Quotulatiousness

September 9, 2021

QotD: Terrorism

Filed under: Middle East, Military, Quotations, Religion — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

Others among the influential for a moment after the retaliatory strikes of October 7, 2001, talked of moral equivalency — the conventional wisdom that American precision targeting of an enemy in time of war carried the same ethical burden as the terrorists’ deliberate mass-murdering of civilians at peace. But billions worldwide knew that the selective wreckage of al-Qaeda safe houses in Kabul was not comparable to the smoldering crater that was once the World Trade Center. Why else were terrorists and the Taliban hiding in mosques and infirmaries to avoid American bombs while their own manuals instructed killers to commit mass murder in Jewish hospitals and temples? So the reality that average folk viewed on their televisions made them question the bottled piety of the last decades that they heard from a powerful and influential few. And in that moral calculus, September 11 shocked an affluent and at times self-satisfied American citizenry into confessing that it was no longer either too wealthy, too refined, or too sensitive to kill killers.

Victor Davis Hanson, Ripples of Battle, 2004.

July 22, 2021

Conservative cancel culture?

Filed under: Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Kurt Schlichter addresses the notion that “cancel culture” is alive and well among conservatives as much as it is among progressives:

“A little Black Rifle Coffee pour over this morning.” by jonmrogers is licensed under CC BY 2.0

Is there a conservative cancel culture? No. What there is now is a consensus among conservatives that we will refuse to subsidize institutions and entities that hate us. “Cancel culture,” properly understood – in this time of words meaning whatever they need to mean at any given moment, I’m going to have to insist on fixed definitions – is the attempt to use formal and informal sanctions to stop people from expressing dissenting views. But conservatives don’t care what the conservatives who cry about it when they are caught shafting us – hi Kristi! – think; conservatives care about what these people do or don’t do. Labeling our rejection of squishes and RINOs as “cancel culture” is a cheesy attempt to stop us from insisting that conservatives actually conserve. If the left, and the GOPuffballs, want to call this act of self-preservation “cancel culture” and shame us into unilateral disarmament in the name of some sort of pseudo-consistency, let them try. We’re not tying ourselves up with alleged “principles” anymore; ideological bondage is not our scene.

[…]

There was a certain coffee company created by vets that embraced a kind of vet-bro/gun vibe and it worked hard to cultivate a following in the conservative community. And then they stamped their combat boots hard on their own tender beans. Black Rifle Coffee Company’s problem provides an important lesson not just for companies seeking to operate on the conservative tip, but for GOP politicians as well.

What happened? BRCC gave an interview to The New York Times that many cons saw as taking sides against us conservatives. Did it or didn’t it take sides against us? The company denies it and is trying to repair the damage, but the facts of the case are not the point we are discussing here – the point is how conservatives, the cheated-on wives of American politics, reacted when they felt, rightly or wrongly, betrayed.

The conservatives went nuclear. Here’s the thing a lot of people seem to not understand. No faction has been screwed over by its own side more than conservatives. How many politicians, when they had the power to do the conservative things they ran on, opted for favorable WaPo coverage over keeping their promises? The incentives to cooperate are huge … like coverage in the DC paper of record explaining how one has “grown”. But we’re done with the bait-and-switch. We’re super-sensitive and super-suspicious, because we’ve been burned before.

So, conservatives have a hair trigger for perceived betrayal – if they even suspect it, they go off. Those seeking our support should act accordingly, as cons have been serially betrayed for decades. Take W, please, back to his ranch to paint his paintings. But before you do, remember what he did to all of us who defended him when he refused to defend himself – he talked smack about us as he partied with his new pals the Clintons and Obamas.

The Ahoy Crew used to at least pretend to be with us – Cap’n Bill Kristol, David Aptly-Named French, Jonah Heavy G Goldberg, and the rest turned on us the second they perceived their sinecures were in peril due to our swelling demand for actual victory.

Them or us. Pick one. But you can’t choose both, or neither.

Update: The CEO of the company is either in desperate damage control mode or genuinely upset at the misrepresentation of his views by the New York Times:

Let’s get the air cleared right away. Black Rifle Coffee’s founder and CEO has spoken out and is disputing how his comments were presented by the New York Times and represented by those reacting to the article, who were led to believe that Black Rifle Coffee bashed conservatives.

