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

    • Remembering Savitri Devi (September 30, 1905–October 22, 1982)

      Greg Johnson

    • The Counter-Currents 2023 Fundraiser: A Question of Degree

      Mark Gullick

    • Politics vs. Self-Help

      Greg Johnson

      25

    • The Fountainhead: 80 Years Later

      Jef Costello

      9

    • It’s Not All About You

      Spencer J. Quinn

      2

    • Who Drinks More, the Rich or the Poor?

      Jim Goad

      19

    • The Stolen Land Narrative

      Morris van de Camp

      5

    • Neema Parvini’s Prophets of Doom: Cyclical History as Alternative to Liberal Progressivism

      Mike Maxwell

      1

    • Counter-Currents Radio Podcast No. 554 How Often Does Pox Think About the Roman Empire? . . . & Other Matters

      Counter-Currents Radio

    • The “Treasonous” Trajectory of Trumpism

      Stephen Paul Foster

      7

    • A Haunting in Venice: Agatha Christie Is Back

      Steven Clark

      4

    • Counter-Currents Radio Podcast No. 553 Endeavour & Pox Populi on the Latest Migrant Invasion & More

      Counter-Currents Radio

      2

    • White Altruism Revealed

      Gunnar Alfredsson

      2

    • The Union Jackal, September 2023

      Mark Gullick

      18

    • The Metapolitics of “Woke”

      Endeavour

      2

    • The Matter with Concrete, Part 2

      Michael Walker

      2

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

      Greg Johnson

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

      Jim Goad

      39

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

      Steven Clark

    • Richard Hanania’s The Origins of Woke

      Matt Parrott

      5

    • The Matter with Concrete, Part 1

      Michael Walker

      2

    • The Virgin Queen Chihuahua Has Spoken!

      Jim Goad

      5

    • Pox Populi and Endeavour on the Latest Migrant Invasion

      Greg Johnson

    • Crowdsourcing Contest! Our Banner

      A. C. C. Reader

      47

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

      Travis LeBlanc

      18

    • Having It All: America Reaps the Benefits of Feminism

      Beau Albrecht

      12

    • 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

      2

    • Donald Trump: The Jews’ Psycho Ex-Girlfriend

      Travis LeBlanc

      14

    • 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

  • 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

    • The Relentless Persistence of Stalinism

      Stephen Paul Foster

    • Counter-Currents Radio Podcast No. 548 Ask Me Anything with Greg Johnson, Pox Populi, & David Zsutty

      Counter-Currents Radio

    • Metapolitics in Germany, Part 1: An Exclusive Interview with Frank Kraemer of Stahlgewitter

      Ondrej Mann

      3

    • Counter-Currents Radio Podcast No. 546 Greg Johnson on Plato’s Gorgias, Lecture 5

      Counter-Currents Radio

    • 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

  • Recent comments

    • Connor McDowell

      The Fountainhead: 80 Years Later

      I never read The Fountainhead, but I did read We the Living and slogged through John Galt’s speech...

    • Wotan1

      Who Drinks More, the Rich or the Poor?

      "People who can’t handle life are constantly puffing on something or downing something." Or...

    • Wotan1

      Who Drinks More, the Rich or the Poor?

      From the "trying new things" angle, I suppose; those who score high on Openness for the "Big Five"...

    • Band on the run

      Politics vs. Self-Help

      This will never even happen. So many people are wealthy precisely because of politics. They have no...

    • Band on the run

      Politics vs. Self-Help

      I’m done blaming Boomers. It was fun for a while, but these are our parents and grandparents. The...

    • ArminiusMaximus

      It’s Not All About You

      Now that he has made it, the prize money is the chump change. The real money is in the endorsements...

    • Vegetius

      Politics vs. Self-Help

      What do people here think of Handsome Truth?  I am not trying to derail or cause a fight here, I...

    • ArminiusMaximus

      Politics vs. Self-Help

      Agreed. I do think that spiteful mutancy is not purely genetic. A child who is pandered to where the...

    • Hamburger Today

      Politics vs. Self-Help

      As is so often the case, Dr. Johnson is willing to take on important issues and give them a healthy...

    • Hamburger Today

      Politics vs. Self-Help

      You're mistaken about the 'bottle-neck' affecting Whites only. It's virtually every population...

    • Greg Johnson

      Politics vs. Self-Help

      Dutton is actually a very popular advocate for ideas that align with ours. He and AltHype are the...

    • Hamburger Today

      Politics vs. Self-Help

      Why do we need a tax burden at all? The plain reality is that printing money for investment in...

    • ArminiusMaximus

      Politics vs. Self-Help

      Excellent. Thank you Greg. This is a wonderful article. I think you made a great point about what...

    • T Steuben

      Politics vs. Self-Help

      I don't see self help and politics as a mutually exclusive dichotomy even though it tends to be cast...

    • Greg Johnson

      Politics vs. Self-Help

      This is quite relevant to Mark Gullick's new fundraiser, above.

