins of Woke

      “The American political system was not prepared for the mass migration of highly intelligent,...

    • Shift

      The Worst Week Yet: September 17-23, 2023

      Howard Stern and Donald Trump have a lot in common.  Howard Stern, Donald Trump, Elvis Presley, Jim...

    • Muhammad Aryan

      The Worst Week Yet: September 17-23, 2023

      Some have estimated that Islamic slaughters of Hindus account for “the biggest holocaust in world...

    • Edmund

      Crowdsourcing Contest! Our Banner

      I've done it. That is, convert non-conservative secular whites into my way of thinking. I admit, it'...

    • Jim Goad

      The Virgin Queen Chihuahua Has Spoken!

      A quick search of “Nick Fuentes” and “working class” on Google yielded this video. Yeah, it’s from “...

    • ShadowPal

      The Worst Week Yet: September 17-23, 2023

      I remember a few episodes of Howard Stern's show. One episode had a game show with black contestants...

    • Weave

      Adult Cartoons Are a Disaster for Western Civilization, Part 1

      Did you make an effort to stop swearing? I keep trying to stop, but traffic gets me every time.

    • Margot Metroland

      Christopher Rufo on White Identity Politics

      Indeed, and that's my usual mainstream-normie reaction. We can't let the perfect be the enemy of the...

  • Book Authors

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

    Editor-in-Chief

    • Greg Johnson, Ph.D.

    Featured Writers

    • Beau Albrecht
    • Morris V. de Camp
    • Stephen Paul Foster, Ph.D.
    • Jim Goad
    • Alex Graham
    • Mark Gullick, Ph.D.
    • Greg Johnson, Ph.D.
    • Spencer J. Quinn

    Frequent Writers

    • Aquilonius
    • Anthony Bavaria
    • Alain de Benoist
    • Kerry Bolton, Ph.D.
    • Collin Cleary, Ph.D.
    • Jef Costello
    • F. Roger Devlin, Ph.D.
    • Richard Houck
    • Ondrej Mann
    • Margot Metroland
    • John Morgan
    • Trevor Lynch
    • James J. O’Meara
    • Kathryn S.
    • Thomas Steuben
    • Michael Walker

    Classic Authors

    • Maurice Bardèche
    • Jonathan Bowden
    • Julius Evola
    • Guillaume Faye
    • Ernst Jünger
    • Kevin MacDonald, Ph.D.
    • 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
    • Dominique Venner
    • Leo Yankevich
    • Francis Parker Yockey

    Other Authors

    • Howe Abbott-Hiss
    • Michael Bell
    • Buttercup Dew
    • Giles Corey
    • Bain Dewitt
    • Jack Donovan
    • Richardo Duchesne, Ph.D.
    • Emile Durand
    • Guillaume Durocher
    • Mark Dyal
    • Fullmoon Ancestry
    • Tom Goodroch
    • Andrew Hamilton
    • Robert Hampton
    • Huntley Haverstock
    • Derek Hawthorne
    • Gregory Hood
    • Juleigh Howard-Hobson
    • Alexander Jacob
    • Nicholas Jeelvy
    • Ruuben Kaalep
    • Tobias Langdon
    • Julian Langness
    • Travis LeBlanc
    • Patrick Le Brun
    • G A Malvicini
    • John Michael McCloughlin
    • Millennial Woes
    • Michael O’Meara
    • Christopher Pankhurst
    • Michael Polignano
    • J. J. Przybylski
    • Quintilian
    • Edouard Rix
    • C. B. Robertson
    • C. F. Robinson
    • Herve Ryssen
    • Alan Smithee
    • Fenek Solere
    • Ann Sterzinger
    • Robert Steuckers
    • Tomislav Sunic
    • Donald Thoresen
    • Marian Van Court
    • Irmin Vinson
    • Aylmer Wedgwood
    • Scott Weisswald
  • 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
  • Private Events
  • T&C
  • Contact
Sponsored Links
Spencer J. Quinn Above Time Coffee Antelope Hill Publishing Identaria Paul Waggener IHR-Store Asatru Folk Assembly No College Club American Renaissance The Patrick Ryan Show Jim Goad The Occidental Observer
Print January 22, 2021 7 comments

The Elephant Man

Trevor Lynch

2,907 words

David Lynch’s second feature film, The Elephant Man (1980), is one of his finest works. In many ways, The Elephant Man is Lynch’s most conventional “Hollywood” film. (Dune too is a “Hollywood” film, but a failed one.) The cast of The Elephant Man is quite distinguished, including John Hurt, Anthony Hopkins, Sir John Gielgud, Dame Wendy Hiller, and Anne Bancroft. The film was produced by Mel Brooks, who left his name off so that people would not expect a comedy.

