OF NAZI PUGS AND SOVIET PIGS

by James Lawrence

In Scotland, a hate crime trial is currently being held over a “grossly offensive” incident last year, in which a local yob persuaded his ugly and defective pet beast to pay homage to a murderous 20th century regime. The defendant is the Chief Constable in command of Police Scotland, a notoriously defective police force, which has previously been known to arrest people for internet comments but leave young women to die in mortal emergencies. He has been accused of a hate crime for his sick impersonation of an NKVD commissar, in which he not only disrespected the memory of millions of victims of the Soviet regime, but actually sent thugs in uniforms to harass and imprison a man for saying something he didn’t like. The defence pleads the case for treating the event and the police force in question as a bad joke, but local people continue to express disgust at the lack of taste, especially as the offending behaviour was made at the defendant’s workplace.

…Whoops! Sorry, that doesn’t quite sound like the wonderful free democratic society of modern Britain, does it? Let’s try again.

BOMBING GERMANY, RUSSIA, AND AMERICA IN ONE NIGHT

by Colin Liddell

"There are a terrible lot of lies going about the world, and the worst of it is that half of them are true." ～Winston Churchill

Among the so-called "war crimes" of World War II, one of the worst is undoubtedly the terror bombing of the German city of Dresden by the Royal Air Force on the night of the 13th and 14th February, 1945.

Much has been said about this horrific event, and many theories, explanations, and even justifications have been given. But in, essence, the attack was more a sign of the decline of Britain and the bitterness that this engendered than anything else.

DAVID BOWIE: VISIONS OF SWASTIKAS

by Colin Liddell

David Bowie, who recently died after an 18-month battle against cancer, will be remembered for many things. But one of the most interesting points about the man was the degree to which his creativity, especially at its height, coexisted with what came to be considered extremely taboo views, and the degree to which his talent tapered off as he became more acceptable in the eyes of the establishment.

We live in an age of oppressive political correctness, where almost anybody of prominence is forced to toe the line, lest they offend, "trigger," or commit "micro-aggressions"; and, if they do, they are required to humbly beg for forgiveness even where none is offered. Such intolerance even includes rock stars, the wild, shamanistic figures we reared up in the spiritual vacuum of the 1960s and 70s, through our appreciation of the Dionysian aspects of a fast-mutating musical culture.

But what about David Bowie and his obvious interest in Nazism and Fascism? Going by comments made in interviews, song lyrics, and stage imagery, the singer clearly had a crush on the 20th century's real counter culture. Why wasn't more made of this? Why was he let off the hook?

First the evidence of Bowie's fascism. Back in his 1970s heyday, he gleefully told reporters that "Hitler was the first pop star" and declared that "the best thing that can happen is for an extreme right government to come."

In his 1971 song Quicksand, he wrote:

I’m living in a silent film

portraying Himmler’s sacred realm of dream reality.

 Then there is his 1977 composition China Girl, which became a hit in 1983:

I stumble into town, just like a sacred cow

Visions of Swastikas in my head, plans for everyone.

But Bowie had gone even further than that. There are famous pictures of him waving and sieg heiling from an open-top black Mercedes of the kind that Hitler used.

Here's Hitler in a similar car (and with a better crowd response):

Definitely not a coincidence. Then there is the lightning flash mark, a symbol of fascism, that was used for Aladdin Sane, as well as the SS symbols he used onstage for the Ziggy Stardust tour:

Of course, Bowie was an eclectic style stealer and far from being an "actual Nazi." His general sexual and narcotic degeneracy would have precluded that. However, he was at least open to elements and aspects of Nazism and Fascism in a way that made sense for someone in his creative, cerebral, and iconoclastic niche.

His Nazism quotient was certainly high enough to provide endless ammunition for "Social Justice Warriors" and "antifa" with nothing better to do. It is surprising therefore that more was not made of Bowie's flirtations with fascism and his frequent one-night stands with Nazism. Throughout his long career, no public statement or press conference was forced from him, in which he begged for forgiveness for his "hurtful" and "insensitive" comments, lyrics, or actions.

Communism killed 100 million
and all I got was this lousy
Manic Street Preachers T-shirt.

But then again, in the 1970s and 80s countless bands, including the likes of  The Sex Pistols, Joy Division/ New Order, The Skids, and Spear of Destiny played with Nazi imagery. Even the Jewish musician Mick Jones, who later found fame with the Clash, started off in an outfit called London SS!

