AWAKEN!

by Brett Stevens

Every now and then, you might run into a real person, even now. Unlike the usual people, real people have not entirely externalized their minds to money, social opinion and power.

For such people, power is found within. They have the ability to do things, or to find out or discover how. They derive their self-esteem from moral and personality traits. They know what they like, and can sit alone in a silent room thinking for hours.

THE PRESENT IS A FOREIGN COUNTRY

"The past is a foreign country, they do things differently there," is the famous opening sentence of The Go Between, a 1953 novel by the English novelist, L.P. Hartley. It is used to set up a flashback to 50 years before, and to reflect on the changes in English culture and manners wrought by two world wars and the torrent of modernity.

WESTERN ISOLATIONISM

by Siryako Akda

Not too long ago, Stratfor released one their usual forecasts on long term trends and possible events affecting the entire world. With regards to Europe, this is what they have to say:

“The diversity of systems and demographics that is Europe will put the European Union's institutions under severe strain. We suspect the institutions will survive. We doubt that they will work very effectively. The main political tendency will be away from multinational solutions to a greater nationalism driven by divergent and diverging economic, social and cultural forces. The elites that have crafted the European Union will find themselves under increasing pressure from the broader population. The tension between economic interests and cultural stability will define Europe. Consequently, inter-European relations will be increasingly unpredictable and unstable.”

And then for the United States:

“The United States will continue to be the major economic, political and military power in the world but will be less engaged than in the past. Its low rate of exports, its increasing energy self-reliance and its experiences over the last decade will cause it to be increasingly cautious about economic and military involvement in the world. It has learned what happens to heavy exporters when customers cannot or will not buy their products. It has learned the limits of power in trying to pacify hostile countries. It has learned that North America is an arena in which it can prosper with selective engagements elsewhere. It will face major strategic threats with proportional power, but it will not serve the role of first responder as it has in recent years.”

Conclusions, like these, are certainly interesting, and may even be greeted with joy and enthusiasm by nationalists and dissidents from different races and backgrounds. However, it is important to remember that such predictions are also often associated with notions of Western decline by ordinary people. An increasingly isolationist Western World is usually interpreted as one that is stagnating or going downhill.

HONG KONG AND THE HOLLOWNESS OF THE CHINESE DREAM

by Siryako Akda

When the Hong Kong protests first began, I regarded the whole thing with impartial interest. As a foreigner, it was an entirely Chinese affair. However, like most major political events in our heavily globalized world, the protests are not just isolated events; they have implications for other parts of the world as well. This is particularly true for the Hong Kong protests, since they can be interpreted in several different ways.

STIHIE: JIZZBERG vs. FATBERG

Typical New Yorkers

"They call it a 'jizzberg' because the active ingredient is human semen," said Anton Jones, lead engineer on the repair project. "It's miles and miles of ejaculate, kleenex, lotion, and torn up love poetry blocking the pipes, which causes a backup when it rains hard."

Masturbation is inversely related to human fertility, so this report that New York's sewers are being clogged by a "jizzberg the length of Long Island" should ring alarm bells about the survival prospects of modern urban Western man – just as London's notorious fatberg, which has a more established news pedigree, should raise concern about the dietary habits of sedentary Londoners.

But while London's Fatberg is merely grotesque, nothing captures the moral depravity and existential horror of what the West has become as successfully as jizzberg, a giant globule of clotted-up cum blocking up the rat-infested sewers of "the city that never sleeps." This is what modernity represents – the coagulation of humanity, all races, all sexual practices – those involving males, anyway – in one undifferentiated amoral, stomach-churning mass. Even if this story turns out to be part of the "bullshitberg" of the internet, it is nevertheless a perfect symbol of our modern world.

DONBAS AND DUMBER

Badass in the Donbas: one of your buttons has just been pushed.

by Colin Liddell

America's "Shit Happens" Foreign Policy adopted by the 'Solaris State'

When the present problems between Russia and the West, centring on the Ukraine, first started to come to prominence earlier this year, the first thing I noticed was the increasing partisan pitch and self-delusion among all parties concerned.

The "pro-democracy" advocates had their KoolAid poured fresh from cartons courtesy of Kolor-Яevolutions-Я-Us, the Ukrainians Nats were all dewy-eyed about some alternative universe where "Great Ukraine" had always existed, and the more extreme Duginists had their Polandball-like doctrine "because Octopus" and Manichean intolerance for all who would not prostrate themselves before Putin the Great.

NICOLÁS GÓMEZ DÁVILA

101 years ago today the great Colombian reactionary Nicolás Gómez Dávila was born. ¡Feliz cumpleaños!

by Gwendolyn Taunton 

"The reactionary does not extol what the next dawn must bring, nor is he terrified by the last shadows of the night. His dwelling rises up in that luminous space where the essential accosts him with its immortal presence. The reactionary escapes the slavery of history because he pursues in the human wilderness the trace of divine footsteps. Man and his deeds are, for the reactionary, a servile and mortal flesh that breathes gusts from beyond the mountains. To be reactionary is to champion causes that do not turn up on the notice board of history, causes where losing does not matter. To be reactionary is to know that we only discover what we think we invent; it is to admit that our imagination does not create, but only lays bares smooth bodies. To be reactionary is not to espouse settled cases, nor to plead for determined conclusions, but rather to submit our will to the necessity that does not constrain, to surrender our freedom to the exigency that does not compel; it is to find sleeping certainties that guide us to the edge of ancient pools. The reactionary is not a nostalgic dreamer of a cancelled past, but rather a hunter of sacred shades upon the eternal hills." The Authentic Reactionary, Nicolás Gómez Dávila

ARE MASS MOVEMENTS OBSOLETE?

by Siryako Akda

If the likes of John Robb, Martin Van Creveld and William S. Lind are correct about their predictions about 4th Generation Warfare and the declining fortunes of the nation state then it’s only a matter of time before modern mass society will undergo certain changes as well. Should their predictions come true, then, it's important to consider how such changes might affect existing perceptions about politics and power.

Among the most important of these perceptions, I think, is how people look at mass movements as instruments of political and social change. Mass movements are one of the most defining characteristics of modernity, liberal democracy, and egalitarianism.

RETHINKING COLONIALISM

by Siryako Akda

The subject of European Colonialism is arguably one of the most important historical topics in the modern world, because it is heavily intertwined with contemporary issues of morality, globalism, indigenism, religion, economics, ethics, etc. Whatever your opinions may be about it, European Colonialism is clearly one of the most important epochs in human history and still very relevant.