Counter-Currents
Counter-Currents Radio Podcast No. 609
Ask Me Anything with Greg Johnson
Counter-Currents Radio
145 words
Having spent the last few weeks giving speeches, fundraising, and attending conferences, Greg Johnson returned to host Counter-Currents Radio. It is now available for downloading and online listening.
Topics include:
2:24 – Is it good that the left is attacking Jews?
10:16 – Who is the worst US president?
12:50 – What about Armenians?
17:33 – What about citizen juries?
21:31 – Thoughts on Walt Bismarck?
25:11 – On the automation of the longshoremen
29:46 – On libertarianism
39:02 – Question about opera
46:57 – Comment on JD Vance
1:06:38 – Favorite film set in San Fransisco
1:09:02 – Comment on Trump
1:12:54 – Defeating arguments which appeal to “colonialism”
1:18:31 – Who will be persuaded by Counter-Currents?
1:22:55 – On disgust response
1:24:25 – Africa has 30% of the world’s resources
1:25:36 – On Dead Can Dance
1:27:30 – On Conservative psychology
1:29:27 – Where has Greg been?
1:38:26 – A classic contradiction of an old anti-white argument
1:40:14 – On the importance of long term strategy
To listen in a player, click here or below. To download, right-click the link and click “save as.”
Enjoyed this article?
Be the first to leave a tip in the jar!
19 comments
One of the most eminent specialists in Chinese culture was the Frenchman Léon Vandermeersch (1928-2021).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A9on_Vandermeersch
Unfortunately, none of his books have been translated into English. In 2005, he gave an interview to the “Nouvelle Revue d’Histoire” (2022-2017), directed by Dominique Venner. Vandermeersch condensed his scientific research into a relatively short book: “Ce que la Chine nous apprend. Sur le langage, la société, l’existence” (in English: What China teaches us. About language, society, existence.). The book is 176 pages long and was published in 2019.
Counter-Currents readers interested in the deep mentality of the Chinese can purchase Léon Vandermeersch’s books from the renowned French publisher Gallimard, here:
https://www.gallimard.fr/catalogue/ce-que-la-chine-nous-apprend/9782072828423
https://www.gallimard.fr/auteurs/leon-vandermeersch
Frankly, as someone who was part of the millenial generation that went to Japan and Korea to pick-up chicks while teaching English, I don’t think there is much depth to Chinese.
They are status-oriented, conformist, greedy people obsessed with material things. Not unlike Jews, but without the genocidal hate. The women are also more attractive than India or Israel.
At least the Japanese, though suffering from the same conformism and lack of creativity, were polite, with honor and their social-limiting culture had good constraints on negative human behaviors. Japan isn’t necessarily more deep than China, it is just much more polished and socially controlled.
Interesting point on the Japs. A country I’d love to visit. Here in SA, the complete opposite with the blacks- Jesus, no social limiting AT ALL. (And litter EVERYWHERE, ALL THE TIME). I’d love to see a polite culture like Japan.
Regarding your critique of republicanism, free-marketism, invisible hand,
libertarianism, liberalism, capitalism, etc
I think your critisism is unfair.
When you criticise invisible hand and acting in self-interest but glorify
common good above all you assume anti-anthropologiical and anti-civilizational
view of humanity.
You put the cart before the horse, so to speak.
What was the praised “common good” in pre-liberal, feudal, or even earlier
societies ?
Ownership of land, education, freedom of movement, freedom to die in permanent
warfare … Anything else ? Just kidding.
You have to be able to take care of your own good first, then you can
participate in advancing a common good.
The societies and economic systems were driven by self-interest first, always
(even so called “communes” were social and/or economic tools of it, if you
think about it; as long as they served people’s immediate needs they survived,
otherwise they gave in to self-interest pressures of their members).
Besides, the so called “common good” is in the eyes of the beholder – you
certainly have heard of humaan “manias”, “delusions”, ideologies, religions,
people acting like a herd, destructive or poisonous behavior on societal level.
Individual self-interest, one by one, often was the only answer to the madness,
random or institutional.
I tend to be suspicious about the so called “common good”.
