Western Civilization Bites Back
Jonathan Bowden
San Francisco: Counter-Currents, 2014
228 pages
Edited by Greg Johnson
About Western Civilization Bites Back
Western Civilization has suffered an astonishing series of reversals in the last century. On the eve of the Great War, whites controlled virtually the entire globe. Today, whites do not even control their own homelands. A century ago, Western culture as the inspiration and envy of the globe. Today, it is synonymous with hamburgers, pop music, and porn. Oppressed from above by alien and deracinated elites, demographically and culturally swamped from below by alien masses, whites are on the road to racial and cultural extinction.
In Western Civilization Bites Back, the late Jonathan Bowden argues that the ultimate root of Western decline is a collapse in moral self-confidence. But the West can recover its pride, glory, and destiny. Through wide-ranging discussions of such figures as Aeschylus, Shakespeare, and Nietzsche — as well as Marxism, the New Left, the holocaust, flimmaker Hans-Jürgen Syberberg, and novelist Bill Hopkins — Bowden explores the necessary conditions of a moral, racial, and cultural rebirth of the West.
With transcripts of seven of Bowden’s volcanic orations, his last interview, and three shorter pieces, Western Civilization Bites Back is an ideal introduction to one of the leading voices of the Anglophone New Right.
Praise for Western Civilization Bites Back
“Anyone who experienced Jonathan Bowden speak in public was in awe of his ability to thrill and inspire his audiences. His energy and personal magnetism were truly amazing and a huge asset to our cause. In reading these essays, most of which are transcriptions from his talks, one is also impressed by his very broad intellectual background and his far-ranging interests—art, literature, philosophy, music, and politics. I am also very impressed by his ability to get to the heart of the predicament that we Europeans face—in particular the guilt that so many of us have, to the point that the great majority of us feel morally condemned for simply asserting our absolutely normal and legitimate interests in controlling societies we have established and dominated for hundreds and, in the case of Europe, many thousands of years. He is sorely missed.”
—Kevin MacDonald, author of The Culture of Critique
“Jonathan Bowden’s Western Civilization Bites Back is a short manual to culture warfare, a kind of a vade mecum for the uninitiated who still remain dazed by the mendacity of the System. Bowden understands that beyond intellectual critique, we need to muster up a bit of civic courage in order to dislodge Leftist cultural hegemony. This is a solid contribution to the fight against the Big Lie.”
—Tom Sunić, author Against Democracy and Equality
“Jonathan Bowden’s work was marked by a synthesis of ultra-conservative or neo-fascist ideas and an emphasis on the importance of metapolitics or cultural struggle. To the many who knew him only through his remarkable oratory, he appeared a force of nature rather than a man. Western Civilization Bites Back collects some of his most stirring orations as well as those from the last few months of his life, when—after thrusting his demons back behind the veil at least for a time—he enjoyed an Indian summer as a speaker, adopting a voice that was the more insightful for being less strident. How shall we assess his legacy? He was a rare exception to his own criticisms of the ‘far right’ in Anglo-Saxon countries: ‘In this age, those with intellect have no courage and those with some modicum of physical courage have no intellect.’”
—Adrian Davies
Contents
Foreword by Greg Johnson
1. Western Civilization Bites Back
2. Marxism & the Frankfurt School
3. Revisionism: Hard & Soft, Left & Right
4. Credo: A Nietzschean Testament
5. Hans-Jürgen Syberberg: Leni Riefenstahl’s Heir?
6. Hans-Jürgen Syberberg—Leni Riefenstahl’s Heir
7. Bill Hopkins: An Anti-Humanist Life
8. Remembering Bill Hopkins, 1928–2011
9. Bill Hopkins’ The Divine & the Decay
10. Western Civilization: A Bullet Through Steel
11. The Last Interview
Index
About the Author
Jonathan Bowden, April 12, 1962–March 29, 2012, was a British novelist, playwright, essayist, painter, actor, and orator, and a leading thinker and spokesman of the British New Right. He was the author of some 40 books — novels, short stories, stage and screen plays, philosophical dialogues and essays, and literary and cultural criticism — including Pulp Fascism: Right-Wing Themes in Comics, Graphic Novels, and Popular Literature, ed. Greg Johnson (San Francisco: Counter-Currents, 2013).
Also by Jonathan Bowden
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“Let us return to tradition to go forwards with modernity in a different direction.”
Since the Second World War, “modernism” in the arts has been overwhelmingly associated with the cultural and political Left. But before the War, there was vigorous debate between modernists of the Right and the Left. -
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Extremists: Studies in Metapolitics collects transcripts of nine of Jonathan Bowden’s most compelling orations: on Thomas Carlyle, Gabriele D’Annunzio, Charles Maurras, Martin Heidegger, Julius Evola, Savitri Devi, Yukio Mishima, and Maurice Cowling, as well as his speech “Vanguardism: Hope for the Future.” These speeches do not just explore the lives and thoughts of creative and exemplary individuals, they also illustrate three cardinal principles that Bowden repeatedly emphasized: First, political change depends upon metapolitical conditions. Second, cultural and political innovations take place on the extremes. Third, metapolitical extremists must think of themselves as vanguardists who lead the public mind to truth, not cater to illusions and folly.
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Right-Wing Themes in Comics, Graphic Novels, & Popular LiteratureJonathan Bowden was a paradox: on the one hand, he was an avowed elitist and aesthetic modernist, yet on the other hand, he relished such forms of popular entertainment as comics, graphic novels, pulps, and even Punch and Judy shows, which not only appeal to the masses but also offer a refuge for pre- and anti-modern aesthetic tastes and tendencies.