Counter-Currents
2,084 words
“You know how to gain a victory; you do not know how to use it.” Those are the famous words Maharbal, a commander in the Carthaginian army, told Hannibal after they had achieved a momentous success on the battlefield at Cannae. Whether or not Maharbal really did utter the admonishment does not matter. There are so many quotes, events, and figures from the past that may never have been said or occurred or existed, yet their legacies carry on throughout the centuries because they have transcended the material world of historical facts. Marharbal’s warning has become cemented in the story of the Second Punic War because his words, especially viewed in hindsight, add to the drama and pathos of Hannibal’s fate. They speak to something we all have felt: the regret of not doing the things we should have done.
I’m often reminded of that old Numidian’s rebuke when I think of nationalist and dissident politics in recent times. So many victories: Trump, Brexit, electoral domination in places like Italy — yet none of those victories are ever put to appropriate use. While there have been victories in the realm of politics, albeit fruitless or underwhelming ones, when it comes to matters of culture the nationalist-dissident-conservative side of things has a dismal record. There are several reasons for this, especially for why conservatives in particular are inept at creating culture and waging a culture war. We will not go into too much detail about those reasons in this article, but one worth mentioning here is the fact that artists on “the Right” are effectively shut out of the mainstream channels of artistic endeavors. So when someone like Oliver Anthony appears out of nowhere with a song that captures international attention, and whose music video has been watched 15 million times on YouTube as of this writing, one would think that “the Right” would be thrilled. However, in an example of not knowing how to use a victory, many on “the Right” have reacted to Oliver’s country dirge by scorning and scoffing at it. There is no shortage of people who one would think agree with the song’s message, but who are vocally putting the song and its composer down rather than reveling in a spotlight which is not often shining on “conservatives” or “dissidents.”
Whether or not one likes the song is not the point here. Personally, I don’t like it. I don’t like American country music in general, which is strange considering how much I love the Irish and Scottish folk music off of which it branches. As is often the case, the American version just isn’t as good as the original, I suppose. The lyrics of “Rich Men North of Richmond” make me cringe, literally. They are too awkward and artless, lacking in finesse, and not very profound. Anyone who thinks a country song or a working man’s song cannot have lyrics which do boast those qualities is mistaken, but to be honest, lyrical complexity across all genres of music has been decreasing for decades, with specific genres such as pop and rap descending to an 8-year-old’s level of English. However, none of this matters. The song is infused with a political message whose importance takes precedence over my personal taste, and this is something too many on “the Right” have failed to realize. Too many have decided to mock Oliver Anthony — and rural folks in general — as a country bumpkin singing a stupid song about Joe Biden’s America. That may very well be what the song is about. And? The fact of the matter is that “Rich Men North of Richmond” is something that hardly ever comes into existence: an artistic expression of dissident or conservative sentiment which has widespread appeal.
Today’s “Right” doesn’t have enough artists who are capable of reaching people’s feelings. The Right thinks it can fight a culture war or spark a revolution while completely skipping over the part where you inspire people to want those things in the first place. To do that, we need more songs, more poems, more novels, more paintings, more films. Again, whether or not these works are to one’s particular taste is irrelevant. The point is that a song or a film has the potential to affect people in a way that a tedious Twitter thread or Substack essay cannot match. Men of the past understood this and made sure to drape their political cause in a veil of art. Think of Irish nationalism and the poetry of W. B. Yeats, Spanish Republicanism and the paintings of Pablo Picasso, German National Socialism and the works of Richard Wagner. It is not enough only to hand out pamphlets, make speeches in city squares, or in our time, hustle “hot takes” on podcasts, livestreams, and social media apps. There must be a romantic element.
Furthermore, “the Right” needs to stop LARPing as an elitist establishment and understand that, in this age of inversion, “the Right” is both on the side of and comprised of the downtrodden, the oppressed, and the abused. “The Right” is a populist and underdog movement, and “Rich Men North of Richmond,” regardless of its artistic quality, has clearly resonated with the people for whom today’s “Right” claims to stand: white, rural, honest, and fed up with the corruption and mistreatment oozing their way from the seats of power. Putting on haughty airs and mocking rural working-class country folk, as Richard Spencer and so many gremlins from the farcically-named America First movement did, is indescribably stupid. Note too, reader, that it doesn’t matter if Oliver Anthony is actually a well-to-do middle-class young man with enough money to buy fancy microphones. Bruce Springsteen and John Mellencamp weren’t working-class boys, yet their songs have become anthems for working-class folk all over the world, not just in the United States. Not only that, but Springsteen in particular has been able to use his star power to promote Left-wing ideals for decades. I don’t think I’ve ever seen Barack Obama voters or “refugees welcome” activists whine about Springsteen latching onto their causes. Complaining about a perceived inauthenticity in Oliver Anthony as a person is just another example of too many people on “the Right” not getting it.
You can buy Kerry Bolton’s Artists of the Right here.
