Rembrandt, Aristotle Contemplating a Bust of Homer
3,550 words
Even so the clouds of my melancholy were broken up. I saw the clear sky, and regained the power to recognize the face of my physician. Accordingly, when I had lifted my eyes and fixed my gaze upon her, I beheld my nurse, Philosophy, whose halls I had frequented from my youth up.
— Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy (more…)
Humza Yousaf, Scotland’s Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care.
1,042 words
James Boswell once asked Dr. Johnson, the man whose biography he famously wrote, what was the best thing to come out of Scotland, that country being Boswell’s homeland. Johnson replied, “The noblest thing a Scotchman ever sees, is the high road that leads him to England.” If any Scotchmen wish to take that road to the land of the Sassenachs today, and they wish to bring their politics with them, the English should be, to channel Margaret Thatcher, “frit.” (more…)
2,325 words
The British mainstream print media has been struggling for years against a gradual decline in sales figures, which are the guarantee of advertising revenue, which in turn is the life-blood of the industry. As an institution, the United Kingdom’s press is fundamentally Left-wing, with even its purportedly conservative-leaning newspapers (The Daily Telegraph, Daily Mail, The Sun, and Daily Express) being nothing of the sort. (more…)
Morgan Johansson, Sweden’s Minister for Migration and Asylum Policy. Sweden has the highest percentage of immigrants in Europe.
1,282 words
An Arab proverb warns that it is better to have a thousand enemies outside the house than one inside. For Europe, it is too late. Worse, the enemies inside the house were elected.
Relentless, government-sponsored Islamic immigration into Europe for more than half a decade means that Muslim attacks on the indigenous population are now part of the rhythm of European life. (more…)
1,222 words
When I was a boy my parents would take me to the cinema. (That’s the Proustian opener out of the way). It would be either my father or my mother but never both, as I had brothers five years younger than me, identical twins, and my parents would take turns looking after them (and they were a handful) while the other one took me to see a movie. I remember seeing Walter Matthau in the movie Prisoner of Second Avenue with my dad, and both my mother and I being scared out of our wits seeing Carrie. I also remember classic Disney films. (more…)
Van Morrison
1,600 words
The new groups are not concerned
With what there is to be learned.
They got Burton suits. Ha!
You think it’s funny?
Turning rebellion into money. — The Clash, “White Man in Hammersmith Palais”
Is it not wonderful to see Britain still shining as a beacon of youthful rock ‘n’ roll rebellion, with bands telling it like it is and generally sticking it to The Man? Oh, wait. My mistake. I was thinking of 1979. (more…)
1,745 words
Here are the young men.
But where have they been?
— Ian Curtis, “Decades”
Everything resembles the truth, everything can happen to a man.
— Nikolai Gogol, Dead Souls (more…)
2,264 words
[L]ike the great majority of mankind the savage is above being hidebound by the trammels of a pedantic logic.
— James George Frazer, The Golden Bough (more…)
1,273 words
Editor’s note: Unfortunately, Mark Gullick is unable to contribute at present due to his current detention in Central America. Doing charity work and, you know, what have you. However, Counter-Currents is proud to be able to publish an excerpt from the working diary of Oxbridge University’s Diversity, Inclusivity, Pride, Solidarity, Heteronegativity, Indigenousness, and Transexuality Directrix, Suki Mombasa. (more…)
1,992 words
Jack London
The People of the Abyss
New York: Macmillan, 1903
Some phrases stay with you for life, and one such for me has been attributed to Carl Jung, but seems rather to be a Latin motto favored by the European alchemists of the 15th century: Liber librum aperit, or, “one book opens another.” (more…)
Curt Stoeving, Friedrich Nietzsche, 1894.
1,994 words
The French philosopher René Descartes was a worried man. His concern was that his memory resembled a sheet of paper that was constantly being written over with his experiences, with facts and events. Realizing that it is in the nature of paper eventually to become filled with writing, he avoided wherever possible being told extraneous facts for fear that insufficient room would remain in his mind for things of importance to this polymath. Thus, he hoped to avoid the fate of Homer. Homer Simpson, that is. (more…)
Ollie Robinson bowling
1,418 words
Cricket. Not as homely as “mom and apple pie,” but, to the Englishman, just as evocative of home. If American readers don’t know the game, I won’t attempt to explain more than to say it’s the one that is played by what look like hospital interns using bookshelves as bats who attempt to swat a baseball-sized, rock-hard, red leather ball hurled by a bowler (more…)
1,819 words
Milan Kundera, trans. Michael Henry Heim
The Joke
New York: Harper, 1993 (1967)
Write it on a postcard.