Evan Hafer decided to set the record straight regarding the “significant amount of misinformation being put out on the internet” about Black Rifle Coffee and about statements that he has made.

Hafer quickly debunked the notion that he made derogatory remarks about BRCC’s customers or conservatives and then proceeded to explain how the New York Times deliberately twisted his words and took them out of context. According to Hafer, his conversation with the NYT Magazine reporter was in the context of racism and anti-Semitism in America in light of Hafer being the target of an organized attack last year because of “my last name and my heritage.”

“We were purely discussing that,” Hafer says, and he was not conflating those groups with conservatives.

“The New York Times, as we know, the chances of them being objective were fairly slim, but we gave them the opportunity,” he added. He went on to mention veterans issues he hoped to bring attention to. But, unfortunately, the New York Times chose to go with “the salacious headline” about the company instead.

Hafer reiterated that racists and anti-Semites have no place in his company.

July 12, 2021

QotD: Führerprinzip

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Germany, History, Quotations, WW2 — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

All revolutions bring out the weirdos, of course, and go through purity spirals, and the rest, but the English, American, French, and Bolshevik revolutionaries had a clear, universalizing ideology — a coherent worldview, a real body of doctrine, hashed out in hard debates among serious thinkers. The Nazis were a lot more intellectual, and more ideological, than they’re given credit for, but they were unique in their ideological commitment to Führerprinzip, the “leader principle.” Such that while, say, Communism in practice ended up being “whatever Comrade Lenin says it is,” Nazism started out that way.

Because of this, it was easy to “project” onto Hitler. It was one of the keys of his appeal. When he talked about “international finance capital,” for instance, he often meant “Jews” … but often he didn’t, and even when he did, you could fairly easily convince yourself that he didn’t. Same with his other big bugbear, “Jewish Bolshevism.” Was he primarily an anti-Semite, or an anti-Communist? You could convince yourself either way — that the part you didn’t like was just a personal psychological quirk of Hitler’s, while the part you did like was “true Nazism.”

Unlike the Bolshies, then, or the French or even American and English revolutionaries, you really didn’t know what Hitler and the boys would do once they were in power. You knew it wasn’t going to be sunshine and roses for the folks in tiny hats, of course, but you could very easily convince yourself that stuff was only a small part of Hitler’s program. So much really depended on one man’s psychology.

Which fed into the other big ideological pillar of Nazism, Social Darwinism. The Nazis weren’t the hyper-organized, hyper-efficient monsters of popular imagination. Their org charts looked like plates of spaghetti, by design. Indeed it was often hard to tell who, exactly, was in charge of what — again, by design. Just to take one prominent example, Heinrich Himmler was, in his capacity as head of the German Police, nominally subordinate to the interior minister, Wilhelm Frick … but as head of the SS he controlled a much more powerful organization, and he used it to split the police into several bureaus (Orpo, Kripo, etc., for the specialists), which were then amalgamated into the Reich Main Security Office. Plus, guys in the various police organizations also held SS rank…

All of this, again, was explicitly ideological. As Social Darwinists, the Nazis wanted the various groups to fight it out, letting the most talented (and, needless to say, ruthless) guys rise to the top. Power was wielded by whomever seized it, in whatever capacity. Again, you had Adolf Eichmann running the entire Reich’s transport network in the darkest, most desperate part of the war … and he was a lieutenant-colonel. Not even an Army LTC; he only held rank in the SD, the secret police.

In practice, then, you had little islands of authority. The guys in charge were all freelancers, advancing The Cause however they saw fit, with whatever tools they had to hand. SA guys (brownshirts, “storm troopers”) and SS guys were always locked in conflict with each other; inside the SS, the “general SS” lost out to the SD, all of whom were backstabbing each other. The Wehrmacht and the Waffen-SS were always stomping on each other in the field, constantly squabbling over equipment, manpower, areas of responsibility … even the occupation governments were a mess, with some functions falling to the Army, some to the HSSPF (the parallel SS/SD adminstration), some to the Waffen-SS, some to the Einsatztruppen, and all with the approval of the head honchos, which is why e.g. Poland (the “General Government“) was such a mess … and why such comprehensively awful shit happened there (when you’ve got SOBs on the order of Hans Frank and Odilo Globocnik competing to out-asshole each other, it’s really, really bad).

