Jarl Ulfric

above-time:

There was a recent article about the film Goodbye, Lenin! on Occidental Dissent, ruminating on the fall of the DDR and the subsequent rise of capitalism in East Germany. For those unfamiliar with the film, it is set during the years in which the socialist state collapsed, and deals with the reaction of an East German family to their new-found social and economic conditions. I won’t spoil the plot for anyone who hasn’t seen it, because it is worth watching.

As the author points out, East Germany was not tainted by a massive influx of coloured immigration when it was a socialist state. The East Germans still had a strong sense of community and solidarity because of their inherent ethnic cohesion, and because of their resistance against the atomised individualism of cosmopolitan capitalism:

The movie “Goodbye, Lenin!” is beautiful, romantic, very funny. It shows regular White formerly Socialist East German people being loyal to their families, loyal to their White neighbors, loyal to their White community. Yeah, it was the Socialist DDR – German Democratic Republic”, but it was “their” Socialist German Republic and it was very White. The “Ossies” were and are a unique White people – get to know them. I highly recommend this film.

I have written about the differences between the New Left and the Old Left in an earlier post, but it bears further consideration - particularly in light of the excellent discussion of National Socialism, Strasserism and European White Nationalism on Carolyn Yeager’s radio programme.

In recent months, I have been moving towards the view that it is not possible to embrace capitalism and nationalism at the same time. The two strike me as incompatible, for the simple reason that the end goal of capitalism is the accumulation of capital for person gain (see Alisa Rosenbaum’s philosophy of greed). Every nation with an unrestricted market ends up being undermined when the self-interested desires of certain individuals conflict with the interests of the nation itself, and the individual is permitted to prevail at the expense of the rest (which is bound to happen when gold is king). The only way to reconcile the two is to support a form of National Capitalism, which market fundamentalists would doubtless refer to as socialism because of its restrictions on “freedom of movement” and other abstract “rights”.

The point of this preamble is to stress that nationalism is neither the dominion of the “Left” nor the “Right”. It is something that can be present in both economic systems - but, in many ways, is more compatible with Left economics, despite the constant association drawn between nationalism and the “far-right”. What was the central tenet of Stalinism, if not Socialism in One Country? What of Lukashenko’s “social nationalism” in Belarus, or National Bolshevism? Even Maoism has strong nationalistic tendencies.

There is a reason that nationalism in European nations is almost always on the economic Left. Most Americans will not understand this because the propaganda machine in their nation pushes the message that anti-capitalism is anti-Americanism, thanks in no small part to the legacy of the Cold War - and perhaps that is correct! I am certainly anti-American insofar as I oppose the American Republican lie that “all men are created equal”.

I left the following comment on the article:

This is an excellent film – it is a shame that Daniel Brühl went on to lend his considerable talent to Quentin Tarantino’s dismal Inglourious Basterds. Still, at least his character in that film was the good guy, despite being one of Those Evil Nazis!

What interests me about this film is its popularity. In my experience (which is vindicated by its box office performance), it is by far the most popular modern European film among young Whites, along with Jeunet’s Amélie. Amélie also romanticises a pre-multiracial Europe. It is set in Paris of 1997, but the hordes have been whitewashed out of the landscape. There is little wonder that it, along with the French New Wave films, endures sustained popularity – its young European admirers, whether or not they are conscious of it, do yearn for better times when they embrace this White aesthetic.

If you speak to a young White cinephile with an interest in more than Hollywood poison, most of their intake will consist of modern films with a historical setting (i.e. an all-White cast), or classics from the years before the immigrant onslaught began (Godard, Fellini, De Sica, Truffaut and Kieślowski all remain popular). These will far outweigh films with mixed-race casts. I doubt many of these people are willing to admit to their implicit ‘racism’, but it is there, and they cannot deny it.

There is a pan-Europeanism present in both films, too. Think of the scene from Goodbye, Lenin! in which a helicopter is shown carrying a statue of Lenin out of ‘liberated’ Berlin. The statue is juxtaposed with the symbolism of international corporations in the background, a none-too-subtle indication of things to come. This is an obvious homage to the statue of Jesus being carried over Rome by a helicopter in the opening sequence from La Dolce Vita. Amélie is also filled with homages to other films. The most notable is The Double Life of Véronique, the phantasmagorical film by Polish director Krzysztof Kieślowski, from which Jeunet heavily borrows his visual aesthetic and cinematographic hues.

