Edgar Fernhout, Schädel, 1935.
1,937 words
The lexicon of mendacious government platitudes has gained another ignominious entry. “Just three weeks to flatten the curve!” they implored one long year ago. Yet after twelve months of authoritarianism and state-enforced solitude, SWAT teams are swooping in to arrest Miami spring break revelers, and lockdown protests from Amsterdam to Kassel are intensifying across Europe. (more…)
Alain de Benoist
888 words
Translated by Greg Johnson
Now that things seem to be on the mend, can we say that the government, even if manifestly taken aback, has done too much, too little, or just enough in the face of the epidemic?
There is no other word for it: the reaction of the authorities to Covid-19 has been truly calamitous. Five months after the start of the epidemic, we still have not reached the screening capacity that we should have had when the first deaths appeared. (more…)
René Magritte, Hegel’s Holiday, 1958
142 words / 59:56
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This week Greg Johnson concludes his conversation with Counter-Currents writer Nicholas Jeelvy, answers questions from our Entropy donors, and thanks all recent donors for their support. The podcast concludes with a reading of Scott Weisswald’s “Wisterias.” (more…)
108 words
On Tuesday, April 28, Greg Johnson will debate the truth about coronavirus on two separate livestreams.
Debate #1:
At 10am EST, Greg Johnson debated Andrew Anglin of The Daily Stormer. Tiina Wiik was the moderator.
To listen in a player, click here. To download the mp3, right-click here and choose “save link as” or “save target as.” (more…)
4,631 words
While mankind suffers through the worst global crisis in recent memory, the rest of the world appears to be benefiting from our discomfiture.
The quarantines, travel bans, and economic stagnation brought about by COVID-19 have had a number of unintended consequences for the natural environment: improvements in air quality resulting from the reduction of major pollutants such as nitrous oxide and greenhouse gases; cleaner waterways (most famously the canals of Venice); and the return of wildlife to humanized landscapes. (more…)
Carl Spitzweg, Der Bücherwurm, 1850.
864 words
I have to admit it. I love the restrictions and hope they continue indefinitely. Social distancing works for me. There is something vulgar about shaking hands and the incessant hugging that seems to be de rigueur these days. Bowing and the Roman salute are much more civilized methods of greeting.
Since the quarantine, society seems to be much more polite and thoughtful. People are more serious, and America has not been a serious country since about 1962. (more…)
3,789 words
In March 2020, the world declared war on COVID-19.
The use of martial rhetoric with reference to peacetime political conflicts — the War on Drugs, the War on Poverty, the domestic arena of the War on Terror — has a long and dubious history in American politics. The appeal is obvious. Warlike language depicts every conflict as a life-or-death struggle, encourages mass mobilization, justifies significant intrusion into people’s lives, and provides a pretext for novel (and possibly illegal) political solutions. (more…)
2,950 words
If any further proof were needed that our “experts” and “leaders” know nothing, the coronavirus crisis provides an abundance of it. While the media and certain public figures keep ladling on the doom and gloom with a trowel, projecting many more months of death and economic shutdown, all signs indicate that death and hospitalization rates in the US may have peaked and are now declining. (more…)
1,420 words
The coronavirus pandemic is a complex and changing phenomenon, and so are my thoughts about it.
I can sympathize with the ecologists who think that the Earth has far too many humans and would welcome a pandemic to dramatically reduce our numbers. But not yet. This is not the time, because coronavirus isn’t the killer they’ve been hoping for, and as a member of a race that is already on the path to extinction— (more…)
913 words
Three weeks ago, soon after the first “shelter in place” orders were being handed down by governors throughout the nation, I made a decision to start wearing some kind of “mask” when in public or around others. (more…)
Albrecht Dürer, The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, 1497-98.
1,541 words
Albrecht Dürer died on April 6th, 1528. He was a highly influential painter and artist of the German Renaissance. Dürer was one of the first major artists to produce high-quality woodcuts and engravings that eventually spread throughout Europe, influencing future generations in various mediums and styles. While I grew up seeing Dürer’s artwork on many of my favorite heavy metal albums, I never knew his name until I went with an ex-girlfriend to a Christmas market in Vienna last December. Discovering his woodcuts was the highlight of the day and it taught me to find the silver lining in the most challenging of times, including the current COVID-19 pandemic. (more…)
1,661 words
There is a new infectious disease sweeping the planet, and those it doesn’t infect or kill, it locks behind closed doors. Modern man can’t sit still for longer than five seconds, so while we hide from the impacts of a lethal virus, we pass the time by watching movies about the impacts of a lethal virus. Torrenting numbers for Scott Z. Burns’ Steven Soderbergh-directed 2011 thriller Contagion are through the roof, (more…)
Hans Holbein the Younger, The Plowman from Dance of Death, 1524-26.
