471 For example, in *Sweeney Agonistes*, Sweeney in an exchange with Doris says: 'I'll carry you off / To a cannibal isle! [...]  I'll be the cannibal. [...] I'll convert *you*! / Into a stew. / A nice little, white little, missionary stew.' (Eliot*; Collected Poems and Plays*; 121). Note the language and the emphasis of Doris being turned into a white missionary stew.

472 DuPlessis, 151.

473 Eliot; *Ara Vos Prec*, 16.

474 Schmidthorst highlights how Eliot inserted the Sweeney figure into contemporary discourse of evolution and eugenics, most concisely in the title 'Sweeney Erect' which alludes both to rampant sexuality and evolutionary stages (cf. 73), but also by linking Sweeney to animals especially to orang-utans (cf. 72). Also note that orangutans were popularly associated with the Irish in contemporary caricatures.

475 DuPlessis, 152.

476 DuPlessis, 152-153.

477 Cf. Vincent Sherry: 'When he [Sweeney] later reappears in *The Waste Land*, it is to visit Mrs. Porter, the madam of a Cairo brothel known for infecting British soldiers with venereal diseases. The song of "Mrs. Porter and her daughter" was sung by troops in the Dardanelles campaign (Southam 168)'. In: Chinitz; *A Companion to T. S. Eliot*, 97.

478 Cf. Rainey; *The Annotated Waste Land with Eliot's Contemporary Prose*, 102-103.

479 North, *The Dialect of Modernism*, 10.

480 North, *The Dialect of Modernism,* 1.

481 Cf. Young, James, O.; *Cultural Appropriation and the Arts*, 7.

482 A similar dynamic can be observed nowadays in the debate about 'blaccent', for example, in the debate involving musician Iggy Azalea.

483 North, *The Dialect of Modernism*, 11.

484 In *Sweeney Agonistes*, Sweeney chants: 'We all gotta do what we gotta do / We're gona sit here and drink this booze / We're gona sit here and have a tune / We're gona stay and we're gona go / And somebody's gotta pay the rent' (Eliot; *Collected Poems and Plays;* 125). Moreover, the whole play is laced with minstrel-style performances of different songs.

485 Quoted in Tratner, 100.

486 DuPlessis, 133.

487 DuPlessis, 101.

488 Sanders, Charles: '"The Waste Land": The Last Minstrel Show'; 27 and 26 respectively.

489 Cf. Sanders, 24 and 26. Eliot wrote a tribute to Marie Lloyd after her death, calling her 'the greatest music-hall artist of her time in England' (Selected Essays, 405). Despite this, halfway through the essay the argument veers from tribute to criticism of society, pitching music hall culture against the new technological progress – cinema, gramophones and auto-mobiles presented as anti-culture – and ends in a gloomy prediction of the death of 'the entire civilized world' (408). Sanders refers to the following quote: 'The middle classed have no such idol: the middle classes are morally corrupt. That is to say, their own life fails to find a Marie Lloyd to express it; nor have they any independent virtues which might give them as a conscious class any dignity. The middle classes, in England and elsewhere, under democracy, are morally dependent upon the aristocracy, and the aristocracy are subordinate to the middle class, which is gradually absorbing and destroying them' (407). Note the qualifier 'under democracy'.

490 North, *Dialect of Modernism*, 10.

491 Sanders, 36. Also note his use of 'our' to draw in the reader into a fuzzy feeling of a 'common humanity'.

492 North, *Dialect of Modernism,* 81.

493 Chinitz; *T. S. Eliot and the Cultural Divide,* 106.

494 Quoted in: North, 78.

496 Quoted in North, *The Dialect of Modernism*, 78.

495 Ibid; 78.

497 Emphasis in the original. Quoted in Chinitz, *T. S. Eliot and the Cultural Divide*, 79.

498 Moreover, while Eliot conceded that artists are able to learn from the savage, the artist 'is also the first person to see how the savage ... can be improved upon; he is the last person ... to yield to the weak credulity of crediting the savage with any gifts of mystical insight or artistic feeling that he does not possess himself' (quoted in: Irmscher, Christoper; *Masken der Moderne: Literarische Selbststilisierung bei T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, Wallace Stevens und William Carlos Williams;* 157). This shows that the supposedly primitive is, like the lower classes, something to be used for the creation of art but not to be valued for its own sake.

499 DuPlessis, 126.

500 Chinitz; *T. S. Eliot and the Cultural Divide* 73.

501 Chinitz; *T. S. Eliot and the Cultural Divide;* 75.

502 Chinitz; *T. S. Eliot and the Cultural Divide;* 29.

503 Quoted in: Bornstein, George; 'When Race Meets Religion: Blacks, Jews, and Modernist Fictions' 23.

504 North, *The Dialect of Modernism*, 82.

505 ''I am not an anti-Semite and never have been,' Eliot insisted. 'It is a terrible slander on a man.'' (Ricks, 61).

506 Eliot; *Ara Vos Prec*, 14.

507 Sloane, 25.

508 Redman, 186.

509 Sloane, 128.

510 That the poem with Eliot's most prominent Jewish figure(s) is set in Venice can be read as a reference to Shakespeare's *Merchant of Venice*. In this way, 'Burbank' inscribes itself into the long tradition of anti-Semitic English literature.

511 Eliot, *Ara Vos Prec*, 14, lines 14-16.

512 Cf. DuPlessis, 150.

513 This depiction of Jews not merely as carriers of disease but of Jews as disease was widespread during the time of composition (not only in Germany but also in Britain). Lara Trubowitz has noted how important '[t]his subtle but crucial conceptual transformation—from the Jew as importer of infection into the Jew as principle of contagion, the disease itself—' proved to be for the passing of the Aliens Act of 1905 (*Civil Antisemitism, Modernism and British Culture 1902-1939;* 36).

514 Compare with Tratner, who writes: 'The lowest of the low is the Jew because Jews where the symbol of a cultureless people in their acceptance of Diaspora: they are the essence of "heterogeneity," of adulteration' (111).

515 Eliot, *Ara Vos Prec*, 14, lines 17-19.

516 Sloane has gone to great length to analyse these lines. She has, for example, traced the expression 'Jew's eye' and unearthed that it named an (either real or fictional anti-Semitic practice of torturing Jews to extort money from them). Furthermore, she discusses the question whether Bleistein is, in fact, dead or alive. While it makes for a compelling reading, it has no great effect on my reading of Bleistein as an anti-Semitic representation and thus I will not go further into detail. (cf. Sloane 109-110, 158).