Severian, “AMA Response: Revolutions”, Rotten Chestnuts, 2021-02-10.

May 27, 2021

“Are you an ally of an all-powerful white supremacist, colonialist apartheid regime led by baby-killing oppressors, the likes of whose evil the world has never seen?”

Filed under: History, Media, Middle East, Politics, Religion — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Why, yes. Yes I am, Barbara Kay. And you should be too:

Nobody with eyes to see can press on with the myth that this is a political conflict. The anti-Semitism that lurks behind obsessive Israel-bashing can no longer be credibly passed off as “criticism of Israel”. It’s not about Israel and never was. It’s about those maddening Jews. Wherever they are, they make trouble. What is it with their stubborn insistence on their right to live and flourish in their homeland, when they know they are not wanted there?

Never mind the historical facts surrounding Jews’ indigenous rights, or the painstaking legal journey to national sovereignty (along with other newly minted Middle Eastern countries like Iraq and Syria, both of which have appalling human rights records, but never have their right to exist questioned). Treaties and international law are too dull, nuanced and complex. They take time and effort to understand. It’s very taxing for the brain. Narrative, though, takes no time at all to absorb. Stories of good and evil are simple, unnuanced and satisfyingly emotive.

If you attend to the myth-mongering on social media, it seems your choice is stark. Are you an ally of an all-powerful white supremacist, colonialist apartheid regime led by baby-killing oppressors, the likes of whose evil the world has never seen? Or are you a decent, compassionate human being, committed to social justice and ready to lend your support to those infamous Zionist monsters’ powerless, oppressed, racialized victims, who are languishing in their open-air prisons?

It’s a tough choice for progressive Jews. Before 1967, living with oneself as a Jew was easy. Socialist Israel was little David then and the massed hostile Arab states were Goliath. Even Bernie Sanders enjoyed his time on a kibbutz in 1963. (Mind you, that particular kibbutz, Sha’ar Ha’amakim, was so far left, one of its members was convicted of spying for the Soviet Union.)

Then those upstart Jews dared to win a war against incredible odds and had the chutzpah to take back territory that had been stolen from them in the 1948 War of Independence. The pivot from victim to victor, from powerlessness to power, was the kiss of death for their support from the left.

March 1, 2021

QotD: Anti-semitism in Harold Lamb’s novels

Filed under: Asia, Books, History, Quotations, Religion — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

The “brushes with anti-Semitism” lie in Lamb’s portrayal of the Jewish merchants of the time [Wikipedia]. They sell the Cossacks clothes, weapons, food, and gunpowder and turn the freebooters’ loot into cash. They are depicted as avaricious, cowardly, mean, and quite willing to toady to the warriors and princes they serve. How are we to interpret this in light of Lamb’s sympathetic portrayals of a dozen other races and cultures?

Of course it’s possible Lamb was simply replaying anti-Semitic attitudes he had absorbed somewhere. But in reading these stories I had another moment like the one in which I understood that [Edgar Rice] Burroughs [Wikipedia] was using “white” as culturist code for “civilized”. It was this: the behavior of Lamb’s Jewish merchants made adaptive sense. Maybe they were really like that!

Consider: The Jews of Lamb’s milieu lived under Christian and Islamic rulers who forbade them from carrying weapons, who despised them, who taxed and persecuted them with a heavy hand. If you were a Jew in that time and place, exhibiting courage and the warrior virtues that Lamb was so ready to recognize in a Mongol or an Afghani was likely to earn you a swift and ugly death.

Under those conditions, I’m thinking that being cowardly and avaricious and toadying would have been completely sensible; after all, what other options than flattering the authorities and getting rich enough to buy themselves out of trouble did Jews actually have?

Lamb seems to have have mined the historical sources pretty assiduously in his portrayals of other cultures and races. Rather than dismissing Lamb’s Jews as creatures of his prejudices, I think we need to at least consider the possibility that he was mostly replaying period beliefs about Jewish merchants, and that those beliefs were in fact fairly accurate. He certainly seems to have tried to do something similar with the other flavors of human being in his books.

