Tag: history

A Special Interview

This is a real treat! Big Serge interviews Dr. Sean McMeekin, the author of the excellent book STALIN’S WAR:

Big Serge: “One of the first things that stands out about your work is that you have found success writing about topics which are very familiar to people and have a large extant corpus of writing. World War One, the Russian Revolution, World War Two, and now a broad survey of Communism – these are all subjects with no shortage of literature, and yet you have consistently managed to write books that feel refreshing and new. In a sense, your books help “reset” how people understand these events, so for example Stalin’s War was very popular and was not perceived as just another World War Two book. Would you say that this is your explicit objective when you write, and more generally, how do you approach the challenge of writing about familiar subjects?”

Dr. McMeekin: “Yes, I think that is an important goal when I write. I have often been called a revisionist, and it is not usually meant as a compliment, but I don’t particularly mind the label. I have never understood the idea that a historian’s job is simply to reinforce or regurgitate, in slightly different form, our existing knowledge of major events. If there is nothing new to say, why write a book?

Of course, it is not easy to say something genuinely new about events such as the First World War, the Russian Revolution, or World War Two. The scholar in me would like to think that I have been able to do so owing to my discovery of new materials, especially in Russian and other archives less well-trodden by western historians until recently, and that is certainly part of it. But I think it is more important that I come to this material – and older material, too – with new questions, and often surprisingly obvious ones.

For example, in The Russian Origins of the First World War, I simply took up Fritz Fischer’s challenge, which for some reason had been forgotten after “Fischerites” (most of them less than careful readers of Fischer, apparently) took over the field. In the original 1961 edition of Griff nach der Weltmacht (Germany’s “Bid” or “Grab” for World Power, a title translated more blandly but descriptively into English as Germany’s Aims in the First World War), Fischer pointed out that he was able to subject German war aims to withering scrutiny because basically every German file (not destroyed in the wars) had been declassified and opened to historians owing to Germany’s abject defeat in 1945 – while pointing out that, if the secret French, British, and Russian files on 1914 were ever opened, a historian could do the same thing for one of the Entente Powers. I had already done a Fischer-esque history on German WWI strategy, especially Germany’s use of pan-Islam (The Berlin-Baghdad Express), inspired by a similar epigraph in an old edition of John Buchan’s wartime thriller Greenmantle – Buchan predicted that a historian would come along one day to tell the story “with ample documents,” joking that when this happened he would retire and “fall to reading Miss Austen in a hermitage.” So it was a logical progression to ask, if Fischer can do this for Germany’s war aims, why not Russia?

Both the interview and the book are highly recommended.

DISCUSS ON SG

Another Sign of the Inevitable

Turkey’s nationalists are beginning to openly push for a break with NATO and the Clown World West:

For decades, Turkish nationalism marched under the NATO flag. But now, one of Türkiye’s most influential right-wing leaders is calling for a turn East – toward Russia and China. His proposal may mark the country’s clearest ideological break with Atlanticism since joining the Alliance.

In September, Türkiye’s political landscape was shaken by a statement that many experts called sensational and potentially transformative. Devlet Bahceli, leader of the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) and a long-time ally of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan within the People’s Alliance, proposed the establishment of a strategic trilateral alliance involving Türkiye, Russia, and China to counter the “US-Israel evil coalition.”

Bahceli emphasized that such an alliance is “the most suitable option, considering reason, diplomacy, the spirit of politics, geographical conditions, and the strategic environment of the new century.” The proposal extends far beyond the usual nationalist agenda, positioning Türkiye as a player capable of initiating new formats of international cooperation.

To grasp the importance of this statement, we must note the historical context. Turkish pan-Turkism has traditionally been oriented toward the West, and nationalists were seen as staunch defenders of the pro-Atlantic course. In this light, Bahçeli’s call for an alliance with Moscow and Beijing marks a symbolic break from that tradition, reflecting growing distrust toward NATO and the US within Türkiye’s political landscape.

Bahceli’s comments are not random. Over the past few years, he has steadily ramped up his criticism of the West, advocating for Türkiye’s sovereign development “beyond blocs and alliances.” But this is the first time he has explicitly named Russia and China as preferred partners.

This obviously isn’t even remotely surprising, considering that I predicted it was going to happen over a year ago. But cooperation with an increasingly irrational and aggressive NATO is obviously not in Turkey’s best interests, given its past history of military conflict with Russia, and Turkey also has very serious reason to doubt that its allies will take its side in its coming conflict with Israel.