The Elephant Man was a commercial success and a critical hit. It received eight Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture and Best Director. It also prompted the Academy to create a new award for makeup the next year. The Elephant Man won the British Academy Film Awards for Best Film, Best Actor (Hurt), and Production Design, as well as the French César Award for Best Foreign Film. It is routinely included in critics’ “best” lists.

Although The Elephant Man is about a hideously deformed sideshow freak, Lynch’s treatment is sentimental and compassionate, not lurid and exploitative. Indeed, The Elephant Man is wholesome, heartwarming, and quite explicitly Christian, which is surprising given that Lynch, being a longtime devotee of Transcendental Meditation, is more Hindu than Christian. 

Yet The Elephant Man is unmistakably the work of the director of Eraserhead. It is exquisitely shot in black and white by cinematographer Freddie Francis, who later worked on The Straight Story. The Elephant Man also features Lynch’s trademark surreal montages, low-tech special effects, and meticulous sound design, created with his longtime collaborator Alan Splet. Like Eraserhead, The Elephant Man treats technology as an almost demonic force and depicts urban life as hellish and alienating. Finally, the grotesque subject matter and sentimental manner of treating it are also quite Lynchian. 

The story of The Elephant Man can be summarized quite briefly. Joseph Merrick (called John Merrick in the film) was born in England in 1862. By the age of five, he began developing abnormally and became shockingly deformed, probably due to Proteus Syndrome. Merrick’s skull became massively enlarged and distorted. His right arm became enlarged and useless, but his other arm was normal. His spine was alarmingly twisted, affecting his gait. His body was covered with wart-like growths. He also had difficulty breathing. His head was so massive that he had to sleep sitting up. If he slept normally, he would have been asphyxiated. 

Unable to work, Merrick began to exhibit himself as a sideshow freak, which provided a precarious living due to police bans and dishonest carnies. In 1883, a surgeon named Frederick Treves discovered Merrick and exhibited him at a meeting of the Pathological Society of London. Merrick and Treves developed a friendship. Merrick’s plight became a cause célèbre of British high society. Championed by Queen Victoria herself, Merrick was given a permanent home at London Hospital, where he died at the age of twenty-seven. Lynch’s film takes some liberties with the story but conveys the essence.

The opening montage of The Elephant Man is pure Eraserhead. Like the opening of Eraserhead, it is an allegory of a monstrous birth. We begin with the eyes of a woman in a Victorian photograph. Later we learn this is John Merrick’s mother. We hear an ominous mechanical humming. Then we see elephants, the mother’s face overlaid. The elephants freeze then approach. We hear their lowing and trumpeting. We see a woman thrown to the ground and writhing in slow motion terror, to increasingly distorted sounds. (In Lost Highway, Lynch films the transformation of Fred Madison into Pete Dayton in a similar way.) Then we see white smoke rising against a dark backdrop. A baby cries. The sequence is based on the side-show origin myth of the Elephant Man, premised on the idea that a child’s development can be shaped by maternal experiences. 

Next we see a Victorian circus. The camera focuses on a well-dressed gentleman in a top hat. This is Anthony Hopkins as Dr. Frederick Treves. Although Treves looks like the embodiment of Victorian propriety, he enters the sideshow through an exit door marked No Admittance. This transgressive gesture is repeated a few seconds later. We catch glimpses of standard freaks, such as a bearded lady. Then we meet a horrified woman being comforted by a gentleman. Treves plunges into the darkness from which they emerged. 

Treves’ destination is the Elephant Man exhibit. When he arrives, however, the curtain is closed. The police are shutting the exhibit down for being degrading and “monstrous.” The “proprietor,” Mr. Bytes, is a fictional composite of the carnies with whom the real Merrick worked. Brilliantly played by Freddie Jones — who was Thufir Hawat in Dune and had a cameo in Wild at Heart — Bytes is a seedy drunkard and sadist. 

Treves is determined to see the Elephant Man and eventually tracks Bytes down for a private showing. In Blue Velvet, Sandy is not sure if Jeffrey is a detective or a pervert. Likewise, in The Elephant Man, we are led to wonder if Treves is a doctor or a pervert. Bytes has Treves pegged as a pervert — a fellow pervert — and leeringly intimates that they share a common secret. Later Bytes speaks to Treves practically like a pimp: “I move in the proper circles, for this type of thing . . . In fact, anything at all, if you take my meaning.”

But when Treves finally sees the Elephant Man, he does not view him with a doctor’s objective curiosity, or a pervert’s salacious leer. His face registers utter shock. Then a solitary tear appears in his eye. 

Treves is still, however, a man of science — and a man of some ambition. Thus he arranges to exhibit Merrick to the Pathological Society of London. 

Later, after Merrick has been severely beaten by Bytes, Treves admits him to the London Hospital. Initially, he is placed in an isolation ward near the clock tower, Lynch’s gentle homage to The Hunchback of Notre Dame. 