Nowadays we tend to interpret Lamb’s Jewish merchants through assumptions that read something like this: (1) All racial labels are indications of racist thinking, and (2) all race-associated stereotypes are necessarily false, and (3) all racial labels and race-related stereotypes are malicious. But it seems to me that, at least as I read Burroughs and Lamb, all these assumptions are highly questionable. As long as you hold them, you can’t notice what “whiteness” in Burroughs really means, or account for the genuine multiculturalism of Lamb’s books.

Eric S. Raymond, “Reading racism into pulp fiction”, Armed and Dangerous, 2010-01-18.

February 19, 2021

Quislings! – Traitors of World War Two – WW2 Gallery 02

World War Two
Published 18 Feb 2021

The name of Norwegian National Socialist Politician Vidkun Quisling became synonymous with “traitor” and “collaborator”. In this gallery episode, we’ll cover some of the most prominent Quislings in World War Two.

Join us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/TimeGhostHistory
Or join The TimeGhost Army directly at: https://timeghost.tv

Follow WW2 day by day on Instagram @ww2_day_by_day – https://www.instagram.com/ww2_day_by_day
Between 2 Wars: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list…
Source list: http://bit.ly/WW2sources

Hosted by: Indy Neidell
Written by: Joram Appel
Director: Astrid Deinhard
Producers: Astrid Deinhard and Spartacus Olsson
Executive Producers: Astrid Deinhard, Indy Neidell, Spartacus Olsson, Bodo Rittenauer
Creative Producer: Maria Kyhle
Post-Production Director: Wieke Kapteijns
Research by: Joram Appel
Edited by: Miki Cackowski
Sound design: Marek Kamiński
Map animations: Eastory (https://www.youtube.com/c/eastory​)

Colorizations by:
Norman Stewart – https://oldtimesincolor.blogspot.com/​
Adrien Fillon – https://www.instagram.com/adrien.colo…​
Jaris Almazani (Artistic Man) – https://instagram.com/artistic.man
Julius Jääskeläinen – https://www.facebook.com/JJcolorization/​
Carlos Ortega Pereira, BlauColorizations – https://www.instagram.com/blaucolorizations
Dmitriy Vasilyev – https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi…​

Sources:
USHMM
Narodowe Archiwum Cyfrowe
Bundesarchiv
efsyn.gr
Yad Vashem 85DO
Amsab Institute of Social History www.amsab.be
Picture of Mussert shaking hands with Hitler, courtesy of Beeldbankwo2 https://beeldbankwo2.nl/​

Soundtracks from the Epidemic Sound:
Johannes Bornlof – “The Inspector 4”
Philip Ayers – “Trapped in a Maze”
Cobby Costa – “Flight Path”
Rannar Sillard – “March Of The Brave 4”
Johan Hynynen – “Dark Beginning”
Farrell Wooten – “Blunt Object”
Reynard Seidel – “Deflection”
Yi Nantiro – “Watchman”
Hakan Eriksson – “Epic Adventure Theme 4”

Archive by Screenocean/Reuters https://www.screenocean.com​.

A TimeGhost chronological documentary produced by OnLion Entertainment GmbH.

February 17, 2021

Sarah Hoyt on why Progressives think Gina Carano’s tweet was antisemitic

Filed under: History, Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

I’m a few days behind, so I didn’t see this post by Sarah Hoyt until Tuesday morning:

My first reaction was “Oh. Actress said something, and … they cancelled her.” Which is not only “day ending in y” right now, but also has been for a long time. Part of the reason I came out of the political closet is because I’d gotten tired of watching every word I said, and every expression I made in public. Because even a slight slip would have caused my career to be completely dead. […] So, I was going “Yeah, only innocents who don’t realize what life is like in a completely taken-over industry would think this is surprising. All power to the lady, but I’m sure she knew what would hit her for stepping out of line.”

And then I came across a screen capture of what she said. And someone asking “how is this anti-semitic.”

Which is when I panicked.

[…]

The only way, remotely, no matter how much you stretch it, that what she said can be considered “anti-semitic” is this:

    The left believes the Jews were innocent. (This is correct, btw.) That what happened to them was shameful and terrible, and a dishonor on those who attacked them.

    BUT they also believe it’s an insult to compare them to the people the left hates FOR THEIR POLITICAL VIEWS.