517 Apart from the illustration above; note, for example, the then common assumption that Jews were particularly susceptible to disease, especially trachoma, as was claimed by Dr Francis Tyrell, surgical officer at the Royal London Ophthalmic Hospital (cf. Trubowitz, 36-37).

518 In a similar but different reading Schmidthorst sees in Bleistein's posture traces of the evolutionary process, thus suggesting that the development of upright walk constitutes a difficult and ultimately reversible developmental stage' [Die Spuren des biologischen Evolutionsprozesses zeigen sich auch in Bleisteins Körperhaltung, die die Ausbildung des aufrechten Ganges als eine mühevolle und durchaus wieder reversible Entwicklung erscheinen läßt:...] (71).

519 DuPlessis, 148.

520 Fleissner, 95. And who goes on to conclude that 'this drawback does not have to mean that Eliot really was anti-Semitic…' because that would mean that many other authors and artists could also be labelled anti-Semitic, for example 'such a favourite among Jews as the musical composer Richard Wagner, and then where do we draw the line?' (95). From today's perspective it is rather amusing that Fleissner would have chosen Richard Wagner of all people in an attempt to illustrate the ridiculousness of anti-Semitic accusation of artists.

521 A comparison which the title already invites. Julius adds: ''Burbank' adopts the anti-Semite's doctrines of the unity and wickedness of the Jewish people, and the trans-historical struggle between Jews and Gentiles' (*T.S. Eliot, Anti-Semitism, and Literary Form*; 98).

522 Consider again Julius: 'The poem does not damn Klein and Bleistein in order to praise Burbank. His brooding is as debased as his romance' (*T.S. Eliot, Anti-Semitism, and Literary Form;* 100).

523 In Julius; *T.S. Eliot, Anti-Semitism, and Literary Form*; 37.

524 'Dirge' was initially part of *The Waste Land*, yet was removed before publication, possibly at Pound's behest. It is reproduced in the facsimile and transcript edition of *The Waste Land* referred to earlier.

525 'Hence the poem's rendering of the decomposing nostrils as lace, and the substituting of one form of vagrancy for another; not toes peeping through ragged shows, but bones through ragged toes. The Jew is in death as he is in life: both plutocrat and pauper, flashy (hence the 'lace') and indigent (hence the 'ragged')' (Julius, *T.S. Eliot, Anti-Semitism, and Literary Form;* 126-127).

Sloane, 146.

 Both: Cheyette, Constructions of 'the Jew' in English Literature and Society; 257.

Julius, *T.S. Eliot, Anti-Semitism, and Literary Form*, 123.

Julius, *T.S. Eliot, Anti-Semitism, and Literary Form*, 85.

Julius, *T.S. Eliot, Anti-Semitism, and Literary Form;* 99.

Sloane, 207.

DuPlessis, 146.

 Translation: 'And other liked to call themselves Fischbein, Herz and Mond and Stern. And Dreifuß, Blaß and Fels and Stein. And Schloß and Großmann and also Klein.' Bauer, Elvira; *Trau keinem Fuchs auf grüner Heid und keinem Jud bei seinem Eid*; 9.

 However, as Julius has shown, Eliot had used similar names in his original draft of *The Waste Land* for Jewish characters, namely Lady Kleinwurm and little Ben Levin (cf. Julius, *T.S. Eliot, Anti-Semitism, and Literary Form*, 104).

 Eliot, *Ara Vos Prec*, 16, line 23. Ricks notes: 'Rachel *neé* Rabinovitch' invites the further suspicion that one devious motive for, or aspect of, such a marriage is that in changing one's name one will disguise one's Jewishness. Some such thoughts as these must swirl in with the line.' (Ricks, 30).

In: Kushner, 12-13.

Eliot, *Ara Vos Prec*, 15, line 26.

Cf. DuPlessis, 147.

 DuPlessis, 148. A similar yet less detailed observation is made by Crawford, Robert; *The Savage and the City in the Work of T. S. Eliot;* 113.

Eliot, *Ara Vos Prec;* 15, line 28.

Compare also Julius, *T.S. Eliot, Anti-Semitism, and Literary Form*, 103.

Eliot, *Ara Vos Prec;* 15, line 29.

Julius, *T.S. Eliot, Anti-Semitism, and Literary Form;* 104.

Sloane, 62.

Cf. ibid.; 62.

Also see Sloane, 167-168.

547 This also corresponds to Eliot's own notes originally attached to *The Waste Land* , where he states that 'the Phoenician Sailor [...] is not wholly distinct from Ferdinand Prince of Naples...' (Eliot; *The Waste Land*, 148).

548 To add insult to injury, Eliot was still happy to read 'Gerontion' at a poetry recital in September in 1943, that is during a time when Jews across Europe were rounded up and exterminated by virtue of declaring them an inferior form of life (cf. Julius, *T.S. Eliot, Anti-Semitism, and Literary Form*; 213). In Julius's own words: 'Many Jews were beyond insult by then' (ibid.).

549 Also note that by the use of water imagery Jews are linked to women and the feminine. Again this was a common trope during Eliot's time and can also be found in Pound and Lewis.

550 Julius, *T.S. Eliot, Anti-Semitism, and Literary Form*; 18.

551 Julius, *Trials of the Diaspora*, 184.

552 And according to Julius a further insult as crabs are not kosher (cf. Julius, *T.S. Eliot, Anti-Semitism, and Literary Form* ; 133).

553 Both, Cheyette, *Constructions of 'the Jew' in English Literature and Society;* 264.

554 Eliot, *Ara Vos Prec;* 17, lines 27-30

555 Eliot, *Ara Vos Prec;* 17, line 32.

556 Eliot, *The Waste Land*, 121. Both are additionally defined by their eyes, heavy eyes and protrusive in the other.

557 An affiliation between 'Burbank' and 'Gerontion' is also indicated by intertextual reference as Sloane points out: 'Eliot replaced *Gerousia* with *Gerontion*, a title that more easily evokes Gerontus, the Jewish money-lender of Robert Wilson's *The Three Ladies of London* (1584). Wilson's ladies are Love, Lucre, and Conscience. In the play, which uses many themes also found in *The Merchant of Venice*, Gerontus lives in Turkey, and his name is from Greek *geron* (old man). The Christian Mercadorus, who owes Gerontus money, goes to England to evade paying. When Gerontus takes the case to court, Mercadorus converts to Islam to avoid paying the debt. We can perhaps add to the long list of similarities between *Gerontion* and *Burbank* that each evokes a play about a Jewish moneylender cheated by Christians, Wilson's *The Three Ladies of London* in one case and Shakespeare's *Merchant* of *Venice* in the other.' (353).

