Tag: history

2,069 words

We are rerunning this article which was originally published on November 2, 2018, due to the Supreme Court’s ruling on birthright citizenship on June 30, 2026.

Leftists are fond of mocking conservative defenders of the Constitution, but they mysteriously morph into strict constructionists whenever anything threatens to overturn a law that suits their interests. Such is the case with the citizenship clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The same people who have advocated discarding the Second Amendment altogether are now rallying around the sacred infallibility of constitutional law regarding birthright citizenship. (more…)

Johan Huizinga, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

2,902 words

Johan Huizinga
Homo Ludens
Groningen, Netherlands: Wolters-Noordhoff, 1938

After writing last week about Tarot considered as a game, I kept with the subject of gaming for a while longer. I realized I didn’t really know what Game Theory was, for example, so I swotted up on that. I also came across a book I had never heard of by a writer whose name rang only the vaguest of bells, although readers may be more familiar. Homo Ludens was published in 1938 by Dutch historian Johan Huizinga, and has turned out to be a complete delight. (more…)

The Fool from the Sola Busca deck.

3,533 words

“Tarot” is a strange word because everyone and no one knows what it means. Ask anyone over 20 what “Tarot” means, and the likelihood is that they will recognize it in the simplest, most popular way; A deck of cards which can tell the future. Like so many modern myths, that is misleading on both counts. Although there are decks of Tarot cards, and they predated its study, Tarot is also the school of thought behind the meaning of the cards, rather than just the cards themselves and any simple meanings which might become attached to them. (more…)

 3,203 words

Editor’s Note: March 31st marks the 117th birthday of Robert Brasillach, the French journalist, novelist, film historian, and man of the Right who was sentenced to death and executed by firing squad for “intellectual crimes” he was alleged to have committed as a German collaborator during the Second World War. The translation below is offered as a commemoration, and links to other resources regarding Brasillach’s life and work are at the end.

Robert Brasillach & Notre avant-guerre:
The Pre-Phony War (Part II)

*  *  *

In our last episode of his memoir Notre avant-guerre, Robert Brasillach told us what it was like in September 1938, when he was suddenly called up for mobilization over the Sudetenland crisis, and found himself, like thousands of others, lost in the haste and confusion. (more…)

1,446 words

Peter Hammond
Slavery, Terrorism and Islam – The Historical Roots and Contemporary Threat
Cape Town: Christian Liberty Books, 2021

Peter Hammond’s Slavery, Terrorism and Islam is structured as a sweeping historical indictment. It is not written in the tone of comparative theology or neutral historiography. Hammond’s objective is to argue that the themes of slavery, expansionist warfare, religious supremacy, and coercion are not distortions of Islam but are embedded in its earliest precedents and carried forward through centuries of jurisprudence and empire. In his telling, modern Islamist terrorism represents continuity rather than corruption. (more…)

1,183 words

David Eltis
Atlantic Cataclysm: Rethinking the Atlantic Slave Trades
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2025

David Eltis’s Atlantic Cataclysm is an indispensable book for college students and anyone seeking a nuanced, deeply researched, and global understanding of slavery. This masterwork, grounded in decades of archival research and statistical data, obliterates parochial and mythologized versions of the Atlantic slave trade. It compels readers to reassess what they think they know about slavery, particularly the tendency to see it as a uniquely American tragedy. (more…)

2,895 words

Many dismiss Atlantis as merely a myth or allegory by Plato. The theosophists and other peddlers of pop culture esotericism embrace the myth and embroider it, for instance, claiming that Atlantis had flying machines. I have always taken the radical centrist stance that Atlantis existed, minus the fantastical claims. It was probably a settlement in North Africa that was advanced for its time, like Göbekli Tepe in Anatolia.

The only two primary sources on Atlantis are Plato’s Timaeus and Critias which are sequels to The Republic.[1] But modern myth mongers rarely examine them, even in passing.  A close reading of them suggests that the Greeks remembered Homer’s Troy but not Solon’s Atlantis because it was closer in time with fewer intervening disasters and because Homer could devote his attention to poetry while Solon could not. The Critias ends abruptly mid-sentence with a council of the gods to echo the start of the Odyssey, further emphasizing the comparison to Homer’s Troy. (more…)

912 words

Nanny of the Maroons

Contemporary academia loudly celebrates the concept of “lived experience” as a legitimate way of knowing. Personal narratives and subjective impressions are often treated as evidence, placed on the same level as empirical data or archival documentation. Yet this principle is applied selectively. When scholars write about slavery, they suddenly abandon the idea of lived experience, not because it loses relevance, but because it becomes politically inconvenient. (more…)

155 words

Today is the birthday of Lawrence Roscoe Brown, the author of The Might of the West, which the great Revilo P. Oliver proclaimed “one of the fundamental books of our century.” You can read Oliver’s review of The Might of the West here at Counter-Currents:

• Revilo P. Oliver, “Lawrence R. Brown’s The Might of the West.”

(more…)

Plato’s cosmology as depicted by Calcidius in his commentary to his fourth-century Latin translation of the Timaeus.

2,882 words

I am embarrassed by the world. I cannot believe that a watch exists and has no watchmaker. — Voltaire

Which of the patterns had the artificer in mind when he made the world? — Plato

Given the world we have created, or rather a world which has been created for us, whoever “we” are could do a lot worse than take advice from the Classical world. For the vast majority of us, our world is one we never made, and those who did are becoming intentionally isolated, remote from those whose lives they control, living as they do in a dry and ideological gated community. (more…)

329 words / 2:15:38

Morgoth (Substack, Odysee) was Greg Johnson‘s special guest on the latest broadcast of Counter-Currents Radio, where they discussed Denis Villeneuve’s new film Dune: Part Two and of course answered listener questions. In the second hour, they were joined by Endeavour (Substack). (See Trevor Lynch’s reviews of Dune and Dune: Part Two for Counter-Currents; also see our Frank Herbert commemoration for links to all our resources on Dune and Frank Herbert.) (more…)

2,242 words

Tom C. McKenney
Jack Hinson’s One-Man War
Gretna, La.: Pelican, 2009

Pitting oneself against the modern world can be a lonely endeavor. Sure, we can find company on the Internet. But if any of us has fellow travelers in our day-to-days lives, then we should consider ourselves lucky. I am sure we all can appreciate the lone person who stands athwart history, yelling “Stop!” and meaning it at the same time. It’s a rough road, but if you do it well, it can be a splendid thing. (more…)

5,133 words

Part 2 of 2 (Part 1 here)

Nero was only 16 when he became Emperor. His coming to power had nevertheless been enabled by several murders and/or suspiciously timely deaths. Claudius may or may not have died accidentally, but Narcissus, who favored Britannicus and the Senator Silanus, were poisoned almost certainly on the orders of Nero’s mother. (more…)