Counter-Currents
Remembering Revilo Oliver (July 7, 1908–August 20, 1994)
Greg Johnson
351 words
Revilo Pendleton Oliver was born in Texas on this day in 1908. He received his undergraduate degree at Pomona College in California and his doctorate in classics at the University of Illinois under William Abbot Oldfather. He was Professor of Classics at the University of Illinois for many years.
Revilo Oliver was a man of remarkable erudition: he read eleven languages, including Sanskrit, and for more than half a century wrote scholarly articles in four languages for leading academic publications in the United States and Europe. His first book was The Little Clay Cart, an annotated translation of the Sanskrit Mrcchakatika, published by the University of Illinois in 1938.
During World War II, Oliver was Director of Research in a highly secret cryptographic agency of the War Department in Washington, DC, and was cited for outstanding service to his country. After his work for the War Department, Dr. Oliver was awarded a Guggenheim Post-Service Fellowship, and during the years 1953 and 1954 he traveled to Italy on a Fulbright Research Fellowship to study Italian Renaissance manuscripts.
In 1954, alarmed by the ongoing political subversion of the United States, Professor Oliver threw himself into conservative activism. He participated in the creation of National Review magazine; he was one of the founders of the John Birch Society; he made numerous speeches before patriotic groups; he wrote hundreds of articles and reviews. His disillusion with the conservative movement is chronicled in his book America’s Decline: The Education of a Conservative. Eventually, he abandoned conservatism and became an avowed racial nationalist.
Counter-Currents has republished the following essays and reviews by Revilo Oliver:
- History and Biology
- William Gayley Simpson’s Which Way Western Man?
- After Fifty Years
- Beyond Good and Evil: Bill Hopkins’ The Divine and the Decay
- Lawrence R. Brown’s The Might of the West
- The Shadow of Empire: Francis Parker Yockey after Twenty Years
- Spengler: Criticism and Tribute
For more work by and about Revilo Oliver, see the Revilo P. Oliver: The Life and Works of a Great American Writer and Thinker Website.
See also Margot Metroland’s commemorations, “The Professor and the Carnival Barker” and “Revilo Oliver in Winter.”
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17 comments
Most people remember Revilo Oliver as the author of JEWISH STRATEGY, but I think THE ORIGINS OF CHRISTIANITY, REFLECTION ON THE CHRIST MYTH and CHRISTIANITY AND THE SURVIVAL OF THE WEST are even more important.
Yaaayyy Oliver!
thats my comment for the day.
revilio once mentioned to me he had met nesta webster during her visit to the united states…………….anyone know anything further about rhis…….
The man was a giant. His prose is so powerful and direct.
I really enjoyed reading Margo’s retrospectives (again).
I’ll be honest and admit that the man’s name initially prevented me from taking him as seriously as I probably should have from the start. So many giants, erudite men who preceded us, plainly saw the problems, dared speak about them and organized to do something about it… yet none of the decay was ever properly reversed. Fascism so far remains the only proven chemotherapy to save decaying civilization, and since the war, it hasn’t been tried seriously.
He had an unique sense of humor for an author writing on such serious topics. He was an excellent satirist. And his books and articles were never boring.
I bought The Might of the West due to his review and enjoyed it. Unlike Richard Weaver (who’s book Ideas Have Consequences was delightfully ripped by O’Meara), Brown and Oliver praise Nominalism and credit it with the West’s unparalleled achievements in science.
I haven’t made up my mind. It seems like really extreme Nominalism can lead to denying the reality of categories like race and sex, and we see how that’s turned out.
I have the same reservations about Nominalism as you do. One of our own, Matthew Raphael Johnson, believes that Nominalism is the root of all evil, and has a book coming out about it soon.
An amusing fact about Oliver is that he was the one who encouraged William Pierce to start writing fiction.
I had never had experience with Dr. Oliver’s writings and ideals, and so decided to buy his book “America’s Decline” which is mentioned above, but the hardback is not available on Amazon, and the paperback was $450! So, I read a couple of the reviews there and learned many more facets about his writing and his ideas and how they evolved. I will also read the posts from Counter Currents’ authors listed above. I am wondering, however, if his book is something that CC could re-publish for a reasonable price? I would understand if there are copyright problems, etc. But anyone who writes the truth about communism, the JQ, and racialist reality deserves a wider audience.
I will try to find a PDF of America’s Decline and make it available.
I have readily found it here
https://www.jrbooksonline.com/PDF_Books/AmericasDecline.pdf
There are a couple of e-copies at this awesome site (as well as copies of some of Oliver’s other works):
https://u1lib.org/book/21450765/398c2a
My paperback copy of America’s Decline, which I bought in the 80s, is thoroughly highlighted and underlined. I wished I’d known that one day it could sell for up to $450!
But I do treasure it, and doubt I’d be able to part with it, even if it were still in pristine condition. You will enjoy reading the book, Alexandra.
I’d love to learn Sanskrit.
Was Revilo’s anti-Semitism more of the academic variety? As in he saw that the interests of Jews and WASPs were simply diametrically opposed to one another.
I suggest C-C consider adding Oliver’s brilliant essay “Conservatism and Reality” (pgs 140-152 in America’s Decline; originally published in the traditionalist conservative quarterly Modern Age in Fall 1961) to its archive. Although slightly dated in those to whom it seemed to be addressed (persons who may then have thought that American Occidentalists should focus their energies on building a militant domestic Christianist movement), its recommendations sound remarkably contemporary, and fit right in with C-C’s general political / strategic approaches. It’s also, unsurprisingly, beautifully written.
I wanted to send a copy to a friend, but failed to find the essay online, including at both Modern Age, where it’s mislisted, and Kevin Strom’s Revilo Oliver site. And the PDF versions of America’s Decline that I’ve experimentally downloaded are poor in quality.
It is amusing, that Oliver always mentioned Jews, when he wrote about virtually ANYTHING, from women pilot Amelia Earhart to “Loch-Ness Monster”, from domestication of horses to Castro´s Cuban revolution.
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