Author Archives: Margot Metroland

Margot Metroland

I was born in a house I helped my father build.

Remembering Revilo Oliver (July 7, 1908–August 20, 1994)
The Professor & the Carnival Barker

3,434 words

Professor Revilo Pendleton Oliver died in 1994, full of years and honors, as they say; and also notoriety. Long a Classics professor at the University of Illinois in Urbana, he gained his PhD in 1938 with a translation and commentary on a 1500-year-old Sanskrit drama. Read more …

Published: July 7, 2017 | Posted in North American New Right | Tagged articles, commorations, John Birch Society, Louis Byers, Margot Metroland, National Alliance, North American New Right, originals, Revilo Oliver, Robert Welch, the Jewish question, William F. Buckley, William Pierce | Comments closed

Print this post

Special Pleading for Fascist Daddy

Margot Metroland

2,183 words

Francis Beckett
Fascist in the Family: The Tragedy of John Beckett MP
London & New York: Routledge, 2017 (Routledge Studies in Fascism and the Far Right)

Here is a book of deep political scholarship and heartbreaking family history. It misses being great because the author lost the plot during the many years he worked on it, and he wound up hanging his father’s story on a lurid promotional “hook,” which I’ll get into below. Read more …

Published: May 22, 2017 | Posted in North American New Right | Tagged A. K. Chesterton, book reviews, Chapman Pincher, Duke of Bedford, Fascist in the Family, Francis Beckett, Graham Mitchell, John Beckett, Margot Metroland, Nigel West, North American New Right, originals, Oswald Mosley, Peter Wright, Roger Hollis, William Joyce | Comments closed

Print this post

The Weaponized Nonsense of George Lakoff

Margot Metroland

1,446 words

Sometimes you read a newspaper column that starts off so pointlessly and insipidly you can’t tell whether it’s supposed to be a parody of bad writing, or the writer just wants to introduce a humorous idea but can’t find the right hook to hang it on. This happened a few days ago (April 10) in The Washington Post, with a column by one Steven Petrow. Read more …

Published: April 14, 2017 | Posted in North American New Right | Tagged Alt-Right, Andrew Ferguson, Donald Trump, George Lakoff, Margot Metroland, North American New Right, originals, Steven Petrow | Comments closed

Print this post

The Enigma of Whittaker Chambers

Margot Metroland

Whittaker Chambers, underground man.

2,070 words

(Written in the style, if not quite the spirit, of senior TIMEditor Chambers’ weekly newsmagazine.)

Rumpled, paunchy Whittaker Chambers (April 1, 1901-July 9, 1961) has long merited haughty sneers and raised eyebrows on America’s nationalist Right. Reasons: his shifting ideologies, his inscrutable motives.

Among the most compelling critiques of Chambers we may count those of Classics professor Revilo P. Oliver. Read more …

Published: April 4, 2017 | Posted in North American New Right | Tagged Adolph Berle, Alger Hiss, Arnold Toynbee, Ayn Rand, Bambi, Calvin Fixx, Chiang Kai-Shek, Czar Nicholas II, Evelyn Waugh, Felix Salten, Harry Dexter White, Henry R. Luce, James Agee, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, John Ford, Joseph Stalin, Margot Metroland, Marxism, Noel Field, North American New Right, originals, Oxford University Press, Priscilla Hiss, Reinhold Niebuhr, Richard M. Nixon, Sam Tanenhaus, The Grapes of Wrath, Theodore H. White, Time magazine, Whittaker Chambers, William F. Buckley Jr., Witness (book), Yalta Conference | Comments closed

Print this post

Robert Brasillach & Notre avant-guerre:
Remembering Robert Brasillach, March 31, 1909-February 6, 1945

Margot Metroland

Robert Brasillach at his trial in 1945.

3,570 words

Today is the birthday of Robert Brasillach, French journalist, novelist, and film historian (The History of Motion Pictures, co-written with Maurice Bardéche).

