Culture

Fascination

 

“It’s not the side effects of the cocaine,” sang David Bowie on the eponymous named album Station to Station. Which is the opposite of what the late rocker would claim about some of his rather outre political statements from the 1970s. That being said, Bowie’s flirtation with fascist symbols and “far right” rhetoric tells us more about the vacuity of the 1960s “counterculture” and its inability to give birth to anything more meaningful than a boring new artistic and intellectual orthodoxy which still plagues us today.

With his own caveats out of the way, let’s explore the Thin White Duke’s critique of liberalism on its own merits. For Bowie, rock and roll was about shaking the artistic cobwebs off of his time. Here’s how he characterized its original goals in 1975:

“The original aim of rock and roll when it first came out was to establish an alternative media speak voice for people who had neither the power nor advantage to infiltrate any other media or carry any weight and cornily enough, people really needed rock and roll.

And what we said was that we were only using rock and roll to express our vehement arguments against the conditions we find ourselves in, and we promise that we will do something to change the world from how it was. We will use rock and roll as a springboard.

But it’s just become one more whirling deity, right? Going round that never-decreasing circle. And rock and roll is dead.”

Rock in the seventies had become just another part of the panorama liberal culture at the time. Disco, which was just emerging, was described by Bowie in another interview as merely being a “dirge” (despite his own success with the format). But what were these dirges for?

Bowie gave us that answer in 1975:

“There’s some form of ghost force liberalism permeating the air in America, but it’s got to go, because it’s got no foundation at all, apart from a set of laws that were established way back in the bloody ’50s and early ’60s…”

This is a statement that could easily have been made at Radix or any other identitarian/alt-right publication today. Regardless of whether these were Bowie’s actual thoughts, they betray a true artist’s implicit understanding of his era. A mark of artistic genius is to reflect one’s times back in a meaningful statement. For Bowie, this manifested itself in being on the cutting edge of every new “rock” movement from psychedelia to new wave.

If Bowie gave us hymns to celebrity or top-of-the charts disco dirges, it was in reflection of our own culture’s debased values. As Bowie reflected:

“This whole particular period of civilisation … it’s not even decadent. We’ve never had true decadence yet. It borders on Philistine, really.”

When we get philistine art, it’s because we allow philistine tastes to rule us. From Tracey Emin to Star Wars our culture has become a self indulgent swamp for that “ghost” liberalism. Bowie, of course, flirted with imagery and lyrics from the far right to shock this moribund husk.

Bowie showed real prescience about the nature of a mass media’s effect on the inner life of it’s consumers as well. From the same 1975 interview:

“I mean, to put on pornographic movies in a truly free society is one thing; to put on pornographic movies in America is very dangerous because it intimidates and ridicules the average family man. He watches himself being portrayed six inches tall on TV every night, and he wakes up the next morning and he feels six inches tall, he thinks he is six inches tall.”

The simulacrums used to stimulate, sterilize. The hegemonic media of Bowie’s age has only grown to a galaxy in our own times. Atomizing and alienating who we are from our own identites. But all hope is not lost.

Through our own trolling, culture jamming, and identitarian situationist actions we have started to fight back. Like Bowie, we shock the “mainstream” mandarins of managerial multiculturalism. Unlike Bowie, we don’t represent merely ourselves but a new cultural counter attack he prophesied back in the ’70s (even if he wasn’t “serious”).

In Archeofuturism, Guillaume Faye argues that rock will stay around because of its chameleon-like nature. Nobody embodied that more than Bowie. And it’s because of this that we can reinterpret aspects of his work in an identitarian manner. Over at the usual places, you will find peans about how Bowie made it cool to be “weird.” What’s left out is that he once made it cool to be “fascist”—or at least to dabble in far right-of-center ideas. It’s something most want to sweep under the rug.

Then again, it’s cool to be underground. Let’s embrace the Thin White Duke if for just throwing some of his own fashy statements back at the (now grown) children he despaired of in the 70s.

