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. Democracyhere.)
Many critics of populism accuse it of being a form of white identity politics, (more…)
To listen in a player, click here. To download the mp3, right-click here and choose “save link as” or “save target as.”
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…)
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…)
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…)
Ha csak most ismerkedik a Counter-Currents internetes folyóirattal, kitűnő kiindulási pont az alábbi interjú, amelyet Laura Raim francia marxista újságíró készített Greg Johnsonnal. (more…)
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…)
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…)
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.
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.
(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…)
This is the transcript by V. S. of Greg Johnson’s interview with Laura Raim on the Alternative Right. To listen in a player, click here. To download the mp3, right-click here and choose “save target or link as.” (more…)
What follows is the transcript by V. S. of Michael Enoch’s Between Two Lampshades interview with Greg Johnson on The Right Stuff. You can listen to it here.
GJ: There’s another argument that I want to make about laissez-faire capitalism: (more…)
Paternalismo significa tratar a la gente como niños. Los niños carecen de madurez y sabiduría para tomar sus propias decisiones. Por lo tanto necesitan padres – o gente que ejerza el rol paternal – que les diga que hacer y, en ocasiones, forzarlos a hacerlo.
La mayoría de la gente no tiene problema con el paternalismo cuando trata con niños, tanto como con retardados, seniles o insanos. (more…)
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…)
The following text is based on a transcript by V. S. of a lecture on Plato’s Republic. As usual, I have edited his transcript to remove excessive wordiness and corrected a couple of small mistakes.
Plato writes in his Seventh Letter that he never set forth his own philosophy in any of his writings. That’s a pretty extraordinary statement for one of our greatest philosophers to make. (more…)
I want to maintain that after a hundred years of romanticism, we are in for a classical revival, and that the particular weapon of this new classical spirit, when it works in verse, will be fancy.[1] And in this I imply the superiority of fancy—not superior generally or absolutely, for that would be obvious nonsense, but superior in the sense that we use the word good in empirical ethics—good for something, superior for something. (more…)
The First World War brought to a climax a cultural crisis in Western Civilization that had been developing for centuries: money overwhelmed tradition, as Spengler would have put it[1] (or, to resort to the language of Marx, the bourgeoisie supplanted the aristocracy).[2] Industrialization accentuated the process of commercialization, with its concomitant urbanization and the disruption of organic bonds and social cohesion. This has thrown societies into a state of perpetual flux, with culture reflecting that condition.
It was—and is—a problem of the primacy of Capital. (more…)
If Hamsun and Lawrence carry out their desire to return to a natural ontology by rejecting rationalist intellectualism, this also implies an in-depth contestation of the Christian message. (more…)
The Hungarian philologist Akos Doma, educated in Germany and the United States, has published a work of literary interpretation comparing the works of Knut Hamsun and D. H. Lawrence: (more…)
In 1762, Immanuel Kant did something unprecedented. He missed his daily walk. He stayed home to read Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s new book Emile, a philosophical novel on education that was to exercise a profound and revolutionary influence on his thought.[1](more…)
Maurice Quentin de La Tour, “Portrait of Jean-Jacques Rousseau” (1712–1778), pastel on paper, 1753
10,607 words
Translated by Greg Johnson*
Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778) is a rather curious case in the history of ideas. After two centuries, he is still the object of truly passionate opinions (you either love him or you hate him), and few authors have given rise to as many contradictory interpretations. He is commonly seen as an inspiration for the French Revolution, but also as an influence on German nationalism. (more…)
Louis de Bonald On Divorce
Translated and edited by Nicholas Davidson
New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers, 1992
On the European continent, Louis de Bonald has long been named alongside Edmund Burke and Joseph de Maistre as a foremost first generation critic of the French Revolution and founder of modern conservatism. (more…)
169 words / 74:32
