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This is the first installment of Mark Gullick’s monthly roundup of the news from the United Kingdom, which we plan to publish during the last week of each month henceforth.
Sometimes I look at the old country and wonder how we ever got an empire organized without tripping over our own shoelaces. (more…)
Sabina Spielrein
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The relationship between Sigmund Freud and Carl Gustav Jung lasted just six years, from 1907 to 1913, moving from mutual admiration to friendship to professional association and finally to an irreconcilable split, and although there was a woman involved, Russian emigré Sabina Spielrein was not part of any love triangle with the two men. She was Jung’s lover, sporadically, and Freud became her confidante, but Fraülein Spielrein became a psychoanalytic theorist in her own right, even being credited (erroneously) with pre-empting Freud’s theory of the death instinct after her work on destruction and becoming as mutually supportive functions within the self. (more…)
Friends of Dorothy Julian and Sandy speaking palare with Kenneth Horne on Round the Horne.
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What stood out was the magical notion that the mere pronunciation of words in a ritual manner could effect a change in the character of material objects. — Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic
Alice felt dreadfully puzzled. The Hatter’s remark seemed to have no sort of meaning in it, and yet it was certainly English. — Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland (more…)
The consequences of 74 years of “cultural enrichment” in the UK.
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At the start of the millennium in the United Kingdom, an accusation of racism in the workplace might have led to a few cold shoulders in the office. Now, it is more likely you will be clearing out your desk, possibly with a police officer in attendance prior to your arrest. (more…)
“Know thyself”
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Psychoanalysis is learned, first of all, from a study of one’s self, through the study of one’s own personality. — Freud, Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis (more…)
J. K. Rowling, who earned praise for getting herself cancelled this year by refusing to back down from her normal views on genitalia and gender.
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We can be heroes just for one day. — David Bowie
Hans, are we the baddies? — Mitchell and Webb sketch featuring Nazi soldiers
As European and Commonwealth countries act like faithful servants to the autocratic global coup currently taking place, my own home country of England has fallen into step like a good foot-soldier. The government, nominally Conservative but actually a sort of Green Socialist elite oligarchy, has gone full Bezmenov, contradicting itself on a daily basis about COVID and preventing its people from seeing dying loved ones while it parties maskless indoors. (more…)
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“The White Witch? Who is she?”
“Why, it is she that has got all Narnia under her thumb. It’s she that makes it always winter. Always winter and never Christmas; think of that!”
— C. S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
Students of the subject are well aware that the tradition of ancient pre-Christian rites and ceremonies lingered on in the East long after they had been banished by the more practical genius of the West.
— Jessie Weston, From Ritual to Romance (more…)
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Every Cretan is a liar. I am from Crete. — attributed to Epimenedes
Tell me lies.
Tell me sweet little lies.
— Fleetwood Mac (more…)
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“Hey, Ma! Look at my shoes! Aren’t they great?”
“Oh my God! You look like a gangster.”
— Goodfellas
Gangster movies, like war films and Westerns, are not simply a part of the American cinematic tradition, but a component in the collective psyche of its people. The well-dressed gentleman rogue who sees violence as a necessary part of business, and business as essentially a family or quasi-familial operation, is iconic. Crime, business, and family (or surrogate family) are intertwined. (more…)
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The Game was not mere practice and mere recreation; it became a form of concentrated self-awareness for intellectuals. — Herman Hesse, The Glass Bead Game
Do you want to play a game? — catchphrase from the Saw film franchise
As the Western media continues to mesmerize the majority of the public much as a mongoose entrances a cobra, one of its finely-honed techniques is to distract by use of a repeated phrase or word invested with importance. (more…)
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Right-wing music: Is there such a thing? Dissident rock, anyone? I imagine our enemies picture us sitting around all day thumbing through our well-read copies of Mein Kampf and listening to Wagner, Joy Division, and the “Horst Wessel” song — sort of Reich ‘n’ roll. But, as with the rest of culture, I have found that people on the Right tend to listen to music they instinctively enjoy, rather than what their ideological commissars tell them they may listen to. (more…)
Liberals’ ideal police force.
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For the last 20 years, America’s elites have talked feverishly about police racism in order to avoid talking about black crime. — Heather McDonald, The War on Cops (more…)