558 Eliot, *Ara Vos Prec* 11.

559 Asher, 40-41. Both are not part of Eliot's concept of tradition. Yet, while Sweeney could become part of tradition by leaving the 'uncultured' lower classes, the Jew will remain the perpetual outsider even if assimilated.

560 Cf. Schmidthorst, 75.

561 Kushner, 161.

562 Cf. DuPlessis, 199.

563 Julius, *T.S. Eliot, Anti-Semitism, and Literary Form*, 195.

564 Quoted in: Ricks, 64.

565 Sloane, 193-194.

566 This has remained a popular strategy in right-wing discourse, which often nowadays conflates people of colour with apes. Compare this to Eliot who uses not only primates, but also pigs, rats, vertebrates, and protozoic slime (arguably not an animal but notable as the living organism farthest removed from humans).

567 Sanos, Sandrine; *The Aesthetics of Hate: Far-Right Intellectuals, Antisemitism, and Gender in 1930s France;* 90. Furthermore she adds: '"Decadence," "degradation," "decrepitude," "debasement": those are the words that appeared most often, almost compulsively, in the prose of *Combat* and *L'Insurgé* journalists' (90-91).

**5. No Men in No-Man's Land – Wyndham Lewis**

568 Anspaugh, Kelly; 'Another Look at Lewis, Joyce and Woolf', 365-366.

569 Loewenstein, Andrea Freud; *Loathsome Jews and Engulfing Women: Metaphors of Projection in the Works of Wyndham Lewis, Charles William, and Graham Greene,* 151; versus: Ivan Phillips: 'Political Incorrectness Gone Sane: Lewis, Race, and Gender' In: Gasiorek, Andrzej and Nathan Waddell; *Wyndham Lewis: A Critical Guide,* 121. Phillips is making a similar argument for *The Jews: Are They Human?* (Ibid.; 121).

570 'Towards the end of 1938 Lewis wrote a book about the Jews that is the most powerful philosemitic statement made by any modernist writer – or indeed any writer – at this time.' (Munton, Alan; 'Wyndham Lewis: From Proudhon to Hitler (and back): the Strange Political Journey of Wyndham Lewis'; 6); versus: Loewenstein, 141.

571 Hegarthy, Terence; 'Wyndham Lewis the Writer: A Preoccupation with the Real'; 338.; and: Materer, Timothy; *Wyndham Lewis the Novelist,* 167.

572 Nadel speaks of the irresistible attraction fascism had for Lewis. (Nadel, Ira B.; ''The Real History of the ERA': Joyce, Lewis and Fascism', 31). Despite the title of his study, Jameson seems to feel more comfortable with the label of anti-Marxist for Lewis, rather than fascist (Jameson; Frederic; *Fables of Aggression: Wyndham Lewis: The Modernist as Fascist,* 15-16); revolutionary conservative: Lafferty; David; 'Castor Oil for Conservatives: Wyndham Lewis's and "Count Your Dead: They Are Alive! Bolsho-Tory" Politics', 26ff; reactionary: Brown, Nicholas; *Utopian Generations: The Political Horizon of Twentieth-Century Literature,* 130; Actually Bridson sees him even more in the political centre: '[u]nwilling as he might have been to admit it—along with Baldwin and Chamberlain, Attlee and Churchill, Lewis clearly remained in the middle—right of centre maybe, but none the less in the middle. He would commit himself to *neither* extreme' (Bridson, D. G.; *The Filibuster: A Study of the Political Ideas of Wyndham Lewis,* 181).

573 Head, Philip; *Some Enemy Fight-Talk: Aspects of Wyndham Lewis on Art and Society,* 58-65.

574 Gasiorek and Waddell, 3; and Munton, as evidenced by the title of his paper 'Wyndham Lewis: From Proudhon to Hitler (and back): the Strange Political Journey of Wyndham Lewis'.

575 Gasiorek and Waddell, 3; versus: Nadel. 31 and Jameson, 183.

576 Chace, William; William Chace: 'On Lewis's Politics: The Polemics Polemically Answered'; In Meyers, Jeffrey; *Wyndham Lewis: A Revaluation,* 163-164.

577 Quoted in: Bridson, 97.

578 Frederic Jameson describes *Hitler* 'as notorious as [it] is unread' (179), while Nathan Waddell talks about Lewis's 'inflammatory books [...] susceptible to "hearsay interpretations" and bemoans the supposed fact that 'many critics have not actually read these books [...] yet nevertheless feel qualified to condemn them' (in: Miller, Tyrus; *Cambridge Companion to Wyndham Lewis*, 87). Ivan Phillips chimes into the debate suggesting that those who attack Lewis for his politics have seldom read the books on which they rest their charges (cf. Phillips, Ivan; 'In his Bad Books: Wyndham Lewis and Fascism', 108).

579 Cf. Lewis; Wyndham; *Rude Assignment*, 196.

580 This experience left in him the persistent maxim to avoid future war involving Western Europe at all costs – he, however, had not become a full pacifist as his reaction to the Abyssinian War show. In *Left Wings Over Europe* Lewis writes 'that the industrious and igneous Italian rather than the lazy, stupid, predatory Ethiopian, should eventually control Abyssinia is surely not such a tragedy' (164-165), showing that Lewis could be supportive of war aggression if it was based on ideological assumptions he shared.

581 In *Rude Assignment* Lewis quotes from Orwell's piece: 'The intellectual struggle between Stalinists and anti-Stalinists goes on and on, with frequent sensational defections from one side or the other. Wyndham Lewis, I am credibly informed, has become a Communist or at least a strong sympathiser, and is writing a book in praise of Stalin to balance his previous books in favour of Hitler.' Lewis dryly comments that 'this curious fairy-story exported to America was a record in silliness, if not in malevolence' (both Lewis, *Rude Assignment,* 78).

582 Consider, for example, Munton's statement that 'when *The Vulgar Streak* was published in 1941, George Orwell praised its understanding of class in Britain. In private Lewis described himself as a communist, though we must have some doubts as to what he thought that meant.' (6) Munton offers no sources for the latter claim. According to another essay by Munton, Orwell had, already in 1938, claimed Lewis for the left-wing side (In: Gasiorek and Waddel, 76).

583 Lewis, *Rude Assignment,* 211.

584 Lewis, *Rude Assignment,* 67.

585 Lewis, *Rude Assignment,* 168.

586 Lewis, *Rude Assignment,* 221-222.

587 Establishing intellectuals as a distinct class helps Lewis to address the then widespread attacks on intellectuals by right-wing intellectuals such as Sorel and Berth. I will take up this point in more detail in chapter 6.

588 The source of these terms and the division is Goethe, whose words preface the chapter 'What the Puppets Want' in *The Art of Being Ruled*.