Because they think the people they hate for their political views — us — are really that bad, and really deserve everything the left intends to do to them. Which is more or less—in rough outlines — what the Nazis did to the Jews.

I mean, they have already talked of reeducating us, taking our children away, and they do in fact do think of us as not fully human.

Mind you, they have absolutely no idea who we are and what we believe, but they know we don’t agree with them, and since their hearts are pure, and utopia is their objective, we must be the very devil, and terrible on principle.

They’ve been exquisitely propagandized to the point they think the only American president with Jewish grandchildren was “anti-semitic.” They think that black people who don’t want to careen into ruinous and deadly socialism are “white supremacists” (the poor things swallowed Gramsci without chewing); they think other races aren’t hetero-normative; they think America is the most racissss, sexissss, homophobic nation on Earth … and they will not listen to corrections of their appalling and atrocious ignorance of true history or foreign anthropology or … really anything. Because anything opposing the indoctrination has been trained into them is an attack on their psyche.

So, they’re ignorant. They live in a political/social universe where if you oppose the completely insane leftist version of the world, you must be evil and “a nazi” which is to say the devil. They are so completely saturated in utter inanity that they call Israel “fascist.”

BUT one thing they know, and they know it at gut level: everyone to the right of Lenin — or perhaps Mao — are untermensch who will have to be utterly destroyed, so that the final promised utopia that they were promised since elementary school will come to be.

So, in their eyes comparing innocent Jews to their political opponents is experienced as an insult to the Jews.

Because in leftist eyes, we are evil, cockroaches and sub-humans whom they have to eradicate from society.

And they will not look in the mirror, or admit that what they’re engaging in is exactly what the nazis did, only with political beliefs instead of race. And it’s complicated. These idiots have simply decided that the real master race are black people. And that all evil comes from white males. But to be fair, it shades to people like me who have “internalized oppression” and are therefore “male.”

February 11, 2021

The Zionism of Albert Einstein | BETWEEN 2 WARS: ZEITGEIST! I E.11 – Spring 1921

Filed under: History, Middle East, Science, USA — Tags: , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

TimeGhost History
Published 10 Feb 2021

Albert Einstein may be renowned for his work in the field of science, but this season he is fundraising for a new Jewish university. Charity isn’t the only activity on the cards in the United States this season however, much more tragic events are also afoot …

Join us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/TimeGhostHistory​

Hosted by: Indy Neidell
Written by: Francis van Berkel
Director: Astrid Deinhard
Producers: Astrid Deinhard and Spartacus Olsson
Executive Producers: Astrid Deinhard, Indy Neidell, Spartacus Olsson, Bodo Rittenauer
Creative Producer: Maria Kyhle
Post-Production Director: Wieke Kapteijns
Research by: Francis van Berkel
Image Research by: Daniel Weiss
Edited by: Daniel Weiss
Sound design: Marek Kamiński

Colorizations:
– Daniel Weiss – https://www.facebook.com/TheYankeeCol…​
– Dememorabilia – https://www.instagram.com/dememorabilia/​
– Daniel Hass

Sources:
Some images from the Library of Congress

From the Noun Project:
– Death by Adrien Coquet
– Ukraine by Lluisa Iborra, ES
– Immigrants by Luis Prado
– sun by MRFA
– Wine by Made
– orange By lieuchien, SG
– Champagne By Pete Baker

Soundtracks from Epidemic Sound and ODJB
– “One More for the Road” – Golden Age Radio
– “Dawn Of Civilization” – Jo Wandrini
– “London” – Howard Harper-Barnes
– “Ominous” – Philip Ayers
– “Prescient” – Howard Harper-Barnes
– “Not Safe Yet” – Gunnar Johnsen
– “Document This 1” – Peter Sandberg
– “Growing Doubt” – Wendel Scherer
– “Tiger Rag” – ODJB
– “It’s Not a Game” – Philip Ayers

Archive by Screenocean/Reuters https://www.screenocean.com​.

A TimeGhost chronological documentary produced by OnLion Entertainment GmbH.

From the comments:

TimeGhost History
2 days ago
In the year that Buck’s Fizz is born, the USA promises to be a hotbed of funding for Albert Einstein. But for the nation’s black population, this season will brutally prove that the USA is still lightyears from any semblance of racial equality. Further highlighting this racial inwardness will be legislation to curb immigration. Clearly, America is still a long way from being the Land of the Free.

