Tag: Napoleon

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Kolberg, like Jud Suss (reviewed here) is directed by Veit Harlan, is a period film that stars Harlan’s wife Kristina Soederbaum, and is accused of being clouded with “Nazi” themes. It was one of the last films distributed by the Third Reich, and always shown as an example of Nazi fanaticism and resistance to the end. When one sees Kolberg, it has usually been in documentaries about the Hitler era, always in snippets that remind the viewer how it was shot at the end of the war, wasted whole divisions of German soldiers as extras when they could have better been at the front. It is Nazi and therefore a pointless waste of cinematic resources.

My viewing of the film offers a different impression. (more…)

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“Whether you think you can, or you think you can’t—you’re right.”

—Henry Ford

Agency is the ability to take meaningful action. Essentially, is one more of a subject or an object. There are three types of people according to their level of agency: non-player characters (NPCs), player characters (PCs), and dungeon masters (DMs). Life and art imitate one another, and these terms are known to anyone familiar with old school tabletop games like Dungeons & Dragons. DMs run the game, while PCs play the game and interact with NPCs. (more…)

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Last weekend’s broadcast of Counter-Currents Radio was a Thanksgiving weekend all-star extravaganza, where Greg Johnson and co-hosts Gaddius Maximus (Telegram), Cyan Quinn, and David Zsutty were joined by The Ayatollah (Odysee, Telegram), Sam Dickson,  Endeavour (Substack, Telegram, YouTube), Friedrich, Jim Goad, James Kirkpatrick (Substack), Tim Murdock (White Rabbit Radio),  Pox Populi (Telegram, YouTube), Karl Thorburn (Telegram), and Keith Woods. It is now available for download and online listening. (more…)

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Ridley Scott’s Napoleon is a bad movie, but not a terrible one. There are legions of nerds complaining about how Scott got this or that historical detail wrong. Honestly, that’s beside the point. Even if Scott didn’t know Saint Helena from Elba, he could still have made a great movie.

Everyone has heard of Napoleon. But what’s so great about Napoleon? Any film about Napoleon needs to answer that question. But in nearly three hours’ screen time, Scott fails to do so. (more…)

Persian relief of soldiers similar to those lost in the 525 BC march from Thebes.

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Part 3 of 3 (Part 1 here, Part 2 here)

III. Deserts Take Few Prisoners

 “. . . we saw the break-up of the enemy . . . [they escaped] into what they thought was empty land beyond. However, in the empty land was Auda^[1]; and in that night of his last battle the old man killed and lulled, plundered and captured, till dawn showed him the end. (more…)

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Part 2 of 3 (Part 1 here, Part 3 here)

II. Deserts Create Monsters and Messiahs

“The Bedouin could not look for God within him: he was too sure that he was within God. He could not conceive anything which was or was not God, Who alone was great . . . He was the most familiar of their words.” — Thomas Edward [T. E.] Lawrence, Seven Pillars of Wisdom (more…)

Chile’s Atacama Desert: one of the driest places on Earth.

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Part 1 of 3 (Part 2 here)

Deserts are the strangest places on Earth.

I spent my undergraduate years at an isolated college town that sat on the fringes of a vast, interior desert. To the northwest, the great Rocky Mountains began their ascent; directly west lay No Man’s Land, but the Sun’s; to the south, the flats gradually lifted into ancient atolls, red gorges, and rock. As a native woodland creature, this dryland seemed to me like another planet. (more…)

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Part 2 of 2 (Part 1 here)

II. To Winter Wonderlands

The road through the Almond and Raisin Gate led Nutcracker and Marie to Rock Candy Mountain and the Christmas Woods, Bon-Bonville, Marzipan Castle, and Jamburg. Upon crossing Lemonade River, six monkeys in red vests began “playing the most beautiful Turkish military music,” while they walked “farther and farther on multicolored tiles, which, however, were nothing but nicely filled lozenges.” (more…)

Left: Antoine-Jean Gros, Premier Consul Bonaparte, ca. 1802; Right: Cover for E. T. A. Hoffmann and Alexandre Dumas’ The Nutcracker & the Mouse King

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Part 1 of 2 (Part 2 here)

Like many of us this past season, I have had to endure far too many repetitions of the same 11 ”holiday” songs that fail to capture the essence of the season: the contemplative, dirge-y, or haunted side of winter, paired with the tasteful emotional warmth and childlike joy of Christmas. (more…)

Napoleon’s North African-attired Consular Guard: a hard look to pull off

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Part 2 of 2 (Part 1 here)

2. Rage Militaire: Franco-American Zouave-mania

“His parents taught him to be a cavalier, but the life of the Zou-zou he much did prefer.” — anonymous Confederate verse

“The city,” one Richmond, Virginia newspaperman enthused, “was yesterday thrown into a paroxysm of excitement by the arrival of the New Orleans Zouaves — a battalion of six hundred and thirty, as unique and picturesque looking Frenchmen as ever delighted the oculars of Napoleon the three.” (more…)

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Napoleon has generally been viewed harshly by anti-liberal thinkers, with a few notable exceptions such as Nietzsche, Léon Bloy, and Francis Parker Yockey. A great deal of criticism has been leveled at him. He has been accused of being a mere petty dictator without any higher authority legitimizing him, an enemy of the Catholic Church, a liberal egalitarian who brought the violence of the French Revolution to the legitimate monarchies of Europe in his conquests.  (more…)

Johann Gottlieb Fichte, 1762–1814

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Johann Gottlieb Fichte was one of those rare men who are both thinkers and heroes. His challenging Wissenschaftslehre (“doctrine of science”) remains one of the most ambitious attempts to encompass the world and its meaning in a speculative philosophical system. In his elaboration of Immanuel Kant’s philosophy of ethical idealism, Fichte achieved a compelling synthesis of the complementary values of freedom and duty. (more…)

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Part One, Part Two

17.

This brings us to the political aspects of the English-Prussian antithesis. (more…)