Another point is that Amélie and Goodbye, Lenin! both feature soundtracks by the Breton composer, Yann Tiersen. I think much of the appeal of Amélie comes from the accordion music that underlies the landscape, along with the melodramatic piano pieces. There is something unmistakably French about this music: the minimalism of the piano pieces is somewhat reminiscent of Erik Satie (e.g. Sur le fil), and the accordion waltzes conjure memories of the Parisian landscapes from the older French New Wave films. They do for me, at least, even though I have no recollection of hearing accordion music in any Rohmer, Truffaut, Godard or Rivette film. It is a question of atmosphere, so feel free to disparage me for making such an abstract link.

The point is, these popular films are not reflections of Europe as it is today. The Italian and French movements in the 1940s/50s and 1950s/60s were famous for their purported realism. The French directors shunned the studio and took their hand-held cameras to the streets, making films that reflected the landscape of their nation. It was this romantic realism that made the films popular in the first place. Amélie, on the other hand, is completely artificial. Its artifice is an attempt to recreate the Parisian landscapes of the 1960s and earlier decades. Even by 1997, much of Paris had been transformed beyond recognition (see La Haine for a popular neorealist Parisian film), making it impossible to achieve this vision without manipulation. It’s the chronologically-detached artifice that makes it popular! Most people do not want to see films set in the crime-ridden suburbs.

The enduring popularity of the films made in the first four decades after the Second World War, as well as the popularity of these modern eurocentric films, is not a great reflection of the multicultural project’s alleged success. If it is as great as people would have us believe, why is Amélie not set in the banlieues? Where are all of the Morrocans, Arabs and Algerians? They are excluded from this idealised French film because they are not part of the popular conception of an ideal France. The same feeling fuels the Ostalgie of Goodbye, Lenin!, made in a Germany that is under siege from a growing influx of non-German immigrants. Resentment against the alienating effects of global capitalism, which ostensibly ‘liberated’ the East Germans after the collapse of the Berlin Wall, also plays a major factor.

In short, things suck.

Creative preferences reveal an individual’s latent attitudes to society. Untarnished by propaganda, the true measure of someones preferences is not in what they say or advocate, but what they like on a seemingly unpolitical level. 

Partiality to media of (or set in) times past can not simply be attributed to the generations before inexplicably possessing greater talent. It is not who is behind the lens, but what we see through the lens which we admire. The nostalgic multiculturalist, the paradox he is, cannot correlate a better society with being a nationalistic one, despite what his tastes affirm.

Even still,  there is no dissonance in his head as preferences are natural, ideology isn’t. No amount of sloganeering, essays or promotion could encourage me to develop a preference for rap music. My tastes, as anybody elses, are not rationalised or influenced by opinion. I could however be fooled into becoming a socialist with enough reinforcement, and endure that conversion whilst conflictingly still maintaining an abiding pleasure in images of a pre-multicultural Europe; a pleasure which far exceeds images of the modern one that I champion.

In this conflict of heart versus mind, mind wins. Mind’s can be infiltrated, hearts cannot. Many are inherently drawn towards nationalism, but the corrupted head does not even register it. Do people not realise the absurdity of indulging in a purely white European culture whilst simultaneously encouraging steps to dilute it, only to then complain that our culture is becoming progressively more vacuous?

Anonymous

Anglo Saxon Poem, circa 600-900AD

Translated from the Old English.

*

‘Oft the lonely one  experiences compassion,

the Creator’s kindness;   though he with sorrowing mind,

o’er the watery way,   must long

agitate with his hands      the rime-cold sea,

go in exile tracks;   his fate is full decreed.’—         (5)

So said a wanderer,   of his hardships mindful,

of hostile slaughters,   his dear friends’ fall.—

’ Oft I must alone,   each morn,

my care bewail:   there is now none living,

to whom my thoughts   I dare         (10)

tell openly.   I in sooth know,

that it is in man   a noble quality,

that he his soul’s coffer   fast bind,

hold his treasure.   Strive as he will,

the weary-minded cannot   fate withstand,         (15)

nor the rugged soul’d   help effect;

even the ambitious   a sad one oft

in their breast’s coffer   fast bind.

