Category: History, Page 30

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  • The Rise of Modernism

    Occidental Dissent - Sep 17th 2020 5:27pm EDT

    I’ve been skipping all around the world. In this article, I will try to sum up the case that I have made so far and where I am going with this argument, which is that the rise of Modernism is central to understanding our decline. In his book The Rise and Fall of Anglo-America, Eric […]

  • Inventing Tomorrow: H.G. Wells, Modernism and the Future

    Occidental Dissent - Sep 16th 2020 3:35pm EDT

    The Young Intellectuals created modern liberalism. Who was the biggest influence on the Young Intellectuals though? H.G. Wells wrote over 100 novels, sold millions of copies and was the most influential author in the English language of the early 20th century. Along with Jules Verne, Wells was the father of modern science fiction. He was […]

  • Review: The End of American Innocence, 1912-1917

    Occidental Dissent - Sep 15th 2020 1:12pm EDT

    Henry F. May, The End of American Innocence, 1912-1917 When did our own times begin? Culturally speaking, when did Victorian 19th century America become Modern 20th century America? Why did this happen? How did this happen? What changed? In The End of American Innocence, 1912-1917, Henry F. May argues that the transition began in New […]

  • The New Woman

    Occidental Dissent - Sep 15th 2020 1:14am EDT

    This is interesting. The New Woman arrived in the United States from Western Europe in the 1910s. The American version became known as the Flapper. “The New Woman was the term used at the end of the nineteenth century to describe women who were pushing against the limits which society imposed on women. Today she might […]

  • The Young Intellectuals

    Occidental Dissent - Sep 13th 2020 8:53pm EDT

    This is the whole point of why we have been studying Modernism The following excerpt comes from Henry F. May’s book The End of American Innocence: “The Young Intellectuals went further than mere tolerance: they turned the conventional hierarchy upside down. Anglo-Saxons, repressed and bigoted, were at the bottom of the scale; at the top […]

  • H.L. Mencken, Nietzsche and the Death of the Victorian Mainstream

    Occidental Dissent - Sep 12th 2020 9:55am EDT

    Why should anyone bother studying this? What relevance does it have to our own times? I would respond by saying it is worth knowing when, why and how our own age began and when, why and how the old mainstream crumbled. The following excerpt comes from Henry F. May’s book The End of American Innocence, […]

  • The Roots of Cultural Liberalism

    Occidental Dissent - Sep 10th 2020 10:53pm EDT

    The is a pretty good summary. I’ve never seen post-liberals, reactionaries or White Nationalists bring up the true origins of cultural liberalism. The following excerpt comes from Henry F. May’s book The End of American Innocence, 1912-1917: “It was not the fervent romanticism of an earlier period, though it drew on the romanticism of all […]

  • The Meaning of Progress

    Occidental Dissent - Sep 10th 2020 12:39am EDT

    What is the meaning of progress? According to Henry F. May, the Victorian mainstream believed in the old credo of moralism, progress and culture. The Progressive movement, however, did not define progress as social liberalism. The mainstream of the Progressive movement was left-conservative, not left-liberal. The following excerpt comes from Henry F. May’s book The […]

  • Pride and Prejudice Fails To Meet Modern Inclusion Standards

    Occidental Dissent - Sep 9th 2020 1:59pm EDT

    Starting in 2024, movies will need to meet specific inclusion standards in order to be eligible for the best picture Oscar. https://t.co/aPT1qejKvU— Los Angeles Times (@latimes) September 9, 2020 The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which is responsible for the annual Academy Awards, has implemented sweeping new restrictions and requirements that will determine […]

  • Custodians of Culture

    Occidental Dissent - Sep 8th 2020 11:12pm EDT

    This was America in 1912. It was the year the RMS Titanic sank. The following excerpt comes from Henry F. May’s book The End of American Innocence, 1912-1917: “The third article of the standard American credo, the belief in culture, was weaker than the other two. We can think of the three as a triptych, […]

  • Rod Dreher’s Weirdness

    Occidental Dissent - Sep 8th 2020 6:19pm EDT

    Rod Dreher is a strange man. TAC: “Now, what I found most interesting in Ehrett’s review, and definitely something I want to think about, is his argument that Christianity is really going to be a bystander in the coming clash between Progressivism and Atavism. You really need to read his review discussion of the idea, […]

  • Nietzsche’s Insanity, Oscar Wilde’s Aestheticism and Modernism

    Occidental Dissent - Sep 8th 2020 4:44pm EDT

    When did the Modern age begin? There is no real precise moment that separates the Romantic or Victorian age from the Modern age and it varies from country to country, but the moment that Friedrich Nietzsche went insane and became Dionysus isn’t far off. The 1890s were a cultural turning point in European history. The […]

