The recent Brown Revolution in Ukraine, which saw the overthrow of the legitimate (if corrupt and bumbling) Yanukovych government, is a triumph of Western Ukrainian nationalism—an ideology characterized by a violent Russophobia and antisemitism. The rabid neo-Nazis of Oleh Tyahnybok’s Svoboda (“Freedom”) party and Dmytro Yarosh’s militant Right Sector are just the latest manifestation of...
The Grand Budapest Hotel Produced by Scott Rudin Productions and Studio Babelsberg Directed and written by Wes Anderson Distributed by Fox Searchlight Pictures Exceptionally well-made pastries are often said to be lighter than air. I was reminded of this after watching Wes Anderson’s latest film, The Grand Budapest Hotel, a confection so airy that...
Auferre trucidare rapere falsis nominibus imperium, atque ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant. “Robbing, slaughtering, pillaging they misname sovereign authority, and where they make an empty waste they call it peace.” Tacitus puts this accurate if one-sided summation of Roman imperial strategy into the mouth of Calgacus, a Caledonian chieftain, urging the Celtic warriors to resist...
Despite all the media attention devoted to it, Russia’s incursion into Ukraine poses no threat to the United States. Soviet Russia was a mortal threat to the United States because she embodied a communist ideology with aspirations of global hegemony. The threat died with that ideology, which is why Americans who believe that the goal...
Americans are getting a taste of unintended consequences from overly broad public-accommodation laws enacted in the past half-century. Christian business owners are especially burdened when individuals practicing what once was considered perversity are deemed “suspect classes” and are thus entitled to heightened legal protection. A prime example is Elane Photography v. Willock. Elane Photography is...
Congratulations to Taki for achieving what seemed to be impossible: transforming the effete, amoral boob FDR into a sympathetic figure (“Little Yellow Bastards,” Under the Black Flag, April). Taki’s celebration of early-to-mid-20th-century Japanese military traditions and the heroic unshackling of Japan’s economy from those nefarious usurers was understandable. His failure to mention other significant activities...
One of the great knee-slappers, however perverse, of the so-called War on Terror is the fact that fundamentalist Islamic forces are stronger than ever as a result. It is like going on a crash diet for a month and putting on 20 pounds. In the 12 years since George W. first uttered those three little...
With the death of Eugenio Corti on February 4, Italian literature has lost the last of its great masters. Born in 1921, Corti grew up in the rolling countryside south of Lago di Como known as the Brianza. His father was a textile manufacturer whose handsome brick factory in Besana had been converted into the...
I’ve long wanted to go to Cuba for the same reason that most Americans my age might. I wanted to see a place that has, for most of my life, been shrouded in mystery. It has been difficult for me to accept the idea that a country only 90 miles off our coast, home to...
The hysterics are deafening: The “invasion” of Crimea has the pundits in an uproar, with the Krauthammers and Kristols and Kagans calling for a new cold war (verging on hot), and the “progressives” chiming in with calls for sanctions and making Vladimir Putin “pay a price,” as the President put it. Even some “libertarians” are...
Is the past really a foreign country? Did they do things so differently then? Or is it that the past isn’t dead after all—and isn’t even past? In Washington, it is always 1939. But the Crimea isn’t the Sudetenland, and Vladimir Putin isn’t Hitler. No Blitzkrieg threatens Europe, or even Kiev. Then it’s the 1950’s,...
Here’s how you’ll know the conservative movement means something again: when the Conservative Political Action Conference moves its annual meeting from Washington, D.C., to Rockford. Or Dubuque. Or Peoria. Or Helena. Or San Antonio. Or Bakersfield. Or Murfreesboro. Anywhere but the District of Corruption. Conservatives flock from around the country to CPAC, expecting to advance...
On January 1, something like 20,000 people marched by torchlight through the center of Kiev to celebrate the 105th anniversary of the birth of the Ukrainian nationalist leader Stepan Bandera. Some of the older participants even wore their old uniforms from the Ukrainian National Army. In Western Ukraine, Bandera is regarded as the founder of...
Spending the first three days of spring in snowy Moscow, especially after being in balmy Yalta and Sevastopol, is not my idea of fun. It is useful, however, when you write on foreign affairs and there’s a first-rate crisis under way between “Putin’s Russia” and the West. The overriding impression is that Moscow no longer...
It is by now a truism that, in politics today, opposites are converging. Starting out as specks on the underside of a Möbius strip, Europe’s Greens, anarchists, post-Marxist socialists, even a welfare-minded single mother or two, come out on top of the anti-EU agenda, mixing with Roger Scruton and his hunt, resplendent in their pinks,...
Quite a while back I annoyed the readers of this site with a long series of quotations: “What is History?” My intent was to provide thought on the vast and complicated question of how we understand and best make use of the past. As a kind of belated conclusion to that series, I quote myself—with...