1,697 words
I’ve spent the last 21 days in quarantine. To be honest, staying inside these last three weeks has been relatively easy for me. After all, I spent most of my time in college by myself reading books in the university library. Looking back at my experience in college, I think my real education came not from the lectures or assigned readings, but from the books I decided to read on my own out of interest and curiosity. One such book was a prose version of Piers Plowman, the 14th-century poem attributed to William Langland. In many ways, the themes of this poem reflect both my times in college and the last three weeks spent inside my home during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. (more…)
4,910 words
“All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” — Pascal, Pensées 139
“Be still, and know that I am God.” — Psalm 46:10 (more…)
Albertus Pictor, Death Playing Chess, 1480-90.
2,823 words
There is something sinister in the springtime this year. Rather than a serving as a yearly reminder of rebirth and natural beauty, the blooming trees and emergent grasses wear the face of some ancient enemy, awoken from its long slumber. The spreading pestilence makes one long for the dormancy and stasis of winter.
This atmosphere of dread has infected every dimension of our lives. (more…)
2,560 words 
“But what does it mean, the plague? It’s life, that’s all.”
– Albert Camus, The Plague (1947)
The Coronavirus pandemic has rather put me in mind of Albert Camus’s classic allegorical book about the pestilence that struck the “ugly and smug little port town” of his native Oran in the 1940s. The plague is a metaphor that Camus rather unsubtly intended to represent the growth of National Socialism (more…)
2,331 words
I arrived at the gym the other night at 7:50 p.m. only to be told: “By the way, we’re closing in ten minutes.” The governor had ordered all gyms to close at 8:00 that night and to remain closed until further notice. I was the last guy to hear, apparently. This was the climax in a series of events that led to my finally recognizing the gift of Corona.
I had been in a state of denial for a couple of weeks. I am still not convinced that the whole thing isn’t being massively overblown (as I argued here.) (more…)
141 words / 72:56
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Greg Johnson and Fróði Midjord talk about how the coronavirus outbreak has revealed the intellectual bankruptcy, corruption, and incompetence of the current system and how it creates an opening for sensible nationalist policies.
1,107 words
People want someone to blame for the coronavirus outbreak. The obvious culprit is China. It originated in China, China tried to cover up the outbreak for weeks, and the communist state has not been open with what it knows about the virus.
But liberals don’t want to blame China. They want to blame Donald Trump. Surprisingly, many on our side share this view. (more…)
The Plague on the Stairs, Theodor Kittelsen, 1896.
530 words
It is not without a certain excitement that I realize that current events, horrible as they may be, will force many of our contemporaries to reevaluate their blind faith in the Liberal world-view. This isn’t business as usual — and the naive need a wake-up call. But these events also interfere with our own plans.
Considering the trajectory of the COVID-19 pandemic and related travel restrictions, we are forced to postpone the Zagreb Scandza Forum until later this year. (more…)
2,807 words
“It shall come to pass, saith God, throughout all the world there will be chaos, there will be floods, and famines, and earthquakes, and fires, and plagues on every side, even before [March 2001] is past.” (Brother Stair, 2001 Prophecy) [1] (more…)
2,723 words
Coronavirus, or COVID-19, the virus which originated in China, has now swept the globe. People are sick, many have died, there is widespread panic, entire nations have been shut down, and daily life has been disrupted virtually everywhere at this point. (more…)
1,682 words
Coronavirus is going to change the world. I just hope that I live to see it, along with the people I care about.
I call the Coronavirus the “Globalvirus,” because globalism is the underlying condition that made it all possible.
1,309 words
After President Trump’s speech on Friday, Jim Acosta, the “poisonous moron” as Tucker Carlson calls him, announced it xenophobic for President Trump to state that COVID-19 came from China. (more…)
Turku Castle, Finland
1,449 words
When King Gustav Adolf II of Sweden visited Turku Castle in 1614, a fire broke out around the complex, destroying one of the area’s oldest medieval sites. Left in ruins, the abandoned castle would become the setting of Zachris Topelius’s novel The Tomten of Åbo Castle (more…)
John Martin, The Great Day of His Wrath, 1853.
2,901 words
The epidemic began in Australia and spread from there to other countries.
I am referring to the panic buying of toilet paper. (more…)
966 words
“What is in store for my children tomorrow?”
— Steiner, from the movie La Dolce Vita (1961)
I was staying in Neive, a tiny red-roofed Piedmont village caught in a time-warp, where the traditions and ingrained habits of centuries, like the rolling vine-clad hills, remain unchanged. (more…)
John William Waterhouse, A Tale from The Decameron, 1916.
1,222 words
The Decameron is a novel that is often overshadowed by The Canterbury Tales despite sharing many similarities. Both were written in the 14th century and have a similar narrative structure of various short stories being told by a group of characters. (more…)
1,094 words
Consider the human immune system — not from an academic or scientific standpoint, but from a very practical and goal-oriented point of view; the goal in question being the continued health of the human. The body seals itself off from the outside world with a strong wall, known as the skin, and only communicates with it through highly specialized ports — the bodily orifices. (more…)