Some other complaints about Anthony and his song were equally ridiculous. Anonymous accounts on X were flustered at the discovery that Oliver Anthony might have attracted the attention of a marketing agency which works to promote artists and those loathsome creatures of the 2020s, influencers. If Anthony signed up with a conservative media management team after his song’s success, or if a conservative media management team created the successful song, either situation should be seen as a victory by “the Right” as used appropriately. Both cases suggest that people with money have understood the importance of metapolitics and the romantic element, and are investing that money in talented individuals who can use their artistic abilities to shape narratives, influence the masses, and promote (in this instance) so-called conservative values and the concerns of rural white Americans. There is a legitimate worry that Anthony might be lured into the clutches of the Daily Wire types. That’s a very likely possibility, but it has not yet become reality, so there is no sense in criticising Anthony for being a neocon shill just yet.
Another criticism leveled at Anthony is that his hit song is defeatist. One online hot-take hustler named Steve Franssen said Anthony’s art is “evil” because it contains nothing uplifting, only the sounds of a despairing man. I haven’t listened to any of Anthony’s other songs, but even without having listened I still wouldn’t go so far as to say his music is “evil.” It is not evil to lament, it is not evil to protest at one’s conditions. A rather annoying feature of many people online and on “the Right” is their tendency to characterize everything in absolutist terms without ever making room for nuance, context, and exception. Now, it is true that too much lamenting and despair is not a good thing, and if Anthony’s other songs are, as some have described them, about smoking weed and being a deadbeat, then there is a genuine critique to be made. But we must be realistic. At this present time, there is much that a white man like Oliver Anthony has legitimate cause to gripe about. We cannot only focus on the uplifting and ignore the very real plight that so many “people like me, people like you” are in, a plight that is already ignored — and caused — by the establishment, and a plight unbeknownst to a significant portion of the rest of society. It’s worth getting offline and reminding ourselves that there are a great many people who are totally unaware of the Great Replacement, the deaths of despair, the victimization of our kin at the hands of the state, and all the other hardships afflicting native and diaspora Europeans. Before we can have a Liberty Leading the People, we must have a Massacre at Chios. While I will probably never listen to any of his future songs, my sincere hope is that Anthony improves as a country singer-songwriter. I hope he does write some inspiring ballads and edifying anthems. I hope he evades the talons of FOX News and other kosher conservative media. But I don’t mind him singing it as it is.
Eugéne Delacroix, Liberty Leading the People (1830)
Eugéne Delacroix, The Massacre at Chios (1824)
I suppose all of the criticism and derision surrounding Oliver Anthony is a symptom of our time. We already live in a Metaverse. A cultural phenomenon today is met with a hurricane of critique, deconstruction, and opinions, all emanating from the millions of voices across social media. No cultural expression has any time to breathe before it is already picked apart by interminable Twitter threads and op-eds across the Internet. Our metaverses are worlds of curated realities. If an idea, an opinion, a film, or a song does not suit the curated reality of one’s Metaverse, then it must be removed from the gallery. “Extremely online” commentators rushed to respond to “Rich Men North of Richmond” — this intrusion on their curated reality — and to augment their “traction” and “reach” on their curated reality social media platform of choice. I think this is also a reason why art which “goes viral” tends to peter out and fade away rather quickly. It’s difficult for a piece of music, for example, to stand the test of time when it must withstand more public criticism, dissection, complaints, conspiracy theories about its success, and opinions that go just as viral as the song itself than a composition from before the Internet Age ever had to endure. In the past, it was sufficient to either like or dislike a song and go about the rest of your life. Nowadays, every listener is seemingly required not only to have an opinion, not only to share his opinion, but to strive for having an opinion more caustic and niche than everyone else’s opinions. This does not bode well for dissident and nationalist artists, of whom we are in great need. Who would want to toil away on a work of art and proffer it to an audience of the supposedly like-minded, only for it to be ridiculed for a host of reasons most of which have little to do with the actual qualities or merits of the artwork itself? Once again, it is what I call “The Followship” that is letting us down.
Of all the subjective views on art, tastes in music are arguably the most subjective. A bad film is often considered a bad film by a consensus of audiences. It’s arguably easier to identify what makes a film good or bad. Same with literature. Same with painting. Music is a bit different. A song might please one listener, but absolutely traumatize another. Certain genres are totally intolerable for some, while mellifluous for others. The point being that that the counter-culture which is dissident politics needs to start actually creating culture. This means that not all of it will be to everyone’s taste. In that eventuality, it would behoove the online Right to offer constructive criticism, or simply to keep silent. Creating metapolitics is more important than your hot take. And should dissident art, such as a song, “go viral” and become a hit, then it would be fantastic if “the Right” finally learned how to use a victory.
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55 comments
Great article, Pox. This song really smokes out the Republicans among us. OMG, don’t blame the RICH!
Furthermore, “the Right” needs to stop LARPing as an elitist establishment and understand that, in this age of inversion, “the Right” is both on the side of and comprised of the downtrodden, the oppressed, and the abused.