That’s why conformity-enforced societies and political systems always hit the
wall.
We need the natural, libertarian, unregulated “invisible hand”, checks-and-
balances political and social mechanisms (free interplay of “right” and “wrong”
values) to survive, and historically the “messy” liberal democratic republic
provided that best – Liberal to think and act freely, democratic to respect the
will of majority, republic to prevent the rule of a mob. If not them and and
“invisible hand” capitalism we all would live in “shithole” places, worldwide.
Why do you think the so-called “common good” overachievers (China, Russia, etc)
are so crazy about adopting essential liberal-democratic and capitalist
principles after they destroyed self-interest and creativity of their own
people and societies for hundreds of years (with the “help’ of West’s Trojan
Horses and their own tyrants and idiots) ?
It is not libertarian, liberal, democratic and republican principles that are
sick in the West – it is the political class members (mostly so called
“elites”, domestic and international) that are fucked up and need to be
replacedi, and the system rebooted, economic and social policies changed
within, hopefully by peaceful means. It is your turn …
Nice Q & A. I liked the reflections about popular culture not developing taste or morality and lowering the threshold.
The return of the king!
Best opera: the Mikado, easily. Puccini is okay. I saw Salome–it’s just racket.
Mr. Johnson,
Would you address your relationship to the thought of Leo Strauss in another podcast of this sort? You often use terms that I think I can trace to him—classical political philosophy, the regime, reason vs. revelation, and so on.
Perhaps you’ve addressed this elsewhere. If so, would you mind pointing me to an essay or interview in which you may have done this?
I’m genuinely curious. I don’t really care that he was nominally Jewish, as some might, though I do ultimately suspect that he didn’t free himself from that nasty form of subversive parochialism in the final analysis.
Best wishes.
I have several essays on Strauss at CC. Begin with my review of Paul Gottfried’s book.
Thank you very much. I’ll have a read. To my mind Strauss’s epigones are doing a great job of fiddling while Rome burns. They’re guilty, at best, when they’re not simply being careerist scholars eager for peer recognition or a mention in the New York Review of Books, of radicalizing modernity—that is, in spite of all their talk about the superiority of the ancients, of doing exactly what Strauss says Rousseau and Nietzsche in their own ways were guilty of. But mainly they’re just silly.
Great take on many, if not most, of the Straussians, though I think one of those, Tarcov, ably defended Strauss himself against the connection to neocon wars of imperial aggression. Reading “Leo Strauss, the Conservative Revolution, & National Socialism, Part 1” now.
Dido and Aeneas by Purcell is a fantastic English-language opera. Very good and very short. I would say it’s perfect.
Re: (@ 1:07:30) “There’s a movie about a flakey girl in the 60s set in San Francisco. I can’t think of the name of it now.”
Was it Psyche-Out with Susan Strasberg as a deaf young woman searching for her lost brother?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F0EIKC0YbyE
Dear Greg,
I don’t believe the Democrats will cancel elections when they’re on the cusp of gaining a permanent electoral majority thanks to mass migration. The farce will suit them better. “Oh, you lost again? So sad. We won fair and square! You’re just on the wrong side of history…”
As for what I’d like to see in podcast streams, well, I can’t speak for everyone but I like interviews with those who are in the trenches fighting for our people, or who are kindred spirits on a similar path: successful street activists, leaders of patriotic, identitarian, and nationalist movements, etc.
I’d like to see joint work, interviews, and networking with European, Australian, Canadian, New Zealander, and South African groups: Martin Sellner, Thomas Sewell, Jacob Hersant, Nathan Damigo, Thomas Ryan Rousseau, Irish activists… sorry, I’m not so good with remembering names and some of them may be pretty spicy, but you get the idea. Interviews with the organizers and rulers of Orania are always fascinating. We’re all in this together, and our far-flung cousins can bring fresh, new perspectives, even if we don’t agree 100%. And making our audiences aware of each other seems like it can only be a good thing. Plus, it’s generally “white-pilling” to hear their war stories.
I’d like to see joint work, interviews, and networking with European, Australian, Canadian, New Zealander, and South African groups...