    • Just Passing By

      The Fountainhead: 80 Years Later

      *The Fountainhead* is probably Rand's best work, whatever its literary flaws. Many speeches are...

    • ArminiusMaximus

      Politics vs. Self-Help

      Part of our politics must also be providing solutions. I think the biggest area is in offering K-12...

    • ArminiusMaximus

      Politics vs. Self-Help

      I agree. This sounds like resignation. It is way too early for that. We are passing through an event...

    • Greg Johnson

      Politics vs. Self-Help

      I do think white populists need to think seriously about limiting the ability of wealth to influence...

    • Rubadub

      Politics vs. Self-Help

      We’re going on what, 40+ years of Reagan Republican tax cuts for the rich? It’s time to recognize...

  • 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 24, 2022 13 comments

A Tip of the Trilby:
On the Passing of the Dynamic Duo, Meat Loaf & Jim Steinman

James J. O'Meara

Meat Loaf

3,393 words

“We didn’t know each other, we were each other.” — Meat Loaf on Jim Steinman[1]

On Thursday, as it must to all men, death came to Marvin Lee Aday, known professionally as Meat Loaf. Mr. Loaf was perhaps an acquired taste, but he was certainly an energetic performer — on one occasion, falling off the stage, only to insist on completing his tour in a wheelchair. Despite his prodigious girth and periodic drug abuse, he more than fulfilled his Biblical three score and ten, dying at 74. Indeed, he seemed to lead a charmed life, of a sort:

Meat Loaf’s baffling number of injuries and near death experiences led him to describe himself as a “cat with 48 lives”.

In 2013, he told Ultimate Classic Rock he suffered 18 concussions, survived eight car crashes, and had close calls on planes. He also claimed he had “fallen three storeys” and had so many near misses and collisions that he “should have died” — but the truth of these accidents has never been verified.

Meat Loaf even claims his singing voice came as the result of a 12-pound shot put being thrown at his head from 62-feet away during school. He told The Telegraph: “Didn’t even knock me out. Weird.” Shortly after he was trying out for a choir and found he suddenly had a three-and-a-half-octave vocal range. He was also left with a dent in his head.

Despite the usual rock ‘n roll excesses, Mr. Loaf is something of a conservative, or Right-wing, figure. Indeed, his career was bookended by two iconic Rightist movie roles; first, as the doomed biker Eddie in The Rocky Horror Show, which Edmund Connelly has recently discussed here as a “reactionary morality tale,” describing Mr. Loaf’s role thusly:

We enter into an unexpected moral dilemma as a scene of irrepressible power and creativity overtakes us. From a large freezer emerges an ice-covered biker carrying a saxophone. The biker is none other than the iconic Meat Loaf, scarred and oozing primal male power, which is apparently what drew Columbia, an old girlfriend, to him.

Meat Loaf as Eddie belts out a powerful rock-‘n’-roll song, completely upstaging the fuming Frank-N-Furter, a vain and spoiled individual. After finishing his sax solo, Eddie rides around the large room on his large Harley, continuing to dominate the scene. Furious, Frank grabs a pick and threatens the much larger Eddie, who fearfully backs into the foggy freezer, from which we hear the horrible sounds of pick ripping flesh, with screams from Columbia. Soon, the bloodied Frank-N-Furter exits, stumbling after such exertion. Rushing over to his love creation, he consoles an agitated Rocky, “Don’t be upset. It was a mercy killing. He had a certain naïve charm — but no muscle.”

You can buy James O’Meara’s End of an Era here.

In a sort of degenerate parody of the premise of Hitchcock’s Rope, Frank will serve Eddie’s remains to his captive guests: “All are appalled except for Frank, who blithely continues to assume that power trumps any old-fashioned concepts of morality.”

Apart from all the soon to be socially fashionable depravity around, it is Eddie’s death — the death of the truly masculine figure, replaced by the synthetic, hairless, pumped-up masculinity of Rocky (or “The Creature,” as the credits refer to him) who is intended as a toy for the amusement of the epicene Frank — that serves as the moral aporia at the center of the film.

Indeed, towards the end of his career, Mr. Loaf again personified threatened masculinity on screen in a film more commonly associated with the Right than Rocky Horror: David Fincher’s Fight Club.[2] In Jef Costello’s landmark essay “Fight Club as Holy Writ,”[3] he reflects on Mr. Loaf’s character, Bob:

The story of Fight Club starts when Jack, an emotionally repressed insomniac looking for some kind of catharsis, visits a support group for men with testicular cancer: “Remaining Men Together.” Some of these men have literally been emasculated. One of them, Bob, has developed “bitch tits” because testosterone therapy caused his body to up his estrogen level.

How did Bob get in this predicament? We are told that he was a “champion bodybuilder.” And like all champion bodybuilders he was a ‘roid head. (Bob gives us a litany of the drugs he used to use, saying of one of them “They use that on racehorses for Christ’s sake!”). It is implied that Bob’s steroid abuse led to his testicular cancer. How ironic. Here’s a guy who pumped himself full of synthetic man hormones and built enormous man muscles — why? Well, to be manly for gosh sakes. And it led to his manhood being removed.

