RIP, Lawrence Auster

Pennsylvania

I’m sure everyone has heard the news that Lawrence Auster of View From The Right lost his battle with cancer on Good Friday.

There isn’t much left for me to say that hasn’t already been covered in the tributes that have been posted at VDARE and Amerika. When I was in college at Auburn, I stumbled across his book The Path To National Suicide, and it was a formative influence on my views about immigration and multiculturalism.

I would prefer to remember the Auster that I encountered in that insightful book rather than the blogger that I came to know in later years. Like Alex Linder, it would be the understatement of the century to say that Larry Auster clashed with other bloggers and far too often allowed ideological disputes to devolve into personal feuds.

As death approached, I had considered reaching out to Auster to thank him for his life’s work and to wish him luck in the next life (future historians trying to figure out what happened to America in the first decade of the 21st century will find VFR a nearly unparalleled resource), but he made it plainly clear toward the end that he didn’t want any “anti-Semites” among his well wishers.

Larry went to the grave fighting anti-Semitism. After all these years, I had come to believe that he was sincere in his desire to preserve Western civilization (no one who was faking it would blog to his deathbed), but for whatever reason (choose your explanation), he could never really bring himself to acknowledge the starring role that Jews had played in undermining that civilization. He couldn’t wrap his mind around the thought that the Jews aren’t going to take “will you knock it off, pretty please” for an answer.

Anyway, I will miss Larry’s unique take on “the passing scene and what it’s about viewed from the traditionalist politically incorrect Right.” Although I didn’t always agree with him, I still enjoyed reading his thought provoking website.

About Hunter Wallace 12379 Articles
Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Occidental Dissent

50 Comments

  1. It’s a good thing too. Any more booze and my midnight horse ride would be a no/go

    I regret not seeing Sinatra in concert. I did not want to pony up the cash when I had the chance. Thought there was more important things to spend the money on at the time.

  2. John, your supposedly “Welsh”* critique of Christianity (the “hymn”) is good at 3:50 where it lists all the sins to be punished by death. Vlad Tepes was a follower of that rule.

    *Not like the Welsh of the Revival times.

  3. I can’t stand the Morris Dancing.

    The names Murray and Morris have strong connections to describing
    Darkies. Probably not subsaharans, but Moors of some sort.

    Yeah and I know the form probably goes back to Celtic rituals. Its been hijacked by Trotskiites in Burford’s levellers day though.

  4. I said ignore the video. So what did you do? You looked at the video. The song however is rather different. I think the songwriter looked at evenagelicals in the US and failed to understand why they might be Rapture Bunnies… The Apocalypse has already happened in America’s urban areas and is spreading, like a zombie plague. They are just beginning to get a taste of it now that London is overrun with Africans.

  5. The Spanish Moresca dance was celebrating the defeat of the African MOORS. Black face is sometimes used, but it is not a “darkie” dance.

  6. “I said ignore the video. So what did you do? You looked at the video.”

    I was bound to look since you warned me. I understood the explanation before. The song writer or group doesn’t seem to like violence in the name of religion.

  7. Ray Davies is not even remotely Hebrew. He comes from a totally working class background. He’s almost 70, and he’s still writing and performing, despite health issues.

  8. Alright John, this kind of dance is also good, I think, with more “elegant,” complex movement than the simple, natural, outdoors “Morris” :

  9. Oh, good, about Davies. I know how you are Denise! As a rule in London, be careful around people with that family name.

    Some of the things Morris men get up to in the Cotswolds, do seem quirky. I’m not too keen on them. For instance that Leveller’s Day parade. It’s coopted by some very odd leftist groups and the Morris Dancers don’t really seem to object. I can’t imagine folkways like that surviving a Trot takeover. So it’s utterly surreal to see the two together.

  10. RUDEL!!!! THAT clip is stunning, Hypnotic. THAT is exactly what I mean about a brilliant artist, performing an examplary interpretation. Sinatra was a kind of funny looking fellow. Skinny, bony facial planes. He kinda embodied the Everyman – with extraordinary talents. He “acts” his way through that number – talks, and sings. It’s subtle. He’s in pain, he’s weary…..it’s all the weariness of every disappointed palooka out there, just trying to make his way in the world. He’s got to keep plugging away, too….gotta keep the roof over the head…. the phrasing and intonation is exquisite. As good as it ever gets.

    There was a PBS documentary about Sinatra, broadcast years ago. The show featured “rehearsal” footage of that number. The angles of the camerwork were difference…done from behind the bar, photographing Sinatra head on. I recall it was done with a studio rehearsal piano,; Sinatra was singing almost a cappella. I beleive they were working on the timing. How long the piece would run, etc. The acting element was simpler. He was more “internal”. Not quite as openly rueful. He sang the song simply, straight through.

    I was STUNNED. Riven. It was one of the best things I’ve ever seen and heard in my entire life. I haven’t seen it since, and I’ll never forget it.

    I have been meaning to go to bed for 45 minutes.

    I bid you all goodnight!

    P.S, – I have exactly the same feelings on Martin. I thought he was hokey, when I was a kid, but I now appreciate his subtlety and sensual romanticism.

  11. @Jack Ryan

    It’s back on? I had heard that Harold Covington phoned anonymous threats to Montgomery Bell Park and got the conference cancelled. So I take it they didn’t cancel after all?

