The elegantly titled Iron Wall is a perfect example of how a necessary book on an important topic can be rendered inadequate by the author’s all-consuming bias. In the Preface to this immense volume, Avi Shlaim, a retired professor at Oxford and a fellow of the British Academy, describes his well-connected family as Iraqi “Arab”...
After publishing highly acclaimed biographies of Zola and Flaubert, the New York City-based Frederick Brown established himself as an expert on French cultural and intellectual life with his magnificent book For the Soul of France, a saga of the struggle between the militant secularists and the royalist reactionaries between the fall of Napoleon III and...
Indiana’s shameful surrender to the Gay Mafia, Big Business, the Left, and the Commentariat on the Religious Freedom Restoration Act came as no surprise. Indeed, Pat Buchanan’s most recent column on the whole sorry debacle contains words that must be memorized by every traditionalist: First comes a call for tolerance for those who believe and...
The recent Israeli Knesset elections surprised the world by returning Benjamin Netanyahu and his Likud party to power. The resounding win put Netanyahu on the path to becoming the longest serving PM in Israeli history and caused some consternation and disappointment both in the White House and Brussels. There are two main reasons for Bibi’s...
I used to have a test for when an immigrant is truly Americanized (if such a thing is possible these days): When he starts liking football as much or more than soccer. I reached that point almost five years ago, during the excruciatingly boring 2010 World Cup. However, I found this test to be woefully...
The centennial of that enormous calamity later known as World War I saw the release of about a dozen books on the subject. Catastrophe 1914, by Sir Max Hastings, one of the foremost British military historians writing today, is an exhaustive, one-volume history of that annus horribilis and the events leading up to the fatal...
The bestselling Fifty Shades trilogy by E.L. James (pen name of British authoress Erika Mitchell), which includes the books Fifty Shades of Grey, Fifty Shades Shades Darker, and Fifty Shades Free became the latest fad in the shabby genre of lowbrow female fiction. Unlike its earlier specimens like Twilight, the novels of E.L. James stood...
The most recent Muslim terrorist outrage took place in Copenhagen this time. The son of Palestinian immigrants (the European liberals’ favorite designated victims) Omar Abdel Hamid El-Hussein (described with typical accuracy by the NYT as Denmark’s “native son”) shot up first, a free speech meeting, killing a Danish documentary filmmaker, and moved on to shoot...
A year or so ago, I discovered the work of Czech author Karel Capek who died on the eve of World War II. He was very popular in Eastern Europe and is barely known in the West. Most famous for his science fiction masterpiece War with the Newts (the salamanders, not the repulsive Republican politicians),...
In segments of the black community, particularly among the urban poor, being pursued by the police is a badge of honour, a sign that you have stood up to ‘the man’. Many black voters in Washington thought the police entrapped Marion Barry because he was getting too ‘uppity’. Barry won nearly every vote in poor...
Ralph Sarchie exudes an aura of intense strength when he walks into a room. A fit, middle-aged man with heavily tattooed arms (pictures of his daughters and tough cop tattoos, like one that reads New York Untouchables) and a buzz cut, who speaks with a Queens accent straight out of Martin Scorcese’s Goodfellas, Sarchie has...
In the current issue of Chronicles Thomas Fleming writes: Surrealists, communists, and Dadaists did not merely embrace the death of meaning and civility; they positively exulted in the death of the West and everything Western. They hated Christianity, especially the Catholic Church; they hated Europe, France in particular; they hated the classics; they hated white...
In one of his most famous quotes, Winston Churchill described Russia as “a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma.” Today’s America could be described as a country led by a plagiarist, with the help of another plagiarist, which celebrates a holiday in honor of a third plagiarist: Barrack Obama, Joe Biden, and Martin...
Muslim Terrorism in Paris, Michel Houellebecq’s Cowardice, and the Islamization of France: An Interview with Russian writer Elena Choudinova, author of The Notre Dame de Paris Mosque. Translated from Russian by Eugene Girin Eugene Girin: Elena, you are the author of the sensational, politically-incorrect bestseller, The Notre Dame de Paris Mosque, published in 2005, which...
In the midst of the cold war declared by the NYPD against our ultra-liberal mayor, the hot wars in Ukraine, Syria, and Iraq, I could not help but notice a well-written and hard-hitting piece by traditionalist Catholic attorney Christopher Ferrara for redoubtable Remnant newspaper. Now, why is Ferrara’s “The Remnant’s Man of the Year” article,...
For the last couple of years, this poor little Jewish boy (to paraphrase Taki) has a tradition. Every Christmas, I like to read a novella or a story (with a glass or two or three of spiced wine) that puts me into the holiday mood. Last year, it was the great Dickens’ A Christmas Carol,...
Recently, the Big Burrito erupted into protests after Italian-American Police Officer Daniel Pantaleo was cleared by a grand jury of all criminal responsibility in the death of Black man Eric Garner who died after being allegedly held in a banned chokehold by Pantaleo during an attempt to restrain and arrest him. Protesters led and goaded...