Raunchy literature, Broadway and Buck’s Fizz will also make an appearance this season, tune in to find out how!

December 30, 2020

QotD: The sting in the tail of genetic research

Filed under: History, Quotations, Science — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

A specter is haunting genetics; the shadow of racialist slavery, eugenics, and Naziism. Western civilization since 1945, traumatized by the horror of the Holocaust, has elevated anti-racism into an unquestionable secular piety. Much good has been accomplished thereby, but like all pieties the worthy results have been accompanied by a great deal of willed repression, denial, and cant. Evidence that racial genetic differences do matter is not actually hard to find; Murray & Herrnstein’s The Bell Curve (1994) included a brave and excellent summation of the science on this point. Consequently, the bien-pensant reaction to that book was hysterical vilification, anathematization of heresy in full cry. Even at the time the lurking fear beneath the hysteria was easy to spot – that the authors might, after all, be right, and must be damned even more intensely because they might be.

Eric S. Raymond, “A Specter is Haunting Genetics”, Armed and Dangerous, 2010-06-19.

December 17, 2020

Henry Ford and the Mass Marketing of Hatred | BETWEEN 2 WARS: ZEITGEIST! | E.07 – Spring 1920

TimeGhost History
Published 16 Dec 2020

Racist conspiracies are on the rise in America. But other hysterias are also lessening. Will there be a return to normalcy?

Join us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/TimeGhostHistory

Hosted by: Indy Neidell
Written by: Indy Neidell and Francis van Berkel
Director: Astrid Deinhard
Producers: Astrid Deinhard and Spartacus Olsson
Executive Producers: Astrid Deinhard, Indy Neidell, Spartacus Olsson, Bodo Rittenauer
Creative Producer: Maria Kyhle
Post-Production Director: Wieke Kapteijns
Research by: Indy Neidell and Francis van Berkel
Image Research by: Daniel Weiss
Edited by: Daniel Weiss
Sound design: Marek Kamiński

Colorizations:
Daniel Weiss – https://www.facebook.com/TheYankeeCol…
Spartacus Olsson
Mikolaj Uchman

Sources:
Some images from the Library of Congress
Portrait from Bibliotheque Nationale Francaise

From the Noun Project:
– agreement by Vectors Point
– film camera by Chanut is Industries, TH
– cowboy man by Adrien Coquet
– Protest by Juan Pablo Bravo
– Immigrants by Luis Prado
– pair figure skating by Andrei Yushchenko
– singles figure skating by Andrei Yushchenko
– Letter by Mochammad Kafi
– speech by Juan Pablo Bravo, CL
– universe by Icongeek26
– Arrow by IconTrack
– Galaxy By Victoruler

Soundtracks from Epidemic Sound
– One More for the Road – Golden Age Radio
– “First Responders” – Skrya
– “Guilty Shadows 4” – Andreas Jamsheree
– “Slow Discovery” – Cobby Costa
– “Try and Catch Us Now” – David Celeste
– “The Inspector 4” – Johannes Bornlöf
– “Deviation In Time” – Johannes Bornlof
– “Disciples of Sun Tzu” – Christian Andersen

Archive by Screenocean/Reuters https://www.screenocean.com.

A TimeGhost chronological documentary produced by OnLion Entertainment GmbH.

November 22, 2020

Douglas Murray’s Bosie: The Tragic Life of Lord Alfred Douglas

Filed under: Books, Britain, History, Law — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Melanie McDonagh reviews the re-released early work by Douglas Murray:

It would probably have been better for Lord Alfred Douglas to have died young. Had he died when he was still beautiful and youthful looking, he would have remained forever the gilded youth Oscar Wilde loved. That golden Alfred Douglas survives in the famous photograph on the front of Douglas Murray’s book, with Wilde sitting near Bosie, his arm extended behind the boy with something like possessiveness. Instead the boy survived until 1945, worn, lonely and poverty-stricken, his looks withered, his nose pinched, contemptuous of modernity, but still with a redemptive, blistering integrity.