Yup. I’ve been working on an essay called “The Snob Problem in These Circles.” I might even make it the topic of an upcoming speech.
An AI version of Mike Judge’s Hank Hill covers “Rich Men North of Richmond.”
“Yup. I’ve been working on an essay called “The Snob Problem in These Circles.” I might even make it the topic of an upcoming speech”.
Didn’t a young man born sometime in the late ’90’s, of rather small stature who claims to be of Mexican/Irish/Italian background berate rural white working class Americans recently, claiming that blacks picked up their anti-social habits from them?
The snob problem’s a big problem in the English-speaking world. It doesn’t seem to afflict the movement in continental Europe.
I’m really looking forward to your essay on this.
This is a great piece. Thank you very much writing it.
The problem with the argument that our side needs a better or more functional alternative in terms of popular culture is that popular culture, as such, is a creation of the same sorts of political philosophers and the various people they influenced that brought us to this impasse in the first place. It appeals to, bolsters, and you could even say is based on the lowest common denominator—that is, the body and the desires of the body. It is essentially hedonistic with a little bit of thumping appeals to thumos thrown in for good measure. But it goes nowhere. It is fundamentally a form of distraction. Of distraction from distraction. Its themes are essentially sex, fun, and misguided anger—again, all dressed up with nowhere to go. How do you play the popular culture game in the hopes of transcending it and moving back to something like a proper alignment between folk culture and high culture, without at the same time being enmeshed in and running the risk of being taken down by it?
To every song I never cared to hear, to every tune which never graced my ear…
Thank you for being in the world. I’m so glad to know that you are here, if not with me, still with someone, always to abide like an ugly friend who is beautiful inside.
***
Furthermore, “the Right” needs to stop LARPing as an elitist establishment and understand that, in this age of inversion, “the Right” is both on the side of and comprised of the downtrodden, the oppressed, and the abused.
100%.
You think like the kind of person I like to be around.
The downtrodden, the oppressed, and the abused don’t change the world. Also why would anyone want to be in a movement with downtrodden abused people? I want to be in a movement with successful, motivated, upstanding people who either have accomplished things or have potential. Why would anyone want to be in a movement of losers? I genuinely don’t get it. Also, every single successful populist movement has had some form of elite backing, be it old elites or new elites.
Like I said, this song really smokes out the Republicans.
The farce of contemporary politics is that the center-Right pretends to be the party of winners while being losers, and the center-Left pretends to be fighting against the system while they are the system.
Can you name an elite movement currently in power that makes a habit of openly mocking poor blacks as “losers”? Can you point to one billionaire Manhattan Jew who shows open disgust for dirt-poor Orthodox Hasidic communities just northwest of Manhattan?
And yet the current elites openly mock poor whites, as does the current “dissident” movement. So the current “dissident” movement is, consciously or otherwise, walking in lockstep with the elites by trampling on “white trash.” I doubt that’s a coincidence.
White-against-white snobbery is such an obvious divide-and-conquer tactic, “I genuinely don’t get” why so many people can’t see it.
Another howling contradiction of the modern suited-up e-Christians is that they openly despise “wagies” and “white trash losers” regardless of everything their purported savior allegedly said about helping the poor.
Like everything stupid, the e-Christian’s loathing of “white trash” is just their token nod to show they are not RACISTS , because look! We hate honkies, too!
Why is the notion of elites often so misanthropic and contemptful instead of benevolent and compassionate in these circles?
In all sincerity, some of the most insufferable WNs I’ve met so far are the unempathic and unsympathetic ones, who think that when the tables finally turn they and a small group of their exemplary friends will rule over the rest of us as scornful co-emperors.
A society ruled by elites, by the way, would be a society populated by mostly non-elites; not a sane one of them would support being governed by embittered despots. So if you really have an aversion to losing, that stance should be reconsidered.
The way I see it, every society has a ruling class, but whether or not they deserve popular support depends on what kind of people they are. If we had a wise and responsible ruling class who put the well-being of the nation first, that would be fantastic. Instead, our so-called elites are an unholy alliance of Deep State swamp creatures and greedy CEOs with too much money, and they’re wrecking our society. There’s just not much to love about all that. This is why I’m a radical, rather than a supporter of the status quo who wants to be on the currently winning team.
Definitely.
Elites pursuing and defending our best interests who are not, as Mr. Goad says, snobs, have my full support.
As for the other types, the embittered would-be despots … step away from the memes!
I don’t care for the song, but respect that there is an audience this size sympathetic to it to make it #1. It shows what there is out there to tap in to.
Imagine a mediocre song complaining that the 1619 project is getting rebuffed in schools… would that make it to #1? Even the New Yorker and The Guardian have paid note. Of course the New Yorker is showing the effects of drugs in the water supply by claiming that this is evidence of
“the conservative-media machine’s attempt to create their own gangster rap”.