Part of being a paleoconservative is facing down hostile remarks and insults by the usual suspects of the Left and the neocon Right. Aside from the ubiquitous “racist” (defined by VDARE’s Peter Brimelow as “someone who’s winning an argument with a liberal”), used in response to the most inoffensive, barely un-PC remark, there is also...
In this month’s issue, Dr. Fleming discusses anarcho-tyranny, Sam Francis’ term for “our bizzare criminal justice system that combines ‘anarchy (the failure of the state to enforce the laws)’ and ‘tyranny – the enforcement of laws by the state for oppressive purposes’. Dr. Fleming writes: Formerly, the “right to privacy” was understood as a barrier...
Last week I wrote about the tedious process one needs to go through in order to obtain a shotgun/rifle license in the Big Burrito. The passive aggressive bureaucratic roadblocks such as the co-habitant permission requirement, are surely a violation of the Second Amendment, but unsurprisingly, the mayors and the courts upheld them. Only crooks and...
The Big Burrito (formerly known as the Big Bagel) is infamous for its harsh restrictions on legal firearm ownership. To legally own a handgun in the five boroughs, a mere civilian, with no background in law enforcement, needs to jump through the proverbial hoops that include a visit to police headquarters with a stack of...
Vitali Klitschko, former heavyweight boxing champion and one of the Brown Revolution’s Terrible Trio (the other two being Arseny “Yats” Yatsenyuk and neo-Nazi former urologist Oleg Tyahnybok) became mayor of Kiev in June in a quiet, almost unnoticed election, that was overshadowed by bloodshed in Novorossiya. Recently, the opportunistic “Dr. Ironfist” made some waves in...
Both Dr. Fleming’s column “Thinking Outside the Boxes” in the current issue of the magazine and John Seiler’s “Welcome Back to the Slammer…er…School” blog on our website inspired me to share some of my personal experiences with the 12 years of torment known as school. I began my grade school education in the last months...
The beheading of American journalist Steven Sotloff by ISIS led to outraged declarations by this country’s leaders. “When people harm Americans, we don’t retreat, we don’t forget. We take care of those who are grieving. And when that is finished, they should know: We will follow them to the Gates of Hell, until they are...
The recent videotaped beheadings of American journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff by the bloodthirsty savages of ISIS bring to mind a story which took place in Lebanon almost 30 years ago. On September 30, 1985, a group of gunmen seized four Soviet diplomats and embassy workers (Arkady Katkov, Valery Myrikov, Oleg Spirin, and Nikolai...
According to Norway’s The Local English-language news website, Mohammed became the most common male name in Oslo, surpassing Jan and Per, which are in the second and third spots respectively. Apparently, for the last four years in a row, Mohammed was at the top of the list of male names in Oslo. The city itself...
Rabbi Mayer Schiller was a close friend of Thomas Molnar, Sam Francis, and Joe Sobran. I described his life and views in a VDARE column some years ago. Rabbi Schiller is a staunchly paleoconservative Hassidic rabbi living in internal exile in the manner of Soviet dissidents in upstate New York and teaches at a prestigious...
French author and unabashed rightwinger Gerard De Villiers who passed away last fall at the age of 84 was hardly a household name in this country. The former journalist who became a spy novelist was famous for his 200 pulp fiction novels about the exploits of CIA agent, the Austrian aristocrat Malko Linge. What made...
The recent massacres and expulsions of Iraqi Christians are only the latest chapter in the genocide of the ancient and exclusively Christian Assyrians, a continuation of the bloody campaign that took place in the Ottoman Empire, Persia, and Iraq throughout the 20th Century. The Chaldean Catholics who are bearing the brunt of IS attacks in...
The recent riots in majority-black Ferguson, Missouri have seized the attention of the world. Eighteen-year-old Michael Brown, universally described by the media as an “unarmed Black teenager” was shot and killed by a police officer. According to the police, he participated in a violent convenience store robbery and then resisted arrest, attacking a police officer...
The last three summers (2011-2013), I indulged in a genre of books, which my Catholic friends found to be curious. As longtime Chronicles reader and fellow New York attorney Fred Kelly said: “You have an interesting reading list for a traditionalist Jew”. What they were referring to was my interest in the topic of exorcism,...
This week brought the unpleasant, but not surprising news that Pope Francis reinstated as priest one Miguel D’Escoto Brockmann (the latter is his mother’s maiden name, added to his surname as customary in Spanish-speaking countries) who served as foreign minister for the Nicaraguan communists (the Sandinistas) from 1979 to 1990, later becoming president of the...
After coming back from magnificent (unless you’re talking about the food), yet woefully underrated Prague in late August of 2008, I immediately read Jaroslav Hasek’s The Good Soldier Švejk, a satirical novel based on the misadventures of a Falstaffian Czech soldier during World War I. Like Druon’s novels, the unfinished Švejk was extremely popular both...