Twenty years after it was first written, Douglas Murray has reissued his fine biography of Bosie: his first book, written in his gap year before he went to Oxford. Looking back now on his precocious work, he thinks he overdid a little his enthusiasm for Douglas’s poetry, understated his toxic anti-Semitism and didn’t quite do justice to the pederastic element of his early sexuality – as Bosie preferred to put it, his tastes were for youth and softness. In practice this could mean 14-year-old boys, even younger, at a time when he and Wilde had reunited following Wilde’s release from prison. Actually, I think Murray’s original estimate of Alfred Douglas’s sonnets was absolutely right; they vary in quality, but as he said, at their best they equalled the poets he most venerated.

Trouble is, not many people think of Alfred Douglas as a poet, even though they might unknowingly quote perhaps his most famous line, about the love that dares not speak its name. But there were literary critics in his own day who compared him to Shakespeare as a writer of sonnets. Remarkably he has fallen almost entirely off the literary radar now, known only as a player in Wilde’s drama, and it is a pity that the success of this biography hasn’t changed that.

One of the services Douglas Murray performs in his biography is simply to reproduce some of his finest verses so we can judge it for ourselves. Indeed, while writing the book he managed to persuade the Home Office to release the copybook in which Alfred Douglas wrote his prison verses, In Excelsis, which the authorities refused to do in his lifetime.

Even in his own time, most people thought of him as the lover of Oscar Wilde, a byword for a bugger, the boy who brought about Wilde’s destruction through the vengeful malice of his unbalanced father. That perception was powerfully reinforced by Wilde’s terrible letter written from prison, De Profundis, in which he empties his bitterness against the youth he loved in an outpouring of emotion which was in many respects unjust and untrue, especially about Bosie’s financial support for Wilde. Fatally, the letter was never given to him by Robert Ross, Wilde’s friend, and only released in full during a devastating court case.

November 17, 2020

QotD: Prejudice

Filed under: Politics, Quotations, Religion, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

For instance, when an Islamic terrorist murders people, there’s an instant rush to fret over and condemn any sort of “anti-Muslim backlash.” Never mind that such backlashes have been vastly rarer than we’re usually told, the principle is correct: It is wrong to blame innocent Muslims for the things other Muslims did.

Or just think about how much ink has been spilled arguing that it is unfair and unjust to assume that one black youth is a criminal or a threat just because he resembles in some way a negative stereotype. I’m not mocking this argument; I am agreeing with it.

As I’ve been saying until I’m blue in the face on my book tour, one of the greatest things about this country is the ideal — always in tension with the lesser devils of our natures — that says we should take people as we find them. My objection to identity politics is that it reduces millions of people to a single attribute or grievance. It assumes that, simply by accident of birth, some people are more noble or more evil than others.

If you think that all you need to know about an African-American person to size up his character or humanity is his skin color, then you’re a racist. […]

You can run similar thought experiments about virtually any group. If all you need to know about Oscar Wilde is that he was a gay dude, just like Richard Simmons or Milo what’s-his-name, you’re a bigot. If Meyer Lansky and Albert Einstein are merely two Jews to you, you’re an anti-Semite. If Margaret Thatcher, Joan of Arc, and Lizzie Borden are just three chicks, you’re a sexist.

And again, historically, this is mostly a left-wing or liberal (both in the classical and modern senses of the word) insight. But for some bizarre reason, for many people, this idea evaporates like water off a hot skillet when you replace any of these categories with “white” or, very often, “male.”

Suddenly fancy words and phrases fly like sawdust from a wood chipper: “structures of oppression!” “decontextualized!” “ahistoricized!” etc. It’s all so clever and complicated. The same people who take to the streets at the slightest suggestion that Muslims can be judged by the evil deeds of other Muslims will lecture and harangue you for hours, mob you on Twitter, or condescendingly dismiss you for not understanding that all white people have it coming.

I am not denying the history of white racism in America. I’m more than eager to acknowledge it. But what these people are basically saying is that you can say bigoted things about all white people based on things other white people have done. And spare me the argument that some 70-hour-a-week truck driver in Appalachia has it coming because he’s a grand beneficiary of white supremacy.

Jonah Goldberg, “The G-File”, National Review, 2018-08-03.

September 30, 2020

America First – Patriots or Nazis? – WW2 Special

Filed under: History, Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

World War Two
Published 29 Sep 2020

In 1941, the question of whether America should join the European War still isn’t settled. Different groups whip up opposition to it, and those such as the America First Committee seem suspiciously sympathetic to Hitler’s message and cause.