589 Lewis, Wyndham; *The Art of Being Ruled,* 125. Or again on page 151: 'For in the mass people actually wish to be *automata*: they wish to be *conventional*: they hate you teaching them or forcing them into "freedom": they wish to be obedient, hardworking machines, as near dead as possible – as near dead (feelingless and thoughtless) as they can get, without actually dying.' In essence this idea matches Pound's and Eliot's understanding of the subconscious masses versus the select few.

590 This is effected by the shift on the desires of the 'puppets' triggered by democratic ideals: 'But the theory or philosophy of What the Public Wants would never have come into existence without (1) the democratic, "enlightened" régime of modern Europe; and (2) the censure of the moralist, criticism of the philosopher, inhumanity of the scientist, and *superbia* of the napoleonism of Nietzsche.' (Lewis, *The Art of Being Ruled*, 80).

591 Lewis; *The Art of Being Ruled,* 127. It can be assumed that Lewis here uses 'racial' as pertaining to species as he makes clear in his examples: '[a] beaver does not compare itself with a walrus or an antelope' (127). For Lewis, most white people would be classed as puppets.

592 Lewis; *The Art of Being Ruled,* 247.

593 Lewis; *The Art of Being Ruled,* 248 and 249 respectively.

594 Lewis; *The Art of Being Ruled,* 250.

595 Lewis; *The Art of Being Ruled,* 250.

596 Erin G. Carlston has summed up Lewis's take on gender quite aptly:

Lewis articulates strongly hierarchical and gendered theories of aesthetics and politics while calling into question the very meaning(fulness) of gender in terms that can approximate the radical antiessentialism of third-wave feminism, or even Judith Butler's theory of gender as performance. In particular, although his treatment of women characters and inscriptions of femininity often remain congealed in hostile and relatively uninteresting stereotype, his discussions of men and masculinity can open onto much wider vistas. Lewis's critique of masculinity lays bare the workings of masculinist power, denaturalizes male privilege, and represents manliness as an anxious, generally unsuccessful performance with ludicrous – and potentially lethal – consequences (In: Miller, Tyrus; *Cambridge Companion to Wyndham Lewis* 126).

#### 597 Lewis; *The Art of Being Ruled,* 92.

598 Lewis; *The Art of Being Ruled,* 244.

599 'Traditionally women and children are the most helpless and ill-equipped categories of mankind. Up to the present, equality of opportunity has not been achieved, and they are still the most credulous and influenceable of us. It is natural, therefore, that a great political power, interested only in domination and nothing else, would seize on them as its most readily manipulated tools. By flattery and coercion it would discipline their ignorance and weakness into an organized instrument of social and political domination.' (*The Art of Being Ruled*;185).

600 According to Lewis, women, children and child-like people are easier to influence and coerced; moreover, the emancipation of women is a boon to the industry as they can be employed for lower wages than men.

601 Lewis; *The Art of Being Ruled,* 218.

602 See for example Lewis *The Art of Being Ruled* 195-196 and *Hitler* 97. This argument can be found almost verbatim in Weininger's book *Geschlecht und Charakter*, where Lewis possibly lifted it from, or, at least, found his conviction validated. In his study *Geschlecht und Charakter*, Weininger writes that 'many posts in stores, accounting, postal and other communication services, any place where a merely mechanical skill is employed, are being given to women, because the female is less sophisticated and therefore has less demands than the male; capitalism has realised earlier than science that women can also be paid less as they have a lower cost of living.' [...daß viele Stellen in Geschäftsläden, in der Buchhaltung, Im Post-, Telegraphen- und Telephondienste, wo immer eine rein schablonenmäßige Tätigkeit beansprucht wird, mit Vorliebe an Frauen vergeben werden, weil W viel weniger differenziert und eben darum bedürfnisloser ist als M, der Kapitalismus aber lange vor der Wissenschaft das weggehabt hat, daß man die Frauen ihrer niedrigeren Lebenshaltung wegen auch schlechter bezahlen dürfe'] (284). The similarity of Lewis's and Weininger's arguments may be a testimony to Weininger's great influence on Lewis, yet it might also testify to – and is further proven by Weininger's postmortem fame – the great popularity and ubiquity of these thoughts.

603 Carlston, Erin G.; 'Women, Masculinity, and Homosexuality in Lewis' In: Miller, *Cambridge Companion to Wyndham Lewis*, 126.

604 Brown 130.

605 With some notable exceptions, such as Charles Ferrall who charts Lewis's ideological journey thusly: 'Ideologically, his first but never dissolved marriage was to the romantic primitivism of liberal democracy. However, after the General Strike of 1926, Lewis became more preoccupied with communism and when Hitler came to power in 1933 he devoted much of his new ideological attention to fascism' (136). Here not only the timing seems to be skewed but Ferrall's general assessment of Lewis's ideology during the 1920s.

606 Jameson, 18. Nicholas Brown has similarly noted this and moreover explains why it does not only show Lewis's pre-mature awareness but also his later attraction to critics of the Left: 'All these critiques [of the cult of the primitive, the manufacture of the public as an instrument of social control, the patriarchal family as an antiquated and repressive institution, the educationalist state, ideologies of progressivism and the related notion of a hypostatized human nature] we are accustomed to think of not only as much later developments, but also specifically in terms of Left analyses of liberalism: indeed, as has been pointed out before, it is as a critic of liberalism that Lewis is most sympathetically understood' (129).

607 Munton, Alan; 'Introduction: Wyndham Lewis Our Contemporary'; In: Jaime, Carmelo Cunchillos; *Wyndham Lewis The Radical: Essays on Literature and Modernity,* 9- 10. Toby Foshay has also addressed Jameson's critique: 'The notion that anti-Marxism is the "structural center," whether conscious or unconscious, of Lewis's work [as Jameson claims] misses the point' He continues: 'Lewis opposed all egalitarianism and collectivism, whether democratic or socialist. His classicist and rightist sympathies were rooted in a commitment to fundamental difference, to the irreducible uniqueness of the artist in society, the mind in the body, the genius among the common run of humanity. He opposed democratic mass collectivism, socialism, feminism, homosexuality, primitivism, historicism (the "time cult"), and modernist subjectivism in its aestheticist reduction of significant content to experimental form. He opposed all erasing of distinct lines of demarcation between objects, social classes, races, sexes, states of mind, categories. Dualism, the tension of opposites, was an instinctive and visceral response of Lewis's in every sphere of life, a response which he deliberately cultivated and theoretically and polemically promulgated' (*Wyndham Lewis and the Avant-Garde: The Politics of the Intellect;* 18-19). While I agree with the general notion that Lewis's right-wing allegiance has at its core 'a commitment to fundamental difference', Foshay's list is too inclusive: Lewis's stance towards socialism is more complex as is his attitude towards the category gender.

