REVIEW: "A LIFE IN THE POLITICAL WILDERNESS"

A Life in the Political Wilderness
by Welf Herfurth
240 pages
Buy at Amazon.com

Reviewed by
  Alex Fontana

This is a stimulating and readable collection of essays that I found myself both agreeing and disagreeing with. In the Germanic tradition of wanderlust, the author Welf Herfurth takes us through a personal account of his political journey, both metaphorical and actual, as Herfurth turns out to be something of a globe hopper.

This is the kind of anthology that is sure to resonate with any European nationalist, while having enough crossover appeal to be pushed in the direction of any fence-sitting or Left-leaning “normie” friend, with Welf acting the role as a personable guide into politically incorrect territory and taboo viewpoints. The book can be viewed as a Right-wing version of Rules for Radicals, where its strengths lie in its pragmatic and practical approach to political activism. It opens with an introduction and a preface respectively by New Right veterans Troy Southgate and Tomislav Sunic.

TOTALITARIAN PANSIES

by Andy Nowicki

In his hilarious, horrifying, and profoundly insightful short book The Screwtape Letters, C.S. Lewis assumes the persona of a mid-level administrative demon in Hell instructing his cousin, a guardian Devil on Earth, in the myriad ways to steer his client down the slick and well-trod road to damnation. At one point, the infernal bureaucrat narrator exults at just how cleverly demonic propagandists have trained the foolish humans to be on guard against the very type of wrongdoing that is least likely to happen in a given era’s Zeitgeist:

"The use of Fashions in thought is to distract the attention of men from their real dangers. We direct the fashionable outcry of each generation against those vices of which it is least in danger and fix its approval on the virtue nearest to that vice which we are trying to make endemic… Cruel ages are put on their guard against Sentimentality, feckless and idle ones against Respectability, lecherous ones against Puritanism; and whenever all men are really hastening to be slaves or tyrants, we make Liberalism the prime bogey."

Currently, a fashionable outcry has arisen in chic circles against the sadly ubiquitous phenomenon known as “bullying.” While many people are, no doubt, sincerely opposed to wanton acts of cruelty and humiliation by the strong and well-placed against the weak and vulnerable, one must nevertheless be aware that taking a political stand against bullying is, at best, a bland, empty gesture, much like opposing drunk-driving, homelessness, child abuse, or pollution; worse, it is quite often a brazenly fraudulent stance, since bullies as such are in reality not the true target of most contemporary “anti-bullying” campaigns. Instead, certain political interest groups have hit upon the idea of characterizing their opponents as ipso facto “bullies,” simply because they have the temerity to oppose what is so obviously right and true (gay marriage, legalized abortion, or some other ideological hobbyhorse), which can only be a result of hateful and repugnant motives, the same kind of mean senior football jock to steal a puny ninth-grader’s lunch money and shove him in his locker.