Punishment from the gods, if you ask me. Like Jack and so many other men today, he felt a sense of masculine inferiority. And like so many men today he addressed it through the external, through the cosmetic. So he built big muscles (which, of course, any fairy can do in a gym in Chelsea). Others allow a quarter inch or so of stubble to accumulate on their faces, and carefully trim it every few days. Others buy snazzy cars.

So, while Eddie is chopped up by transvestite Frank “N” Furter to be replaced by the artificial muscle-man Rocky,[4] Bob is an artificial muscle-man whose drug regimen has lopped off his testicles and added tits. Manhood doesn’t seem to stand a chance these days.

Personally as well, Mr. Loaf was known as a Trump supporter, certainly a bold stance in the “entertainment industry,” although it may have been a somewhat, um, rocky relationship.

So fare well, big guy. Given the furious, gung-ho nature of his performances, perhaps Hunter Thompson’s epitaph for Dr. Gonzo himself applies as well or better:

There he goes. One of God’s own prototypes. A high-powered mutant of some kind never even considered for mass production. Too weird to live, and too rare to die.

But although I did not come here to bury Mr. Loaf, I did not exactly come here to praise him; rather, I wanted to say a few words about his Svengali: Jim Steinman, who, somewhat weirdly, died just last year — April 19, 2021 — at almost 74 himself. Steinman was a rather literal Svengali to Mr. Loaf’s Trilby, being not only the mastermind behind the music but about as Jewish as they come in America: scion of some sort of construction mogul on Long Island.

His work included albums such as Meat Loaf‘s Bat Out of Hell (one of the best selling albums in history) and Bat Out of Hell II: Back into Hell, and producing albums for Bonnie Tyler. His most successful chart singles include Tyler’s “Total Eclipse of the Heart,” Air Supply‘s “Making Love Out of Nothing at All,” Meat Loaf’s “I’d Do Anything for Love (But I Won’t Do That),” the Sisters of Mercy‘s “This Corrosion” and “More,” Barry Manilow‘s “Read ‘Em and Weep,” Celine Dion‘s cover of “It’s All Coming Back to Me Now” (originally released by Steinman’s project Pandora’s Box) and Boyzone‘s “No Matter What” (the group’s first and only single to be popular and chart in the US). Steinman’s only solo album Bad for Good was released in 1981.

Steinman’s work also extended to musical theater, where he began his career. Steinman was credited with the book, music, and lyrics for Bat Out of Hell: The Musical, as well as lyrics for Whistle Down the Wind, and music for Tanz der Vampire.[5]

If you’re of a certain age or spent too much time watching VH1 or were ever stuck in an elevator or a mall, you know all or most of this music. And while there’s certainly nothing unusual about a successful Jewish songwriter, what’s peculiar here is that I, at least, find Steinman’s most characteristic music to be rather, um, Aryan.

But first, let me observe that one of the cruel truths of post-high school life is that popularity rarely, if ever, correlates to “coolness.” If asked by any kind of high-status person who your favorite pop composer is, the answer “Jim Steinman” would be greeted perhaps by puzzlement — “Who?” — and then, when several examples of his songs are cited, there would be a sad shake of the head and perhaps the mouthing of the word “loser.”[6]

So while popular among white people, you could not call it “Music White People Like.” Quite the contrary; or rather, it was and is popular among a certain sort of white people — most likely to be found in some basket of deplorables, or shopping without a mask — and hated, or mocked, by another sort: those who think themselves to be part of an elite, the actual Stuff White People Like (SWPL) crowd,[7] made up of those who, among other things, hate or mock that kind of music.[8] And not coincidentally, they, though white themselves, often hate or mock White People: racists and so on with, as a thoroughly indoctrinated white high schooler famously complained, no culture.

So the thing about Steinman’s music is that I find the themes and production are quite Aryan, or even Faustian; they deal with tragedy, romance, tragic romance, romantic tragedy, White men exploding atoms and traveling to the moon (the secret themes of “Total Eclipse of the Heart”) and especially heroism.

I mean, really:

Holding Out for a Hero
(“Secret Dreams and Forbidden Fire” Version)

Where have all the good men gone
And where are all the gods?
Where’s the street-wise Hercules
To fight the rising odds?