612 Lewis; *The Art of Being Ruled,* 35. Although in a later chapter he states that 'in the abstract I believe the sovietic system to be the best' (320), fascism seems to him more suited to his country.

613 Lewis; *The Art of Being Ruled,* 71.

614 Lewis; *The Art of Being Ruled*, 321.

615 Lewis; *The Art of Being Ruled,* 320-321 and 321 respectively.

616 Cf. Lewis; *The Art of Being Ruled,* 69, 75, and 134.

617 Munton, 4. Munton offers a rather bizarre conclusion in his essay writing that: '[t]he impossible political places he visited but withdrew from should alert his readers to the fact that he was trying out ideas, not defining a political position. Lewis's politics are offered by him in such a way as to ask for a response' (24).

618 It is debatable how much socialism there was in National Socialism. Even if the use of the concept was merely employed to attract the working class to the newfound NSDAP, it signifies that socialism was not something deemed utterly incompatible, but something that could be made use of, or even partially incorporated.

619 Lewis; *The Art of Being Ruled,* 321.

620 I agree with Vincent Sherry when he writes: 'As a Marxist, however, Jameson reduces Lewis's political options to the binary dialectic model: the spectre of communism has generated the single, predictable antithesis of fascism, which the Enemy must seize as the only available alternative.  Authority is his one value, and if it is properly (optically) established, it matters not one whit to him which partisan stripe it wears' (*Ezra Pound, Wyndham Lewis and Radical Modernism*, 102).

621 In *Rude Assignment* he writes: 'Personally I would rather muddle along with the democratic rulers of the West' (165).

622 Stockton, Sharon; 'Aesthetics, Politics, and the Staging of the World: Wyndham Lewis and the Renaissance', 496.

623 Lewis, *Time and Western Man*, 404. Lewis flaunted a very idiosyncratic orthography and used italics and unusual capitalisation frequently. In this chapter all deviations from the norm (be it spelling or typography) in Lewis's quotes are his own and will not be further indicated. The 'he' here refers to Bertrand Russell, whose book, *Our Knowledge of the External World*, Lewis viewed as an example of 'the timeview in all its pristine brilliance and naïveté' (Lewis, Wyndham; *Time and Western Man,* 395).

624 Hegarthy, 338.

625 For an explanation of the concept ethnopluralism, see chapter 6.

626 However, a few years later Lewis would speculate in *Hitler* that maybe there is a natural inequality among different cultures: 'When we consider the intellectual 'darkness' of Africa (with the exception of the Nile Valley)—the similar unresourcefulness of the negritic south of India, the absolutely stationary condition of the Australian 'aborigine' (in whom, because of his isolation, it is suggested, we have a paradigm of average humanity, when left to its own devices)—there is something to be said for the european—the 'aryan'—'Whites'—those people who in the remote past brought civilization to India, and possibly to Chaldea and to China too. It appears that any such notion must remain the merest speculation, for too little information so far is available, we are told, to do more than guess. All I am suggesting is that it is not in itself a *ridiculous* notion, as it is too much the habit—in the anti-'aryan' West—to assert' (134-135).

627 Cf. Lewis, *Paleface*, for example, 4 and 22-26.

628 Cf. Lewis, *Paleface*, 23-25. Both, Stoddard and Grant constructed a racial history that saw white people under threat from people of colour. Stoddard bemoans the fact that white people are too absorbed with 'domestic dissensions' to notice the impending threat from outside (vii), which, so Grant reasons, coupled with racial mixing, leads to 'suicide pure and simple, and the first victim of this amazing folly will be the white man himself' (xxxii). While Lewis's *Paleface* has a slightly different focus than these studies it nevertheless rests on the same assumptions of whites, and white power and hegemony, being under threat.

629 'As to 'Racial Equality,' what that 'equality' really implies, Tredrup [character from Hans Dominik's *Atlantis*] learns from his impressive friend, the great german industrialist—who is not the dupe, of course, of such a word as *equality*—'und dann hatte Uhlenkort zu ihm gesprochen—lange eindringlich, bis es auch ihm klar geworden. *Die Bedeutung der Frage: Gleichberechtigung der Rassen—Gleichbedeutend mit dem Abstieg der weissen Rasse. Erste Stufe eines Abstieges, der weiter und weiter zum Unterliegen führen musste.*' (quoted in: Lewis,; *Paleface*; 50). Similar allegations can also be found in Lewis's other writings concerning feminism and homosexuality. Again these arguments are still very much in circulation among today's Right.

636 For example, Brown mentions that '[i]ndeed, somewhat bizarrely, some of the fictional dialogue spoken by the proto-fascist Hyperidians in early drafts of *The Childermass* finds its way back into Lewis's mouth in his nonfiction treatise *Time and Western Man*' (27-28). Daniel Schenker sees the Hyperideans repeating Lewis's arguments from *The Art of Being Ruled* and *Time and Western Man* (*Wyndham Lewis: Religion and Modernism*; 155), while David Trotter sees Alectryon as carrying on 'where *The Art of Being Ruled* had left off' (*Paranoid Modernism: Literary Experiment, Psychosis, and the Professionalization of English Society;* 344-345).

637 Campbell, SueEllen; *The Enemy Opposite: The Outlaw Criticism of Wyndham Lewis;* 18.

638 Chace, commenting on *The Revenge for Love*, writes: 'And this has the effect, which is perhaps his unique contribution to the political novel, of completely neutralizing ideology itself. Even the human aspiration to political life is rightfully seen valueless' (in: Meyers, 155).

639 Neilson, Brett; 'History's Stamp: Wyndham Lewis's *The Revenge for Love* and the Heidegger Controversy', 29.

640 Wagner, Geoffrey; *Wyndham Lewis: A Portrait of the Artists as Enemy,* 305-306.

641 Lewis; *Rude Assignment*, 199. Of course, compared to the reception of other books, like *The Apes of God,* it was indeed peaceful.

642 Based on Shlomith Rimmon-Kenan narratological model *The Childermass* can be described as having a narrator-focalizer who perceived the focalized from without. Apart from this the novel is in large parts dominated by dialogue. All of this taken together creates an atmosphere of unreliability, uncertainty and opacity.

