Tag: Rome

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Since 2011, Counter-Currents has organized private, invitation-only weekend retreats for our writers, donors, and friends. We have had many distinguished speakers and guests, including Jonathan Bowden, Kevin MacDonald, Mark Weber, Jared Taylor, Charles Krafft, Roger Devlin, and Edward Dutton.

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Gian Lorenzo Bernini, Ecstasy of St. Teresa, 1647-52 (Cornaro Chapel, Santa Maria della Vittoria, Rome)

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Jared Taylor and Greg Johnson discuss the Counter-Currents Retreat in Rome and their impressions of CasaPound, as well as their visit to the Finnish Awakening Conference and Jared’s other recent travels in France and Belgium.

Now for your  streaming or downloading pleasure. To listen in a player, click here or below. To download, right-click the link and click “save as.”

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I just got back from the Counter-Currents retreat in Rome. To culturally appropriate a phrase from the Civil Rights Movement, “My feets is tired, but my soul is rested” after a week of walking around the most historically significant city in the West. But we weren’t just exploring Rome’s past. We also encountered her present and future at CasaPound.

My single biggest impression was the immediacy and realism of having an “irl” (in real life) community. CasaPound has claimed numerous other physical spaces in Rome and elsewhere across Italy. (more…)

Goethe at the Window by Johann Heinrich Wilhelm Tischbein (1786-87), depicting Germany’s greatest writer during his life-altering sojourn in Rome. Source: Wikimedia Commons.

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Since the fall of the Western Roman Empire, the history, language, and literature of the Romans, and to a lesser extent their art and architecture, has provided a large part of the material used to educate Western man. The extent to which this is so actually increased during the Renaissance and modern period over what had been the practice in the first millennium following Rome’s fall. In the case of the most thoughtful educators, this focus on the Roman inheritance represented a conscious choice, not a mindless following of hide-bound tradition, as is sometimes made out today. But the reasons for such a choice are not self-evident. (more…)

The Sistine Chapel. (Photo by Richard Mortel [CC BY])

In preparation for my first visit to Rome, I recently watched a documentary about the Sistine Chapel. It explained how the frescoes on the southern wall depict scenes from the life of Moses, while those on the northern wall show the life of Christ — all paired in deliberate, meaningful ways. On the ceiling, of course, are Michelangelo’s magnificent scenes of the Old Testament. (more…)

The Roman Forum at night. Photo by Trey Ratcliff (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

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As an American, I can relate better to Rome than to Greece, and that’s not necessarily a good thing. I have written two books on Plato. I love Greek philosophy, literature, and art. But they are not mine. I’ve just appropriated them. Like the Romans did. (more…)

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The following is reprinted from the Will2Rise Substack.

I knocked on the big metal doors of a commercial building on a quiet Roman street. I had no contact name—just an address. It came from some random account I found while going down a European nationalist rabbit hole on social media.

It was around 2013. My first time back in Italy since childhood, since those family visits that left more flavor than memory. I was there with a chick, planning the usual romantic getaway. The Colosseum. Wine. Ruins. But one square on the itinerary was mine. One day, one reason I really came to Rome: CasaPound. (more…)

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Part 1

Il cinema è l´arma più forte.
-B. Mussolini

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Artekrati

Italy had already enjoyed a famous and successful era of silent films, (more…)

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When I heard that Paolo Sorrentino’s La Grande Bellezza (The Great Beauty, 2013) was “Felliniesque,” that didn’t recommend it at all. By “Felliniesque,” I mean the most stunning and unconventional traits of such films as La Dolce Vita, 8½, and Juliet of the Spirits: basically, a person undergoing a personal crisis in an increasingly surreal, carnivalistic setting that suggests an oncoming psychotic break—or divine intervention—or both; a liberal use of the grotesque sweetened with a Christian-humanist compassion; (more…)

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Francis Ford Coppola
Megalopolis: A Fable
Adam Driver, Giancarlo Esposito, Nathalie Emmanuel, Shia LaBeouf, Aubrey Plaza, Dustin Hoffman, Jon Voight, Laurence Fishburne
Produced, written and directed by Francis Ford Coppola

“This is typical of new directors, too many good ideas. Or, in this case, no ideas.” –Mystery Science Theater.[1]

“It was like watching a train wreck unfold day after day, week after week, and knowing that everybody there had tried their hardest to help the train wreck be avoided…. This sounds crazy to say, but there were times when we were all standing around going: ‘Has this guy ever made a movie before?’” – Crew member quoted in The Guardian (more…)

“Which multiculti- fakeugee-dumping-ground should we go to for our next holiday, darling?”

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Last week, for the first time in too long a time, I found myself again in Rome. Europe is changing so rapidly that returning to once-familiar places no longer feels like a homecoming. It feels like entering an alien terrain for the first time. I perceived a similar sensation when I visited Ireland again after an absence of a few years. Shops and locales that I frequented have been closed down or replaced and renamed. (more…)