Isn’t there a white knight upon a fiery steed?
Late at night I toss and I turn, I dream of what I need

I need a hero
I’m holding out for a hero ’til the end of the night
He’s gotta be strong
And he’s gotta be fast
And he’s gotta be fresh from the fight
I need a hero
I’m holding out for a hero ’til the morning light
He’s gotta be sure
And he’s gotta be soon
And he’s gotta be larger than life
Larger than life

Somewhere after midnight
In my wildest fantasy
Somewhere just beyond my reach
There’s someone reaching back for me

Racing on the thunder and rising with the heat
It’s gonna take a superman to sweep me off my feet

I need a hero etc. [repeat]

Up where the mountains meet the heavens above
Out where the lightning splits the sea
I could swear that there’s someone somewhere watching me

Through the wind and the chill and the rain
And the storm and the flood
I can feel his approach
Like the fire in my blood [repeat]

I need a hero
I’m holding out for a hero ’til the end of the night
He’s gotta be strong
And he’s gotta be fast
And he’s gotta be fresh from the fight
I need a hero
I’m holding out for a hero ’til the morning light
He’s gotta be sure
And he’s gotta be soon
And he’s gotta be larger than life

And of course the official video is based as all Hell. It makes Jack Donovan look like Klaus Nomi:[9]

Bonnie Tyler - Holding Out For A Hero (Official HD Video)Bonnie Tyler – Holding Out For A Hero (Official HD Video)

Now I need to deal with the rebellion I can already feel starting up.[10] This is “bombastic.” This is “over the top.” [11] This is “self-parody,” or even worse, unconsciously parodic. And I see that, I really do. But I find it charmingly earnest, not something to be mocked and condemned as “camp for straight people.”[12]

The latter attitude I find to be an example of the modern pose of Irony, which has been an acid rotting away any serious or even playfully earnest aspect of white culture and civilization for decades, replacing it with a bored, literally sophomoric been there/seen through that reflex that makes any kind of serious engagement with the world, art, or society impossible.

Writing about Kill Bill Vol. I, Trevor Lynch observes:

There are scenes in Kill Bill that are genuinely powerful and moving. But just when you find yourself caught up in the film, just when you are starting to take it seriously, Tarantino douses your enthusiasm with a bucket of cold irony.

[By] “irony” I mean a refusal to take serious things seriously, specifically a refusal of respect or allegiance to ideals, a refusal of their demand that we must elevate and transform our lives in their image, or even sacrifice our lives for their greater glory and continued sway.

By “irony,” I mean the cynical pretense of having seen through the emptiness and vanity of all ideals.

[This] is a sign of decadence, because a healthy soul and a healthy society need ideals. Ideals are the only things that raise the human soul above the brute animality of our carnal desires.

The desires for food, security, sexual gratification, and continued existence do not set us apart from the animals. What sets us apart is our ability to give these things up for something higher. The desire to conform to a social hierarchy to ensure the satisfaction of our desires does not set us apart from wolves, apes, or even insects like ants and bees. What sets us apart is the ability to rebel in the name of ideals like liberty and justice.[13]

You can buy James J. O’Meara’s Passing the Buck here.

So if you think you’re too good for this music, I say get over it, and get over yourself. Treat it with a smile of indulgence, if you must, but get rid of the smirk of irony; it’s for your own good, as well as your nation and your race.

Speaking of race, and the acid of irony, one must also face this aspect of the Jewish Question. As already pointed out, Steinman was Jewish.[14] I suppose it’s possible that he devoted his entire career to one long Andy Kaufman-style put-on, mocking, by pretending to embody, the worst features of goyishe music, rather like Sasha Baron-Cohen’s Borat.[15]

But surely its more likely that the worst features of Steinman’s music are accidental. We have an example, in the genre of pop music, of a phenomenon well known to classical buffs. E. R. E. Knutsson writes:

Rudolf Louis, one of Mahler’s anti-Semitic critics, summarized it thus in 1909: “What I find so utterly repellent about Mahler’s music is the pronounced Jewishness of its underlying character. . . . It is abhorrent to me because it speaks Yiddish. In other words it speaks the language of German music but with an accent, with the intonation and above all with the gestures of the Easterner, the all-too-Eastern Jew.” Louis’s choice of words, according to Julian Johnson, “underlines something true about Mahler’s music: it speaks the language of the Austro-German tradition but with a different tone, accent, and voice. It remains contested whether this difference is explained by Mahler’s Jewish origins . . . or whether it results from a modernist attitude toward [music] (marked by irony, parody, exaggeration) that exceeds the specific category of Jewish identity.”[16]

In “Why Mahler? Norman Lebrecht and the Construction of Jewish Genius,” Brenton Sanderson quotes the titular Jewish critic thus:

For Lebrecht, in the funeral march in Mahler’s First Symphony he ‘is writing as a Jew and the irony he uses is not classical Greek but everyday Yiddish, a dialect that changes meaning by gesture and inflection. Any statement in Yiddish can be made to mean the opposite . . .[17] the conjunction of gravity and gaiety is a facet of Jewish psychology and a driving motive of Mahler’s First Symphony. Played without irony, the music sounds shallow. Played with too Jewish an accent, it attains self-parody. Mahler leaves it to interpreters to strike the correct balance.’[18]

I suspect that’s what we have here; as with Mahler, in the wrong hands — and all too frequently, those are Jim Steinman’s hands — pop music in the style of Wagner “attains self-parody.”[19]

I suggest this is something else we need to, as Jonathan Bowden would say, “step over.” Steinman may have, due to his tribal handicap, gotten the accent wrong on occasion, but his intentions seem honest enough and the results speak for themselves, or will if we ignore our “betters” and accept them at face value. There’s precious little spiritually affirmative music in the pop world these days, and we need to make the most of whatever we may find.

