Category: History, Page 28

RSS

  • Transgenderism’s Romantic Roots

    Occidental Dissent - Dec 2nd 2020 6:40pm EST

    I’m genuinely interested in this stuff. The finding “my authentic self” bit is pure Modernism. New York Times: “Elliot Page, the Oscar-nominated star of “Juno,” announced on Tuesday that he is transgender. “Hi friends, I want to share with you that I am trans, my pronouns are he/they and my name is Elliot,” Page, who as Ellen […]

  • Michael Lind: The Revenge of the Yankees

    Occidental Dissent - Nov 22nd 2020 1:41am EST

    I’ve swung away from history over the past few weeks because of the election. I’m planning to pick up where I left off though with my series of articles about Modernism. Tablet Mag: “Is America disintegrating into anarchy and civil war among races, religions, and regions? Is the country more divided than ever before? The […]

  • American History Series: Review: The Nervous Generation: American Thought, 1917-1930

    Occidental Dissent - Nov 2nd 2020 11:56am EST

    Roderick Nash, The Nervous Generation: American Thought, 1917-1930 Roderick Nash has no time for the Lost Generation-Roaring Twenties stereotype that continues to dominate the American memory of the 1920s. In The Nervous Generation: American Thought, 1917-1930, he sets out to debunk the myth of the Jazz Age, alienated and nihilistic intellectuals revolting against Victorian norms, […]

  • Fitzgerald, Hemingway and American Existentialism

    Occidental Dissent - Nov 1st 2020 6:32pm EST

    In the 1920s, the old Victorian values broke down and Modern values emerged in art, music, film and literature even as American mainstream politics under Harding, Coolidge and Hoover reverted to the conservatism of a bygone age. The alienation of young Losters from the mainstream of American culture and politics led them to begin to […]

  • Moral Collapse In The 1920s

    Occidental Dissent - Oct 31st 2020 1:30pm EDT

    Editor’s Note: This is a work in progress. A few years ago, I decided that I wanted to write a book about the collapse of morality. I wanted to dig into the subject and trace the intellectual roots of the moral catastrophe that occurred at some point in the 20th century. How did morality become […]

  • The Real Babbitt

    Occidental Dissent - Oct 30th 2020 11:19am EDT

    Editor’s Note: This is a work in progress. In studying the Victorian-to-Modern transition, I have come across this remark about the Victorian “custodians of culture” several times. The following excerpt comes from Roderick Nash’s book The Nervous Generation: American Thought, 1917-1930: “As self-appointed custodians of ideals and fundamental moral principles, pre-1910 American intellectuals believed it […]

  • The Myth of the 1920s

    Occidental Dissent - Oct 28th 2020 12:54pm EDT

    Editor’s Note: This is a work in progress. This can be highly confusing. It makes perfect sense to me though. The memory that we have of the 1920s is the memory of the American elite. In nearly everything that I have written about the subject, the South has been invisible. The “Roaring Twenties” never existed […]

  • Christianity and Youth Rebellion In The 1920s

    Occidental Dissent - Oct 27th 2020 12:11pm EDT

    Editor’s Note: This is a work in progress. We’re continuing to explore the Victorian-to-Modern transition in America which as we have seen began in the 1910s and accelerated in the 1920s. In previous articles, I have explained at length how at the end of Victorian era there was a consensus in America on national identity, […]

  • The Damned and the Beautiful

    Occidental Dissent - Oct 26th 2020 2:04pm EDT

    As I have argued for several months now, Modernism arrived in the United States in the 1910s and went mainstream after World War I in the 1920s when young Losters rebelled against the Victorian values of their parents. The Losters were the first Modern generation. The following excerpt comes from the chapter “The Children of […]

  • American Crucible

    Occidental Dissent - Oct 24th 2020 1:51pm EDT

    This is going to be an interesting book. It is a history of the clash between racial nationalism and civic nationalism in 20th century America. I’ve really enjoyed tuning out of current events and politics to focus on history and culture. I don’t think that I missed out on anything by not paying as much […]

  • The Adversary Culture

    Occidental Dissent - Oct 23rd 2020 8:16pm EDT

    How are you spending your evening? I’m grilling and chilling … and sharing some highlights of my research. The following excerpt comes from Eric P. Kaufmann’s book Whiteshift: Populism, Immigration and the Future of White Majorities: “Enlightenment individualism, which consisted largely of the rational, cognitive individualism of Descartes and Locke, gave way in the nineteenth […]

  • Cultural Reunification

    Occidental Dissent - Oct 23rd 2020 4:56pm EDT

    In the Victorian era, America had been in the cultural orbit of Britain. In the Modern era, America became much more influenced by continental Europe and vice versa. From the United States, jazz, rock, rap, eugenics, the American bathroom, Hollywood movies, Fordism and Nordicism were exported to Western Europe. From Western Europe, anarchism, communism, socialism […]