The days of the Thin White Duke who once sought to “make sure white stays” are over. But for us, our fight has only just begun. “We can be Heroes,” he sang, yes we can. And to close with some watchwords from the Duke for all of us Alt Right Don Quixotes out there:

”I don’t know where I’m going from here, but I promise it won’t be boring.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jBuwC4VJi50

27 Comments

  • While I dislike that being a Bowie fan, or Mode fan, attracts the derision in the comments that remind me of high school, you do him as much credit as those who simply remember him as just ‘the gender fairy.’ His work is not about any ideology as much it is a synthesis of influences, places, people. A US centric audience might see just the glitter (it’s rock and roll, and Brownshirts with guitars isn’t as exciting as you think) and freak out but he held concerts that would have impressed Riefenstahl. His flirtation with the hard right was as much borne of his work ethic and life, which settled into being more productive and old school than the public face would have you believe. Experimentation within certain parameters does not always equal degeneracy, and it’s unrealistic that you’ll all be based Hoplites, some will have to sing the songs and mould the clay. You have your values, but ever comments section is a purity spiral leaving room only for the most performative interpretations of them. It’s like fashy virtue signalling. Do you want to lead a horse to water or drown it because it’s mane stirred some weird feelings up? Jeez

    His frustration with the earnest liberality of the day suggests like many posters here he appreciated the sentiments but was always seeking more.

    Of course, he married a quite attractive African lady, which would also throw you lot into conniptions.

  • I suppose this article was for the Boomers? I certainly see nothing advantageous about venerating an effeminate such as Bowie, granted some of his songs are catchy. That’s the thing about music I hate….It can disguise poison as ambrosia.

  • What relevance might Freudianism have today?

    Isms change meaning over time. Marxism itself went through many variations. Russian Revolution violated the theory of Marxism, but Leninism was promoted as advancement of Marxism. And later, Marxism became less a formula for revolution but of critique. So, a Marxist intellectual might focus on class issues without believing in necessity or desirability of communist revolution. “Cultural Marxism” is a strange creature, and I’m not sure those labeled as such would accept the title.

    Freud’s core theories about childhood are no longer taken seriously. And psychoanalysis isn’t considered a science, if it ever was by the hard scientific community.

    But Freudianism is the most important ‘ideology’ today because of success of capitalism. Marxism’s appeal had to do with hardship. During the Industrial Revolution and rapid urbanization, most people were too poor, tired, and weary to think of pleasure. They had to focus on basic themes of survival: wage, bread, roof over one’s head. It’s like the movie THE GOOD EARTH. When the farmer is poor, he thinks of family and survival. Later, he grows rich and becomes immersed in pleasure.

    For most of history, only a few could really indulge in pleasure. Most people had to toil from sunup to sundown. So, pleasure was seen as sinful by religious moralists and social revolutionaries(who saw it as the piggery of the rich). Marxism spoke to a lot of people for whom malnutrition was a daily factor in their lives. Even in the US, a lot of people didn’t have electricity and running water even by mid-century.

    But the success of capitalism in the US made hunger and survival no longer core issues. The problem is HOW TO MAKE THE POOR LOSE WEIGHT. Look at FAT young black women acting like they are oppressed. The welfare state made it possible for even the poor to live pretty well by global standards. Many ‘middle class’ folks around the world don’t have it as good as poor Americans. Yet, because US sets the standards via Hollywood and Music, even poor folks look to American standards as the universal ones.

    The scene in Oliver Stone’s HEAVEN AND EARTH where the Vietnamese woman comes to the US and sees all this food and Big people and big everything is a culture shock most Americans wouldn’t understand.

    Freudianism, for most people, simply means that human behavior is driven primarily by pleasure, at least if one’s basic needs have been taken care of. Because the modern world pretty much got rid of hunger and provided housing and warmth and basic comfort for everyone, people began to focus on Pleasure as the main thing in life.

    Moralists warned against the Rise of Pleasure. Some said Pleasure is sinful, especially among religious folks. Some said, Pleasure can lead people astray, especially among social critics. In the 80s, the cocaine-addicted monkey was on TV all the time. This is why Michio Kaku, aka Much Cuckoo, is a promoter of trash pop culture. He knows that much of modern economy is driven by addiction to pleasure. People work mainly to earn money to CONSUME. Global person is the Ikean Man among the affluent and Walmartians among the hoi polloi. That drives the economy and provides funds for scientists. I like Russian emphasis on national morality, but like communism, it has a way of suppressing the Pleasure Drive that incentivizes people to work and work to get paid to get laid, real or via fantasy of entertainment.

