Norman Rockwell, Study for “Freedom of Speech”
4,465 words
English original here
Le spectre du populisme
Les révoltes populistes de 2016 — le Brexit et l’élection de Donald Trump — ne sont pas des événements marquants comme les révolutions de 1789 et 1848. Pas encore en tous cas. Mais vous n’y croiriez pas en voyant la panique qui a parcouru les élites politiques occidentales. (more…)
Norman Rockwell, Study for “Freedom of Speech”
3,380 words
French version here
Populism seeks to rescue popular government from corrupt elites. Naturally, the elites strike back. The most common accusation from elite commentators is that populism is “anti-democratic.” As Yascha Mounk frames it, populism is “the people vs. democracy.” I argue that populism is not anti-democratic, but it is anti-liberal. (See Donald Thoresen’s review of Mounk’s The People vs. Democracy here.)
Many critics of populism accuse it of being a form of white identity politics, (more…)
169 words / 74:32
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This week Greg Johnson talks to video blogger Endeavour on topics ranging from Thomas Hobbes to Steven Pinker to Pixar movies, answers questions from our Entropy donors, (more…)
3,641 words
Jan-Werner Müller
What is Populism?
Penguin, 2017
When a political establishment feels threatened by a growing force like National Populism, Plan A is to defend the establishment and attack its opponents by dispatching middle-brow journalists to sneer and jeer and middle-brow political hacks to construct partisan talking points. (more…)
2,454 words
Paul Theroux
The Mosquito Coast
Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1981
I always find it interesting when different people make similar observations based on the same data, yet come to completely different conclusions. Allie Fox, the main character in Paul Theroux’s novel The Mosquito Coast, seems at first to have much in common with many on today’s Dissident Right. He’s disgusted with the ubiquitous commercialization of modern society. (more…)
3,313 words
In order to embrace the Right, whites must first overcome their shame and embarrassment when contemplating race. Our most difficult and dangerous hurdle, I believe, but also our most important one. Much of this involves resisting the temptation to impute a typical white temperament onto non-whites, especially primitive non-whites. (more…)
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
626 words
Spanish translation here
Paternalism means treating people like children. Children lack the maturity and wisdom to make their own decisions. Thus they need parents — or people playing the paternal role — to tell them what to do and, on occasion, to force them to do it.
Most people have no problem with paternalism when dealing with actual children, as well as the retarded, the senile, and the insane. (more…)
Reyer van Blommendael, Xantippe Dousing Socrates, c. 1665
6,643 words
Part 2 of 2 (Part 1 here)
Author’s Note:
On August 24th, 1999 I began a lecture course called “What Socrates Knew” with a lecture called “Thirty Socratic Theses.” What follows is a transcription of the second half of the lecture by V.S. The thirty theses are listed below, as are links to the audio of the lecture.
14,833 words
Editor’s Note:
If you are new to Counter-Currents, the following transcript of Greg Johnson’s interview (audio here) with French Marxist journalist Laura Raim is an excellent place to start. It is the first interview in Greg Johnson’s new book, You Asked for It: Selected Interviews, vol. 1, now available from Counter-Currents.
Whittaker Chambers, underground man.
2,070 words
(Written in the style, if not quite the spirit, of senior TIMEditor Chambers’ weekly newsmagazine.)
Rumpled, paunchy Whittaker Chambers (April 1, 1901-July 9, 1961) has long merited haughty sneers and raised eyebrows on America’s nationalist Right. Reasons: his shifting ideologies, his inscrutable motives.
Among the most compelling critiques of Chambers we may count those of Classics professor Revilo P. Oliver. (more…)