Some people can trace the stages of their life by the liquor they drink or the clothing style they adopt. Being very ecumenical when it comes to liquor, I prefer to trace the events of my life by the books I read. Turns out, almost every summer and every...
Admittedly, I approached Amanda Bell with a degree of caution. I am, to say the least, wary of fiction, especially fiction centered around a female protagonist who is on a path of self-understanding and realization. The soppy novels of an Emily Giffin or a Helen Fielding come to mind. But rest assured, Jeff Minick’s first...
A video, reportedly shot by an Israeli drone over the war-torn Gaza Strip has been circulating on various social networks. The footage shows several Hamas fighters, decked out in kuffiya headscarves, having sexual intercourse with a goat or a sheep. Stunningly revolting, but hardly surprising. After all, zoophilia was always quite common, if not widespread...
Living in Forest Hills, a predominantly Jewish part of Queens (Simon and Garfunkel, the Ramones, and Jerry Seinfeld all grew up here), I have a fairly good sense of the both liberal American and rightwing Soviet Jewish opinion. Israel’s Gaza offensive of the last few weeks and the anti-Israel demonstrations in Europe, which degenerated into...
Finally home, albeit without luggage, which is stuck either in Rome, Milan, or somewhere in between. But what can one expect from an industry, which sends people to their deaths over a war-torn region in collusion with the EU/State Department hydra. After bouncing around on three different flights to get home from Rome: the bad...
We arrived to Florence on early Monday afternoon and stayed till about 12 pm today. The city of Dante was an unforgettable experience, the crowds of Chinese tourists notwithstanding. (There were so many of them in Florence, that in a few years the Florentines will say “Chao” instead of “Ciao”). We stayed at a charming...
On Sunday, we went to Bergamo – north Italy’s hidden jewel and one of the prettiest places I have ever been to. Having been advised to visit it by both Dr. Fleming and Dr. Trifkovic, I spent some time convincing my reluctant better half to go there instead of Lugano, Switzerland. We set out from...
Saturday, we went on a day trip to Venice (I could hear Andrei Navrozov chuckling all the way from Sicily). Truth be told, I was very hesitant to go to Venice this time of the year after being advised of its oversaturation by tourist hordes, but not knowing when I will be in Italy next...
Today, was certainly a more relaxed day here in the city of St. Ambrose and Silvio Berlusconi. After getting acquainted with the tram routes (Milan’s subways are few and far in between), we got off at the Duomo square. (I must say, my original favorable impression was somewhat spoiled last night, when we, along with...
Arrived today on a direct flight from JFK airport for the first stop in my Italian vacation: Milan. Famous more for its soccer teams and companies than for historic sites, Milan is a convenient first stop because of the abundance of cheap flights from America. After taking an express, lighting-fast train from Malpensa airport to...
The old Serbian joke goes like this. An elderly Serb peasant invites his friends over for some drinks and they notice that the crucifix on the wall of his hut is positioned between two portraits: one of Stalin and the other of Tito. When his buddies express their surprise, bordering on outrage, the peasant responds:...
Ann Coulter’s recent article “America’s Favorite National Pastime: Hating Soccer” is two things. First, it is an example of that shrill uncouthness that Europeans like to attribute to Americans, an obnoxious boorishness that is typical behavior for those jerks, which are the subject of Dr. Fleming’s numerous articles. Second, it is an exaggerated illustration of...
Attorneys love to talk. They are addicted to argument, storytelling, reminiscing. The latter is especially true, both of weathered courtroom veterans, with their salt-and-pepper beards and passé suits, and of eager novices with their bright paisley ties and the slightest hint of gray around the temples. Whether in pages of autobiographical books or over a...
Clarey’s first book is a blunt indictment of the scam that is American higher education. A trillion dollar fraud, which brought financial ruin and misery onto thousands of American young people. More importantly, Clarey’s slim tome warns youngsters away from tens of thousands of dollars in debt and years of miserable, unemployed existence. However, even...
Aaron Clarey is the enfante terrible of American economists. Describing himself as “the only motorcycling, fossil-hunting, tornado chasing, book-writing, ballroom dancing economist in the world”, Clarey quickly became known among young people for his politically-incorrect, masculine, libertarian bluntness. I found out about Clarey through a law school friend who is currently suffering through his third...
Here in New York City, you do not have even go online or turn on the TV to find out which team won one of the day’s three first round matches in the World Cup. You just go out of your apartment and walk a few blocks to the nearest bars and restaurants. The color...
Pope Francis’ visit to the Holy Land had a few tense moments. First, he prayed at the graffiti-covered separation barrier (nicknamed the “Apartheid Wall” by the Palestinians and their Western leftist supporters) between the Palestinian Authority and Israel. Then, he corrected Bibi Netanyahu about Jesus’ native language. Both of these events were widely commented on...