Maybe things have been one way too long and some of these folks are suffering and showing the victimhood card goes right to #1.
This has made it to #1 in the charts. There is clearly a large populus sympathetic to its message not predicted by the media or establishment. It’s better than “Proud To Be An American” but no “I’m Just An Old Chunk of Coal”.
The verses that spotlight select welfare recipients distinguish it from a standard Pete Seeger socialist anthem. If I were a canny leftist I’d just arrange for a black dude to cover it and then it would be about white supremacy, lack of equity and being the poorest of the poor.
But it’s popularity, and for who, give a sense of what size of a base there is.
“Men of the past understood this and made sure to drape their political cause in a veil of art. Think of Irish nationalism and the poetry of W. B. Yeats, Spanish Republicanism and the paintings of Pablo Picasso, German National Socialism and the works of Richard Wagner.”
I would harken back a tad further to drape myself in the channelings of Tacitus –
“They rob, kill and plunder and deceivingly call it “Roman rule” –
where they make a desert, they call it “peace”.
Yeats mused in Easter 1916 that- ‘Too long a sacrifice Can make a stone of the heart’, but the same observation could be applied to sacrificing for false solutions, or refusing to acknowledge actual causation. Eventually it is only a hollow, profit-seeking game played to serve its own enrichment.
A very well written essay. Thanks Pox.
I think that anything that anyone might do, especially in the arts, is automatically heavily criticized because as you state, so much of the population is already in the Metaverse. I wonder why there is so much cynical criticism? It’s a culture of critique. You know, someone wrote a book about that. (Wink)
One thing that perturbed me not too long ago about our dissident community, was when some black celebrities came out about Jewish supremacy; Kanye, Kyrie Irving, and Dave Chapelle. Instead of tipping our hats, and applauding them, many in our community shrugged off, and were critical of them; “they’re inarticulate, they’re going to hurt our cause, no one will ever take them seriously”, and on it goes and many in our community just shrugged them off. When, we should have been there, pushing to have a national discussion about what they were saying. And I know how many dissidents feel about the Black population in the U.S. But still, you go to war with the army you have.
Where were some of our PhD’s at the time? Why weren’t they going on the major podcasts, or trying to get on the major podcast’s, or even on Tucker, to bring educated clarity to what these black men were saying? These black men (who all have enormous popular influence) did what we all dream of; bringing the Jewish question/problem, to the masses. Where were we at the time to back them up?! Talk about not knowing how to use a victory. Watch the Chapelle monologue on SNL if you haven’t already.
I think the song is great and yes Pox, we need more populist art out there, a lot more. No, Oliver is not the Beatles but when it comes to art it is what it is at the time it was created. It’s affect is the important thing.
Two comments.
One, great article. Daily Stormer did a critique of this song, and as is usual, the complaint was that there wasn’t any jew-naming. Yawn.
Second, on a more negative note, I come from a background of southern “poor-mouthers” in my family, so I do have to criticize this aspect of the song a littlE.
My dad is a poor-mouther. All I ever heard growing up was complaints about people we knew that had more money. (As if to say that people with money were somehow a different breed of human that were unrelateable) It was so bad that I think it gave me a bit of an inferiority complex that I’ve always had to fight internally.
I have my own criticisms of wealth. I’m against ostentation and conspicuous displays of wealth. But I don’t blame my own financial situation on others. I prefer to feel a sense of pride in my personal achievements and measure my own sense of accomplishment against the limitations of my background. I’m not wealthy but my dad would have considered my present situation as one of those rich men that he complained about when I was a kid.
Resentment seems to be an almost universal phenomenon in our age. Can it be eliminated, and would we even want it to be? In some ways it’s a great motivator. Your father’s may have inspired you in some way. Without a pervasive societal myth which pushes us to accept our place in the scheme of things or a eugenics programme that makes us all (shudder) equal, envy and longing after the beauty, gifts and privileges of our betters will remain.
The problem with fostering resentment against a particular subset of white people (“the rich,” Christians, liberals) is that people will shoot themselves in the foot and sabotage the movement’s chances of success if it means getting back at those people.
We need a movement that champions the interests of ordinary white Americans, obviously, but resentment is unhealthy. Self-consciously identifying with being “downtrodden, oppressed, and abused” is apt to create resentment and hold us back.
Absolutely. That’s what I meant about having a myth ( a la Plato’s Republic ) that accounts for people’s position in the social hierarchy and gives them a stake in the nation’s highest achievements. The Germans tried this with some apparent success, with their emphasis on the necessity and dignity of work. This made other people mad and now we’re not allowed to talk about it, because it sort of worked.
I think we need to foster the interests of ordinary and extraordinary Americans ( and other White nations ), with slightly more emphasis on the latter, whilst affording the former the greatest dignity and opportunity for human flourishing possible. Really we need to take over Hollywood and start cranking out pro-White, anti-materialist films. Private ostentation should become somewhat shameful again.