One thing that has escaped the notice of the mainstream analysts is the way that the fall of the Assad regime in Syria has set up an inevitable conflict between Turkey and Israel. Turkey clearly has a stronger historical claim to Jerusalem than the modern Jewish state, which was only held by the right of conquest by the Davidite dynasty for 270 years, less than the Romans (700 years), the Caliphates (332 years), or the Turks (401 years).

The elimination of Syria as a functional buffer state between Turkey and Israel means that war between the two states is inevitable. And both Erdogan and Turkey know that an AIPAC-dominated USA is going to side with Israel, which explains why the Turkish nationalists are now openly favoring an alliance with Russia and China, neither of whom are particularly enamoured of the Israelis in light of how Israel has been a) destabilizing the entire Middle East and b) attempting to ethnically cleanse the Palestinians from the region.

The fact that NATO has been comprehensively defeated by Russia almost certainly factors into the new Turkish perspective as well. What use is an alliance that can’t effectively defend you and is more likely to take the side of one of your primary enemies than yours? Logic dictates that the break will come, but it’s impossible to say when it will come. But the fact that the Turkish nationalists are now openly calling for it suggests that it will come sooner rather than later.

DISCUSS ON SG

A Lesson from Spain

The Nationalist Right in Spain was divided into two camps. One of them read the Republican Left correctly. One of them didn’t:

There were two schools of thought on the Spanish Right in the lead-up to the civil war: Accidentalism and Catastrophism. Accidentalists believed that the serious issues facing the Spanish Republic were not baked into the institution itself, but rather an accident that could be attributed to the early Marxist bent of the first government. The Republic had gotten off on the wrong foot, but Conservatives could and would steer the ship in the right direction once they peacefully won political power through the electoral process and formed a government capable of addressing the Right’s concerns regarding government attacks on the Church and private property. They were strictly committed to following the rule of law and operating within the constitutional framework.

The second group believed the Republic was a catastrophe from the start, and that there could be no saving the Republic from itself. They asserted that the Left would never recognize any non-Leftist government, no matter how much they claimed to uphold the rule of law, because the problem was not with the Republic’s legalistic procedures but rather with the fact that the entire system was merely a facade to facilitate a Socialist and eventually Communist state that would permanently exclude Conservatives from power.

These two camps were largely united in their politics but divided in how to engage in politics. One pursued reform, while the other waited for an opportunity to overthrow the system itself once enough of the Right realized that there would be no voting their way out of this mess.

Most American Republicans are still Accidentalists. And like their Spanish forebears, they are both a) wrong and b) irrelevant. If even an American rump state is to survive the eventual breakup of the USA, it will be the Catastrophists who will be running the show.

Fortunately for Americans, Trump is increasingly showing signs of having embraced Catastrophism.

DISCUSS ON SG

The Lesson of Lepanto

A reminder that God loves His warriors and helps those who help themselves:

In 1571 as the Muslim fleet threatened Europe, Christendom was deeply divided. Protestants fought Catholics. France fought the Holy Roman Empire. Christian princes even allied WITH the Muslims against their Christian brothers.  They were all too self seeking to see the threat and and answer the call. 

But one man—a bastard with no lands and barely even a title—takes weapons from the wall and rides to the sea.  Don John of Austria.

Who was Don John? He had no throne. He was the bastard son of Charles V and a burgher’s daughter from Regensburg. Raised in obscurity, not even told who his father was. When his half-brother Philip II finally acknowledged him, it wasn’t with lands or title, just a name and a small allowance. Among the princes of Christendom he was the last man you’d pick: No inheritance, no wealth, no claim to rule.

Yet when the Ottoman fleet gathered in the waters just beyond Italy, this forgotten son was the one who answered. Because no one else would.

Yes, the Pope called for the defense of Christendom, and that is more than we have today.  But no one sent Don John personally. No one gave him the wealth to outfit an army. The most likely outcome was that they’d all die.  Don John went because someone had to.

That’s the pattern of every important battle in Christian history. One man, alone, often betrayed by his Christian brothers, under resourced, with only a small band of bedragged warriors, standing in victory against the pagan hordes.

No Crusader victory was ever a triumph of Christian unity. Most of Christendom sat Lepanto out. France stayed home. Protestant Europe stayed home. Even most of Italy stayed home. The Holy League was a minority of the willing. A handful of ships and a handful of men who made the decision to go. And that’s the truth.