At this point, we are thirty minutes into the film and still have not yet seen Merrick’s face. Lynch handles this slow reveal masterfully, and once we see Merrick, it takes a while before we see him up close. By taking his time, not only does Lynch build suspense, but he also fully humanizes the character before revealing the full horror of his appearance. Also, it should be noted that Hurt’s Elephant Man costume and makeup are not as grotesque as the real Joseph Merrick. 

Up to this point, Merrick has said nothing either. Treves has assumed he is an imbecile. But this is not true. Eventually, he gets Merrick to speak. 

Merrick’s presence is opposed by Francis Carr Gomm — the Governor of the hospital warmly portrayed by Sir John Gielgud — on the grounds that the hospital does not admit incurables. Nevertheless, Carr Gomm wishes to meet Merrick, and Treves believes that if the interview goes well, Merrick might be allowed to stay. But the conversation is quite awkward, and when Merrick repeats the same phrases in contexts where they make no sense, Carr Gomm thinks he is an imbecile who has been coached. 

But when Merrick recites the 23rd Psalm, and then begins to open up, both Treves and Carr Gomm are thunderstruck. They both had hoped Merrick was an imbecile, because intelligence could only magnify his suffering. But Merrick has not just suffered greatly, he has retained his humanity. He has managed to remain a sensitive and decent human being, a beautiful soul in a hideous material prison, a theme that also harmonizes with the essentially Gnostic outlook of Eraserhead. Carr Gomm is overcome with compassion. He vows to find some way to give Merrick a safe haven. The whole sequence is immensely moving. 

You can buy Trevor Lynch’s Part Four of the Trilogy here.

Carr Gomm writes a letter to the Times publicizing Merrick’s plight and asking for support, which brings Merrick to the attention of high society and low. 

Queen Victoria dispatches her daughter-in-law, Alexandra, Princess of Wales to read her letter to the board of the London Hospital in support of giving Merrick permanent residency. Upon completing the letter, Alexandra looks directly at the board members and says, “I am sure you gentlemen may be counted on to do the Christian thing.” Which they do. When Carr Gomm, Treves, and the stern hospital matron Mrs. Mothershead bring Merrick the good news, he is overcome with emotion, as is any viewer who doesn’t have a severely deformed heart. 

A prominent actress, Madge Kendal (Anne Bancroft), wishes to meet Merrick. So do the drunkards and floozies who associate with London Hospital’s seedy night porter, Sonny Jim (a name reused by Lynch for Dougie’s little boy in Twin Peaks: The Return). 

By day, Merrick receives actresses and society matrons bearing lavish gifts. These are sentimental well-meaning souls who want to marvel at a triumph of the human spirit. By night, he is assailed by raucous drunkards who pay Sonny Jim a few coins to laugh at the Elephant Man. 

Mrs. Mothershead, played beautifully by Wendy Hiller, disapproves of both sets of visitors. She sacks Sonny Jim when she finds out about his shows. She also reproaches Treves for allowing the more genteel gawkers, saying that Merrick is once again a sideshow curiosity. 

This prompts one of the most touching scenes in the movie. Treves has a sleepless night over the question, “Am I a good man, or am I a bad man?” Treves is a good man, and part of what makes him good is his willingness to entertain such questions. Nobody can watch The Elephant Man without admiring the Victorian middle and upper classes: their exquisite manners, their moral earnestness, and their desire to edify and beautify a nation wrecked by Blake’s “dark Satanic mills.” 

Treves’ moral crisis is paired with a Lynchian montage of Merrick’s night terrors. As with the severed ear in Blue Velvet, Lynch’s camera approaches then dives into a hole, this time the eyehole in Merrick’s hood. We follow pipes to the sound of mechanical chuffing like Merrick’s labored breathing. We see men laboring in factories with machines, bringing to mind Eraserhead’s Man in the Planet, who is a Gnostic symbol of the spirit’s bondage to matter. A leering crowd emerges from the darkness, holding a mirror to Merrick’s terrified face, which is intercut with elephant parts. Then he flashes back to the beatings he has received from Bytes. Lynch is a master of putting dreams on film: prophetic dreams, wish-fulfillment dreams, and nightmares.

The contrast between good and bad men is underscored one night when Bytes slips in among the last batch of Sonny Jim’s revelers and kidnaps Merrick, taking him to a circus on the Continent. Merrick’s health is declining, however, and he cannot perform. A drunken Bytes beats him then locks him in a cage next to some angry, threatening baboons. 

It is a terrifying sequence, using an odd technique that crops up in The Straight Story and Twin Peaks: The Return, in which Lynch places the camera and microphone far from the action, framing it in a vast space and forcing the viewer to strain to see and hear what is happening. It is a return to the static cameras of the early talkies, which often seem like filmed stage plays. 

This circus sequence specifically brings to mind Todd Browning’s classic Freaks, where sideshow freaks band together to avenge one of their own. In The Elephant Man, however, they simply liberate Merrick from his cage and put him on a boat at Ostend to carry him back to London. 