    So, when people now say ‘Freudian’, they mean a society organized mostly around pleasure. And that is the state of our culture, so Freud won BIGLY.

    Aldous Huxley foresaw this in BRAVE NEW WORLD with its soma and orgy-porgies. Orwell’s vision was a kind of Marxist anti-Stalinism. He was a socialist who dreaded where socialism may lead. Socialism is about serving the people, but its moral purism and logic of power may create a new kind of tyranny more frightful than any kind. Norman Mailer warned that ‘leftist totalitarianism’ is the most dangerous kind cuz it’s done in the name of people, justice, and progress.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SIlg85GA0GQ

    For Orwell, the future might be a drab dreary concrete tyranny over mankind in the name of collective virtue. Orwell feared Stalinism, the cancerous outgrowth of Marxism. Orwell feared how the very righteous force rebelling against tyranny could spawn a newer tyranny far more total. (There is still this side of the ‘left’ in the elite’s approval of the physical attack on Richard Spencer.)

    In contrast, Huxley feared a kind of future-Freudianism where the System would scientifically calculate, manipulate, and control the ‘erogeny’ of mankind. Huxley figured that technology would produce enough basic stuff for people, and it may even lead to cloning and other such means. A world without hunger and want can do two things: uphold a life of culture, philosophy, arts, and intellectual for men freed from toil. Or indulge in wanton pleasure in the infantile mode. Given human nature, Huxley figured most people want fun than meaning.

    Now, too much fun can lead to social chaos and breakdown, so the state would have to figure out a way to scientifically manipulate this Dionysian nature of man so that mankind would be beholden to the System. System would find orderly ways to dispense drugs and orgasms so that people will remain loyal and obedient.

    Jews understood that the way to gain control over the goyim was by controlling the Pleasure Principle, especially after the failure of communism, an extreme Virtue Ideology. Bernays was a key theorist of the uses of advertising as propaganda. Once capitalism provided people with basic stuff, it can only grow and expand by offering more and more pleasure. Pleasure of food, music, sports, vanity, sex, and etc. With pleasure being the main obsession of life, those who control the Pleasure would control the world. Look at Sheldon Adelson.

    And to sell this dream, advertising is key. No wonder MADMEN had such cultural currency for so many viewers. It’s about men who manipulate the illusion of the dream.

    Now, Freud may well be appalled by how society turned out, but the populist view of Freud is, “the guy was for ‘boing’ as the path to truth and power.”

    And this was the big challenge for Jews because the power, unity, and solidarity of the goy world owed to morality, sobriety, discipline, and self-denial. The Anglo race was a great warrior race, as seen in Anthony Hopkins in THE BOUNTY. But this required tremendous discipline and self-control. If British soldiers acted like American soldiers in Vietnam, the Rock n Roll War, they couldn’t have commanded the empire. US certainly lost the Rock n Roll war. (But then, given what has become of new Vietnam according to Linh Dinh, maybe the Empire of Pleasure won.)

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lEHHZQccGSI

    Also, for goy men to keep control over goy women, they had to be moral. Men had to be good husbands and fathers, and women had to be loyal wives and mothers. Anglo sexuality is about balls and wombs, not puds and poons. Sex is supposed to serve a purpose. Family and children. So, even though sex may be fun, the man is supposed to sow seed in the woman so that the child would be born, and the kid would be raised to be a good man or good woman. THE SEARCHERS is a womb-war movie.

    In contrast, Jewishness came to fixate on the pleasure of sex. The orgasm of the pud and poon(or clit). So, the Anglo view put purpose above pleasure. In contrast, the Jewish view put pleasure at the center.

    Now, Jews were fearful of this Pleasure Principle because, as the saying goes, the dealer must not get high on his own supply. It’s like Tony Montana snorts too much of what he is selling and he goes down too. For Jews to have the power, they had to control themselves while peddling the pleasure to others. This didn’t meant that Jews shouldn’t partake of the pleasure but that they should never let the pleasure take control over their lives. (It’s like the movie producer in Woody Allen’s CAFE SOCIETY isn’t the most moral man — he leaves his wife for a young shikse — , but he does it in a way that maintains his reputation, position, and power.) It’s like the Deniro character in DENIRO loves to gamble too, but he watched over the whole operation. And he makes sure bets. In contrast, the masses of dummies are throwing the money at him. Hump the shikse whores but don’t let your own daughter turn into a whore. Many Jews know this lesson, but given the likes of Dunham, Winehouse, Shia Leboof, and etc, it seems like some Jewish kids are getting overdosed on their own junk. Anthony Weiner certainly did. He had a promising political career but threw it all away cuz he couldn’t control his boingery. And now, even pervs see him as a moron. I mean it’s one thing to have an illicit affair discretely but sexting pics of his dong with his son next to him on the bed? Yikes.