History turns on the ones who go. Not on the ones who wait for orders. Not on the ones who whine about the hierarchy. The ones who go. Western man today stands on another shore. The pagan fleets are at pur shores again.  Our clergy are cautious, our politicians are compromised, our institutions asleep.

So what now?

The Churchians aren’t going to save the civilization they despise. The foreigners, immigrants, migrants, and refugees aren’t going to save the nations they hate. The governments aren’t going to defend the peoples they have betrayed. The priests and pastors aren’t going to defend the faith they subverted.

And yet, all we need are twelve.

DISCUSS ON SG

On Motorcycles

There have been 3 motorcycle fatalities in my area recently. I’m pretty sure they’ve all been college aged guys. Really sad. Motorcycles are insanely dangerous.

There are good risks, bad risks, and dumb risks. For the most part, motorcycles fall into the latter category.

I understand motorcycles are a) fun and b) cool. I bought a red Suzuki GS 750 when I was 24. It was very cool, and matched beautifully with my leather jacket that had our dojo’s big dragon logo airbrushed on the back. It was also a big, heavy, and rather challenging bike for a beginner. I rode it on the backroads for a summer and had just gotten comfortable enough to ride it on the highway a few times when a much more experienced rider who was an acquaintance from the gym was killed on his Kawasaki 1100 by an old lady who didn’t see him as he was turning into a parking lot in a 25-MPH zone.

I sold it the next week and never rode a motorcycle again. There was no way I ever wanted to do anything that made me so vulnerable that a Iittle old lady driving about 20 MPH could do me in.

Buy a cheap old convertible instead. It’s only half as cool, but very nearly as fun and most girls will prefer the convertible.

DISCUSS ON SG

Fighting the Previous War x4

President Trump wants to bring back the battleship:

US President Donald Trump suggested that he’s considering bringing back US Navy battleships, vessels that were retired decades ago, long after the kind of naval combat they were built for had become a thing of the past.

Battleships were heavily armed naval powerhouses built to slug it out with other warships. During the World Wars, they dominated the seas, but by the end of the Cold War, these once mighty warships were completely obsolete.

Speaking at a high-profile summit with top US military leaders at Marine Corps Base Quantico in Virginia on Tuesday morning, Trump said battleships are on the table.

“It’s something we’re actually considering,” he said, “the concept of battleship, nice six-inch side, solid steel, not aluminum, aluminum that melts if it looks at a missile coming at it. Starts melting as the missile’s about two miles away. No, those ships, they don’t make them that way anymore.”

T”I look at those ships, they came with the destroyers alongside of them, and man, nothing was gonna stop them,” he said. “Some people would say, ‘No, that’s old technology,’ I don’t know, I don’t think it’s old technology when you look at those guns.”

I can only assume this is some sort of joke. Battleships have been outdated and little more than floating targets since 1941 at the absolute latest. The aircraft carriers that replaced them are already outdated. But instead of seeking to catch up on the hypersonic missile technology that has rendered traditional sea and air war alike irrelevant, Trump wants to go back to pre-WWI gunboat diplomacy.

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Mailvox: The World We Lost

Request to the GenX crowd — what is your best anecdote or memory or description of “how things used to be”? The before time, that we millennials and younger have no memory of.

The entire suburban 20-house neighborhood of 20-30 children between the ages of 5-11 playing outside, all day, every Saturday during the school year and every weekday too during the summers. My favorite was the huge Capture the Flag games the older kids would organize sometimes in the evenings after dinner. We’d play until it got too dark to be able to see very well, then everyone would go home.

In the summer, the people with the big house and the pool would put out a red flag on Saturdays to announce an open pool after lunch and half the kids on the street would play there all afternoon. In the winter, the open rink about a mile away would be one big pick-up hockey game and my parents would just leave me there after lunch and pick me up before it got dark. Usually some moms would show up with cookies and hot Russian tea in the warming hut.

The freedom and sense of community was entirely different than today. Many of the neighborhoods look more or less the same from the outside, but since the mid-1990s, one no longer sees large packs of kids playing outside together like they previously did.

And if you want conclusive evidence that immigrants to America will never, ever, understand the world of the 1950s-1980s that we lost, consider the perspective of one immigrant from Portugal who still doesn’t know what we’re talking about despite having spent most of her adult life in the USA.