When Merrick arrives at Liverpool Street Station, he is harassed by urchins who want to know why his head is so big. Fleeing, he accidentally knocks over a little girl. Her mother shrieks an alarm. A large crowd pursues him. The monster is unmasked then cornered in a toilet, where he proclaims the famous lines “I am not an animal. I am a human being! I am a man! I am a man!” Then the police arrive and return Merrick to his home at London Hospital. 

Merrick’s life is nearing its end. Mrs. Kendal and Princess Alexandra take him to the theatre, where he is enchanted by what appears to be a children’s fairytale pantomime. The play montage is pure Lynch, but at his most naïve and winsome, using special effects from the silent era less to depict the story than Merrick’s childlike rapture.   

When Merrick returns to his room, he completes work on his model of Saint Phillip’s Cathedral, then signs it “John Merrick.” To Samuel Barber’s hauntingly melancholy Adagio for Strings, Merrick says “It is finished,” bringing to mind the words of Christ on the cross. Then Merrick looks at a picture of a sleeping child and decides to lie down to sleep like a normal person, which he knows will kill him. As he breathes his last, the camera takes our eyes to the picture of Mrs. Kendal, then the picture of his mother, then the model of the cathedral, rising with the music to focus on the cross on the highest spire. Then we see the stars, and begin to move quickly among them, shades of Dune. 

Merrick’s mother begins reciting lines from Alfred Lord Tennyson’s “Nothing Will Die”: 

Never, oh! never, nothing will die.
The stream flows,
The wind blows,
The cloud fleets,
The heart beats,
Nothing will die.

In the original, the first line is a question, but in the movie, it is a declarative statement. The poem continues “Nothing will die; All things will change.” This flatly contradicts the Christian idea of the immortality of the human soul, affirming instead the essentially pagan and naturalistic idea that all things merely change, one into another, which is also consistent with Hindu and Buddhist ideas that reincarnation is not the transmigration of consciousness from one body to another, but more akin to one flame lighting another before going out. 

As she recites, the mother’s face appears beyond the stars in a halo of light, which sucks in the white smoke associated at the beginning with Merrick’s birth, then finally fills the screen. The End.

There is no evidence that the real Elephant Man killed himself this way. Lynch does not treat it as a death of despair. In fact, Merrick tells Treves that he is happy every day of his life. Near the end of the movie, it is established that Merrick is dying, probably of a problem with his lungs. If abnormal things are growing on the outside, surely they are growing on the inside as well. Maybe Merrick has accepted that death is imminent and decides to end on a happy note and spare himself further suffering. 

Lynch treats Merrick’s death like an apotheosis, turning him into a patron saint of the unfortunate. 

Lynch is masterful in his treatment of the grotesque, which is akin to the sublime because it both attracts and repels us. But there is a false note when Merrick explains people’s reaction to him by saying, “We fear things that we don’t understand.” In what sense do people fear the Elephant Man? Is their fear rational or irrational? Do they suffer from a “phobia” like “homophobia,” “transphobia,” or “Islamophobia”? Should we shame them for cowardice and congratulate ourselves for our bravery?

In truth, most people are not afraid of Merrick. They are simply disgusted and horrified by him. Thus it is false to accuse them of “fear.” Moreover, disgust and horror are simple biological reactions to anything unwholesome. Such reactions protect us from dangers: disease, tainted food and water, etc. Thus it is doubly false to claim this is an irrational fear: a phobia. Is disgust simply a disguised form of fear? Maybe, but it feels different, so isn’t it a different feeling? If disgust is a fear, however, it is not an irrational one. 

We are all curious about bad things that befall other human beings: accidents, illnesses, deformities. If we satisfy our curiosity, the result is horror. At this point, however, there are two basic ways to deal with horror: mockery or compassion. 

As Anthony M. Ludovici argued in The Secret of Laughter, laughter is glorying in one’s superior fitness. Forced or nervous laughter, however, is an attempt to reassure oneself that one really is more fit.

But the horror we feel is ultimately based on the recognition that misfortune can befall us all. No, the Elephant Man’s affliction is not contagious, thank God. But none of us is immune to misfortune of one sort or another. Compassion is the recognition of this fact: one sees oneself in the other and feels for him as one feels for oneself. Mockery is a lie and evasion, compassion an admission of the truth. 

As Lynch’s career unfolded, he would take us to darker and darker places. He would wring laughter from us over terrible things. But he always sided with the better angels of our nature in the end.  

The Unz Review, January 20, 2021

If you want to support Counter-Currents, please send us a donation by going to our Entropy page and selecting “send paid chat.” Entropy allows you to donate any amount from $3 and up. All comments will be read and discussed in the next episode of Counter-Currents Radio, which airs every weekend on DLive.