“Race in America is always an inflammatory, volatile thing,” chirped NPR sports commentator Tom Goldman on this morning’s “Morning Edition. Goldman was sounding off to David Greene on the woes of Donald Sterling, owner of the LA Clippers, who expressed himself too candidly on matters of race in a private phone call. The word “always”...
Down with a resounding bang comes the wrath of that great moral institution, the National Basketball Association, upon the noggin of Donald Sterling. Boo! Hiss! Get the hook! And once you’ve paid your $2.5 million fine, Sterling, for the offense of lax language during a private conversation, why don’t you just die? That would be...
A few blogs ago, my devoted reader Louis from San Antonio asked me to share the mystical secrets of that famous elixir known as vodka. In the former Soviet Union – not only Russia, but even the Central Asian republics, drinking vodka involves a series of preparations and elaborate rituals, not far behind the famous...
Whenever the president of the Rockford Institute and I chat about movies, the conversation always runs into the brick wall of the Japanese cinema. I especially like the films of one of its acknowledged masters, Yasujiro Ozu, whose later movies are his best-known in the West, especially Tokyo Story (1953) and Floating Weeds (1959). “Ach,...
[Final part of the interview between Srdja Trifkovic and Elena Chudinova that was started in Part I and Part II.] ST: Finally, this is something I have asked others and never got a satisfactory answer. Why is the Russian intelligentsia so fascinated with the West and why does it still have this inferiority complex vis-a-vis...
[A Continuation of the interview between Srdja and Elena] ST: One worrying aspect is that Russia has allowed almost uncontrollable immigration from former Soviet Central Asia and this may, in view, of the low birth rates of the Orthodox Russians, change the demographic picture of the country in only a few decades. EC: I always...
The Southern Poverty Law Center has weighed in again on Cliven Bundy, the rancher in Nevada at odds with the federal government over grazing rights, fees and endangered turtles on federal land. Having restrained itself from calling Bundy a “terrorist lawbreaker,” as the Daily Kos did, SPLC may be reconsidering. Apparently upset that Daily Kos...
When you hear of something happening in the art world, what comes to mind? What vision does that combination of words, “art world,” conjure up? I will frame my next paragraph as the classic four answers to a multiple-choice quiz, if you don’t mind. A. A bunch of HIV-positive inverts, stuffing their faces with coke...
Elena Chudinova is a Russian traditionalist conservative author and publicist who is Russia’s leading critic of Islam, mass non-European immigration, and a dedicated proponent of Russia’s engagement with the European Right. Chudinova’s famous bestseller “The Notre Damme de Paris Mosque” – a fast-paced dystopian novel about a 2048 Western Europe taken over by Wahhabi Islam...
As I was still reeling from Tax Day, the Heritage Foundation just emailed me a copy of a letter sent to the IRS by former SecDef Donald Rumsfeld. Heritage also linked to a tweet by Rummy that also attached the letter. He seems to have written it all himself. In the 1960s, Rummy represented a...
At a hastily convened meeting in Geneva last Thursday the foreign ministers of Russia, the Kiev interim regime, the European Union and the United States worked out an agreement on the principles that are supposed to defuse the crisis. It is a flawed document, open to conflicting interpretations and devoid of verifiable benchmarks. The agreement...
American churches cannot make up their minds. Do they serve God or an Uncle Sam who for a long time has been looking a great deal like Mammon? On patriotic holidays the choirs sing that bloodthirsty and nonsensical anthem to war and slaughter ironically titled “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” and pastors give sermons...
Srdja Trifkovic’s Voice of Russia interview posted April 19, 2014 (excerpts) Trifkovic: [ … ] It is obvious from Crimean episode that the gap between the artificial reality created by the western media machine and the tangible reality on the ground is growing by the day. That is what we have seen with the coverage...
With the upcoming Easter in mind, I could not help but to share a Twitter observation reposted by Scott Richert: “Advertisers now call an Easter ham a “holiday ham”. You know, so as not to offend all those celebrating Passover with a ham” Funny? Of course. Sad? Even more so. As someone who actually observes...
Twice a year, at least, during Christmas and Easter, some Conservative Christians must feel like the hero of “I Led Three Lives,” a 1950’s television series starring Richard Carlson. The show was loosely based on the memoirs of Herbert A. Philbrick, the American double-agent who infiltrated the Communist Party, I Led Three Lives: Citizen, “Communist,”...
Every civilization is measured not by the culture it offers its denizens, but by the one it imposes upon them. So, though the Soviet 1920s harboured a Boris Pasternak, or, say, the American 1990s a Tom Wolfe, this will mean less to a future historian than, say, collective farms or electronic games. Electronic games had...
Another year, another April 15 when the government gouges us to the bone. The excuse often given is Oliver Wendell Jr.’s “Taxes are the price we pay for a civilized society.” Except history shows taxes and inversely proportional to civilization. Back before 1913, when the dreaded income tax first was imposed (except for during the...