Well, excuse me, I lived in a village growing up. And while I miss some things, sometimes, if you think for a little very Odd kid it was an ideal environment, you’re out of your ever loving mind. In fact, it wasn’t an ideal environment for anyone, judging by the epic fights and factions. Because people in point of fact had very little in common, and were together by utter necessity, which means that the group enforced absolute conformity and you couldn’t escape.

Whoever said anything about poor rural villages full of inbred Iberian peasants? That was never our world and it certainly isn’t the loss that we’re lamenting. These days of diversity and immigration are most certainly not “the good new days” in the eyes of any genuine American.

DISCUSS ON SG

Palestine Existed Before Israel

Larry Johnson addresses the oft-heard lie that Palestine is some sort of modern mythical creation by antisemites, as certain parties would have everyone believe.

I am writing this to inform some friends who believe, wrongly, that there is no such thing as Palestinians and that the people being genocided by the Zionists are nothing more than interlopers.

Prior to 1947, the territory now occupied by Israel and the Gaza Strip was commonly called Palestine. This designation was used during various historical periods, including the Ottoman rule and the British Mandate period (1920–1948). The British Mandate for Palestine was established after World War I and lasted until 1948, during which the region was officially administered under that name. The term Palestine historically referred to the geographic area between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea and was used in various forms dating back to ancient times, including Roman, Byzantine, and early Islamic periods.

The earliest recorded historical reference to Palestine dates back to around 1150 BCE in ancient Egyptian inscriptions during the reign of Ramesses III. The name Peleset (transliterated as P-r-s-t) was used to describe a group of people, likely the Philistines, who lived along the southern coast of the region.
The first clear use of the term Palestine to refer to the broader region was by the ancient Greek historian Herodotus in the 5th century BCE. In his work The Histories, he described a district of Syria, called Palaistínē, which included the area between Phoenicia and Egypt, incorporating the Judean mountains and the Jordan Rift Valley.

Thus, while the name’s roots trace back to ancient Egyptian references to coastal peoples, the geographical concept of Palestine as a region appears clearly in Greek literature from the 5th century BCE.

I addressed this ahistorical propaganda myself six years ago, with a direct citation from the 1911 Encyclopedia Brittanica.

PALESTINE, a geographical name of rather loose application. Etymological strictness would require it to denote exclusively the narrow strip of coast-land once occupied by the Philistines, from whose name it is derived. It is, however, conventionally used as a name for the territory which, in the Old Testament, is claimed as the inheritance of the pre-exilic Hebrews; thus it may be said generally to denote the southern third of the province of Syria. Except in the west, where the country is bordered by the Mediterranean Sea, the limit of this territory cannot be laid down on the map as a definite line. The modern subdivisions under the jurisdiction of the Ottoman Empire are in no sense conterminous with those of antiquity, and hence do not afford a boundary by which Palestine can be separated exactly from the rest of Syria in the north, or from the Sinaitic and Arabian deserts in the south and east; nor are the records of ancient boundaries sufficiently full and definite to make possible the complete demarcation of the country. Even the convention above referred to is inexact: it includes the Philistine territory, claimed but never settled by the Hebrews, and excludes the outlying parts of the large area claimed in Num. xxxiv. as the Hebrew possession (from the “River of Egypt” to Hamath).

This is why the preservation of old books and historical knowledge is necessary, because it so readily disproves the modern lies that are broadcast by those attempting to provide a psychological cloak for their deeds and misdeeds.

The irony is that the Turkish and Italian governments have historical claims on Jerusalem that are probably better than the claims of the European Zionists. Even if one grants the asserted connection between modern Jews and the historical kingdom of Judah, the Kingdom of Judah did not include the land upon which Tel Aviv was built, much less the important port of Haifa.

The Old Testament even makes it clear that Palestine, also known as Philistia, preceded the establishment of the Kingdom of Israel, as many of the battles of King Saul, and subsequently King David, were part of a war of Hebrew independence waged against the five Philistine kingdoms of Gaza, Ashdod, Ashkelon, Gath, and Ekron.

Now, obviously Israel holds its current land under the right of conquest, which is a legitimate and recognized right. I certainly don’t expect the USA to return my Indian tribe’s historical lands to me any time soon; it’s much more likely they will eventually return to the control of the descendants of the Spaniards who first conquered them. Demonstrating the falsehood of ahistorical propaganda is not tantamount to denying the legitimacy of current borders or recognizing that there are often multiple historical claims to the same land.

