As a man of an aging vintage, I look back on the changes I saw with a great degree of regret. Each reader will have seen demographic changes in their own lifetimes, as well as the erosion of social and cultural mores. In my own case, as an Irish nationalist born and bred, I have seen this in my own country. (more…)
Tag: Ireland
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Many years ago, in what now seems to be almost like a past life, I used to be quite the cinephile. I loved films. I loved the French Nouvelle Vague. I loved Italian neorealismo. I became enamoured of the great auteurs. On many occasions, I would drive to faraway cinemas in the big cities so I could see films—usually foreign or independent ones—that were not going to play in my hometown movie theatres. When I was even younger, I used to eagerly await the the Friday edition of the local newspaper so I could read the movie reviews of the weekend’s new releases. When I reached my college years, I took a few elective courses on film history and production.
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I have a rule about films: I don’t watch any made after 2008, which I consider to be the last year in which good films were made. Sometimes, however, my rule can be wrong and I’ll make an exception. I’m pleased to report that my rule was wrong about The Banshees of Inisherin, a 2022 Irish film starring Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson and directed by Martin McDonagh.
Colin Farrell portrays Pádraic Súilleabháin, a farmer living on the fictional island of Inisherin, off Ireland’s western coast, in the 1920s, during the waning months of the Irish Civil War. (more…)
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Pox Populi (Telegram, YouTube) and Morgoth returned to the show on the latest broadcast of Counter-Currents Radio, where they joined host Greg Johnson to discuss Current Things, including recent debates on capitalism, socialism, and the ethnostate — and of course answer listener questions. The broadcast is now available for download and online listening. (more…)
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Greg Johnson held an impromptu Ask Me Anything on the latest broadcast of Counter-Currents Radio with special guests Gaddius Maximus and Pox Populi where they discussed current things, and it is now available for download and online listening.
Topics discussed include:
00:01:26 On Alex Karp and Palantir
00:35:51 On the bad side of technology
00:39:32 On TikTok (more…) -
The pro-Kremlin crowd in online Dissident Right spaces has one argument that they love above all others. Mike Peinovich made it in his recent post about how utterly right he is (in his view) to support Russia over Ukraine. Greg Johnson from Counter-Currents offered to debate him on that point, an offer which Joel Davis and Mark Collett both seconded, an offer which Mike and The Right Stuff (TRS) will no doubt refuse. (more…)
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William Butler Yeats, the Irish poet, playwright, and politician, was born on this day in 1865. One of the greatest literary figures of the 20th century, Yeats’ life and work straddle the great divide between Romanticism and Modernism. He received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1923.
In life and in art, Yeats rejected modern rationalism, materialism, and egalitarianism. He saw them as coarsening and brutalizing.
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Late to the party
There seems to be a political axiom whereby it is clear that a party or its leaders are in trouble when they start doing things, or at least start talking about doing things, which the majority of people actually want done. Thus, we see Angela Rayner, the blowsy Deputy Shadow Prime Minister, “talking tough” (translated from politico, that means horse-shitting) on crime. Ms. Rayner recently called Tories “scum” on social media. I don’t know where she thinks these mythical Tories are, but they certainly aren’t in the Conservative Party. (more…)
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Throughout the North, the ground still lies beneath a blanket of snow, and springtime seems a distant memory. Yet now, at the midway point between the winter solstice and the spring equinox, signs of nature’s rebirth are starting to appear: cold mornings give way to sunny, warm afternoons, grasses and blossoms begin to emerge, and the sound of birdsong once again fills the forest. The time of snow and ice is not yet past and the Earth still lies dormant — but she is starting to awaken.
The first weeks of February were of special significance to our European ancestors, and a number of holy days, now largely forgotten, took place at this time: (more…)
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What is it like to be part of a family as large as a nation? If that family is the city of Belfast and that nation is the Irish, then Kenneth Branagh’s Belfast gives us quite the clue. Effectively, this film is a love letter to the Irish people — and everything in it suggests that “the Irish” refers only to those who share a common ethnicity. Yes, there are a smattering of Asians in the film — which may be realistic, given that the story takes place in 1969 — but these so-called “people of color” are not employed against history as props but as fittingly minor aspects of the Belfast backdrop. This story is about the Irish and the Irish only. (more…)
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The howling of wolves is one of the most evocative and unsettling sounds on earth, awakening something primordial in the human soul. Among the most intelligent and graceful of terrestrial animals, wolves have been an object of fear and fascination throughout history. While many early societies venerated wolves for their skill at hunting and ferocity in battle, as the world grew tame and domesticated the wolf became a hated vestige of wild nature, an outlaw whose ruthless elimination was necessary to the safety and progress of mankind. (more…)
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Black Irish: African Woman Crowned Miss Ireland
Ireland is a tiny green isle with a population only slightly larger than that of the Atlanta metro area. Its population is 96% white and only 1% black, but in a crowded field of beautiful white indigenous candidates, a black woman born in South Africa with a face that could make dogs bark was recently selected to represent Éire at the 70th Miss World Pageant this December. (more…)