Dad, they broke me.
— Pavement, “Stop Breathing” (more…)
1,787 words
When I first said I wanted to be a comedian, everyone laughed. Well, they’re not laughing now.
— Bob Monkhouse
If you and your friends were to have a séance, and you channeled the spirit of George Orwell, the greatest Englishman never to appear on a banknote would use the glass to tap out the following: stop quoting 1984. (more…)
Cars parked outside Joe the Barber’s house in Apalachin, New York, 1957.
2,362 words
How many friends have we over there?
The border guards fight unconvincingly.
Whate’er we do it seems things are arranged.
We always have to feed the enemy. (more…)
Salvador Dalí, The Phoenix, 1975.
1,517 words
I have believed for some time that the only way the white West can be saved is disaster. I appreciate that we seem to be in the middle of one, but I will be more specific.
The West, from the eastern borders of Finland and the Visegrád 4 (V4) countries to the Californian coast, needs financial collapse in order to continue. (more…)
Alex Belfield with his 100,000 YouTube subscribers plaque.
2,768 words
It is no secret to those of us from the UK who have not been vaccinated against reality that the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is politically biased. Despite an apparent failsafe in its charter requiring it to stay neutral, it is about as non-partisan as a rabid sports fan bellowing in support of his team. (more…)
Detail, Santi di Tito, Portrait of Niccolò Machiavelli, ca. 1550.
1,379 words
I had been aware for some time of the phrase “the engineer’s fallacy,” but unaware of its provenance and exact definition. I struck lucky on the ‘net, because this gentleman claims to have invented the phrase, and this short piece repays inspection.
Mr. Kelly’s definition of the Engineer’s Fallacy is pleasingly simple: (more…)
Ludwig Wittgenstein
1,938 words
Don’t use the rules.
They’re not for you,
They’re for the fools.
And you’re a fool
If you don’t know that.
So, here’s the rules
You stupid fool.
— The Clash, “Cheat” (more…)
2,072 words
“I believe in the certainty of chance,” sang Neil Hannon of The Divine Comedy in 1998, a wonderful songwriter musing on one of philosophy’s oldest conundrums. Are events pre-ordained or as yet unwritten? Do we live in a world of free will or determinism? All of us will look back on our lives and find at least one incident that changed (more…)
1,442 words
Football players in England resumed their interrupted season in front of empty stands this month. Before the first game, each player, in addition to their name, squad number, and advertising slogans (including the now-sainted NHS or National Health Service symbol), wore the slogan “Black Lives Matter” on the back of their shirts, (more…)
1,592 words
High-Rise (2015)
Directed by Ben Wheatley
Screenplay by Amy Jump, based on the novel by J. G. Ballard
Starring Tom Hiddleston, Jeremy Irons, Sienna Miller, Luke Evans, & Elisabeth Moss
The numbers are never consistent, but there is a general consensus that given a complete, Venezuelan-style financial collapse and the subsequent loss of order and infrastructure, any Western society is just a few days from anarchy. (more…)
2,062 words
DSM V is the current edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. The book first appeared in 1952, and the American Psychiatric Association, which publishes DSM, calls it “an authoritative volume that defines and classifies mental disorders in order to improve diagnoses, treatment and research.” The glib might call DSM V the psychiatrists’ bible. The cynical might view it as a retail catalogue for the big pharmaceutical companies.
2,229 words
Few outside England and under 50 will have noted the passing last month of one of Britain’s great comic character actors: Windsor Davies. Although born in North London, he was actually Welsh by parentage, gifting him an accent he made much use of, delivered in a timber-shaking baritone. (more…)
1,811 words
Peter Oborne
The Triumph of the Political Class
London: Simon & Schuster, 2007
Some books are born again. Every book with a political theme aims to be prophetic, and only time can reveal their success or otherwise. Orwell’s 1984, Bloom’s The Closing of the American Mind, Huntington’s The Clash of Civilizations, Faye’s Convergence of Catastrophes are all books whose time has arrived. (more…)