Guys like Franzen are why I’m ‘on the White’ not ‘on the Right’.
Any political commitment that would cause you to criticize a fellow White person on any grounds other than their racial politics is a commitment not worth embracing.
‘Nowadays, every listener is seemingly required not only to have an opinion, nor even to merely share his opinion, but to strive for having an opinion more caustic and niche than everyone else’s opinions.’
I’m going to suggest we coin the word ‘Opinionism’ for this phenomenon.
“Opinionism”
I like it! That’s a great quote, BTW, in keeping with his (Pox’s) “Indie-Band Nationalism” idea mentioned in a podcast from a while back (i.e. always having to one-up fellow travelers by coming up with some increasingly obscure novelty take, for novelty’s sake.
Is getting attention for being a stereotype really a victory?
This is the truth:
That guy is only a stereotype to people who aren’t like him. To someone like me, a southerner raised in Appalachia, he is simply another Appalachian southerner.
of course I don’t know the man. But singing a song in southern folk tradition isn’t a stereotype, it’s a heritage and a culture.
There is a good series about Appalachia on YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p3O6bKdPLbw
I watched a minute or two of that video just now. I’ll watch more later I think.
My first thought was, his utterly disgraceful it is that an entire region of this country, a region that is vastly white, is viewed not unlike how a poor African country would have been treated by a National Geographic documentarian 50-60 years ago.
The poverty in that region was diminishing 30-40 years ago. It has come back with a vengeance because of globalism, antiwhite bigotry, and bad environmental policy.
If white identity politics is just whaling on a guitar to complain about how hard done by we are, it’s not going to interest anyone apart from professional victims and grievance-mongers.
As a city kid raised on skateboards and concrete, I’m unimpressed. Dude needs a diet and to do some pressups and to trim the beard. As a white guy I’m embarrassed past the point of disgust.
There’s that snobbery mentioned above. It’s easy to pass judgement on another for many reasons. Now imagine how impressed a rural southern blue collar factory worker is of a grown man who skateboards and watches My Little Pony.(By the way, I’m a city kid who grew up on a skateboard as well, but you’re all alone on the MLP)
The song itself is a snobby disparagement of the working rich by a religious goofball, so your schtick about how it’s “easy to pass judgement” falls flat.
I don’t have to imagine what rural southerners think of me, because they tell me so on Gab. O. A. is just another dork with a Bible who’s blaming everyone but white ruralites for white ruralites not being able to get it together.
You yourself are condescending enough to repeatedly bring up the topic of my book without ever taking the time to read it and address its contents.
No, it is not a song disparaging working rich. I can’t believe I have to spell it out but it is disparaging the Washington D.C. establishment. The ones who tell people like him to learn to code when their livelihood is ruined by their retarded regulations and environmental policies.
For someone who writes for a white advocacy website you sure seem to have a lot of contempt for a large swath of white America. Go back and read the article and maybe recognize that Pox is talking about people like you on the right.
For me to repeatedly bring up your book I would have to have mentioned it more than once. Perhaps I did one other time in the past, but I promise to never mention it again since it seems to be a sore subject.
I thought the ‘rich men north of Richmond’ were freemasons and jews. I’m predicting it’ll be banned in public due to its anti-semitism and its effectiveness as cultural propaganda.
‘White’ is a stereotype to our enemies.
“Whether or not one likes the song is not the point here. Personally, I don’t like it. I don’t like American country music in general, which is strange considering how much I love the Irish and Scottish folk music from which it originated.”
Country music has its origins in ballads from the British Isles, many of the songs were already centuries old when brought to America by the first colonists. The ballads were romantic; songs of love, loss, and courage. The old ballads address the condition of being human and the themes go to the heart. They were not at all like most modern country music. I tried to like country music, but I can’t relate to songs involving pickup trucks, fishing, brawling, and flag-waving patriotism.
The American folk music revival flowered in the early 1960s. Folk music from that time highlighted and featured old ballads from early America. Some of the best examples of the old ballads were sung by Joan Baez.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sdS09kT98Yw
Good article and I appreciate the points made.
It’s a catchy tune, and despite what appears to me a little bit too much electronic studio processing, this young and poofy Gingerbeard man appears to have some talent and a good voice.
From my almost nonexistent musical experience, what becomes stellar in the Kosher music industry, however, is vocal performers, and marketable personalities ─ and not superlative guitarists or championship fiddlers (who will never be noticed by the industry).
Oliver Anthony can sing so he might indeed go places. And he’ll soon be wearing bling and making the social justice PSAs and washing Negro feet soon enough.
Some of the recent criticisms by edgy podcasters might be a bit harsh ─ but I do think this whole thing reeks of “AstroTurf” and inauthenticity. But who am I to say one way or another?
I was not the least bit triggered by the “rich man” trope.
I note also that “Rich Men North of Richmond” traditionally alludes to the Yankee nexus during the War Between the States, where the two capital cities were nose to nose.