  12. John, I think the Quaker’s link above was a reply to your “darkie dance” comment.

    Regarding your question about the plough and guise dancing: No. But we should re-awaken those traditions here, as well as the St. David’s Day parade, and “morris” dance traditions, etc.

  13. References to pitching woo, birth control, out of wedlock “midnight ride” activities, all seem unlikely for a professed Christian, and out of place and harmful on a blog that is intended to lead the moral and social conservative movement.

  14. When you are at the ground level of country customs in England there’s all sort of still you know that you can’t immediatly find on wiki or from the scrubbed versions those groups present about themselves.

    My Grandad was a Druid revivalist and was involved in these folk customs as a morrisman. He was deeply racist and I think he saw these sorts of things as ethnic and racial. The black face is most certainly about race. Things have been sanitized.

    Darkie Day! I wasn’t making it up.

  15. Have fun at Amren Jack, I know I gave the one I attended a harsh review (and it was well earned, trust me) but I did meet some really good people, Scott Terry and ‘Courtney from Alabama’ being two of them.
    Scott is the guy who has been getting a lot of media attention for his ‘performance’ at CPAC this year, haha, this clip is a ‘must see’:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3EGj5brWJp4

    Never know who ya might come across on yer travels 😉

  16. Mary – I’m not going to Amren – but if Scott is there – I hope any attendees on this forum meet him. He is one of the most wonderful folks I’ve ever met. He’s an absolute doll. I love him.

  17. “References to pitching woo, birth control, out of wedlock “midnight ride” activities, all seem unlikely for a professed Christian, and out of place and harmful on a blog that is intended to lead the moral and social conservative movement.”

    I didn’t hear anything but the pitching of woe for lost love in the song “One For My Baby.”

    And what does actively participating in the pagan ritual re-enactments of Druid rites have to do with promoting “moral Christianity?” Even Jesus replenished the wine supply at the Wedding Feast of Canaan; a fact that a lot of Baptists and Methodists seem to conveniently forget or skip over when reinterpreting the New Testament to fit into their made up Calvinist theology.

  18. Mary – I’m not going to Amren – but if Scott is there – I hope any attendees on this forum meet him. He is one of the most wonderful folks I’ve ever met. He’s an absolute doll. I love him.

    Agreed! Glad you had the pleasure as well.

    🙂

  19. What’s really funny is, somehow riding horses at night with my church wife, my son’s, my uncle and his wife is sexual in nature. Talk about jumping to conclusions. Puritan logic I suppose

  20. I’m not sure I follow…Druid? I’m not sure if the old guy ever talked about Christianity. He didn’t mention the Druidism much.

  21. “Talk about jumping to conclusions. Puritan logic I suppose”:

    Not jumping to conclusions at all, and PERFECTLY logical, given the context of the statements about “not using ‘b c’ ” (birth control) and trying constantly to produce a child out of wedlock, while the spouse is still living. The earlier plan involved using Asian surrogate wombs. Who would have thought you ride horses at MIDNIGHT. An indoor arena?

    This is Southron Biblical literalism, I suppose (taking some parts of the Bible literally, other parts less convenient just ignored).

  22. John, it has nothing necessarily to do with “Neo-Druidism,” and is not “Darkie” (African) either, and is quite congruent with ethnic Anglo-Celtic Christianity. Fighting Quaker posted an example (above) of Darkie movement, apparently in response to your comment.

  23. Rudel wrote: “what does actively participating in the pagan ritual re-enactments of Druid rites have to do with promoting…Christianity?”

    I was observing that a certain kind of music and dance seems to appeal and come naturally to our white ethnic group, which has nothing necessarily to do with Neo-Druidism, and is not incongruent with our ethnic Christianity.

  24. “You live in Penn or Texas. Not the Cotswolds or Penzance.”

    After many generations, we cannot go home again. There is a new fatherland, but old traits and preferences may endure longer. Why are YOU here, and not there?

  25. The accordion is associated strongly with Germans. I had forgotten how much it was also part of the folk in England. We play it different to the German or Mexican though. Different to the French. The English version is a sea shanty sound.

  26. I remember singing that “Old Ned (the Nigger)” song in elementary school. The teachers in the 100% white rural school were old, formerly one-room school teachers, who thought it was a cute song.

    I remember being taught that Gypsies are bad, too.

  27. “The accordion is associated strongly with Germans. I had forgotten how much it was also part of the folk in England. We play it different….”

    Exactly. It is excellent voice accompaniment in the British style.

  28. Gypos are bad.

    They stole a Henry Moore Sculpture and ram raided a bank in Burford with a Bobcat and ripped the ATM out the wall, vanishing with it.

    They are also burglary specialists.

  29. I’ll bet that the tune was cadged from a merchantman by the American songwriter, and it sorta filtered back as a false etymology. Songs do that. The Cornish are quite a funny bunch. The blackface is very very common in the West Country Morris variation.

  30. I read the New Testament in Greek, and all of it in many English versions and in the context of ancient Near Eastern literature, archaeology, history of interpretation and theology.

  31. You people spout scripture but one of my teachers spent an hour debating( and winning) a student about how it ia impossible to prove the bible is true and how you cant know anything for sure.

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