643 Miller, Tyrus; *Late Modernism: Politics, Fiction, and the Arts Between the World Wars,* 111.

644 A term coined by Frederic Jameson, see his chapter in *Fables of Aggression* 'Agons of the Pseudo-couple', 35-61.

645 Wagner, 294.

646 As many critics point out Pullman seems obviously modelled on Joyce, while Satters appears to be an unflattering portray of Gertrude Stein. Lewis attacked both writers (in *Time and Western Man* and *Men Without Art*) for being followers of the time-cult and especially Stein with her infantilized language as purveyor for the youth-cult.

647 Lewis; Wyndham; *The Childermass*, 30, 37, and 41.

648 Lewis; *The Childermass,* 50.

649 Lewis, Wyndham; *Men Without Art*, 98.

650 Lewis; *The Childermass,* 32. Munton has also observed this dynamic: 'Pullman begins to explain, in a schoolmasterly way, their surroundings. It becomes slowly apparent to the attentive reader that he is an advocate of the world-view of the Bailiff, whilst Satters, foolish as he often is, has a commonsense scepticism that gives him a far more perceptive view of the Bailiff's strategies of domination, even though he cannot fully articulate their significance' (in Jaime 177).

651 Lewis; *The Childermass,* 32.

652 In: Gasiorek and Waddell (eds.), 74.

653 Lewis; *The Childermass,* 85.

654 Lewis; *The Childermass,* 146.

655 Lewis; *The Childermass,* 146-147.

656 Lewis; *The Childermass,* 147.

657 In a way Satters is made to be disgusting. Considering the dynamics of disgust I explored in my chapter on Eliot, Satters despite his perceptiveness comes across as the more repugnant character.

658 Whose *Gentlemen Prefer Blondes* was wildly successful during the 1920s and consequently received its share of criticism from Lewis.

659 Jameson, 59.

660 Lewis; *The Childermass,* 156.

661 Cf. Benjamin, 47-48.

662 Gasiorek and Waddell (eds.), 74-75.

663 Welzer, Harald; *Täter: Wie aus ganz normalen Menschen Massenmörder werden;* 148. ['Der Vollzug der Tat stiftet Gemeinsamkeit; die Zuschauer bestätigen durch ihre Anwesenheit, dass das, was sich in der Arena abspielt, in Ordnung ist.  Überhaupt wird die *aktive Dimension des Zuschauens* bei Gewalthandlungen prinzipiell unterschätzt: Zuschauer bestätigen durch ihre pure Präsenz und durch ihr Nichteingreifen, dass der Referenzrahmen, in dem die Akteure sich bewegen, in Geltung ist und nicht in Frage steht.'], italics in the original.

664 This also serves as an answer to the questions Scott Klein asks about *The Childermass*: 'What political role is played by the observer – such as Pullman – who stands on the sidelines, as chorus, but never involves himself in the 'show' itself?'' (in: Gasiorek and Waddell (eds.), 194-195).

665 Lewis; *Rude Assignment,* 184. 'Culture' here for Lewis denotes the more restricted meaning of cultivation of character, mind and faculties as well as the arts that are products and source for such cultivation.

666 In *The Art of Being Ruled* Lewis maintains that the puppets predominantly seek entertainment and sensationalism (125-130), which he says should be respected by the ruling system and not attempted to be changed. This is part of his greater argument against egalitarianism. The Bailiff in *The Childermass* embodies the deceitful ruler by pretending to pander to egalitarianism while setting up a completely inegalitarian system.

667 The term, according to the OED, can designate a low-ranking soldier or an unskilled labourer, sometimes also a debtor held in servitude.

670 Klein in: Gasiorek and Waddell (eds.), 195.

671 Brown, 147.

672 Lewis; *The Childermass,* 42.

673 Lewis; *The Childermass,* 43. Italics in the original.

674 In his polemical essay Benda argues that the intellectuals of his time had abandoned critical and impartial reasoning in favour of political involvement. His attack was predominantly aimed at nationalist and right-wing intellectuals such as Charles Maurras, Maurice Barrès, Gabriele D'Annunzio and Heinrich von Treitschke. *The Childermass* suggests that complicity with the ruling system/ideology counts as treason of the intellectual, not political involvement per se.

675 Lewis; *The Art of Being Ruled*, 75. Lewis reiterates this point ten years later in *Left Wings Over Europe,* which shows that this assumption had a lasting validity for his assessment of political systems and might partially explain Lewis's on-going support for right-wing movements in the 1930s:

So the hypnotized automaton of democracy*, through not knowing that he is not free*, is, if anything, in greater danger than the plain servant of the state (*servant* – not 'gentleman-help' and co-partner, or any democratic make-believe of that sort). And he is in a less dignified position for he is a perpetual dupe, enslaved by *words*. 'We rule people by words!' When he said that, Disraeli was describing a typical democracy (98).

676 In Meyers, 128.

677 Schenker, writing on Lewis and Religion, notes: 'Discussions at the Bailiffs court rarely mention God, but return again and to the same social and political issues that Lewis addressed in his non-fiction writings. (How odd, for example, that the souls of the dead should be divided into fascist, communist, and liberal democratic factions.)' (Schenker, Daniel; 'Favoring the Divine: Wyndham Lewis's "The Human Age", 65).

678 Munton in: Meyers, 128.

679 Munton in: Gasiorek and Waddell (eds.), 74

680 Brown, 135.

681 Schenker, *Wyndham Lewis: Religion and Modernism*, 151.

682 Wagner, 58.

683 Lewis; *The Childermass,* 160 and 331-2. This is further complicated by the Bailiff changing shape momentarily: 'In this attitude a greatly enlarged mask of Chaplin, but deeply-pigmented, in sickly-sweet serio-comic mockery, it shakes above the audience.' Pullman reacts as readers expect it by now: 'Now that is the *real* Bailiff! [...] I think he's extraordinarily handsome don't you?' (230-231) Later one of the Bailiffites exclaims: 'He's a real White Man isn't he the old Bailie?' (249) No one, as Munton correctly realised, can be trusted here.

684 Lewis; *The Childermass,* 327-328.

685 Klein in Gasiorek and Waddell (eds.), 194.

686 Klein in Gasiorek and Waddell (eds.), 194-5.

687 In a discarded manuscript of the first chapters, god visits Sammael (i.e. Satan) in hospital.

688 In fact, I think *The Enemy of the Stars* offers a number of similarities to *The Childermass* (and is much closer to it in style and content) than *Monstre Gai* and *Malign Fiesta* and it would be worth to devote a comparative study to both texts.