Don’t forget to sign up for the twice-monthly email Counter-Currents Newsletter for exclusive content, offers, and news.

 

Related

  • Adult Cartoons Are a Disaster for Western Civilization, Part 1

  • Field of Dreams: A Right-Wing Film?

  • Memories of Underdevelopment: Revolution & the Bourgeois Mentality

  • Jon Stewart’s Irresistible: An Election in Flyover Country

  • Born Innocent

  • Nueva Derecha vs. Vieja Derecha Capítulo 8: La Psicología de la Conversión

  • Salon Kitty: The Ultimate Nazisploitation Movie

  • Qué No es Una Nación

Tags

Anne BancroftAnthony HopkinscompassionDame Wendy HillerDavid LynchdisgustevilfearFreddie JonesJohn Hurtmovie reviewsreligionSir John GielgudThe Elephant ManTrevor LynchtruthVictorian era

Previous

« Rock Bottom Blackpills

Next

» Inauguration 2021:
The Good, The Bad, & The Ugly
A Review

7 comments

  1. Stephen Phillips says:
    January 22, 2021 at 7:57 am

    Thank you for the review.

    0
    0
  2. Weave says:
    January 22, 2021 at 6:26 pm

    My fear is always, can this happen to me? Or someone I love? I am not sure I saw that outlined.

    0
    0
  3. Barbarossa says:
    January 22, 2021 at 7:24 pm

    Wow! Thanks for the review.

    0
    0
  4. Sartor says:
    January 22, 2021 at 10:17 pm

    St Phillip’s Cathedral? St Paul’s seems more likely.
    However, a brilliant review that also gives the lie to your moralistic critics. Many thanks.

    0
    0
  5. McCauley says:
    January 23, 2021 at 3:02 am

    My mother rented this movie for us as kids from the library. I remember feeling so sad watching it. It sticks with me to this day. Great review.

    0
    0
  6. Flel says:
    January 23, 2021 at 11:09 am

    Was it rational to fear and isolate lepers? It seems utterly normal to recoil from what is viewed as ugly or unclean, even if it is ultimately human. The mob mentality also comes into play with such treatment of differences from the perceived norm. It is a great film and well worth the effort to see at any time. Thank you for bringing it back to our attention.

    0
    0

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

    • The Union Jackal, September 2023

      Mark Gullick

      1

    • The Metapolitics of “Woke”

      Endeavour

    • The Matter with Concrete, Part 2

      Michael Walker

    • Remembering Martin Heidegger: September 26, 1889–May 26, 1976

      Greg Johnson

    • The Worst Week Yet: September 17-23, 2023

      Jim Goad

      25

    • Paper Boy: The Life and Times of an Ink-Stained Wretch

      Steven Clark

    • Richard Hanania’s The Origins of Woke

      Matt Parrott

      4

    • The Matter with Concrete, Part 1

      Michael Walker

      1

    • The Virgin Queen Chihuahua Has Spoken!

      Jim Goad

      4

    • Pox Populi and Endeavour on the Latest Migrant Invasion

      Greg Johnson

    • Crowdsourcing Contest! Our Banner

      A. C. C. Reader

      41

    • Adult Cartoons Are a Disaster for Western Civilization, Part 2

      Travis LeBlanc

      17

    • Having It All: America Reaps the Benefits of Feminism

      Beau Albrecht

      8

    • The Captivity Narrative of Fanny Kelly

      Spencer J. Quinn

      7

    • The Virgin Queen Chihuahua Has Spoken!

      Jim Goad

      52

    • Adult Cartoons Are a Disaster for Western Civilization, Part 1

      Travis LeBlanc

      40

    • Plastic Patriotism: Propaganda and the Establishment’s Crusade Against Germany and German-Americans During the First World War

      Alex Graham

      9

    • Race and IQ Differences: An Interview with Arthur Jensen, Part 2

      Arthur Jensen

      1

    • Donald Trump: The Jews’ Psycho Ex-Girlfriend

      Travis LeBlanc

      13

    • Bad to the Spone: Charles Krafft’s An Artist of the Right

      Gunnar Alfredsson

      1

    • Independence Day

      Mark Gullick

    • The Unnecessary War

      Morris van de Camp

      1

    • Bad Cop! No Baklava!

      Beau Albrecht

      7

    • Counter-Currents Radio Podcast No. 552 Millennial Woes on Corporations, the Left, & Other Matters

      Counter-Currents Radio

      6

    • Remembering Charles Krafft: September 19, 1947–June 12, 2020

      Greg Johnson

    • Marx vs. Rousseau

      Stephen Paul Foster

      4

    • The Worst Week Yet: September 10-16, 2023

      Jim Goad

      22

    • The Tinkling Cherub of Mississippi

      Beau Albrecht

      2

    • A Deep Ecological Perspective on the Vulnerability of Eurodescendants

      Francisco Albanese

      3

    • Remembering Francis Parker Yockey: September 18, 1917–June 16, 1960

      Greg Johnson

      1

    • The Counter-Currents 2023 Fundraiser: Idealism Alone Can’t Last Forever

      Pox Populi

      3

    • Ask Me Anything with Millennial Woes

      Greg Johnson

    • Most White Republicans at Least Slightly Agree with the Great Replacement Theory

      David M. Zsutty

      13

    • Field of Dreams: A Right-Wing Film?

