Culture

Alt-Right Almanac, February 2, 2018

Bill Murray as weatherman Phil Connors in Groundhog Day (1993)

Here is the Alt-Right Almanac for Friday, February 2, 2018.

It’s Groundhog Day, or Grundsaudaag, one of the names by which it was referred in the Pennsylvania German communities that first celebrated it. The people there had carried the notion of the badger as a weather-predicting animal over from their European homeland.

On this day in 880 the Norse Great Heathen Army defeated an army led by Louis III of France at Lüneburg Heath in what is now Lower Saxony. After its defeat at the hands of Alfred the Great in England two years prior, the Heathen Army had traveled to continental Europe in search of territory to conquer. This immediate period of Viking incursions into Northern Europe wound down with the Viking defeat at the Battle of Leuven in 891, but Viking raids continued until the 12th century.

Lüneburg Heath

It’s the birthday in 1882 of James Augustine Aloysius Joyce in Dublin, Ireland, as well as the anniversary of the publication of his best-known work, Ulysses, in 1922. Ulysses had been published in serialized form in an American literary journal beginning in 1918, but its release in Paris by Sylvia Beach was the first time it was printed in its entirety. Once described as “a Jesuit in reverse,” Joyce sustained a transgressive opposition to his Catholic school upbringing throughout his work; this, and his use of interior monologues and streams of consciousness, alienated bourgeois minds. Ulysses was repeatedly banned and censored by the United States and United Kingdom in the 1920s and 30s; authorities found the masturbation scene in the “Nausicaa” story particularly upsetting.

Portrait of James Joyce by Wyndham Lewis, 1921

And on this day in 1989 the last of the occupying Soviet armored units in Kabul, Afghanistan left as the USSR completed its withdrawal from the country. The Soviets campaigned in Afghanistan for over nine years. Their failure there is generally regarded as an illustration of the inherent peril to foreign nations seeking to occupy Afghanistan, and as one of the events that brought about the fall of the Soviet Union.

Mujahideen fighters in Afghanistan

We’ll put a bookmark there in your Alt-Right Almanac for Friday, February 2, 2018.

Evan McLaren
the authorEvan McLaren
Evan McLaren is the Executive Director of the National Policy Institute and Deputy Editor at AltRight.com. He can be found on Twitter at @evanmclaren.

10 Comments

  • I support Richard Spencer, Evan McLaren, NPI, and Alt-Right.com FULLY…….

    I will be Donating more Money in the Future…….

    100% Without a doubt………

  • Evan McLaren
    ‏ @EvanMcLaren
    13m13 minutes ago
    Replying to @EvanMcLaren @TheMadDimension and

    Matters like this lawsuit are a major distraction today, but when they pass, we have some score-settling to undertake. People who are now griping endlessly about Spencer may discover that he is far more accommodating & personally gracious than figures like me. I am unamused. 6/6

    Evan McLaren
    ‏ @EvanMcLaren
    15m15 minutes ago
    Replying to @EvanMcLaren @TheMadDimension and

    We’re at the vanguard here at NPI, & it’s difficult at best (and normally impossible) to do anything as would a normal organization–to set up basic business accounts, raise money, etc. Frankly we are owed more support than we have received from many of our movement brethren. 5/

  • Evan McLaren
    ‏ @EvanMcLaren
    16m16 minutes ago
    Replying to @EvanMcLaren @TheMadDimension and

    Personally I am quite done with empty, sniping critiques of Richard, who has made himself more of a target than all of his critics combined, & who invests nearly all of his disposable income in movement projects and institutions. He’s advanced the cause at great personal cost. 4/
    2 replies 2 retweets 8 likes

    Evan McLaren
    ‏ @EvanMcLaren
    18m18 minutes ago
    Replying to @EvanMcLaren @TheMadDimension and

    If he had done so from the beginning, two things: 1, it would have meant spending scarce resources to defend against an action that was doomed anyway, and, 2, we would have heard from the same critics that Richard is spending $$$ to defend himself, not the movement. 3/

  • Their failure there is generally regarded as an illustration of the inherent peril to foreign nations seeking to occupy Afghanistan”
    i think this is an common overstatement. just as now, it was a proxy war that america was involved with. its not like russia was beaten. their people probably didnt want to be involved just like we dont so it wasnt really even a war. they collapsed from the inside

  • I had a Pennsylvania “Dutch” great-great-something grandfather who founded a militia which fought on the side of George Washington in the Revolutionary War. Back in the good old days when Germans fighting the British Empire was the American Nationalist thing to do. Also back in the time when Americans had slogans like “Give me liberty or give me death!” and were not so concerned with corporate HR departments catching wind of politically incorrect social media posts.

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