Toying with Nazi imagery was certainly no worse than toying with Communist imagery, and in my opinion a lot less offensive, as Nazism only killed large numbers of people under wartime conditions, whereas Communism did the same and much worse under peacetime conditions.

But, given the hysteria that surrounds such symbols as the swastika and Confederate flag today, and the totalitarian "zero tolerance" attitude of political correctness, it is still surprising that the PC bigots left Bowie and his legacy alone.

Why is this? Probably it was due to a combination of factors – his age, his Somalian wife (perhaps that's one reason he married her), and his past bisexuality and androgyny. All these factors made him a slightly awkward target for SJWs to attack, as did his powerful lawyers.

But there was also some clever PR management. In rock histories and biographies of the man – like the one I read most recently, Christopher Sandford's Bowie: Loving The Alien (a solid, "meat and potatoes" effort) – Bowie's fascistic dalliance is more-or-less explained away as an aspect of his drug-addled years, rather than anything significant. This, of course, is the kind of excuse an average member of the public would not be allowed if he or she tweeted or shared similar words or imagery on social media after a few drinks too many.

But has PC exacted a cost on Bowie?

Some will say that his talent declined simply because of age; while others will ascribe his creative decline to the same cause as his "fascism" – a brain burnt out on massive amounts of drugs. Both explanations are quite feasible. But I would entertain a third possibility, that for an iconoclastic soul like Bowie his creative downturn was related to the growing intolerance of our age and the unrealistic expectation that rock stars be "respectable" and line up their ideological ducks with the establishment.

This trend really started to get going in the 1980s, and it is perhaps the reason why that decade was also the last truly creative decade in the history of popular music. Bowie's dip in creativity almost perfectly matches the growing imposition of political correctness in the 1980s, with his 1983 album Let's Dance being his last potent record (with the possible exception of his just released final album). Alongside the fascistic China Girl, that album also included gestures towards political correctness, like the narrative touting the "oppression" of the Aborigines on the video for the album's title track.

What is a rock star if he cannot exist beyond the taboos that circumscribe the rest of us? Answer: a mere musician with an stupid hair cut. During the lifetime of David Bowie (1947–2016), visions of swastikas were incapable of ever bringing back the Third Reich, but they might have helped the occasional taboo-busting rock star find a seam of true creativity.

A version of this article was originally published at The Revenge of Riff Raff

"ON THE MARBLE CLIFFS" BY ERNST JUNGER

This is a chapter from Ernst Jünger — A Portrait, a biography of the great German writer, written for the non-academic type, and a personal portrait by an avid Jünger reader. Available at Amazon.com.

by Lennart Svensson

On the Marble Cliffs is a complex work, existing on many levels. To be precise I don’t hold it above the rest of Jünger’s books. But of course it’s among the top five, if I should express it like that. First of all the title is very apt, combining as it does beauty with danger. Jünger himself had that ambition with the title and I must say he succeeded. As for novel titles in general On the Marble Cliffs is especially rich in connotations, the marble part symbolizing tradition and beauty, the cliff part symbolizing danger and then some.

PYONGYANG PUNK'D: LAIBACH TAKES THE DPRK

Laibach pose solemnly in the "hermit kingdom" of North Korea.

by Andy Nowicki

In a weirdly historic turn of events, the Slovenian art-noise-industrial-Gestapo-Stasi rock band Laibach is playing Pyongyang, North Korea this week. Their show, we are told, is based heavily upon the band's reinterpretation of various songs from Rodgers and Hammerstein's  "The Sound of Music." (!)

RACISM AND SEXISM VIEWED AS ARISTOTELIAN VIRTUES

Aristotle: the original shitlord.

by Colin Liddell

For Aristotle there were always two vices for every virtue. This was because of his belief in the “Golden Mean.” For example, the virtue Courage existed between a vice of deficiency (Cowardice) and a vice of excess (Rashness).

To emphasize the metapoint: Aristotle saw all vices as existing on a continuum with all virtues, with no wall between them. This is very different from the Manichean morality that later poisoned the West through Judaic theology.

What happens, however, if we apply this Aristotelian analysis to the major “vices” of the modern day, namely “Racism” and “Sexism”?

SOPHIE'S CHOICE

Sophie and Hans Scholl, commemorated on a 1961 East German postage stamp.

by Andy Nowicki

On February 22, 1943 – seventy-two years ago – three leaders of the dissident student movement The White Rose were executed by guillotine at the Stadelheim Prison in Munich, Germany.