689 'The idea of the state moved into every heart and roused enthusiasm. To serve the state, this worldly god, became the new form of worship and cult' ['Der Gedanke des Staates zog in alle Herzen ein und weckte Begeisterung. Ihm zu dienen, diesem weltlichen Gott, das wurde der neue Gottesdienst und Kultus.'] Stirner, Max; *Der Einzige und sein Eigentum;* 105. Stirner postulates that the basis of political liberalism is the concept of abstract humanity, and thus the state or nation, replacing actual individuals: 'The true human is the nation, the single individual always remains an egoist. Therefore, shed your singularity, which houses egoist inequality as well as unrest, and dedicate yourselves to true humanity, the nation and the state.' ['Der wahre Mensch ist die Nation, der einzelne aber stets ein Egoist. Darum streift eure Einzelheit oder Vereinzelung ab, in der die egoistische Ungleichheit und der Unfriede haust, und weiht euch ganz dem wahren Menschen, der Nation oder dem Staat.'] 104.

690 Stirner writes: 'Human/humanity and justice are ideas, spectres, for which everything will be sacrificed: [...] The human/humanity is not a person, it is an ideal, a spectre.' ['Mensch und Gerechtigkeit sind Ideen, Gespenster, denen zuliebe alles geopfert wird: [...] Der Mensch ist ja keine Person, sondern ein Ideal, ein Spuk.'] 82. For Stirner it is the French Revolution that epitomises the sacrifice of actual individual humans for the greater humanity: 'Because the revolutionary priestlings and schoolmasters served humanity, they would cut the throats of actual humans.  In the early phase of the political spectacle when Pullman and Satters find themselves involuntarily among them the text identifies them by their 'white folds of a classic drapery' and Pullman states: 'We've got into the middle of the Ku Klux Klan!' (Lewis; *The Childermass*, 178). Later, however, the Hyperideans are described as dressed in black cloaks with some being naked except for a girdle (316). The choice to make their cloaks black could be seen as a nod to Italian Fascists. Moreover, the presence of Scandinavian elements, like horned helmets, and swastikas disturb the classical references.

694 Lewis; *The Childermass,* 179.

695 Consider the following dialogue:

'That set—the high-brow circus you know, [Pullman remarks], the followers of the so-called philosopher Hyperides, not that that's his name either.'

'Isn't it?' Satters is gazing listlessly at the false sun. 'What is it?'

'Jones, I should think' (Lewis; *The Childermass*, 179).

However, readers should have already become suspicious about the veracity of Pullman's statements.

696 Lewis; *The Childermass,* 188.

697 Schenker, *Wyndham Lewis: Religion and Modernism*, 155.

698 Lewis; *The Childermass,* 192-196 and 329-339.

699 Lewis; *The Childermass,* 361.

700 Lewis; *The Childermass,* 316.

701 Lewis; *The Childermass,* 324-325.

702 His name is shortly mentioned along with a dozen names of other Hyperideans fifty pages earlier. Yet his name, similar in sound and origin to many others, did not at this point betray his noteworthiness.

703 Lewis; *The Childermass,* 368.

704 Lewis; *The Childermass,* 367.

705 Obviously, this cannot have been Lewis's model as the now infamous uniforms designed by Hugo Boss have only been introduced in the 1930s (cf. Koop, 134- 135).

706 Cf. Koop, especially chapter 1.1 'Das Hakenkreuz', 34-41.

707 There is one unidentified Hyperidean, '[a] giant with a metal swastika sewn upon his breast, who leads the unpolished horde, bellow[ing]' for revolution' mentioned roughly 50 pages earlier. Despite the similarity this does not seem to be Alectryon, so it would mean that there are at least some Hyperideans wearing Nazi insignia (Lewis; *The Childermass,* 318).

708 Lewis; *The Childermass,* 326.

709 Lewis; *The Childermass,* 368.

#### 710 Lewis; *The Childermass,* 331.

711 Compare this with Reichel's chapter 'Aestheticisation of the Extraordinary: the SS', especially: 'This [the drawing up of a frontier between the normal and the abnormal] led to an aesthetic, political and scientific stereotyping and stigmatisation. National Socialism merged Jews, homosexuals, the mentally ill and petty criminals, communists and gypsies into a 'damned race' of others, awaiting death. On the other side of this utopian aesthetic were the 'political soldiers' of the SS, who not only embodied this vision of terror as well as the beauty cult, but also fulfilled it. The murderous excess was preceded by an aesthetic excess.' [Dies lief auf eine ästhetische, politische und naturwissenschaftliche Stereotypisierung und Stigmatisierung zugleich hinaus. Der Nationalsozialismus faßte alle zusammen: Juden, Homosexuelle, Geisteskranke und Gewohnheitsverbrecher, Kommunisten und Zigeuner – zu einer »verfluchten Rasse« von Außenseitern, auf die der Tod wartete.  Dem mörderischen Exzeß ging der ästhetische voraus.]' (Reichel, 231).

#### 712 Lewis; *The Childermass,* 370.

#### 713 Lewis; *Time and Western Man,* 9.

714 The Bailiff claims Alectryon is 'a Breton baronette with an English barmaid for a mother' who is 'cosmopolitan', due to his travels' and has 'continental politics'. Alectryon corrects him saying that he 'was a Breton duke's son with an English Big-Steel Jewess for mama—[he] had a magnate-mother but [his] papa was poor.' It is difficult to say which version is more creditable. Nevertheless, more importantly, the Bailiff initially refuses Alectryon because he is 'a Dago' and not 'Anglo-Saxon'. Only when Polemon offers to swap Alectryon for Terpsion, a Welsh man, the Bailiff (in panic) accepts Alectryon. (Lewis; *The Childermass*, 369-374) This absurd scene can be read as a debate between the nationalist and internationalist view. It further ridicules the Bailiff for being hypocritical in the realm of race, as he employs and praises people of colour but objects to white people from other European countries. This reasoning comes from Lewis's *Paleface*, which sees the then supposedly widespread interest in other cultures as a misguided exoticism at the expense of a unified white race.

715 Both were also the names of publications emanating from these groups, which again comments on the role of intellectuals in politics.

#### 716 Lewis; *The Childermass,* 375.

717 In *Hitler*, for examples, Lewis writes: ''The Punch and Judy of the Whig and Tory was of the same order of humbug, neither less nor more, as the 'Dictatorship of the Proletariat.' The Czar Stalin is the dictator, and he says 'Le Proletariat, c'est moi!' American Democracy is another political façade of that sort' (195).

718 Cf. Lewis; *The Childermass,* 375-394.

719 Lewis; *The Childermass,* 393.

720 In the sequels this ideological position will be held by higher-ranking characters, but importantly, in each book the governing official with the highest rank holds this exact same view.

721 Lewis; *The Childermass,* 394.

722 Lewis; *The Childermass,* 394.

723 Sorel saw violence as both destructive and constructive, because already the act of violence produces positive values such as vigour and valour thus replacing weakness and cowardice; cf. Sorel, chapter 6 'Ethics of Violence' and Appendix 2 'Apology for Violence'.