*  *  *

Counter-Currents has extended special privileges to those who donate $120 or more per year.

  • First, donor comments will appear immediately instead of waiting in a moderation queue. (People who abuse this privilege will lose it.)
  • Second, donors will have immediate access to all Counter-Currents posts. Non-donors will find that one post a day, five posts a week will be behind a “paywall” and will be available to the general public after 30 days.

To get full access to all content behind the paywall, sign up here:

Paywall Gift Subscriptions

If you are already behind the paywall and want to share the benefits, Counter-Currents also offers paywall gift subscriptions. We need just five things from you:

  • your payment
  • the recipient’s name
  • the recipient’s email address
  • your name
  • your email address

To register, just fill out this form and we will walk you through the payment and registration process. There are a number of different payment options.

Notes

[1]  Andy Green, “Meat Loaf Remembers Jim Steinman: ‘He Was the Centerpiece of My Life'”. Rolling Stone, April 23, 2021.

[2] Reviewed by Trevor Lynch here, and reprinted in his collection Trevor Lynch: Part Four of the Trilogy; edited by Greg Johnson (San Francisco: Counter-Currents, 2020), available here.

[3] Reprinted in his collection The Importance of James Bond & Other Essays; edited by Greg Johnson (San Francisco: Counter-Currents, 2017), available here.

[4] Frank introduces his creation with a song that references, ironically, the Charles Atlas bodybuilding slogan, “In just seven days I can make you a man!”; however effective or not the Charles Atlas course was, at least it was a regimen — an ethos, if you will.

[5] He almost wrote The Phantom of the Opera for Anthony Lloyd-Weber, but chose to finish a Bonnie Tyler album instead. Again, one notes the “man behind the music” motif.

[6] Or perhaps this.

[7] See Greg Johnson’s “Smells Like . . . White Guilt: Christian Lander’s Whiter Shades of Pale,” reprinted in his collection Confessions of a Reluctant Hater; second ed., revised and expanded (San Francisco: Counter-Currents, 2016).

[8] They’re the people who think, or claim to think, as a sort of badge of Internet coolness that Starship’s “We Built this City on Rock and Roll” is, like, “the worst song ever.”

Say you don’t know me or recognize my face

Say you don’t care who goes to that kind of place.

[9] Not that there’s anything wrong with that. Here’s Klaus’ “Total Eclipse,” which doesn’t seem to be Steinman’s song, but sure gets the production values.

[10] “Oh, you’re all coiled up like a rattlesnake ready to strike me!” That’s Brother Stair and one of his typical proactive, passive-aggressive “I ain’t a smooth-talker” remarks after, say, denouncing the “Pope of Rome” as the Whore of Babylon, along with her “daughters of harlotry” — everyone else but him.

[11] From the “Total Eclipse of the Heart” Literal Video: “The gayest man on Earth would call this ‘over the top’.”

[12] Writing about another “implicitly white” form of music, exotica, and tiki culture in general, I pointed out that tiki had a surprising recurrence at Charlottesville: “Perhaps the most enduring image of the infamous Unite the Right march — also known as ‘Charlottesville,’ like some historic Confederate rout — is the tiki torchlight parade. You can see why: On the one hand, a torchlight parade sounds ominous, right out of the Hollywood Nazi playbook; on the other hand, it sounds ridiculous — combined with the polo shirt and khaki wardrobe, it calls to mind the way someone once described the music of Jim Steinman: camp for straight people. I see that the only reference for this is an earlier article of . . . my own. But I swear I saw it somewhere on the internets.”

[13] See also Greg Johnson, “Postmodernism vs. Identity, Part 2: Identity vs. Irony,” reprinted in his collection From Plato to Postmodernism (San Francisco: Counter-Currents, 2019). Especially good, and brief, is the video by Academic Agent, “Deconstructing Boomer Truth #6: Generation X and the Rise of the Midwit,”which examines Mike Judge’s cartoon character Daria as an archetype of Gen-X ironism.

[14] Or at least a “half-Jewish New Yorker,” according to The Sunday Times.

[15] Even Baron-Cohen quickly grew tired of the joke, and now lectures us on anti-Semitism via the ADL.

[16] “The Archaeology of Postmodernity, Part I: Viennese Mutations.” Knutsson?

[17] As a student I was told a joke, possibly a real event, where a practitioner of British “ordinary language philosophy” was lecturing at, I think, New York University, and said, “In many languages a double negative may indicate a positive, but there is no language in which a double positive conveys a negative meaning,” when from the back someone muttered “Yeah, yeah.”