    Anglos were especially mindful about controlling sexual urges since having an empire meant the whites could go native and lose their cultural essence. The men might fall for Polynesian babes like in THE BOUNTY and, worse, women might catch jungle fever and go savage with the Negroes. Well, look at the state of our culture.

    So, it was in the interest of Anglos to focus on the balls and wombs than on puds and poons. Balls and wombs would be about family, race, ethnos, and continuity. Puds and poons would be about doing it with ANYONE for instant pleasure. SEX AND CITY lifestyle, but even that is relatively classy compared to something like GIRLS and the adventures of Emma Sulk.

    Because of Anglo balls-and-womb-centrism, the Jews had to break down the resistance by making the Anglos admit that they wanna do it, wanna do it, wanna do it.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p9a5-E5Zk3w

    Mel Brooks HISTORY OF THE WORLD is like a primer on Pop Freudianism.

    The very opening scene sums up the entirety of mankind from rise of civilization to modernity.

    We see apes standing upright. Beast becomes noble man. And we see ape-men stretch out their arms to the heavens as if in spiritual quest. But then, their arms soon lower and they begin to realize that it feels good to touch their own groins and fixate on nothing but pleasuring themselves.

    It’s like Western Civilization’s theme going from search for God and higher meaning to obsession with ‘boing’. Communion had turned into cum-union. Women in America used to gather to revere God. Today, we have 1/2 million women in DC with pussy hats yapping about their pussies, though oddly enough screaming about Donald better not grab it. (I guess there is a bit of puritanism left in the puerility).

    https://youtu.be/TE_YBBEp4nQ

    https://youtu.be/_tquDnOdYDI?t=1m34s

    HISTORY OF THE WORLD is a nonsense movie, but it also reveals the Jewish strategy of power via wit, humor, and manipulation of the pleasure principle. Not for nothing do we see Brooks join forces with a dancing Negro — Gregory Hines — to drive the goyim nuts.

    Consider the Power of Weed to demoralize and disorient the Roman military in pursuit.

    Today, the US military is fighting for what? Homo parades around the world and to spread ‘western values’ like rap and celebrity news about Kardashians? Opium was used on the Chinese certainly to break down the resistance. (Moral Anglos said ‘enough of that’ and ended the trade, which was masterminded by a Jewish guy.)

    https://youtu.be/vQ7jHHC2bvg?t=1m4s

    The most instructive segment of HISTORY OF THE WORLD is The Spanish Inquisition number with its screaming irony(but then Brooks was never subtle, as Allen could be if he tried).

    Though ostensibly about the Spanish goy Christians using their might to convert the Jews with PAIN, it is really a celebration of how Jews converted the goyim with PLEASURE.

    So, the real title of the scene should be the Jewish Acquisition. It’s about how Jews won and acquired the world by controlling the Vice Industries that have addicted to goyim to the orgy-porgies of hedonist-entertainment.

    So, goyim might laugh at the suffering Jews in the musical number, but the real joke is on the goyim. Even though Brooks seems to be mocking the terrorized Jews, he is really avenging them by celebrating the fact that Jews ‘converted’ and conquered the goys’ eyes, ears, mouths, butts, and genitalia to the opiate of the Jews. Marx said religion is the opiate of the masses, but Pop Freudianism’s keen understanding is how opiate could become the religion of the masses. The final image of the number says it all. The nuns who turned into aryan aquatic nazis emerge from the water as Hanukkah candles.

    Jews learned that they need God to remain together as a people but they need to use the golden calf to gain power over the goyim. Moses got it half-right. Yes, Jews must stick to Yahweh. But in having lost the other five commandments, he forgot the lesson of “golden calf is for the goyim”. Use it on them to milk them.

    https://youtu.be/5ZegQYgygdw?t=7m5s

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I48hr8HhDv0

    Though mostly forgotten, Houdini should be seen as a key figure. He was not a man of ideas, but his feats serve as useful metaphor for Jewish strategy of survival. He would put himself in ‘impossible’ situations but emerge alive. And this can said for Jews throughout history. A combination of real feat and trickery.

