3,808 words
Translated by F. Roger Devlin
Communities, whether old or recent, whether ethno-cultural, linguistic, religious, sexual, or something else, are natural dimensions of belonging. No individual can exist without belonging, even if only to distance himself from it. (more…)
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, left, and David Hume.
3,901 words
“No good deed goes unpunished,” as the old saw goes. It puts a cynical, waggish twist on the perspicacious observation that acts of genuine generosity and kindness too often come to grief. Benefactors beware! Shades of Thomas Hobbes: “Man to man is a wolf.” (more…)
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
5,174 words
1. The Greatest Unread Philosopher in History
Chances are you may never even have heard of the German philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762-1814). If you have heard of him, you probably have the vague idea that he was a follower of Kant who went off the reservation and tried to defend the bizarre position that all of reality is the creation of something called the “Absolute Ego.” This is how he is often treated in histories of philosophy. But this characterization of Fichte is completely wrong. (more…)
Louis de Bonald
137 words
Louis Gabriel Ambroise, Vicomte de Bonald, is one of the great French counter-Revolutionary conservative thinkers. For an overview of his life, see “Louis Gabriel Ambroise, Vicomte de Bonald,” here at Counter-Currents.
F. Roger Devlin has written several pieces assessing Bonald’s contribution to the North American New Right: (more…)
Jules Chéret, 1880 Parisian advertisement for a recurring Saturday masque performance
8,839 words
On April 19, Counter-Currents instituted a paywall for articles and podcasts that will be made freely available 30 days later. This article by Kathryn S. was one of the first items to go behind the paywall, and is now one of the first items to be released to everyone else. More information about how to get behind the paywall can be found below. (more…)
Jules Chéret, 1880 Parisian advertisement for a recurring Saturday masque performance
8,691 words
This past winter I lost my last grandparent — the most stubborn one, still to the end a strict English schoolteacher after having long since retired from the profession in the 1970s. She suffered through the desegregation years while working at Marshall High and was never dishonest about the experience. She possessed that combination of Southern decorum and irascible (and accurate) bluntness, which gave her the ability to reduce anyone, including 250-pound, six-foot-three black football players, to tears. (more…)
Dimitar Pandilov, Harvesters, 1936.
2,226 words
Let’s talk about nationalism.
You’ve probably been told that there are two kinds of nationalism: ethnic and civic. This is true. You’ve probably been told that nationalism is a Left-wing phenomenon. This is partially true. (more…)
2,392 words
Charles Brockden Brown (1771-1810) wasn’t the first American writer. That was William Hill Brown (no relation), whose The Power of Sympathy (1789) was an epistolary novel imitating Richardson with moral purpose and a satisfying ending of virtue triumphant. Then there was Susanna Rowson. Her Charlotte Temple (1790), was America’s first bestseller, another fine moral tale of a young woman choosing virtue and so (again) triumphing. (more…)
Pierre-Jean Boquet, The Burning of Cap Français, 1791.
7,803 words
The monumental significance of the fall of Saint-Domingue, the crown jewel of the French colonial empire, and its ensuant descent into the African savagery of Haiti cannot be overstated. The terrible birth of Haiti as a mangled, stillborn phoenix from a river of white blood (more…)
5,462 words
“Socialism” is intrinsic to the “Right.” When journalists and academics refer in one breath to “liberalism, neoliberalism, and the Right-wing,” that attests to their ignorance, not to the accuracy of any such bastardization. Even at its most basic level of understanding, it seems to have been forgotten that in Britain there were Tories and Whigs in opposition. Now, Toryism has become so detached from its origins (more…)
Gertrude Stein.
6,991 words
Barbara Will
Unlikely Collaboration: Gertrude Stein, Bernard Faÿ, and the Vichy Dilemma (Gender and Culture Series)
New York City: Columbia University Press, 2011
The joy of the body, the most honorable and fecund joy of all, reign[s] in America.
— Bernard Faÿ (more…)
Louis de Bonald
137 words
Louis Gabriel Ambroise, Vicomte de Bonald, is one of the great French counter-Revolutionary conservative thinkers. For an overview of his life, see “Louis Gabriel Ambroise, Vicomte de Bonald,” here at Counter-Currents.
F. Roger Devlin has written several pieces assessing Bonald’s contribution to the North American New Right: (more…)