It is Brasillach’s fate mainly to be remembered for being the only collaborateur sentenced to death (by firing squad) for “intellectual crimes.” Read more …

Published: March 31, 2017 | Posted in North American New Right | Tagged Albert Camus, Alcazar Palace, Belgium, Ce Soir, Charles Maurras, Colette, commemorations, France, Francisco Franco, Georges Bernanos, Gonzalo Queipo de Llano, Henri Massis, Jacques Maritain, Je Suis Partout, Jean Cocteau, José Antonio Primo de Rivera, La Cabeza, Léon Degrelle, M. de Lequerica, Margot Metroland, Maurice Bardèche, North American New Right, originals, Paul Claudel, Pierre Cousteau, Pierre Daye, Pierre Gaxotte, Popular Front, Rexist Party, Robert Brasillach, Spain, Vendredi | Comments closed

Print this post

Whose Jane Austen is It, Anyway?

Margot Metroland

Mock ad by Michael O’Donoghue & George W. S. Trow, 1971 National Lampoon

2,215 words

For the past couple of weeks there’s been a lot of media blather about how the novelist Jane Austen is an icon of the Alt Right. The distress this causes Leftist critics has been a thing of high comedy and low hysteria.

If you haven’t been keeping up, I review some articles immediately below. Otherwise, feel free to skip about halfway down, where I get into matters of cultural appropriation and Austen sex roles. Read more …

Published: March 27, 2017 | Posted in North American New Right | Tagged Alt-Right, English literature, Jane Austen, Jane Austen and the Alt Right, Margot Metroland, North American New Right, originals | Comments closed

Print this post

What Would the Dulles Brothers Do?

Margot Metroland

Allen Welsh Dulles & John Foster Dulles

2,236 words

After decades of blessed obscurity, the Dulles brothers have splashed back into the news of late. There are big books, little books, forthcoming books: all leading to a flurry of newspaper and online articles (notably Alex Beam’s March 8 essay in The Wall Street Journal).

The two major volumes that have led the way are The Brothers: John Foster Dulles, Allen Dulles, and Their Secret World (2013) by onetime New York Times reporter Stephen Kinzer; and The Devil’s Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America’s Secret Government (2015) by David Talbot Read more …

Published: March 21, 2017 | Posted in North American New Right | Tagged Allen Dulles, Anthony Eden, Arabella Arbenz, Bay of Pigs, CIA, Cuba, David Talbot, Indonesia, Iran, Jacobo Arbenz, John F. Kennedy, John Foster Dulles, Lee Harvey Oswald, Lyndon B. Johnson, Margot Metroland, North American New Right, originals, State Department, Stephen Kinzer, Vietnam, Warren Commission, Willie Morris | Comments closed

Print this post

Your Publisher, Cmdr. Rockwell
Remembering George Lincoln Rockwell: March 9, 1918-August 25, 1967

Margot Metroland

1,520 words

Nearly fifty years after his assassination, the image of George Lincoln Rockwell (March 9, 1918-August 25, 1967) is more iconic than ever. You can drop his amiable face into a Twitter avi or Website header, and feel pretty certain that most of your audience will know who it is. At Amazon, publications by and about Rockwell run on for pages: new, used, rare first editions; hardbound, paperback, Kindle; memoirs, speeches, political tracts; cartoon pamphlets and dank satires. Read more …

Published: March 9, 2017 | Posted in North American New Right | Tagged 1950s America, commemorations, George Lincoln Rockwell, Margot Metroland, North American New Right, originals, U.S. LADY, women's magazines | Comments closed

Print this post

Cashing in on Emmett Till

Margot Metroland

1,745 words

Emmett Till was killed more than sixty years ago, but he’s a hotter property than ever. Scarcely a year goes by without yet another book or documentary recounting the tale of the hefty black youth from Chicago who got beaten and shot in Mississippi in 1955, for the mild transgression of “whistling at”—and physically molesting—a young white woman in a country store. Read more …

Published: February 21, 2017 | Posted in North American New Right | Tagged articles, Blacks in America, Emmett Till, lynching, Margot Metroland, North American New Right, originals, rape | Comments closed

Print this post

Mr. Roth, Mr. Melville, & Mr. Trump

Margot Metroland

Philip Roth

1,318 words

We hadn’t thought about Philip Roth in some years, so it was with some delight, and a few misgivings, that we ran into him recently in the pages of The New Yorker (Jan. 30 issue). Actually it was just a Philip Roth e-mail, or portions of e-mails, extracted for a Talk of the Town “casual” by Judith Thurman.

Thurman had sent a note to the 83-year-old Roth because she wanted to pick his brains on the only subject anyone wants to talk about these days, Our New President. Read more …