  • American Racial Decline and Modernism

    Occidental Dissent - Sep 8th 2020 12:10pm EDT

    I’m bumping up my response to ATBOTL from the comments who raises some good points: “American radical abolitionists like William Lloyd Garrison and Charles Sumner were openly anti-white in the current sense long before modernists had any influence anywhere or even existed. Most significantly, they a huge following among average, non-elite middle class whites in […]

  • William James and Modernist Psychology

    Occidental Dissent - Sep 7th 2020 1:27pm EDT

    This is an excellent book. I can’t recommend it highly enough. As we have already seen, the first American Modernist was the artist James Abbott McNeil Whistler whose extraordinary and highly unusual life took him out of the antebellum United States to Russia and from there to France in the 1850s and 1860s where he […]

  • The Origins of the Modern Left

    Occidental Dissent - Sep 6th 2020 2:24pm EDT

    What is the “mainstream”? Where did the modern Left come from? In The Birth of the Mainstream and The Death of the Victorian Mainstream, I began to pinpoint its emergence in the years around World War I. It was the moment in time when the Romantic or Victorian sensibility that dominated the 19th century – […]

  • The Death of the Victorian Mainstream

    Occidental Dissent - Sep 3rd 2020 3:02pm EDT

    Editor’s Note: This is a work in progress. This is such an interesting book. I’m so glad that I bought it. Keep sending me money and I will continue to finding these gems. This is what it was like to be present at the end of the Romantic age in America and the passing away […]

  • James Abbott McNeill Whistler: The First American Modernist

    Occidental Dissent - Sep 2nd 2020 11:04pm EDT

    Have you ever heard of James Abbott McNeill Whistler? Probably not. Whistler was the first American Modernist … the very first of a type which is familiar in our times. He had a very unusual life which took him from the antebellum United States to Russia and to Western Europe where he became a renowned […]

  • The Birth of the Mainstream

    Occidental Dissent - Sep 2nd 2020 5:15pm EDT

    I’m sure the recent articles about Modernism are confusing to a lot of our readers. I started by reaching back deep to Charles Baudelaire in the mid-19th century in France. I moved on and briefly looked at Nietzsche and D.H. Lawrence before describing Nietzsche, Darwin and Baudelaire as proto-Moderns who prepped the European intelligentsia for […]

  • Charles Baudelaire: Founding Father of Modernism

    Occidental Dissent - Aug 29th 2020 2:14pm EDT

    In the troubled life of the mid-19th century French poet Charles Baudelaire, we see the development of some of the key themes of Modernism: Being a social outcast, feeling like an “outsider” and being alienated from society Rejection of bourgeois norms Debauchery (Baudelaire was fascinated with evil and man’s descent into evil) Transgression against bourgeois […]

  • Charles Baudelaire: The Tortured Soul Who Inspired Modernism

    Occidental Dissent - Aug 28th 2020 8:28pm EDT

    I’ve never been into the arts. I have always been far more interested in history. In the course of my research, I have become increasingly convinced that each age of history is dominated by its zeitgeist which is the creation of a small group of elites who dream a big idea. It can be artists, […]

  • The Moderns

    Occidental Dissent - Aug 28th 2020 1:38pm EDT

    I’ve been a White Nationalist, a Southern Nationalist, Alt-Right. Above all else though, I have been on a journey to fully understand what has gone so terribly wrong with our world and what can be done to fix it. There are few people in our circles who have more exhaustively researched this subject. I’ve been […]

  • American History Series: Review: The Rise and Fall of Anglo-America

    Occidental Dissent - Aug 27th 2020 4:08pm EDT

    Eric P. Kaufmann, The Rise and Fall of Anglo-America Why did Anglo-Americans relinquish control of the United States to ethnic outsiders? In The Rise and Fall of Anglo-America, Eric P. Kaufmann seeks to explain this curious global anomaly. Throughout the world, it is normal for dominant ethnic groups to assert their control over their respective […]

  • Enemies of Enlightenment

    Occidental Dissent - Aug 9th 2020 9:39am EDT

    I’m continuing to enjoy these lectures. In the last article, I speculated about how at the end of every great age of Western history two different types of radicals emerge. There are the status quo fanatics who combust the current social order by taking it to a ludicrous extreme and there are reactive creative deviants. […]

  • Sunset

    Occidental Dissent - Aug 8th 2020 6:31pm EDT

    I need to brush up on my Hegel. I’m beginning to develop a theory. Please entertain this idea for the sake of argument which I admit could be complete nonsense. I’m just being creative and having some fun. Joe Biden could be on “the right side of history.” Modernism could potentially last forever. It could […]

  • Modernism and Protestantism

    Occidental Dissent - Aug 8th 2020 2:16pm EDT

    The following excerpts come from Eric P. Kaufmann’s book The Rise and Fall of Anglo-America and illustrate the degree to which the rise of Modernism was transforming American Christianity in the first three decades of the 20th century. In the early 20th century, American Protestantism became obsessed with ecumenicism and cosmopolitanism and began to splinter. […]