[18] Interestingly, no less than Clive Davis of CBS refused to let the title of Meat Loaf’s first album include “Jim Steinman presents . . .” because it “sounded too Jewish;” see the American Israelite’s obituary. Shades of Mel Brooks.

[19] Not that Jews have any objection to appropriating it for themselves. Here’s Valerie Landsburg’s version of “Holding Out for a Hero.” Appropriately, this was recorded at the Jones Beach Amphitheatre on Steinman’s home turf, Long Island, as part of the Fame TV show’s concert “The Heart of Rock ‘n’ Roll” in 1984. Julia Louis-Dreyfus may have millions in the bank and played a Vice President on TV, but this is how she sees herself to this day.

Related

  • Barbie

  • Oppenheimer

  • Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny

  • Meet the Hunburgers

  • Biden and Bibi

  • A 5D Plan in 3D: Hitchcock’s Dial M For Murder

  • Breaking Beat: Reflections on The Rebel Set, a Masterpiece That Never Was

  • The New Mann: Reflections on Reading, Translating, and Annotating Germany’s Greatest “Black” [sic] Author, Part II

Tags

E. R. E. KnutssonFight ClubGustav MahlerHolding Out for a Heroimplicitly white musicJames J. O'MearaJim SteinmanMeat Loafobituariespop musicThe Rocky Horror Picture ShowTrevor Lynch

Previous

« The Yuppie Handbook, 40 Years On

Next

» Nigel Brown:
From No Remorse to Ravens Wing

13 comments

  1. VRS says:
    January 24, 2022 at 10:58 am

    1. Steinman was trying to recreate the sound of Bruce Springsteen on Bat out of Hell, including having two E Street Band members – drummer Max Weinberg and pianist Roy Bittan play on several songs. Much could be said about the white working class street symphonies of Springsteen and his unintentional parody and ultimate betrayal of such.

    2. I think I read somewhere that Steinman was heavily influenced by Wagner’s Ring Cycle and while in college staged a production of it, either at the school or off-Broadway.

    3. Did you intentionally choose a picture of Meat Loaf that made him look the most retarded?

     

     

    0
    0
  2. Hamburger Today says:
    January 24, 2022 at 11:00 am

    Originally opera was a popular musical form. Steinman wrote opera as popular music again.

    Ain’t no doubt about it
    We were doubly blessed.
    Cuz we were barely 17
    And were were barely dressed.

    I think any working class White might be able to project themselves into that moment.

    That’s a decent level of artistry, whether Steinman was pimping us or not.

    0
    0
  3. Michael says:
    January 24, 2022 at 12:01 pm

    Thing is, we don’t need Steinman or Mahler or any of them. We have enough great songwriters, great everything that the foreigner can be left outside the theater. I don’t care how much they sound “genuine”. once in the door, they ruin everything.

    0
    0
    1. Vauquelin says:
      January 25, 2022 at 11:07 am

      Well said.

      0
      0
  4. Alex says:
    January 24, 2022 at 12:22 pm

    Another Steinman masterpiece is It’s All Coming Back To Me Now. I much prefer Meat Loafs duet version to the earlier recording by Celine Dion

    0
    0
  5. Intensities in 10 Cities says:
    January 24, 2022 at 3:36 pm

    No mention of Mr. Loaf singing on Ted Nugent’s Free for All album? It’s not widely known that Loaf saved The Nuge from making a fool of himself by doing a concept album about his hero Martin Luther King Jr. It was Loaf who told him how crazy that was and that instead he should write a song with the word “poontang” in it.

    0
    0
  6. Mike Ricci says:
    January 24, 2022 at 7:10 pm

    Meat Loaf would have done anything for love, but he wouldn’t get vaxed.

    0
    0
  7. Nicolas Bourbaki says:
    January 25, 2022 at 8:18 am

    Really not too aware of the music scene or who Meat Loaf was.  I guess one has to be younger or in the music scene to know?  Did he ever do anything for white identitarianism {abbrev here as W.I.}: other than falling off the stage and completing his tour in a wheelchair?

    On a similar note, I fell off my garage roof onto my back on a brick driveway and survived without any apparent ill effects.  Even to this day, over 15 yrs, later I still don’t have any back problems. I’d recommend that everybody try it at least once in their lives as it apparently worked for Meat Loaf & myself.

    One observation is that W.I. types seem to be dying like flies.  Were I paranoid, I’d even suspect the Evil Empire of irradiating W.I.’s with low-intensity gamma rays so as to induce cancers and other physical maladies.

    0
    0
  8. Edmund Connelly says:
    January 25, 2022 at 8:39 am

    James, I appreciate the fact that you both read my Rocky Horror essay and liked it.

    Now, however, I have to give you kudos for identifying perhaps the key point about the phenomenon that was Meat Loaf, which you phrased brilliantly:

    “But although I did not come here to bury Mr. Loaf, I did not exactly come here to praise him; rather, I wanted to say a few words about his Svengali: Jim Steinman, who, somewhat weirdly, died just last year — April 19, 2021 — at almost 74 himself. Steinman was a rather literal Svengali to Mr. Loaf’s Trilby, being not only the mastermind behind the music but about as Jewish as they come in America: scion of some sort of construction mogul on Long Island.”