      Morris van de Camp

      2

    • Rich Snobs vs. Poor Slobs: The Schism Between “Racist” Whites

      Jim Goad

      99

    • Memories of Underdevelopment: Revolution & the Bourgeois Mentality

      Steven Clark

      2

    • Diversity: Our Greatest Strength?

      Greg Johnson

      2

    • Jon Stewart’s Irresistible: An Election in Flyover Country

      Beau Albrecht

      2

    • Apocalyptic Summertime Fun

      Gunnar Alfredsson

      1

    • Genius Loci: The Rise and Fall of the Great Comedian Peter Cook

      Mark Gullick

      12

    • Counter-Currents Radio Podcast No. 551: Ask Me Anything with Matt Parrott

      Counter-Currents Radio

      2

    • It’s Time to Wind Down the Empire of Nothing

      Morris van de Camp

      1

    • Should Whites Turn Their Backs on the US Military? A Response to Padraig Martin of Identity Dixie

      Spencer J. Quinn

      47

    • Counter-Currents Radio Podcast No. 550: Catching Up with Matt Parrott

      Counter-Currents Radio

      5

    • Race and IQ Differences: An Interview with Arthur Jensen, Part 1

      Arthur Jensen

    • Otázka ženského masochismu

      F. Roger Devlin

    • The Worst Week Yet: September 3-9, 2023

      Jim Goad

      33

    • Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s The Real Anthony Fauci, Part Two: The HIV Swindle

      Jef Costello

      33

    • Born Innocent

      Travis LeBlanc

      6

    • The Counter-Currents 9/11 Symposium

      Greg Johnson

  • Classics Corner

    • Why Race is Not a “Social Construct”

      Greg Johnson

      19

    • Remembering T. S. Eliot:
      September 26, 1888–January 4, 1965

      Greg Johnson

      2

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

      Greg Johnson

      22

    • Leo Strauss, the Conservative Revolution, & National Socialism, Part 2

      Greg Johnson

      3

    • Leo Strauss, the Conservative Revolution, & National Socialism, Part 3

      Greg Johnson

      13

    • Remembering H. Keith Thompson
      September 17, 1922–March 3, 2002

      Kerry Bolton

      1

    • Be All You Can Be: On Joining the Military

      Ash Donaldson

      22

    • Transcript of FOX News’ Banned Report on Israel & 9/11

      Spencer J. Quinn

    • The Banned FOX News Report on Israel’s Role in 9/11

      Spencer J. Quinn

      12

    • The Psychology of Conversion

      Greg Johnson

      43

    • Animal Justice?

      Greg Johnson

      18

    • Uppity White Folks and How to Reach Them

      Greg Johnson

      6

    • Lord Kek Commands!
      A Look at the Origins of Meme Magic

      James J. O'Meara

      7

    • Major General J. F. C. Fuller
      (September 1, 1878–February 10, 1966)

      Anonymous

      5

    • Remembering Johann Gottfried von Herder
      (August 25, 1744–December 18, 1803)

      Martin Lichtmesz

      2

    • Moral Seriousness

      Greg Johnson

      13

    • Columbus Day Special
      The Autochthony Argument

      Greg Johnson

      8

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

      Greg Johnson

      8

    • Sir Reginald Goodall: An Appreciation

      Greg Johnson

      3

    • 7-11 Nationalism

      Richard Houck

      28

    • Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? as Anti-Semitic/Christian-Gnostic Allegory

      Greg Johnson

      7

    • Eraserhead:
      A Gnostic Anti-Sex Film

      Trevor Lynch

      17

    • Remembering Revilo Oliver
      (July 7, 1908–August 20, 1994)

      Greg Johnson

      17

    • Lars von Trier & the Men Among the Ruins

      John Morgan

      16

    • Heidegger without Being

      Greg Johnson

      17

    • Junetarded Nation

      Jim Goad

      8

    • Counter-Currents Radio Podcast No. 338
      Ted Talk

      Counter-Currents Radio

      3

    • Hegemony

      Greg Johnson

      11

    • Cù Chulainn in the GPO:
      The Mythic Imagination of Patrick Pearse

      Michael O'Meara

      5

    • Remembering Dominique Venner
      (April 16, 1935 – May 21, 2013)