So I my   thoughts must,

oft miserable,   from country separated,         (20)

far from my friends,   in fetters bind,

since that long ago   my bounteous patron

earth’s cavern cover’d,   and I abject thence

went, stricken with years,   over the billowy mass;

sad sought the hall   of some munificent lord,         (25)

where I far or near   might find

one who in the mead-hall   my ** might know,

or me friendless   would comfort,

allure with pleasure.   He knows who tries,

how hapless is   care as a comrade         (30)

to him who little has   of faithful friends;

him an exile’s track awaits,   not twisted gold;

a trembling body,   not earth’s riches:

he remembers the hall-retainers,   and receipt of treasure;

how him in youth   his bounteous patron         (35)

train’d to the feast;   but pleasure all has fall’n;

for he knows who must   his dear lord’s,

his lov’d master’s lessons   long be depriv’d of,

when sorrow and sleep   at once together

a poor solitary   often bind,         (40)

that seems to him in mind,   that he his lord

embraces and kisses,   and on his knee lays

hands and head,   as when he ere at times,

in former days,   his gifts enjoy’d;

then wakes again   the friendless mortal,         (45)

sees before him   fallow ways,

ocean fowls bathing,   spreading their wings,

rime and snow descending   with hail mingled;

then are the heavier   his wounds of heart,

painful after dreaming;   sorrow is renew’d,         (50)

when his friends’ remembrance   through his mind passes;

when he greets with songs,   earnestly surveys

the seats of men,   swims again away.

The spirit of seafarers,   brings there not many

known songs:   but care is renew’d         (55)

to him who must send   very abundantly

over the billowy mass   his weary spirit;

therefore I cannot think,   throughout this world,

why my mind   it saddens,

when I the chieftains’ life   all consider;         (60)

how they suddenly   their halls resign’d,

the proud kinsmen.   So this mid-earth

every day   declines and falls;

therefore may not become wise  a man, ere he has pass’d

his share of winters in the world.   The sagacious must be patient,

must not be too ardent,   nor too hurrying of fortune,

nor too faint a soldier,   nor too reckless,         (67)

nor too fearful, nor too elate,   nor too greedy of money,

nor ever too vaunting,   ere he be well experienced.

a man must wait,   when he a promise utters,

till that he, bold of spirit,   well know         (71)

to what his breast’s thoughts   shall lead.

The prudent man should understand,   how ghastly it will be,

when all this world’s wealth   shall stand waste,

as now divers,   over this mid-earth,         (75)

with wind shaken   walls stand,

with rime bedeck’d:   tottering the chambers,

disturb’d are the joyous halls,   the powerful lie

of joy bereft,   the noble all have fall’n,

the proud ones by the wall.   Some hath war destroy’d,

borne on their journey hence;   one the fowl hath borne away

o’er the deep ocean;   one the hoar wolf         (82)

by death hath separated;   one with gory countenance,

in an earth-grave   a man hath hidden.

So o’erwhelm’d this world   the Creator of men,

till that of the inhabitants,   in the briefest moment,

the old works of giants   stood desolate.         (87)

But he who this wall’d place   wisely devis’d,

and this dark life   profoundly contemplates,

wise in spirit,   afar oft remembers         (90)

his many battles,   and these words utters:

Where is horse, where is man?   where is the treasure-giver ?

where are the festive sittings ?   where are the joys of the hall?

Alas bright cup !         alas mail’d warrior !         (94)

alas chieftain’s splendour !   how the time has pass’d,

has darken’d under veil of night,   as if it had not been.

Stands now behind   the beloved warriors

the wall of wonderous height,   with worm carcases foul.

The men has swept away   the spearmen’s band,         (99)

the slaughter-greedy weapon,   and fate omnipotent

and these stone shelters   storms dash,

fierce-rushing;   binds the earth

the winter’s violence;   then comes dusky,

darkens, the shade of night,   from the north sends

the rough hail-shower,   to men’s grievance.         (105)

Irksome is all   the realm of earth,

the fates’ decrees change   the world under heaven:

here is wealth transient,   here is a friend transient,

here is man transient,   here is a kinsman transient;

all this place of earth   hall become desolate.’—         (110)

so spake a sage in mind,   sat apart in meditation.

Good is he who holds his faith.   Never his affliction too quickly should

a man from his breast make known,   unless he ere the remedy can

vigorously forward.   Well it is for him who seeketh mercy,

comfort, at the Father in heaven,   where all our fastness standeth.