Twenty-four year old Christoph Probst, 24-year old Hans Scholl, and his sister, 21-year old Sophie Scholl – all students at the University of Munich – were sent to their deaths mere hours after being tried and convicted for treason in what amounted to a show trial, presided over by the ogre-like "hanging judge" and infamous Nazi stooge Roland Freisler. Their "crime" consisted primarily in the fact that they printed up and surreptitiously distributed pamphlets which condemned the war and urged passive resistance to the Hitler regime. At no time did the White Rose movement ever practice or even espouse violence, but they were nevertheless shown no mercy by the totalitarian government they so vigorously opposed in print. Many more arrests and summary executions of other young people belonging to the group were to follow in the weeks and months to come.

NAVIGATING "VANTARDISM": SCREW SCYLLA, KICK CHARYBDIS!

by William Solniger

The recent debate over ‘vantardism’ has shone light on a problem that the true Right desperately needs to deal with before it can hope to harness its energies effectively. Reluctant as I am to whip up an already well-stirred pot, I think that the more suggestions are advanced for the resolution of the problem, the better.

For anyone who doesn’t already know, ‘vantardism’ – as defined by Greg Johnson – refers to stupid and self-defeating attempts at ‘vanguardism,’ i.e. organising a political vanguard. As far as the true Right is concerned, this vantardism nearly always amounts to a militant insistence on shackling Rightist ideals to the corpse of Hitler’s Third Reich, accompanied by the argument that everyone who does not do the same is merely indulging in a futile and cowardly dissimulation. The fact that the latter argument has any credibility at all can no doubt be traced back to the very real cowardice and futility of the mainstream conservative ‘false Right’ – which, as we are all aware, has fought the postwar cultural revolution in the West half-heartedly, two-mindedly and one-handedly, while employing most of its energies to viciously stab in the back any comrades who dare to overstep the bounds of progressivist “respectability.”

"GO STRAIGHT TO NAZI; DO NOT PASS GO..."

by Colin Liddell

In defense the way to win is to get your enemies to attack you at your strongest point. In offense the way to win is to attack your enemies at their weakest point.

Now, just supposing you were a White-hating, globalist shill – or a slap-headed moron who just acted like a White-hating, globalist shill – and wanted to sidetrack nationalism for as long as possible, then you would want to trick nationalists into attacking by the most bloody, dangerous, and fruitless route possible, the one where their efforts would reap the lowest possible return, and which would lead to their destruction.

In fact, you might even set up something like The Daily Stormer, a populist mix of 4chan Nazi porn, monster truck machismo, and juvenile racist trolling that serves to repel normal people from nationalism, while ghettoizing existing nationalists ever further from the mainstream.

ALT WHITE: MAXIMISING, NOT MAINSTREAMING

by John Londen

In my previous article The Dumbest People Ever: the Nazification of Whiteness, I outlined one of the presentational problems for so-called ‘Nationalism': that in certain pockets of the broader white-conscious movement, a perception is often encouraged in the public's mind of rather weird and scary people who are more interested in nostalgia for historic National Socialism, neo-Nazi chic and the memory of an Austrian-born German who shot himself nearly 70 years ago, than in the promotion of white identity and civilisation as something positive and beneficial in society.

The article has attracted a lot of comments on the site. So far almost-all, I am glad to say, are positive about the general message and show an understanding of what I was trying to say: that Nationalists need to find a way of staying true to their core ideals and values while at the same time avoiding the self-inflicted presentational trap of ‘nazification’, which ghettoises us.

SANE REVISONISM

by William Solniger

On the True Right, as indeed everywhere else, there is probably no topic more controversial than the question of revising the establishment view of the Second World War. However, the critical importance of the Second World War makes it inevitable that any movement of European revival will have to take up a position on it sooner or later. For what it’s worth, mine is as follows:

1. The establishment view of the Second World War, which upholds the present evil and unjust order in Europe and legitimises the ethnic replacement of Europeans, must be revised;
2. This revision must not proceed in the direction of whitewashing or ‘rehabilitating’ the justifiedly black reputation of Nazi Germany.

CHECK THE BADGES

by Colin Liddell

There's a great sketch by the British comedy duo Mitchell and Webb, where they play two members of an SS division. During a lull in the fighting on the Eastern Front, the Mitchell Nazi turns to the Webb Nazi and says, "Have you looked at the badges on our caps recently?" before announcing, "They’ve got skulls on them!!!" I was reminded of this scene when I read Alex Kurtagic's otherwise excellent article Women on the Left and saw that his composite photo of female right-wing paragons included an undue amount of Nazi eye candy.