These historical matters are always more complex than the media is capable of rationally and realistically discussing even if it were objective, which it obviously isn’t. Regardless, it is always best to be aware of the truth, even when there is little chance that the mainstream discourse bears any relationship to it.

DISCUSS ON SG

American Game Theory

Nick Fuentes poses a philosophical exercise.

  • Scenario A: You board a train car and see a black person, you immediately turn and leave— You’re a racist.
  • Scenario B: You sit beside a black person and get stabbed to death— You’re dead.
  • Scenario C: You fight back and subdue your attacker— You’re charged with manslaughter.

This exercise isn’t that hard, because racism isn’t bad, evil, wrong, or a sin. Racism is nothing more or less than the normal preference for the survival of one’s genetic kindred, culture, language, and religion, and opposing their destruction. That’s what it has meant since the term was first coined by General Richard Henry Pratt in 1902. The fact that the term has been twisted and redefined for rhetorical purposes doesn’t change what it actually and observably is.

Racism is even a Biblical and Christian virtue. See 1 Timothy 5:8.

But if any provide not for his own, and specially for those of his own house, he hath denied the faith, and is worse than an infidel.

Anti-racism is literally anti-Christian, as its reliably satanic fruits have proven over and over and over again. Let them call you whatever they want to call you, so long as you do what is right. Which, in this case, is obviously Scenario A. Because they’re going to call you racist no matter what you do, say, or even think to yourself, so long as you and your race of people survive with their identity intact.

“Segregating any class or race of people apart from the rest of the people kills the progress of the segregated people or hinders their growth. Association of races and classes is necessary to destroy racism and classism.”
—Richard Henry Pratt, 1902

DISCUSS ON SG

The End of Anti-Racist Liberalism

In which ESR, a smart, well-educated anti-racist liberal, reluctantly accepts that the racists who fought against the imposition of civil rights in the United States were right all along:

“The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere / The ceremony of innocence is drowned;”

The part of me that was once an idealistic anti-racist liberal marching for civil rights died its final death last night as I watched the video of Irina Zarutska on the Charlotte light rail, being fatally stabbed in the throat from behind by a black savage I refuse to name.

What has finally broken me is, incidents like that aren’t even a surprise anymore. The frequency of brutal, senseless murders by “African-Americans”, both individually and in predatory mobs, has risen exactly as rapidly as social and coercive controls on their behavior have weakened.

Meanwhile, for anybody who’s wondering, American whites still have about the same crime rate as Switzerland. When enforcement of norms disintegrates, only intelligent people with low time preference still act civilized.

As I’ve watched us sliding down the civilizational failure gradient, the question I’ve been increasingly unable to dismiss is this: was the whole ugly apparatus of racial repression – segregation, sundown towns, lynchings -really just senseless hatred? Or was it a rational containment strategy evolved under pressure from living alongside a large, visually distinct population of low-IQ savages?

I think I know the answer now. And I hate knowing it. I preferred my innocence.

It doesn’t do any good to protest that this particular savage was “mentally ill”, whatever you think that means. The mobs that routinely form to beat up and kill whites unwary enough to wander onto their turf aren’t psychotic, unless all Blacks are psychotic.

Yes, yes, I know. If you were to select a population of whites for the same distribution of IQ and time preference as American Blacks, and then coddle them, scholarship out their brightest kids for four generations, and tell them all of their failures are society’s fault, you’d get the same level of pathology and violence in about the time it took you to say “dyscultural and dysgenic”.

That doesn’t matter. We’re not dealing with that hypothetical. We’re dealing with reality. The reality is that we have a predation problem that will only be solved when our actual population of low IQ savages is contained again. Creatures like Irina’s murderer, cognitively unable to participate in civilization, must be subject to either segregation or repression so brutal that they live in fear of it.

I don’t really want to live in the kind of society that can do either these things. But Irina Zarutska’s murder is the seal on my realization that there are no longer soft options, only hard choices.

I’d prefer the one where armed citizens routinely shoot down creatures like that at the time of the attempted crime, or immediately after it. All the alternatives seem far worse.

My only observation would be that the problem isn’t four generations in the making, it’s one that would require about 1,000 years of relentless eugenics to solve given the time to civilization required for the erstwhile savages of Northern Europe.

DISCUSS ON SG