    Yes, that is indeed the fly in the ointment, so to speak. Meat Loaf was a prodigious performer but what would he have been without his Svengali? Surely he never would have had the immense support he enjoyed from the entertainment industry.

    Incidentally, for years I pondered the possible influence of Jews in the creation of Rocky Horror, and only the indirect influence of Lou Adler and Meat Loaf’s future ties to Steinman came to mind. In the end, I had to conclude that Rocky is an almost wholly Gentile production, unsavory as some of it may be. Then again, would you have the chastisement and punishment denouement had Jews lent a few hands to the story? I think not.

    Next, let’s turn to this incisive claim: “I, at least, find Steinman’s most characteristic music to be rather, um, Aryan.” VERY interesting point, and I learned a lot from your discussion about it.

    Another thing I liked was Trevor Lynch’s consideration of the use of irony in Kill Bill: “But just when you find yourself caught up in the film, just when you are starting to take it seriously, Tarantino douses your enthusiasm with a bucket of cold irony.  [By] “irony” I mean a refusal to take serious things seriously, specifically a refusal of respect or allegiance to ideals, a refusal of their demand that we must elevate and transform our lives in their image, or even sacrifice our lives for their greater glory and continued sway.”

    Yes, that analysis is correction, I believe. No wonder Trevor is a film expert. We always learn from him. Fortunately, this critique of irony does not apply to Rocky Horror (in my view), and the ending of the film as I read it is as far from unserious as you can get. Not much ironic about execution, is there?

    Anyway, I think there is much more to say about Meat Loaf and his life, so I hope you will add more. Thank you for a worthy good-bye to the man.

    0
    0
  9. Sun Li-Bai says:
    January 25, 2022 at 10:30 am

    Meat Loaf’s best song for my money is “Objects in the Rearview Mirror.” It makes me cry. I knew a girl just like the one in the third stanza growing up and loved her very much. Steinman is a close second place for my favorite Jew (John Milius is undoubtedly in first place though). For that reason I’m glad Steinman is dead so that I no longer have to make excuses for him. His greatest work is “It’s All Coming Back to Me Now.” When the Aryan Valkyrie Celine performs it live your hair will stand straight up on your arms if you have a heart at all.

    0
    0
  10. Guns or Roses says:
    January 26, 2022 at 1:32 pm

    The horror movie The Strangers features Total Eclipse Of The Heart and Making Love Out Of Nothing At All, two of the ultimate Steinman purple prose compositions.

    I was in university when Bat Out of Hell 2 (Back Into Hell) came out and I always loved it when I Would Do Anything For Love (But I Won’t Do That) came on the airwaves.

    My all time favorite Meat Loaf song is For Crying Out Loud. It always reminds me of flying over the Turks and Caicos on our way to DR before our kids came along.

    There is a wonderful YT video of Meat Loaf doing the Star Spangled Banner I believe before an MLB All-star Game. Very powerful stuff, you feel you are listening to a proud American.

    RIP

    0
    0
    1. James J. O'Meara says:
      January 27, 2022 at 9:13 am

      There’s a forgotten 1980 film, A Small Circle of Friends, sort of a The Way We Were, but with the 60s instead of the 40s, the SDS instead of commies, and instead of Streisand and Redford there’s Karen Allen and a couple of guys in free love setting, one of whom gets blowed up making a bomb, as really happened back then. It was directed by a friend of Steinman’s, and Jim suggested that using 60s rock songs was a cliche (take that, Scorsese) so he had Steinman orchestrate a couple of his songs, including those two. It’s free on YT, and at the big climax, when Karen Allen brings the dead guy’s things to his working class father, you can hear a rather effective version of “Total Eclipse” (1:46:00). No soundtrack album was ever released.

      https://youtu.be/hTOiTO4Fl_g

      0
      0
      1. Guns or Roses says:
        January 28, 2022 at 7:31 am

        Thank you for this, I shall check it out.

        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

    • Remembering Savitri Devi (September 30, 1905–October 22, 1982)

      Greg Johnson

    • The Counter-Currents 2023 Fundraiser: A Question of Degree

      Mark Gullick

    • Politics vs. Self-Help

      Greg Johnson

      25

    • The Fountainhead: 80 Years Later

      Jef Costello

      9

    • It’s Not All About You

      Spencer J. Quinn

      2

    • Who Drinks More, the Rich or the Poor?

