George du Maurier’s gothic horror novel Trilby is all but forgotten today, and to the extent that it is remembered, it is for introducing the term “svengali” into the popular lexicon. “Svengali” has been used as a term for the power behind the throne of an entertainer. He is more than just a business manager who negotiates contracts, although he may do that as well. A svengali is a puppeteer for whom the performer is his own creative outlet. He cultivates the performer’s image and makes artistic decisions for them. (more…)
Author: Travis LeBlanc
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The last of the European pagan traditions died out in the Middle Ages. People no longer believe that thunder is the result of Thor banging his hammer or that the Sun is the wheel of a cosmic chariot travelling across the daytime sky. But there is one pagan belief that has remained widespread to this day: the belief that the Full Moon makes people go crazy. (more…)
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1,413 words
I have mixed feelings about professional wrestling. Allow me to offer my history with pro wrestling before I get into that, however. The story begins in the early 1980s.
John Stossel made an exposé for 20/20 in 1984 aimed at proving that pro wrestling was fake. I remember watching it when it first aired. You might think it was a ridiculous premise for an exposé. Doesn’t everyone already know that it’s fake? Didn’t they always? You’d be surprised. (more…)
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The first match was struck by Griffith, and it led to an explosion, the effects of which the industry is still feeling. The Birth of a Nation was a cinematic revolution — it was responsible for revolutions in every field affected by motion pictures. Riots and demonstrations were living proof of the power of the film. No well-informed person could allow themselves to ignore it. The intelligentsia, who had regarded movies much as the jukebox is regarded today, conceded at last that the film had value. With critics and writers embroiled in controversy, the middle classes went to see for themselves. (more…)
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One can’t help but feel cheated by this year’s primary season. As a political spectacle, primaries are almost always more fun and interesting than general elections. For one, you are also more likely to hear candidates say something interesting in the primaries given that they are appealing only to their base (more…)
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Whenever there is a mass shooting that is attributed to White Nationalism, Greg Johnson posts a commentary in which he bemoans the fact that he has to keep writing the same thing over and over. (more…)
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I think the most disagreeable part I ever had was in The Aryan. It was hard for me to really feel it, being that of a white man, forswearing his race, makes outlaw Mexicans his comrades and allows white women to be attacked by them. It is difficult to put all one’s decent instincts aside and live and think as such a despicable character must have done. But by allowing myself only to think of the terrible wrong that the white race had done me — pure imagery — I settled into it, and I am sure Bessie Love at the time believed I was the typical brute. — William S. Hart (more…)
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1,553 words
There is a meme showing a girl who loves to say “I’m not like other girls” when they are in fact cookie-cutter copies of the infinite other girls who bill themselves as “not like other girls.” You encounter a similar type of person on the Internet, who insists that he is not like other Internet people. “You see, for most e-celebs, the Internet is their whole life. But me? I have a happy life and a successful career outside of all this, and I just do this Internet stuff for fun. I don’t take it seriously, like everyone else does.” (more…)
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Greg Johnson floated the idea of my writing an essay on Candace Owens being the Non-White Ally of 2023. I said no, because I think she is a snake. Has Candace Owens been saying good things lately? Has she been dabbling in Jewish-question territory, helping to bring some of our basic talking points to the mainstream and shifting the Overton window? I don’t deny that she has. (more…)
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1,775 words
Angelo Gage was a minor Alt Right b-lister when he was with Identity Evropa. He then left activism for a few years, but recently returned under a new name: Lucas Gage. He has become one of the dissident Right’s many overnight success stories through Elon Musk’s Twitter/X. He grew from 50,000 followers to over 200,000 in a matter of months and has established his account as one of the large anti-Zionist accounts, and possibly the biggest explicitly Right-wing anti-Zionist account (more…)
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There’s a conspiracy theory going around that I think is really stupid, and yet it is being promoted by some whose intelligence I respect. I now feel the need to publicly explain at length why this theory is nonsense. (more…)
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1,249 words
It would appear that the saga of black female Harvard President Claudine Gay has come to an end with her resignation on January 2. The tale ended as it began: as a farce.
One of the reasons that I find myself incapable of getting too emotionally invested in the matter is the sneaking suspicion that if the President of Harvard is all that important, they never would have appointed a black woman to the position. (more…)
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Along with Mr. Deeds Goes to Town and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Meet John Doe is the third installment in Frank Capra’s trilogy of “everyman versus the establishment” films. Starring Gary Cooper and Barbara Stanwyck, Meet John Doe is far from Frank Capra’s most celebrated work, but it is widely considered his most underrated. It’s now in the public domain. (more…)