The “range war” in Sen. Harry Reid’s Nevada between hardscrabble rancher Cliven Bundy and the federal government appears to have ended. The Bureau of Land Management has retreated, having seized Bundy’s cattle and tasered and arrested his son. Bundy and the BLM are fighting over his refusing to pay fees to use federal lands for...
The recent rebellion against Brown revolutionary rule in the eastern, Russian-speaking regions of Ukraine erupted in bloodshed today, with four pro-autonomy activists killed in the small city of Kramatorsk. After Russian-speaking activists, with the approval of local authorities, took over administrative and law enforcement buildings in the Donetsk region, the Banderovites began an “anti-terror” operation...
I am back from Russia’s capital, where I presented a paper at a conference on World War I at Moscow’s Lomonosov State University. Regarding Ukraine, the consensus of my numerous interlocutors of various persuasions and backgrounds is clear: 1. Russia will not invade. She will support demands for federalization in the east (Kharkov), southeast (the...
Srdja Trifkovic discusses the Ukraine energy crisis, RT live, April 10, 18:06 GMT RT: Ukraine’s economy is in a shambles and its people are suffering. Is it morally justified to turn the taps off? Srdja Trifkovic: Talking about “moral justification,” let’s remember the first OPEC oil crisis in the winter of 1973-74, after the Yom...
JavaScript computer programming language inventor, founder and later, CEO of Mozilla free software community Brendan Eich was forced out of his job. And what was Eich’s crime or misdemeanor? Was he caught using narcotics, possessing child porn, beating his wife, or abusing his pets? Nope, the hapless executive donated a measly thousand dollars to a...
My sole-begotten son, who is midway through Oxford, is visiting me over the Easter holidays. He has brought along a friend from Brown, a classical archaeology major, and basically what the boys do all day long is get plastered. Which is as it should be, of course. When sober, the future archaeologist tells me about...
Recent weeks saw an increase of media attention to events in Syria, shifting away from Ukraine after the Crimean referendum. The main reason for the flurry of Syrian-related activity on the Internet was the ubiquitous #SaveKessab campaign on social media websites Twitter and Facebook. Kessab is a small town in the Latakia region of northwest...
First, a quick summary of all of the positive reviews by Christian thinkers of Darren Aronofsky’s Noah, starring Russell Crowe: The movie Noah is a great conversation starter [shot!]. Like all Hollywood biblical epics, including the Mel Gibson one, the film gets a few things wrong [shot!], but it offers us a great opportunity to...
The Southern Poverty Law Center, or the $PLC, as they call it at VDare.com, has finally found a black murder suspect they dislike. Indeed, such was their distaste, the “hate-watchers” published his mugshot on their website. Normally, SPLC covers only white “haters” collared by the long arm of the law. They include crackpot supremacists, separatists...
Sunday, March 16 – the referendum day – started with a morning visit to three polling stations. By 10 a.m. mainly the elderly turned out to vote in large numbers, some of them very frail and most visibly poor. While those approached outside insist that their vote to join Russia is not affected by material...
Eminent Domain confiscations are a direct threat to private property but perhaps even more sinister are the flagrant violations of the 4th Amendment that Americans have grown to tolerate, much as the English learned to tolerate general writs. State troopers may routinely set up roadblocks, not to search for felons when a crime has been...
Recently, American Jewish naval intelligence analyst Jonathan Pollard who is serving a life sentence for espionage in favor of Israel has reentered the news. Apparently, the Obama administration is strongly considering his early release in exchange for Israeli concessions in the “peace process”. Israel only admitted that Pollard was their agent in 1998, thirteen whole...
The duplex apartment overlooking the Trevi Fountain in Rome, where I spent a year in the 1990s, belonged – I say this without so much as a droplet of irony – to a very kind man by the name of Ernesto Diotallevi. It was only some months after I had terminated my tenancy that I...
When speaking to Moses on Mount Sinai, Jehovah gave explicit instructions on the Year of Jubilee. Once the people came into the Promised Land, every 50 years they were to observe the Jubilee. Loans were to be written off, slaves freed, and land that had been sold returned to the original owner. Those who had...
The headline in the New York Times trumpeted the paper’s approval: “Arizona Governor vetoes bill on refusal of services to gays.” Had Jan Brewer not done the right thing, the nefarious bill passed by the Arizona legislature “would have given business owners the right to refuse services to gay men, lesbians, and other people on...
In “That Special Relationship” (Vital Signs, February), Christopher Sandford compares British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan’s attitudes toward communism with those of President John F. Kennedy. I hope that Mr. Sandford’s upcoming book on the subject will provide some crucial historical context by discussing Macmillan’s role in the forced repatriation of Slovenian freedom fighters (Domobranci) to...
Catholics and Protestants sometimes remind me of Captain Quint and Chief Brody on board the Orca. While they are at odds with each other, a monstrous thing is circling their beat-up old boat and threatening to swallow them whole, to paraphrase Quint. Pretty soon we mackerel-snappers and our Protestant brethren may very well find ourselves in...