  • Explaining America’s Cultural Degeneration

    Occidental Dissent - Oct 23rd 2020 12:26pm EDT

    America was an idea. We’ve never lived up to it but we’ve never walked away from it before.https://t.co/VRCnKI0rfQ pic.twitter.com/xLuhhGyJVp— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) October 22, 2020 Q: How did America become cosmopolitan? A: By cosmopolitanism, I mean the process by which America lost its White Anglo-Saxon Protestant identity and developed a hyper alienated, modernist liberal ruling […]

  • Margaret Sanger, Free Love and the Birth Control Movement

    Occidental Dissent - Oct 21st 2020 12:10pm EDT

    As we have already seen, the cultural revolution of the 1910s and 1920s which was the end of Victorian America and the beginning of Modern America transformed almost every aspect of American life. Nothing was left untouched by it. I could write a book alone on how “antiracism” triumphed over “racism” or how cosmopolitanism triumphed […]

  • Review: Marriage, a History: How Love Conquered Marriage

    Occidental Dissent - Oct 21st 2020 12:01am EDT

    Editor’s Note: I also wrote this review back in 2015, but I am taking a second look at the book in light of the Victorian-to-Modern transition that I have been been researching. In hindsight, we can attribute the fall of marriage and the family to the two waves of Modernism that swept through America in […]

  • Review: A History of The Wife

    Occidental Dissent - Oct 20th 2020 1:21pm EDT

    Editor’s Note: I originally read and reviewed this book in 2015, but it is worth looking at in light of the Victorian-to-Modern transition. The pace of change in marriage and family life was glacial until the second wave of Modernism hit in the counter-culture of the 1960s. Also, it was watching Andrew Anglin ranting and […]

  • Marriage and Modernism

    Occidental Dissent - Oct 20th 2020 11:49am EDT

    After spending the last several months researching Modernism, I now have much better insight into some of my older posts on the decline of the American family. The following excerpt comes from Andrew Cherlin’s book The Marriage-Go-Round: The State of Marriage and the Family in America Today: “The newer form of individualism, which Bellah and […]

  • Jews and Early American Modernism

    Occidental Dissent - Oct 19th 2020 6:13pm EDT

    In the crossover in the Liberal Club between Greenwich Village and the Lower East Side in New York in the 1910s, we’re looking at the embryo of the Modern mainstream. Specifically, we are looking at Jewish radicals from the Lower East Side like Emma Goldman, the alienated Anglos from the Midwest like Floyd Dell, Sinclair […]

  • The Liberal Club

    Occidental Dissent - Oct 19th 2020 12:08pm EDT

    Victorian America was controlled by a White Anglo-Saxon Protestant elite. This is arguably the biggest difference between Victorian America and Modern America. Protestantism used to dominate American culture before the rise of the mass media and mass culture in the 1920s. The following excerpt comes from Robert M. Crunden’s book A Brief History of American […]

  • American History Series: Review: Rebellion Against Victorianism

    Occidental Dissent - Oct 18th 2020 1:44pm EDT

    Stanley Coben, Rebellion Against Victorianism: The Impetus for Cultural Change in 1920s America Stanley Coben’s book Rebellion Against Victorianism: The Impetus for Cultural Change in 1920s America is a brief account of how the Victorian culture of 19th century America broke down in the 1920s and was replaced by the Modern culture of 20th century […]

  • The New York Avant-Garde and Vitalism

    Occidental Dissent - Oct 17th 2020 2:56pm EDT

    Where did America go off the rails? You could make a plausible case for a number of different periods. Was it 1619 when the first black slaves arrived in Virginia? Was it 1776 when Thomas Jefferson inserted the line “all men are created equal” in the Declaration of Independence? Was it 1865 when the North […]

  • The Second Klan and Victorianism

    Occidental Dissent - Oct 16th 2020 10:58am EDT

    Editor’s Note: This is a work in progress. What was the Second Klan about in the 1920s? The following excerpt comes from Stanley Coben’s book Rebellion Against Victorianism: The Impetus for Cultural Change in 1920s America: “The early twentieth-century assaults on Victorianism provoked a strong organized defense by fundamentalists, Prohibitionists, and various conservative and patriotic […]

  • Resistance To Modernism In The 1920s

    Occidental Dissent - Oct 15th 2020 11:18pm EDT

    In this video, the Red Scare, Second Klan, Prohibition, Fundamentalism, the Scopes Trial, nativism and immigration restriction are covered which were all fronts in the culture war. Note: As I learn more about this era, my sympathies are completely with the Victorians. American culture was never made worse by abstinence, modesty, piety, fidelity and sobriety.

  • American History Series: Review: New World Coming

    Occidental Dissent - Oct 15th 2020 1:23pm EDT

    Nathan Miller, New World Coming: The 1920s and the Making of Modern America Nathan Miller’s New World Coming: The 1920s and the Making of Modern America is an excellent, highly readable introduction to the 1920s. I highly recommend it. I’ve had this book for years, but never bothered to read it until I reread Eric […]

  • The Party Is Over

    Occidental Dissent - Oct 14th 2020 4:47pm EDT

    Why is our world so screwed up? In the early 20th century, we went through World War I, the Roaring Twenties, the Great Depression and World War II. The Victorian culture of the 19th century died in this tumultuous crisis period and the Modern culture of the 20th century emerged from the wreckage. The key […]