The idea of European civilisation is repeatedly evoked by a range of different actors within radical right movements in the West. Paradoxically, whilst much of the European radical right is resistant to the European Union as a political project, many elements of radical right discourse return to the idea of Europe as a homogenous culture.… Continue reading “The Narrative of European Civilization within Radical Right Discourse”
GUILD SOCIALISM AND ‘POST-LIBERALISM’ Eliot and Pound of course have been attacked for their bad politics; both were close to Hulme, and Hulme and Pound were deeply involved in the New Age journal, the radical socialist paper that provided a platform for many early modernists. This venue seems to have been a seed-bed for a… Continue reading “The Anti-Democratic Faces of Modernism – Part Two”
In his admiring review of Rebecca Beasley’s Ezra Pound and the Visual Culture of Modernism (2007), Ronald Bush adds one caveat: this exemplary study of the ‘ideological alignment between the oppositional practices of imagism, “anti-democratic” forms of “individualism,” and anarchism’, may ‘[miss] a beat… by not considering the similarly “anti-democratic” features of John Stuart Mill’s… Continue reading “The Anti-Democratic Faces of Modernism – Part One”
I teach modern literature, and I try and teach it with an eye to the political and social environments out of which it emerges. Two years ago, I introduced some extracts from Ezra Pound’s Radio Rome broadcasts into a university seminar discussion of modernist literature and politics. Students were, in turn, shocked, embarrassed and aghast… Continue reading “The Fascist in the Classroom: Teaching Pound, Race and Radical Right Politics”