      Greg Johnson

      11

  • Paroled from the Paywall

    • A Call For White Identity Politics: Ed Brodow’s The War on Whites

      Dave Chambers

      6

    • The Fiction of Harold Covington, Part One

      Steven Clark

      21

    • Death by Hunger: Two Books About the Holodomor

      Morris van de Camp

      4

    • A Child as White as Snow

      Mark Gullick

      6

    • Jonathan Bowden’s Final Lecture on Video: Charles Maurras, Action Française, and the Cagoule

      Jonathan Bowden

      1

    • Who Was Lawrence R. Brown? Biographical Notes on the Author of The Might of the West

      Margot Metroland

      16

    • California Discontent, Part 2: Frank Norris’ The Octopus

      Steven Clark

      1

    • California Discontent, Part 1: John Steinbeck’s East of Eden

      Steven Clark

    • 12 More Sex Differences Due to Nature

      Richard Knight

      4

    • Counter-Currents Radio Podcast No. 545 Pox Populi and Morgoth on the Age of Immigration and More 

      Counter-Currents Radio

    • When White Idealism Goes Too Far: Saints of the American Wilderness

      Spencer J. Quinn

      10

    • A Compassionate Spy?

      Beau Albrecht

      11

    • Counter-Currents Radio Podcast No. 544 Pox Populi, American Krogan, & Endeavour on the Metaverse

      Counter-Currents Radio

    • Nietzsche and the Psychology of the Left, Part Two

      Collin Cleary

      2

    • Thoughts on an Unfortunate Convergence: Doctors, Lawyers, and Angry Women

      Stephen Paul Foster

      5

    • Against Liberalism: Society Is Not a Market, Chapter I, Part 3: What Is Liberalism?

      Alain de Benoist

    • Against Liberalism: Society Is Not a Market, Chapter I, Part 2: What Is Liberalism?

      Alain de Benoist

      1

    • Against Liberalism: Society Is Not a Market, Chapter I, Part 1: What Is Liberalism?

      Alain de Benoist

      1

    • Misrepresentative Government: Why Democracy Doesn’t Work, Part IV

      Kenneth Vinther

      2

    • Misrepresentative Government: Why Democracy Doesn’t Work, Part III

      Kenneth Vinther

      1

    • Counter-Currents Radio Podcast No. 543 Greg Johnson on Plato’s Gorgias, Lecture 4

      Counter-Currents Radio

    • Misrepresentative Government: Why Democracy Doesn’t Work, Part I

      Kenneth Vinther

      1

    • Jack London’s The Iron Heel as Prophecy, Part 2

      Beau Albrecht

    • The Scottish Mr. Bond? An Interview with Mystic

      Travis LeBlanc

      2

    • Counter-Currents Radio Podcast No. 542 Greg Johnson on Plato’s Gorgias, Lecture 3

      Counter-Currents Radio

    • The Bard Across Three Reichs: Germany, Shakespeare, and Andreas Höfele’s No Hamlets, Part II

      Kathryn S.

      4

    • The Bard Across Three Reichs: Germany, Shakespeare, and Andreas Höfele’s No Hamlets, Part I

      Kathryn S.

      3

    • Against Liberalism: Society Is Not a Market, Introduction, Part III

      Alain de Benoist

    • Against Liberalism: Society Is Not a Market, Introduction, Part II

      Alain de Benoist

    • Against Liberalism: Society Is Not a Market, Introduction, Part I

      Alain de Benoist

      1

  • Recent comments

    • Liam Kernaghan

      The Worst Week Yet: September 17-23, 2023

      A very encouraging commentary - you write well and your observations on demographics and social...

    • Lord Shang

      The Union Jackal, September 2023

      Why are the British people so indifferent to their government-engineered replacement? America has a...

    • james Smith

      Having It All: America Reaps the Benefits of Feminism

      Reflection, by John Guzziferno

    • james Smith

      Having It All: America Reaps the Benefits of Feminism

      The destruction of marriage is not woman's fault, but men's. Men are the chief legislators in this...

    • Hamburger Today

      Plastic Patriotism: Propaganda and the Establishment’s Crusade Against Germany and German-Americans During the First World War

      These travesties occur because we let abstractions like 'patriotism' and 'loyalty' and 'America'...

    • Gallus

      The Matter with Concrete, Part 1

      What a superb review of a subject I never thought would be remotely interesting. Living in the UK...

    • Hamburger Today

      Crowdsourcing Contest! Our Banner

      I fixed the link. The essence of the issue is emphasis. Is the pro-White movement about...

    • Hamburger Today

      Crowdsourcing Contest! Our Banner

      If you’re kind enough to validate the feelings of other whites by making them not feel so alone in...

    • Bear

      Metapolitics and Occult Warfare

      History is both linear and cyclical. Christianity usually gets credit for the linear however I think...

    • J Webb

      Having It All: America Reaps the Benefits of Feminism

      I'm glad the NY Post covered the woman looking for liberal guy to take care of her. The comments on...