The entire Oliver Anthony lyrics are especially un-inspired, and I agree with many that they are cringey as hell.
At the risk of even more inauthenticity, I would be comforted if Mr. Anthony’s music video sported a battered Confederate battle flag.
But I fear that he probably joins many a White Trash celebrity newcomer in having his 2nd Amendment rights taken away for some felony involving a sashay with the corn product.
And I’m thinking that this neckbeard will soon be sporting skanky tattoos and rapping it up with dusky Hos before palm trees like that Chet Hanks punk.
This bring me to what I really find troubling here. Oliver Anthony cries about how he’s got a shitty job and he drowns away his shitty paycheck in booze.
FU. Lots of us go to our crappy, whoring jobs every day and pay taxes and barely touch the sauce. Maybe we are just not artistic enough.
I am hardly an elitist. I’ve got White Trashy ancestry with the best of them. But to me the veneration of the Redneck begins and ends at the rehab clinic door.
I have zero talent personally, and I am not a big fan of Country and Western Music. Everybody from my Mom to about every White welder and Native American that I’ve ever known loved Hank Williams Sr.
Elvis being a King is a little bit of a kitschy joke ─ but Hank Prime, that involving God is indisputable.
Around 35 years ago when I lived in Idaho, I went to a Hank Jr. concert in Boise with some very musically-inclined friends, whom I shall not link to.
Hank Jr. introduced himself on stage as the son of a musical artist ─ and was personally tutored by every other living twang troubadour alive ─ after his father died with his boots on of alcohol poisoning in the back seat of a Cadillac at the age of 29.
I wasn’t quite sure how to take this almost-boastful comment, but Hank II lightened it a little by following up that John-Boy Walton had already made a movie about Junior’s life, so how could he ever live up to that?
And then Hank Segundo told some funnies about Gomer Pyle and Rock Hudson, the latter of whom had recently died of AIDS. It was actually a decent joke but I can’t remember the details (and it probably didn’t age well). The concert was enjoyable and the girlfriend liked it, but I liked the later 1999 Black Sabbath concert and the earlier 1978 RUSH concert much better. (I rarely read fiction and rarely go to concerts, btw.)
Anyway, I am not really a prude, but I do have a deep aversion to Stoner culture ─ and I am having a VERY hard time not seeing lines of coke and bottomless booze in Oliver Anthony’s future.
I have seen too many authentic fiddle players with superlative talent jam in cheap motel rooms to believe otherwise.
Then what? Mr, Anthony’s followup version where he blames his addiction on the Pajeet doctor who wrote him a script for an opioid to ease his chronic back pain from singing about the plight of the miners ─ as opposed to the minors on the Pedo Island ─ and then the drugs and drink will all get blamed on da Joos by edgy podcasters instead of a dysfunctional White Trash culture…
I don’t want to say too much about how I know (or know of) guys jamming in cheap Idaho motel rooms before a national contest other than it involves an ex girlfriend musician who was more than a Texas Style groupie ─ and I don’t know how many of them have now met their final coronaries either (assuming that they gave up the hard stuff) since I do not really want to Google ex-girlfriends and their artistic colleagues.
The point is that these guys are as “authentic” with the Honky-Tonk music as it gets ─ and contrary to some edgy podcasters, they do have their street cred forged in working-class bar gigs. You will just have to take my word for it that they were or are some of the best amateur professional musicians in the genre that you have probably never heard of unless you are into Redneck music. My elderly roommate in those days loved this stuff and lamented that you had to buy cover drinks to hear them perform.
Alas, far too many of these artistic types will share the ignominious fate of Hank Williams, Sr. for some reason ─ probably related to something toxic that is deeply-ingrained into Redneck culture itself. (I really hate making arguments like this.)
I don’t think I am being elitist about it either, but as an ex-Mormon I found drunks and stoners repugnant ─ and so did my fiddle champion girlfriend at the time.
Too often Art is intimately connected to substance abuse ─ and White people need to think hard about this and to get a grip on it somehow.
That is what caught my eye and bothers me with the Oliver Anthony breakout tune.
🙂
I enjoyed reading this comment.
Thanks! 🙂
What did Spencer say about working class whites?
Yes we should use this to our advantage.
But we should also be intelligent enough to be skeptical when something is being pushed by Con inc.
There is also Jason Aldeans “Try That In A Small Town”, that also really pissed of the left..
I saw the official music video for that. I’m not sure why leftists are flipping and tripping about it, unless they take it as an affront that someone might dislike radicalinskis looting stores and chucking Molotov cocktails.
Yes, the Left hated it because the implication was that Aldean was counter-signaling BLM and that White militias (reminiscent of the Klan, perhaps) were going to set things straight in rural America when Anarchists pull this crap there. It was even suggested by his critics that the courthouse depicted in the video once had Blacks (righteously) lynched there. I wish.
Yet the Jason Aldean video versions that I saw never showed a single Black face that I can recall, and none of these sacred melanated creatures (the least of us as the Bible says) were shown throwing Molotov cocktails or doing any smash & grab. Orwellian.
The reality was that 2020 was Negro rioting just like the 1960s. And they were cued by the establishment media just as with the Rodney King riots in 1992.
Rural America is in the same boat as anywhere else and there is no way to escape it. That is my main objection to Jason Aldean. If I get out my Grandad’s M1 when they come to burn my town, I can expect to have the Feds or the SWAT team breaking down my door instead of putting down the riot.
So basically, the Aldean anthem is another highly-sanitized and AstroTurfed monetization of “White Trash” with ZERO authenticity. The Coen brothers do this kind of “local yokel” parody a lot in their films ─ but at least I find their fiction funny (most of the time). Raising Arizona isn’t one of my favorites.
I’m sure that either Jason Aldean or Oliver Anthony (the latter even more AstroTurfed) have more property and income than I do ─ not that I really care ─ so I don’t think that my objections to this kind of thinly-veiled SHTICK can be dismissed as Republicanism or snobbery. I am hardly a Republican.
People have been trying to pathologize the Scots-Irish or the Appalachians for as long as I can remember. Bobby Kennedy standing on washtubs in his shirt-sleeves to bring the loaves and the fishes to the unwashed coal mining folk, ad nauseam. Lots of my ancestors were miners ─ and none of them were race-mixing Brahmins like the Kennedys.
And the other side is no better. It has been dropped in cheap soundbites since the Reagan administration about how people can actually use their USDA Food Stamps to buy steaks and lobster tail (which is true but irrelevant).
Food Stamps are one of the few welfare programs that (absolutely destitute) White males can actually use. The idea that this drop-in-the-bucket is what is keeping Oliver Anthony down is pure retardation.
And why Food Stamps are so offensive to fiscal-Conservative budget hawks, that don’t seem to give a flying fudge about endless trillion-dollar Middle Eastern military campaigns, is curious indeed.
Oliver Anthony pays his taxes so that obese poor people can buy fudge balls ─ but he is going to drink his life away rather than do anything with his life besides sing shit in Honky Tonks. He sings about hunger but strikes me as yet another young man who could do with a shave and a little less groceries plus a little more physical exercise out on his hobby farm.
I don’t think we should be fooled by any of this.
I am not really sure why, but I found the Hank Hill AI cover version of Anthony’s catchy ballad posted by Mr. Goad less triggering and infinitely more clever. At least I know Hank Hill’s populist reaction to the Washington merry-go-round was obviously make-believe.
🙂
Great article, thanks.
FWIW, the TDS boys really swung and missed on this one. Focusing on whether or not Oliver Anthony is being promoted by a hidden hand, or is playing a character, misses the forest for the trees.
There are hundreds of thousands, maybe a million or so, unattached supporters of our ideas who never heard of Greg Johnson, or NJP, or Jared Taylor but who just snapped to attention (figuratively) over “they want to know what you think, know what you do, and they don’t think you know, but I know that you do” – this points the way forward for a would be leader wise enough to pay attention.
“If there is hope, it lies in the proles”
I criticize them a lot (with much love whether they realize it or not) which is why I am banned from their comments section again.
They frequently miss the boat, and often fail to do any research on their subject other than being “edgy podcasters,” which triggers me ─ but they are getting better at this. (I also appreciate that they have at least studied the body of Revisionist literature.)
The TRS take on Oliver Anthony ─ while I don’t think that he is a Joo plant or any such thing ─ I do agree that this highly-marketed “White Trash” persona, and this populist revolt angle, is as phony as a three-dollar bill.
Country & Western music practically invented that kind of shtick. The nice young man with the ear gauges on the TRS podcast did not even know what a Honky-Tonk bar was (or at least he pretended not to know).
I can show you pictures from the 1930s of my Grandfather playing a guitar in front of a homemade shack and he looks just like Woody Guthrie (except not being a Communist).
🙂
Perhaps you are banned because you overshare and post wall texts.
Well, I am not sure why sharing is so offensive. We are all shaped by life experience. I am also not sure why people seem so obligated (and so offended) to read more than they want to.
What is the point of Comments sections? Maybe just an amen corner? To gin up subscriptions with anodyne affirmations, perhaps?
I guess people younger than Boomers really are paranoid about having actual Online discussions. That is the new reality according to the narrative that we are all just hapless consumers fed by establishment social cues ─ and are waiting to get doxxed back into submission.
Although perhaps I can dial down the wall-texts if that is deemed annoying, it is odd that the folks at TRS rarely provide any feedback other than my posting ability becoming normal just before my TRS subscription expires (but then breaking again immediately after the annual payment).
Does anybody really want discussions at all these days?
The thing is that ever since Twitter and its catchy one-liners inside a fixed number of characters for a “Tweet,” the Internet has been dominated by bantzy memes and troll culture.
This leads to a sort of Online autism ─ with people taking the Internet far more seriously perhaps than they ought to. However, I would disagree that I have ever hectored anybody (assuming that is the issue).
I just don’t see much value in using that kind of edgy and clipped social media like FaceBook and Twitter, etc., all of which will in any case arbitrarily censor just about anything and everything.
So establishing any kind of Online dialog becomes oddly difficult unlike in the old days when the Internet was new.
I used to have fairly productive Online discussions 25 years ago with Roberto Muehlenkamp ─ an ethnic German corporate attorney in Portugal who now blogs at Holocaust Controversies. These were forum discussion pages that went on to book-lengths, LOL. And I think we gained a mutual respect for each other with comparatively little snark, in spite of both being strident regarding our positions.
Internet discussions really just have not been the same for quite some time, and perhaps I should not bother. Times change. Memories get fuzzy. I think the West has already irredeemably passed the Event Horizon but I will always hope otherwise.
🙂
[385 words]
Well, I saw the video.
He’s going to have power, I hope he’s on our side. Efforts to corrupt him are certainly well on their way. I half expect his next song to be a cover of Bruce Hornsby’s “Just the way it is” and be #1
Still too early to tell, but he seems like the real deal.
https://richmond.com/life-entertainment/local/music/farmville-singer-oliver-anthony-says-he-doesnt-want-8-million-record-deal-reveals-real-name/article_84270630-3db4-11ee-89f3-73935218eff9.html
Fascism might very well have owed its success to getting its energy from the lower and middle classes in society. The common folk have the energy that steers nations, all the upper class can really do is analyze and direct that energy. At present the energy of the lower class whites is being misdirected off a cliff, and they don’t like it, none except the upper class who engineer this direction like it. If we could have an upper class that stands in accordance with the lower class and directs its energy towards the betterment of our entire nations, all of our problems can be solved. This is why Fascism was populist, rooted in socialism, and worker-oriented in all of its most successful forms.
Like it or not, Republicans, the struggle to save your people, your culture and your country – in that order – is in no small part a class struggle.
In practical terms, Fascism and National Socialism both owed virtually everything to veterans. The early core supporters and organizers of both groups were veterans of WWI and their connections to one another was ‘the war’. The ‘ordinary’ people who became part of the war-machine found each other after the war and formed the hard, tough, relentless engine of both the Fascist and National Socialist revolutions.
However, Hitler had conflicted feelings about ‘the masses’. His ‘national socialism’ was dedicated to converting ‘the masses’ into a national asset rather than a national burden (or problem).
Mussolini’s image of ‘Italy’ was always a collective one. As a socialist, his pre-Fascist political commitments placed ‘the workingman’ at the center of his politics and that never really changed despite the necessity of compromise that always comes with having actual power.
I don’t think we should feel any kind of contempt for poor and working class Whites. Many of them are in a truly terrible situation.
However I also don’t think we should handwaive the dysfunction that is prevalent in many rural, red areas as snobbery or elitism. There are serious problems there like broken homes, drug abuse and a culture of poverty that are not going to be helped or solved by pretending these areas are bastions of rugged virtue.
This is just my opinion:
It isn’t that rural or southern or “red state” areas are “bastions of rugged virtue”. You are correct to point out that they are afflicted with a lot of social ills, drug abuse, poverty etc, that would seem to negate that notion.
However, I would point out that these symptoms are due in no small part to a refusal (be it intentional or otherwise) to adapt to the alien culture that is being pushed upon them, and that might be a kind of virtue in itself.
In areas that are resistant to the latest fads and bourgeois consumerism, there tends to be less capital and investment in communities. The Chamber of Commerce is addicted to growth fueled by consumerism.
This is also partially why, despite the prevelence of crime, the black ghettos get money thrown at them. Blacks love to spend money they don’t have to have things they can’t afford. They’re the ideal consumers.
When I consider how poor and working-class whites are not only the most immediately affected by anti-white globohomo policies, but also openly mocked and reviled for it, I can’t help wondering if a huge opportunity for outreach is being missed.
Listen to this:
Merle Haggard – I’m a White Boy
Oliver Anthony: We are the melting pot of the world. – Bing video
It’s too bad the link to that 44-second Bing video can’t be put up here at C-C. Thanks, Mr. Mercer, for posting that to WhiteBiocentrism.com where I was able to view it.
What an idiot this Oliver Anthony, “country music star,” is. So what if he’s number one on Jew-owned Billboard? In that one short Bing video he claims, yes, that “America is great because we are the melting pot” and “it’s our diversity that makes us strong.” His manager is quoted as saying, “God has chosen to speak through Oliver.” Really? Which god is that, Yahweh?
Oliver — no relation to Revilo P — is followed in that short Bing video by the bigger idiot, “Alzheimer Joe” Biden, boasting for the camera that Caucasians like him will soon be an absolute minority in America. Boasting! That was a clip from a C-SPAN feature entitled “Fighting Terrorism” in which Joe is flanked by his Jew Secretary of Homeland Security, Alejandro Mayorkas.
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