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Hosted by: Indy Neidell
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Post-Production Director: Wieke Kapteijns
Research by: James Newman
Edited by: Miki Cackowski
Sound design: Marek Kamiński
Map animations: Eastory (https://www.youtube.com/c/eastory)

Colorizations by:
Daniel Weiss
Norman Stewart – https://oldtimesincolor.blogspot.com/

Sources:
from the Noun Project: people by ProSymbols

Soundtracks from the Epidemic Sound:
Reynard Seidel – “Deflection”
Johannes Bornlof – “The Inspector 4”
Philip Ayers – “Trapped in a Maze”
Johannes Bornlof – “Deviation In Time”
Phoenix Tail – “At the Front”

Archive by Screenocean/Reuters https://www.screenocean.com.

A TimeGhost chronological documentary produced by OnLion Entertainment GmbH.

September 4, 2020

“The Final Solution” – The Holocaust – Sabaton History 083 [Official]

Filed under: Europe, Germany, History, Media, Military, WW2 — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

Sabaton History
Published 3 Sep 2020

Since Adolf Hitler’s rise to power, the Jews of Germany had suffered years of harsh anti-Jewish policies, harassment and public humiliation. The Nazis wanted the Jews to never feel safe or welcome again. With the Third Reich’s expansion and the start of the Second World War, more and more European Jews fell victim to persecution, ghettoisation and violence. It was hard to imagine that the crimes against them could get any worse. But by December 1941, the Nazis began preparing for a “Final Solution of the Jewish question”.

It aimed at nothing less than the extermination of all Jewish life in Europe.

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Listen to “The Final Solution” on the album Coat Of Arms:
https://music.sabaton.net/CoatOfArms

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Hosted by: Indy Neidell
Written by: Markus Linke and Indy Neidell
Directed by: Astrid Deinhard and Wieke Kapteijns
Produced by: Pär Sundström, Astrid Deinhard and Spartacus Olsson
Creative Producer: Maria Kyhle
Executive Producers: Pär Sundström, Joakim Brodén, Tomas Sunmo, Indy Neidell, Astrid Deinhard, and Spartacus Olsson
Community Manager: Maria Kyhle
Post-Production Director: Wieke Kapteijns
Editor: Iryna Dulka
Sound Editor: Marek Kaminski
Maps by: Eastory – https://www.youtube.com/c/eastory
Archive: Reuters/Screenocean – https://www.screenocean.com

Sources:
– Narodowe Archiwum Cyfrowe
– Bundesarchiv, CC-BY-SA 3.0: Bild_183-B04489, Bild_183-B04491, Bild_152-23-07A, Bild_101I-134-0782-24, Bild_183-E13871, Bild_101I-134-0769-33
– Yad Vashem: 139BO1, 1554_1, 1427_85, 1605_1722, 12CO9, 1552/34
– Imperial War Museum: HU 51692, HU 51689

All music by: Sabaton

An OnLion Entertainment GmbH and Raging Beaver Publishing AB co-Production.

© Raging Beaver Publishing AB, 2019 – all rights reserved.

August 30, 2020

Battle of Warsaw – Turning Point of Polish-Soviet War I THE GREAT WAR 1920

Filed under: Europe, History, Military, Russia — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 06:00

The Great War
Published 29 Aug 2020

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In the summer of 1920 the new Poland under Josef Pilsudksi stood with their backs to Warsaw against the Red Army. The Bolsheviks had advanced in the North and in the South and some of the Soviet leadership wanted to carry the revolution into Western Europe.

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Borzecki, Jerzy. The Polish-Soviet Peace of 1921 and the Creation of Interwar Europe (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2008)
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Lehnstaedt, Stephan. Der Vergessene Sieg. Der Polnisch-Sowjetische Krieg 1919-1921 und die Entstehung des modernen Osteuropa (CH Beck, 2019)
Davies, Norman. White Eagle Red Star (Random House, 2003 (1972)
Böhler, Jochen. Civil War in Central Europe, 1918-1921 (Oxford University Press, 2019)
Hux Reed, Vivian, ed. An American in Warsaw (University of Rochester Press, 2018)

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