      Jim Goad

      19

    • The Stolen Land Narrative

      Morris van de Camp

      5

    • Neema Parvini’s Prophets of Doom: Cyclical History as Alternative to Liberal Progressivism

      Mike Maxwell

      1

    • Counter-Currents Radio Podcast No. 554 How Often Does Pox Think About the Roman Empire? . . . & Other Matters

      Counter-Currents Radio

    • The “Treasonous” Trajectory of Trumpism

      Stephen Paul Foster

      7

    • A Haunting in Venice: Agatha Christie Is Back

      Steven Clark

      4

    • Counter-Currents Radio Podcast No. 553 Endeavour & Pox Populi on the Latest Migrant Invasion & More

      Counter-Currents Radio

      2

    • White Altruism Revealed

      Gunnar Alfredsson

      2

    • The Union Jackal, September 2023

      Mark Gullick

      18

    • The Metapolitics of “Woke”

      Endeavour

      2

    • The Matter with Concrete, Part 2

      Michael Walker

      2

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

      Greg Johnson

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

      Jim Goad

      39

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

      Steven Clark

    • Richard Hanania’s The Origins of Woke

      Matt Parrott

      5

    • The Matter with Concrete, Part 1

      Michael Walker

      2

    • The Virgin Queen Chihuahua Has Spoken!

      Jim Goad

      5

    • Pox Populi and Endeavour on the Latest Migrant Invasion

      Greg Johnson

    • Crowdsourcing Contest! Our Banner

      A. C. C. Reader

      47

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

      Travis LeBlanc

      18

    • Having It All: America Reaps the Benefits of Feminism

      Beau Albrecht

      12

    • 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

      2

    • Donald Trump: The Jews’ Psycho Ex-Girlfriend

      Travis LeBlanc

      14

    • 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

  • 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

    • The Relentless Persistence of Stalinism

      Stephen Paul Foster

    • Counter-Currents Radio Podcast No. 548 Ask Me Anything with Greg Johnson, Pox Populi, & David Zsutty

      Counter-Currents Radio

    • Metapolitics in Germany, Part 1: An Exclusive Interview with Frank Kraemer of Stahlgewitter

      Ondrej Mann

      3

    • Counter-Currents Radio Podcast No. 546 Greg Johnson on Plato’s Gorgias, Lecture 5

      Counter-Currents Radio

    • 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

  • Recent comments

    • Connor McDowell

      The Fountainhead: 80 Years Later

      I never read The Fountainhead, but I did read We the Living and slogged through John Galt’s speech...

    • Wotan1

      Who Drinks More, the Rich or the Poor?

      "People who can’t handle life are constantly puffing on something or downing something." Or...

    • Wotan1

      Who Drinks More, the Rich or the Poor?

      From the "trying new things" angle, I suppose; those who score high on Openness for the "Big Five"...

    • Band on the run

      Politics vs. Self-Help

      This will never even happen. So many people are wealthy precisely because of politics. They have no...

    • Band on the run

      Politics vs. Self-Help

      I’m done blaming Boomers. It was fun for a while, but these are our parents and grandparents. The...

    • ArminiusMaximus

      It’s Not All About You

      Now that he has made it, the prize money is the chump change. The real money is in the endorsements...

    • Vegetius

      Politics vs. Self-Help

      What do people here think of Handsome Truth?  I am not trying to derail or cause a fight here, I...

    • ArminiusMaximus

      Politics vs. Self-Help

      Agreed. I do think that spiteful mutancy is not purely genetic. A child who is pandered to where the...

    • Hamburger Today

      Politics vs. Self-Help

      As is so often the case, Dr. Johnson is willing to take on important issues and give them a healthy...

    • Hamburger Today

      Politics vs. Self-Help

      You're mistaken about the 'bottle-neck' affecting Whites only. It's virtually every population...

    • Greg Johnson

      Politics vs. Self-Help

      Dutton is actually a very popular advocate for ideas that align with ours. He and AltHype are the...

    • Hamburger Today

      Politics vs. Self-Help

      Why do we need a tax burden at all? The plain reality is that printing money for investment in...

    • ArminiusMaximus

      Politics vs. Self-Help

      Excellent. Thank you Greg. This is a wonderful article. I think you made a great point about what...

    • T Steuben

      Politics vs. Self-Help

      I don't see self help and politics as a mutually exclusive dichotomy even though it tends to be cast...

    • Greg Johnson

      Politics vs. Self-Help

      This is quite relevant to Mark Gullick's new fundraiser, above.

    • Just Passing By

      The Fountainhead: 80 Years Later

      *The Fountainhead* is probably Rand's best work, whatever its literary flaws. Many speeches are...

    • ArminiusMaximus

      Politics vs. Self-Help

      Part of our politics must also be providing solutions. I think the biggest area is in offering K-12...

    • ArminiusMaximus

      Politics vs. Self-Help

      I agree. This sounds like resignation. It is way too early for that. We are passing through an event...

    • Greg Johnson

      Politics vs. Self-Help

      I do think white populists need to think seriously about limiting the ability of wealth to influence...

    • Rubadub

      Politics vs. Self-Help

      We’re going on what, 40+ years of Reagan Republican tax cuts for the rich? It’s time to recognize...

  • 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