MJOLNIR HAMMERS....THE WELFARE STATE

In this second episode of Mjolnir Hammers.... James, Hanna and David look at the welfare state on both sides of the Atlantic, including liberal, American libertarian, socialist and Tory attitudes to welfarism, as well as offering our own Rightist views on the subject. We examine the history and development of pensions, the health service and unemployment benefit, as well as the faceless bureaucracy and dehumanisation of a system in which people crave privilege but shirk responsibility. Is working as a civil servant not a form of welfarism in itself....?

 

MJOLNIR HAMMERS....CONSERVATISM

This is the inaugural edition of "Mjolnir Hammers...." As Roger Scruton died not long before the recording of this episode, we decided to hammer conservatism. We look at the historical foundations of conservatism as a rebranding of Burkean liberalism, its religious aspects grounded in Christian Protestantism and mercantilism, its primarily economic outlook as a world view, and its legacy in the present in how it has shifted the Overton Window. We explore such topics as elitism, aesthetics, the politics of decline, pessimism and respond to the the fundamental question: do conservative ideas and ideals hold any value for our people?

 

 

GENESIS REUNION

The supergroup Genesis announced their reformation and subsequent tour at the beginning of the month. The trio of Tony Banks, Mike Rutherford and Phil Collins are back after after thirteen years, but, unsurprisingly, original vocalist Peter Gabriel and influential guitarist Steve Hackett will be absent. Collins will delegate drumming responsibilities to his son Nicholas, as he can no longer drum himself due to spinal and nerve problems, and will perform solely in the role he has filled since the departure of Gabriel in 1975, that of lead singer. Even if Gabriel were to come back, which is very unlikely, there is no position for him to fill, as Collins can no longer revert back to drums. Hackett, on the other hand, can no longer fit into a band that has left him and his steadfast adhesion to prog rock behind, in favour of the more commercial pop of the Rutherford-Banks-Collins trio. The trio has, it has to be said, created some worthwhile catchy jingles, but let is not fool ourselves into thinking it is great art.

 

 

 

STIFT ST PETER, SALZBURG: HOW CHRISTIANITY SWEPT THE ROMAN EMPIRE

In this three-part video series, we visit Stift St Peter in Salzburg, which is a multi-faceted monastic complex dating originally from the end of the seventh century after the collapse of the Western Roman Empire and founded by St Rupert. What a good place, then, to talk about how and why Christianity swept through the Roman Empire, replacing the various forms of Pagan worship. In the first video, we talk a little about the edifice itself, before examining a text by the Roman historian Sallust, writing before the birth of Jesus of Nazareth, whose De coniuratione Catilinae presents a good picture of the moral vacuum in Rome, which Christianity would come to fill, and the reasons for it. Strangely, or perhaps not so, Sallust also seems to be describing the present day....

 

TRUDEAU: THE LEFT AS COSPLAY

Whatever happened to the perfectly good term 'fancy dress'? I suppose one might argue that 'cosplay' emphasises the element of play to it, of playing the role the costume suggests. One such man who loves to do this is Justin Trudeau. There is nothing terribly wrong with that - except that he does it when representing the country he is prime minister of on the world stage. Even worse, the majority of Canadians seem to think this is perfectly normal.

 

THE PURITANISM OF PERVERSITY II: WHITE NIHILISM IN THE ARTS

That the movers and shakers among the Jews hate White Gentiles is beyond question. From Susan Sontag's "The White Race is the cancer of human history" to Noel Ignatiev's "The White Race must be destroyed" (even though it simultaneously does not exist), Jews have attempted to create the conditions that will lead to our extinction. This does not concern me. I expect such things from a rival group. What concerns me are those among our own people who wish to see our own destruction, for Susan Sontag is partly right: part of our race is cancerous, and like a cancer, they are the part of our organism that has died and become rotten and threatens to rot the whole. Nihilistic ideas are like diseases: they like to spread and infect and destroy. The Puritanism of Perversity is one such mental and spiritual disease.