Agreed.
Counter-Currents can be a node for nationalist networking at the global echelon. Report on events, disseminate tactics, create solidarity, coordinate international actions and all that sort of thing. C-C is already half way there. Let’s go the distance!
Agree, too. Having RL stories always really interesting. (and thought provoking about other ways /not ways of getting our msg across. BTW, SA is definitely a lost cause now – the demographics are against us. Imagine if you in the US were 8% of population AND having AA quotas for jobs too. And yes, in SA, our favourite ‘chosen’ group was in the forefront of anti-apartheid agitators here, including the Communist Party.
Interesting comments on that youngster J.D. and if I lived in the States I’d probably agree with you. However, rather than your level headed look at reality I thought you would have been ranting and raving about him being married to a practicing Hindu with his three children of the same faith. Not to mention that Sikh prayer at the republican conference. But then no one complains about all our leaders praying at the Wailing Wall. And to get there they have to pass the HQ of the Christians biggest church. Like the Sleeping Beauty of our fairy tales I doubt if Christians will ever wake up. But in the meanwhile we have C-C and I’ll send another small donation in time for Christmas.
Re the “you colonized us so we can colonize you” agitprop line…
Here’s a response: “Yes we Europeans did colonize you, and today we can colonize you right back to your home countries!”
You cannot take the anti-colonial argument at its face value. The words are a mask for the actual line, which is for third worlders to justify the transfer of power in Western countries to the globalist puppet masters. Like much of lefty argumentation these decadent days, it is so much word salad: you know, the marginalized vulnerable indigenous enriching oppressed people of wherever who now have a right to migrate anywhere and gain all benefits thereof.
A basic principle of psychological warfare is that you use propaganda to throw the other side onto the defensive. Example: when third worlders argue for mass migration into Ireland, the tendency for Irish patriots is to get defensive and say something like: “Well, Ireland was also ‘oppressed’ by an imperial powers, so why can’t we be victims too?”
But it has nothing to do with being a victim of imperialism or anything else. It has to do with Power with a capital “P.” Third world migrants have the backing of NGOs, media, corporations, government, et alia. Effectively, they are the shock troops for the globalist power structure. The migrant mantra of the victim is (as the kids say these days) misinformation. Since aforementioned Irish (and most other European) patriots lack access to the levers of power, the globalists can get away with supporting the ongoing invasion.
This is why the “remigration” line works for nationalists. It seizes the initiative and throws the globalist-migrant front onto the defensive. Then double down by pointing out in the Great Age of European Imperialism, small European armies conquered much of Africa, the Middle East and South Asia. We did it before, we can do it again.
Finally, add to the “colonize you right back…” line: “…and we can also colonize your globalist paymasters along with you to the third world satrapy of our choice!”
The Great Replacement can work both ways!
Free plug: for more on this tactic, see James Burnham’s The Machiavellians: Defenders of Freedom.
One of the best AMAs ever. Imagine if this were broadcast nationally, like the evening news . . .
My take on worst president: lots of strong contenders. Lincoln for waging war on the South and promulgating the egalitarian “Jacobin civil religion,” as Greg calls it in his talk “Is White Nationalism Un-American.” Wilson, I realized after listening to Sam Dickson’s peripatetic talks with Frodi in Hungary. Eisenhower, despite Operation Wetback, deserves a (dis)honorable mention for sending the National Guard against whites in Little Rock, Arkansas who were protesting school integration in the 1950s brought on by Brown v. Board of Education. Dubya, for reasons recent enough to remember. Certainly Biden, for being a total POS, and completely opening our borders and instituting an already unofficial anti-white agenda.
My pick: LBJ. His accomplishments include the 1964 Civil Rights Act, completing Lincoln’s attempt to replace the Constitution; the 1965 Hart-Cellar Immigration Act which opened our borders to race-replacement immigration; the Vietnam War; and the Great Society program which began massive and futile public spending on blacks.
I forgot to mention FDR, an oversight. I’ve been listening to Mark Weber a lot lately on the legacy of WWII. So, of course, FDR is one of the worst.
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.