724 Lewis; *The Childermass,* 395.

725 Lewis; *The Childermass,* 400. Addressing parliament, Mussolini declared: 'In the last few days not only Fascists, but many citizens have been wondering "is there a Government" […] Are they men or are they puppets?' (In: Griffin, Roger; *Fascism,* 50).

726 Lewis; *The Childermass,* 400.

727 Lewis; *The Childermass,* 401.

728 The word 'puppet' is the favourite insult among the Bailiff's opponents. Moreover, the word, and similar phrases like 'automaton' are also used in the description of the characters. For example, Alectryon approaches the tribune to enter the debate 'almost as an automaton' (Lewis; *The Childermass;* 369). Note that this usage is also reminiscent of Mussolini, who, for example, in a speech to the Chamber of Deputies in 1925, attacked the government with the words: 'Are they men or are they puppets?'' (Griffin; *Fascism*, 50).

729 Cf. for example Dasenbrock: 'Lewis is not attempting to design an ideal society or even to improve this one; what he is attempting to do is provide us with a survival guide, an art of being ruled, for the modern liberal democracies he criticizes so severely. What this means is that Lewis is developing in *The Art of Being Ruled* not a consistent ideology but a complex critique of ideology' (in: Golsan, Richard J.; *Fascism, Aesthetics, and Culture,* 87).

730 Dasenbrock in: Golsan, 93.

731 Ayers, David; *Wyndham Lewis and Western Man; 126.*

732 Even in the sequel *Monstre Gai* women have to live in a separate city, but readers at least get a glimpse at one female character.

733 A notable exception is Erin G. Carlston's contribution 'Women, Masculinity, and Homosexuality in Lewis'. Paul Edwards's comment that '[a] persuasive and comprehensive account that takes Lewis's complex and conflicted attitudes to women, gender, and sexuality as central has yet (at least to my knowledge) to be written; given that the feminist revolution in literary studies is probably the most transformational since the 1970s, this is surprising.' shows that this is a crucial absence in the study of Lewis as a whole (in: Gasiorek and Waddell (eds.), 227).

734 In: Golsan, 87.

735 Carlston notes that 'although his treatment of women characters and inscriptions of femininity often remain congealed in hostile and relatively uninteresting stereotype, his discussions of men and masculinity can open onto much wider vistas. Lewis's critique of masculinity lays bare the workings of masculinist power, denaturalizes male privilege, and represents manliness as an anxious, generally unsuccessful performance with ludicrous – and potentially lethal – consequences' (In: Miller, Tyrus; *Cambridge Companion to Wyndham Lewis,* 126).

736 Lewis; *The Art of Being Ruled,* 247.

737 Lewis; *The Art of Being Ruled,* 249.

738 This does not mean that Lewis was not susceptible to gender stereotyping and his misogynist tendencies are ample testimony to that. Some examples from *The Art of Being Ruled* show how entrenched Lewis's own gender biases were. Thus he writes: 'Traditionally women and children are the most helpless and ill-equipped categories of mankind. Up to the present, equality of opportunity has not been achieved, and they are still the most credulous and influenceable of us' and later on he speaks of the 'natural feminine hostility to the intellect' (185 and 244).

739 Lewis; *Men Without Art,* 131-132.

740 Brown writes: 'All these critiques [such as the cult of the primitive, the manufacture of the public as an instrument of social control, the patriarchal family as an antiquated and repressive institution, the educationalist state, ideologies of progressivism and the related notion of a hypostatized human nature] we are accustomed to think of not only as much later developments, but also specifically in terms of Left analyses of liberalism: indeed, as has been pointed out before, it is as a critic of liberalism that Lewis is most sympathetically understood' (129).

741 Hegarthy wrote in 1982 that '[f]ifty years ago he picked out the raw pattern that has grown into today's society, although he insisted that he wrote merely from observation of his own time and circumstances'. (338) Today this is still to a certain extent true, although Hegarthy is far too enthusiastic about Lewis 'prophecies'. What Lewis is usually credited with are some of the following issues: he problematized the educationalist state, he dismantled the problematic exoticism of his time, he criticised and analysed the workings of capitalism and he inspired McLuhan's concept of the global village. However, in many cases, these issues are part of a larger argument, which often but not always, defends right-wing ideological concepts.

Lewis; *The Art of Being Ruled*, 218.

Lewis; *The Art of Being Ruled,* 250.

Lewis; *The Art of Being Ruled,* 199.

Lewis; *The Art of Being Ruled,* 244.

 Cf. Munton in: Meyers, 121 and 131. Are we to believe that the Hyperideans are gay by virtue of them 'being Greek'? When Munton persists in reading the Hyperideans as gay this seems to contradict his own more astute interpretation of the text that in the novel no one can be trusted.

 Wagner 294. David Peter Corbetts, more correctly I think, reads them as sexually ambiguous (Trotter, 344).

 In the sequels it is explicitly spelled out that at least Pullman is quite revolted by the homosexuals around him. It might be, that by receiving agency, thus becoming a nature, he also becomes 'a real man'.

Lewis; *The Childermass,* 53 and 57.

Lewis; *The Childermass,* 317.

Lewis: *The Childermass,* 312.

Lewis; *The Childermass,* 308.

Lewis; *The Childermass,* 310.

Lewis; *The Childermass,* 311.

Cf. Lewis; *The Art of Being Ruled;* 199 and *Time and Western Man,* 34-35.

 This is continued in *Monstre Gai* where Third City is almost completely populated by gay men. The double meaning of 'gay' gives the title in this light a second, more disturbing, meaning. Hewitt suggests that 'the transvestite is the emblem of modern Western democratism - a ruler disguised as the ruled, a man disguised as a woman. The reappearance of the transvestite in *Hitler*, then, is the disguised reappearance of the democratic' ('Wyndham Lewis: Fascism, Modernism, and the Politics of Homosexuality', 536). These 'no-men' in *The Childermass* might play the same role and are symbols for the democratic nature that rules the Bailiff's court.

Munton in Meyers, 131.

Lewis, *The Childermass,* 196.

Lewis; *The Childermass,* 384-385.

Lewis; *The Childermass,* 388.

Lewis; *Hitle*r, 22.

 Reading both books side by side, it seems that Alectryon is the idealized Nazi, swastika-belt included, who Lewis would later see come to life in Berlin in the 1930s. Reading both books in juxtaposition helps to make sense of the more enigmatic novel. What I am suggesting is the following: as I discussed above Alectryon's character seems to be overall positive despite some negative traits. