It’s been a while since any of us Russell Kirk types could work up much interest in the heavy metal genre’s subtler nuances. (Admittedly, a Google search for “Russell Kirk + heavy metal” does reveal 191 web pages.) As Australian journalist Keith Dunstan once observed, “Something very strange happens to the eardrums at the age of about 30.” Moreover, we still need more research into how much, if at all, the Takimag-addicted demographic overlaps the metal-head demographic.

Nevertheless, any readers who might belong to both these groups—and who continue cherishing the old adolescent thrill of having been able to blast into eternity the speaker cones of their parents’ stereo systems with repeated Sunday morning renditions of “Beer Drinkers and Hell Raisers”—may now utter a heartfelt nunc dimittis. Because Ashgate Publishing, of Aldershot, Hampshire, England, has catered for their nostalgic yearnings with a learned tome called Heavy Metal Music in Britain.

How many would have thought, when AC/DC reinterpreted Robert Frost’s “road less traveled” as a “highway to hell,” and when Black Sabbath imperiously demanded medical attention unavailable on England’s National Health Service (“Gotta see my rock’n’roll doctor”), that there was an academic, from Germany no less, taking notes? But it’s true. Step forward, Dr. Gerd Bayer, from the Department of English at the University of Erlangen in Bavaria.

With an analytical relentlessness that might seem a tad excessive even if applied to Johannes Ockeghem’s counterpoint or Anton Webern’s dodecaphony—never mind Finnegans Wake—Dr. Beyer and his contributors are at pains to assure us that:

heavy metal tried from the beginning to locate itself in a liminal space between pedestrian mass culture and a rather elitist adherence to complexity and musical craftsmanship, speaking from a subaltern position against the hegemonic discourse.

Who knew? Who would even have guessed, except perhaps the occasional Onion devotee suspecting a hoax?

Here the rest of us were, thinking (circa 1975) that heavy metal’s whole purpose lay in its being loud, repetitive, foot-stomping, fascist, racist, macho, free from Girl Germs, able to shut down frontal-lobe cognition faster than a bottle of Stoly, and generally as dumb as three boxes of rocks. Turns out that according to Dr. Beyer’s think-tank, heavy metal was actually … loud, repetitive, foot-stomping, fascist, racist, macho, free from Girl Germs, able to shut down frontal-lobe cognition faster than a bottle of Stoly, generally as dumb as three boxes of rocks, and at the same time a valid subject for musicological discourse. As respectable as, say, Schoenberg.

Not that I’ve read the book yet, you understand—my hands keep trembling too much every time I try to get it off the local library’s bookshelf—but I am already in a position to announce that its essays include, “The brutal truth: grindcore as the extreme realism of British heavy metal”; “From Achilles to Alexander: the classical world and the world of metal”; and “No class?: Class in Motorhead lyrics”. There is also extended treatment of demons, Gothic literature, “reification” (presumably the purveyor of that noun had overdosed on the celebrated Hungarian Marxist thrash-artiste Georg Lukacs) and “empowering masculinity”. All of which should keep Ph.D. candidates going for a few decades more, at least.

Oh yes, in case you wondered, that roaring noise in the background isn’t bass guitar feedback. It’s T. W. Adorno spinning in his grave.

Of Herr Doktor Beyer’s achievement in this regard, we mere dilettantes can only echo the words of Ozzy Osbourne: “He gonna blow me away.” What will his next scholarly feat be entitled? The Cambridge Companion to Britney? Metanarratives of Miley Cyrus? As they say in Bavaria, warum nichts?

In these uncertain times perhaps you have considered going back to school.

How about Iceland’s Elf School?

With a syllabus, classrooms, textbooks, diplomas, and ongoing research, Álfaskólinn (Elf School) teaches about elves, hidden people, light-fairies, dwarfs, gnomes, and mountain spirits. There are many variations: 13 types of elves, 3 kinds of hidden people (including the Blue People), 4 varieties of gnomes, 2 forms of trolls, and 3 types of fairies. You will also learn how to discern one from another.

For example, Icelandic elves have chicken-thin legs, floppy ears, and shaggy hair. Contrary to mythology they don’t wear pointed hats or shoes.

Icelandic dwarves, on the other hand, have a penchant for pointy hats and shoes as well as long cloaks, and sometimes even a beard.

Magnus Skarphedinsson is the head of The Icelandic Elf School. Despite Magnus never having a personal encounter with an elf, hidden person, or fairy, he has spent years recording the statements of others who have.

According to Magnus, while only 4% of Americans believe in hidden people, 54% of Icelanders do. And 90% of the population “takes notice” of this community, which is said to number anywhere from 7000 to 20,000.

Not long ago there was an incident between the Public Roads Administration and a rock on the side of the road outside Reykjavik, a locale said to be owned by dwarfs.  A multi-lane highway construction was delayed while the rock was moved out of the construction zone.

No doubt the move saved significant expense as other road projects that have threatened hidden people’s homes have met with baffling equipment breakdowns and even illness and injuries to workers. Soon-to-be-homeless hidden folk have been known to resort to sabotage.

Could a diploma from Elf School secure you employment as a lobbyist for the wee furies?

Financial advisor Suze Orman says unless you have abundant disposable income, Elf School should not be thought of as a good investment.

MISH has picked up on an important aspect of the recent job numbers that shouldn’t be overlooked. Not all sectors are shrinking…

190,000 jobs were lost in total vs. 263,000 jobs last month.
62,000 construction jobs were lost vs. 64,000 last month.
61,000 manufacturing jobs were lost vs. 51,000 last month.

Whereas,

45,000 education and health services jobs were added vs. 3,000 added last month.

Government jobs stayed steady, but, as MISH notes, “this trend is likely to reverse in a major way with as of yet unannounced son-of-stimulus and grandson-of-stimulus jobs packages.” Making stuff is out, working in hospitals and public schools is in. If the U.S. economy ever does recover, it will be changed utterly—and socialized to the hilt.   

The European Court of Human Rights ruled against hanging crucifixes in Italian state classrooms, guided by considerations of “confessional neutrality”. There has been considerable protest in Italy against the decision, and in itself the uproar is somewhat encouraging. It’s important, however, to examine what was said against the ruling.

Minister of Education Maria Stella Gelmini stated rather defiantly, “No one, not even some ideologically motivated European court, will succeed in rubbing out our identity.” That’s a decent start. But another Berlusconi colleague by the name of Claudio Scajola had this to say:

“Preventing [the crucifix] from being displayed is an act of violence against the deep-seated feelings of the Italian people and all persons of goodwill.”

Scajola is correct that the ECHR decision is a willful act that can at least theoretically be enforced by the coercive machinery of the state. Yet his statement, representative of much of Italy, is based mainly on sentimentalism. Many Italians rightly take issue with the removal of symbols of their religion and culture from public life, a phenomenon accompanied by mass immigration from the Third World and the imposition of multiculturalism. Feelings, though, do not provide us with a coherent orientation for counteraction.

We who look to uphold, or more accurately, restore tradition in the beleaguered West must seek out the source of its value. Crosses in classrooms are only its most external form. A symbol can be emptied of meaning or perverted in the absence of its spiritual context. Any lasting success in the defense of Christianity in our lands will necessitate a rejuvenation of faith and its intellectual framework. The integrity of a culture and a people’s place in the universe all stem from their relation to the transcendent.

Remaining corralled within the modern pluralist mindset simply won’t do. Invoking “rights” guaranteed by a political document is a futile gesture in a rigged game.  Appeals to religious freedom, as administered by the human rights regime, form a trap into which too many of the well-meaning fall. An editorial piece from L’Osservatore Romano demonstrates this quite well:   

“The political world has almost unanimously testified to the lack of common sense in this ruling, reiterating that the secularization of institutions is a value quite distinct from the denial of the role of Christianity…”

In actuality the ECHR ruling shows that secularization of institutions and denial of the role of Christianity are but two closely related facets of the same campaign. The overriding goal of the Enlightenment project is to tear us away from God, to glorify man and man alone, subject only to his reason, will and passions. More specifically, the secular agenda advanced for the past few centuries has been premised upon the liquidation of Christianity and its transformation into a private matter worthy only of public ridicule.

The ultimate objective of all this is not simply to rid courtrooms and schools of the crucifix, but to erase Christ’s image in the hearts of men. Any truly effective strategy of counteraction will be rooted in spiritual resistance. No stranger to modern totalitarianism, the Russian philosopher Ivan Ilyin succinctly expressed the nature of this battle:

“Да будет ваш меч молитвою, и молитва ваша да будет мечом!”

- Let your sword be prayer, and your prayer be a sword!

Larry Auster offers a helpful digest version of the New York Times‘s coverage of the Fort Hood massacre:

A proud first generation American, born in Virginia, Nidal Hasan wanted nothing other than to serve his country. But the bigotry against Muslims that he encountered in the Army, plus the American occupation of Iraq, plus, finally, his anguish at being ordered to deploy to Iraq as part of the U.S. forces there, drove this deeply patriotic son of the Old Dominion to the point where he felt he had no choice but to launch a martydom operation against the U.S. Army and shoot down scores of his fellow soldiers.

The neopagan takeover of the GOP has begun.

Village Voice
Steven Thrasher, Nov. 4 2009

Holy Tyr! Queens voters made American history tonight, when they chose Dan Halloran as the nation’s first openly heathen elected official.

Halloran will serve as the City Council member from the 19th district, representing Bayside, Auburndale and part of Flushing. He and Kevin Kim were involved in a bruising campaign to the finish, which included many religious and racial fights and allegations.

Trips to both campaigns’ offices on Election Night revealed how different the two were. Shortly before the polls closed at the Kim campaign office, there was not one white person working there. Beneath a Shepard Fairey poster, a couple dozen Mandarin speaking volunteers hustled up rides to the polls on cell phones.

At Halloran HQ, there was hardly one non-white person, and the walls were adorned with ads for Tea Party protests.

And then comes my favorite two lines from the piece:

Ironically, one of the first things Halloran said when addressing his supporters after Kim conceded was “I could never have believed in my wildest dreams of the coalition we have put together.” It didn’t look like much of a diverse ‘coalition’ to us, unless you count the mix of heathens and Roman Catholics.

It’s called the “Takimag Strategy,” and apparently it can win in Queens!

(Our recent discussion of paganism and Christianity can be read here, here, and here.)

It’s worth noting that Halloran is a “King” (that is, high priest) of a New York sect of Theodism, also known as Ásatrú. No postmodern New Ager, Halloran, a former Roman Catholic, appears genuinely dedicated to re-discovering the original spirituality of Europe, and not simply embracing one more religious metaphor for egalitarianism.

So reports the website Religious Dispatches:

He received his BA from the City University of New York in History and Anthropology, and conducted archaeological field research in Ireland on the Norman and Viking periods. Like many Neopagans, who tend to read more and have higher levels of education than the average American, Halloran was drawn to the mythology and lore of ancient cultures that exposed him to an entirely different religious world than the one in which he was raised. Halloran’s particular fascination with ancient Germanic culture led him to Heathenism, a branch of contemporary Paganism devoted to the beliefs and practices of Northern European cultures.

We should learn more about Halloran before deeming him some kind of AltRight champion; however, from the little I’ve learned so far, Halloran already strikes me as infinitely more interesting then this Doug Hoffman fellow, whom the conservative movement has fetishized in the most stupid and embarrassing of ways. As I wrote yesterday, Hoffman represents less of a “conservative insurgency” then a reminder of just how widespread mainstream Republican milk-toastology actually is. Embracing Third World immigrants, promoting consumerism, and practicing fiscal responsibility by doing something as meaningless as cutting earmarks isn’t just the platform of John McCain and George Bush, but also of independent candidates who claim to run to right of the GOP. In this mild-mannered accountant, Stacy McCain and friends have appeared to have found a new guru.

Though I was unable to attend the H.L. Mencken Club event this year, I am in agreement with Jack Hunter’s latest piece where he argues that the “Alternative Right” serves itself best by focusing its efforts on reducing the size and scope of the managerial state, rather than focusing its energies on a new culture war. From my vantage point, most of the grassroots energy is focused on the issues commonly defined as “libertarian,” and thus Jack’s point about “hunting where the ducks are” is a sound one. Of course, this does not mean that cultural issues should be ignored, but as Jack notes, a successful attack on the welfare/warfare state would yield many positive results for the cultural warriors. Sadly, I am not sure the same could be said in reverse.

Take the most popular cultural issue of the day for the Right—immigration. The reason I use the general term “immigration” and not the more specific “illegal immigration,” is because like most of the major cultural battlefields of the day, the depth of opposition is nuanced and varies from person to person. I’m of the opinion that all immigration is a problem and believe simply focusing on the legal status of those entering the country is needlessly myopic.

Given this point of view, most people would classify me as a “restrictionist.” The only problem is—I don’t agree with the vast majority of proposals peddled by most self-described restrictionists. I oppose a border fence. I oppose a militarized border. I oppose a new “Operation Wetback.” I simply don’t believe any of these policies would put a serious dent in the immigration problem, nor do I believe the consequences of implementing them would be worth the minor successes they might bring.

If I say I want to “End the Fed” or “bring our troops home,” most Americans understand what I mean. If I say I want to end immigration, it isn’t exactly clear what kind of immigration I’m referring to, let alone what specific proposals I’m advocating.  This general lack of clarity about many of the cultural issues of the day is yet another reason why cultural vanguardism is doomed to fail as a political strategy.

Since the sixties, conservatives and critics of the ever-emerging multicultural society have noted that politics follows culture. Some have taken this as evidence that cultural issues must be pushed to the forefront of political campaigns. I take this as evidence that the culture must be changed and politics are largely a fraud. This doesn’t mean we should abandon politics wholesale, but rather that we should do everything we can to reduce the power of the State, so that culture can become a reflection of real communities, instead of a series of multicultural edicts dictated from above by the PC police.

In the meantime encouraging irreverent attitudes toward the managerial regime is as good a strategy as any to ensure that the future is less dominated by egalitarian myths and mantras.

One of the great benefits of living in a city full of vibrant cultural diversity and hyper liberal white people is being relieved of the feeling of a civic responsibility to vote. When primaries were held here in my New York City enclave of Park Slope back in September, I took a glance at the slate of candidates and what they supposedly stood for, mostly out of curiosity, and came to the conclusion that I didn’t want to be governed by any of those damn people. I vowed never to take part in the New York electoral process. I momentarily considered voting against Bloomberg yesterday in the mayoral, just to teach that arrogant killjoy a lesson, but the race was too close, and I was afraid Bloomberg’s black liberal, Sharpton-endorsed opponent, Bill Thompson, might actually win. I surmised that abstinence was still the best policy. (Unfortunately the Constitution Party, or a similar type outfit, hasn’t made any inroads up here, which would have allowed me to have at least lodged a principled protest vote of some kind.)*

My frustration aside, it’s hard for me to summon even one cheer for the supposed nation-wide “conservative revival” I’ve been reading about perusing the right-of-center blogosphere. Robert Stacy McCain, for instance, has annoucned, “the [Doug] Hoffman congressional campaign has ignited a revolution within the Republican Party, the results of which are already being felt.” A “revolution”? Really? Let’s look at where this accountant from New York’s 23rd stands on the issues:

Health care reform

Although universal health care sounds great in theory, we can’t afford to do everything at once… especially when it means adding an additional trillion dollars to the deficit we are handing to our children and grandchildren. I believe our first step should be to bring the spiraling costs of healthcare under control so the cost of healthcare does not destroy the budgets of hardworking families and retirees. Then, as the economy picks up we can work to insure everyone.

Socialism, just not all at once.

Immigration:

There is no question that our immigration policies are flawed. The answer, though, is not to put up a wall and stop all immigration. The answer is to create an easier path for immigrants to enter the United States—and to work here—while at the same time getting tough on illegal immigrants who commit crimes.

This is a typical Republican pose in which the illegality of mass immigration is opposed, and yet the candidate expresses his desire to make it even easier for Third World migrants to enter the country. 

Spending

I would cut the pork and wasteful earmarks.

Oh yes, we wouldn’t want to touch anything else. And clearly, cutting earmarks for bike trails and pet projects would make a big dint in the $70-100 trillion in unfunded liabilities that will be coming due in the next few years.

Stacy also quotes Erick Erickson of RedState.com, who claims that the Hoffman campaign “demonstrated to the GOP that it must not take conservatives for granted. … The GOP had better pay attention.” Ooh! Taken for granted no more!  Well, perhaps Newt can’t count on the Tea Parties to follow his every order, as I feared might be the case. But to me, this recent episode proves just how few politicians—even ones like Hoffman, who, one would think, have absolutely nothing to lose—and professional conservatives understand the crisis we’re in, or are willing to talk about it.

Perhaps Obama has “lost the middle class” with his spending programs and inept comments about his good friend at Harvard, HL Gates (though I think it’s far too early to date the end of the white middle-class’s willingness to vote for someone like our Multiculti Messiah.) But if the Middle American Radicals have no alternative force to turn to, then their incipient rebellion at the Tea Parties and Obamacare town halls is nothing but noise. 

*Why someone with my views would ever live in this city remains a mystery to many. Not too long ago, the Times did a special report on the one family in my neighborhood that dared display a McCain-Palin yard sign—the estate seemingly “as lonely an outpost as the Alamo.” And the Observer has investigated the disquieting rumor that an active Republican was a member of the renowned Food Co-op on Union St. Without question, I’m the only ones in Park Slope who’s ever made a tax-deductible donation to VDARE.com.

Scott Richert has continued the discussion about Richard Dawkins’ recent attack on the Catholic Church for its outreach to disaffected Anglicans.  Of particular importance is Scott’s second piece, which argues that Dawkins’ target is Aristotle as well as Christ.  For those who are interested, Scott’s first piece may be found here and his second piece may be found here.

In his StupidParty article, Ellison failed to mention that the GOP’s new webpage is also honoring a certain misunderstood captain of industry. 

(ht: World-of-Crap)