    • Mike Bennett

      The Worst Week Yet: September 17-23, 2023

      The white man’s burden is the Roman Catholic Church…. Christianity in general! it is a carry-over...

    • Liam Kernaghan

      The Virgin Queen Chihuahua Has Spoken!

      There was an audio video from around about the back end of last year, or maybe very early this year...

    • heymrguda

      Richard Hanania’s The Origins of Woke

      “The American political system was not prepared for the mass migration of highly intelligent,...

    • Shift

      The Worst Week Yet: September 17-23, 2023

      Howard Stern and Donald Trump have a lot in common.  Howard Stern, Donald Trump, Elvis Presley, Jim...

    • Muhammad Aryan

      The Worst Week Yet: September 17-23, 2023

      Some have estimated that Islamic slaughters of Hindus account for “the biggest holocaust in world...

    • Edmund

      Crowdsourcing Contest! Our Banner

      I've done it. That is, convert non-conservative secular whites into my way of thinking. I admit, it'...

    • Jim Goad

      The Virgin Queen Chihuahua Has Spoken!

      A quick search of “Nick Fuentes” and “working class” on Google yielded this video. Yeah, it’s from “...

    • ShadowPal

      The Worst Week Yet: September 17-23, 2023

      I remember a few episodes of Howard Stern's show. One episode had a game show with black contestants...

    • Weave

      Adult Cartoons Are a Disaster for Western Civilization, Part 1

      Did you make an effort to stop swearing? I keep trying to stop, but traffic gets me every time.

    • Margot Metroland

      Christopher Rufo on White Identity Politics

      Indeed, and that's my usual mainstream-normie reaction. We can't let the perfect be the enemy of the...

  • Book Authors

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

    Editor-in-Chief

    • Greg Johnson, Ph.D.

    Featured Writers

    • Beau Albrecht
    • Morris V. de Camp
    • Stephen Paul Foster, Ph.D.
    • Jim Goad
    • Alex Graham
    • Mark Gullick, Ph.D.
    • Greg Johnson, Ph.D.
    • Spencer J. Quinn

    Frequent Writers

    • Aquilonius
    • Anthony Bavaria
    • Alain de Benoist
    • Kerry Bolton, Ph.D.
    • Collin Cleary, Ph.D.
    • Jef Costello
    • F. Roger Devlin, Ph.D.
    • Richard Houck
    • Ondrej Mann
    • Margot Metroland
    • John Morgan
    • Trevor Lynch
    • James J. O’Meara
    • Kathryn S.
    • Thomas Steuben
    • Michael Walker

    Classic Authors

    • Maurice Bardèche
    • Jonathan Bowden
    • Julius Evola
    • Guillaume Faye
    • Ernst Jünger
    • Kevin MacDonald, Ph.D.
    • 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
    • Dominique Venner
    • Leo Yankevich
    • Francis Parker Yockey

    Other Authors

    • Howe Abbott-Hiss
    • Michael Bell
    • Buttercup Dew
    • Giles Corey
    • Bain Dewitt
    • Jack Donovan
    • Richardo Duchesne, Ph.D.
    • Emile Durand
    • Guillaume Durocher
    • Mark Dyal
    • Fullmoon Ancestry
    • Tom Goodroch
    • Andrew Hamilton
    • Robert Hampton
    • Huntley Haverstock
    • Derek Hawthorne
    • Gregory Hood
    • Juleigh Howard-Hobson
    • Alexander Jacob
    • Nicholas Jeelvy
    • Ruuben Kaalep
    • Tobias Langdon
    • Julian Langness
    • Travis LeBlanc
    • Patrick Le Brun
    • G A Malvicini
    • John Michael McCloughlin
    • Millennial Woes
    • Michael O’Meara
    • Christopher Pankhurst
    • Michael Polignano
    • J. J. Przybylski
    • Quintilian
    • Edouard Rix
    • C. B. Robertson
    • C. F. Robinson
    • Herve Ryssen
    • Alan Smithee
    • Fenek Solere
    • Ann Sterzinger
    • Robert Steuckers
    • Tomislav Sunic
    • Donald Thoresen
    • Marian Van Court
    • Irmin Vinson
    • Aylmer Wedgwood
    • Scott Weisswald
  • 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
Spencer J. Quinn Above Time Coffee Antelope Hill Publishing Identaria Paul Waggener IHR-Store Asatru Folk Assembly No College Club American Renaissance The Patrick Ryan Show Jim Goad The Occidental Observer
Donate Now Mailing list
Books for sale
  • The Trial of Socrates
  • Fields of Asphodel
  • El Manifiesto Nacionalista Blanco
  • An Artist of the Right
  • Ernst Jünger
  • Reuben
  • The Partisan
  • 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
  • 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
Copyright © 2023 Counter-Currents Publishing, Ltd.

Paywall Access





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

Edit your comment