    • You must be a hit at parties. During the Middle Ages in England, serfs had more free time than we do, and primary sources suggest that a Lord would be reticent about committing his men to work even every consecutive season.

      What is true is that modernity is very, very disruptive to our natural cycles. We compensate by dulling the senses. But desire, by definition, is the carrot forever dangling just ahead of it. You can sate it briefly, but it will be back.

  • These quotes of Bowie are important to cite, but you read your own agenda into a mis-hearing of the lyric of “Station to Station:” the line is “making sure white STAINS,” which is a reference to something written by Aleister Crowley. Also. the plural of “simulacrum” is “simulacra.” “the inner life of it’s consumers” should be “the inner life of ITS consumers.” The song “Heroes” was not created during Bowie’s Thin White Duke character-phase. The phrase “We can be heroes” is qualified by “just for one day” – meaning, we can share the fleeting illusion of person triumph, or as much empowerment as They might grant us to gratify us, or or which we can surreptitiously cadge.

    • “The phrase “We can be heroes” is qualified by “just for one day” – meaning, we can share the fleeting illusion” — based on the rest of the song, i’d say he meant “we can be heroes briefly, then they will kill us”

  • Wow, this article surprises me. I was a teenager in the 70’s and I was also a Bowie fan. I’ll admit I willfully ignored his more *ahem* alternative lifestyle phases.

  • I can’t see David Bowie as being any kind of symbol of White identitarianism or why anyone would even consider such a thing from his androgenous persona to the reality of his mixed race marriage.
    If anything, rock music in the 60’s and onward were used to break down White identity and destroy the minds and sensibilities through a hypnotic haze of drugs, sex, cultural Marxism and endless loops of associative pop culture to rewire the larger American culture with something akin to false archetypes.
    There’s so much more music and musical artistry in the world beyond the “market” of music that is purely identitarian than the types of music that have been pushed on the public. The vast resurgence of “folk metal” coming out of Europe now is far more powerful as symbols to White identity nationalism than anything that has happened in the last 50 years.
    And beyond that the wealth of folk, bluegrass and celtic music has much deeper roots to racial ancestry and is alive and well.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-2ihs2PPf8s

  • Recall that at the RNC, the GE Smith band played “Station to Station”.

    https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=S6WSfEWvxNQ

    I’m not sure if Trump had any input on the selection but it fit perfectly. “The European Canon is here!” The song is underappreciated and the album is Bowie’s best until “Blackstar” came out last year.

    • Thanks for this, I was totally unaware they played this at RNC. It’s kind of an obscure song. I’m surprised they played it. Weird.

      He had a lot of great albums. Station to Station was among the top 3. I’m also partial to ‘Heroes.’ Both of those releases had a special sense of European consciousness.

  • “Britain is ready for a fascist leader…I think Britain could benefit from a fascist leader. After all, fascism is really nationalism…I believe very strongly in fascism, people have always responded with greater efficiency under a regimental leadership.”
    ~David Bowie

  • I spent some time posting various videos after his passing on forums and blogs. I got the impression that people too young to haven’t experienced the era perceived Bowie as PC. Coming out today with ficticious characters that are androgyneous and bi-sexual can indeed be percieved as PC. But in the early to mid-70’s it was different. I can’t remember any of my peers who percieved him as PC. Rather the opposite. The times are a-changing as another rock icon of the time did put it. I think him one of the greatest artists of all time. Even greater than Elvis. Because he didn’t write that much material himself, which Bowie did. If it is true that he claimed, that he didn’t remember the Station To Station sessions, due to his cocaine abuse, then I’m even more impressed. Because it is an amazing album. Although I also like Ziggy, Aladdin and other albums, my favourite album has always been Hunky Dory.

    • Did you here that fat k!ke rat Enoch and SeventhSuck trashing Bowie and his fans when he died, because he mated with a negress (which I’m not really bothered about in terms of listening to him, because she had no affect on his music) and that offended Kike Enoch of kikewife fame?

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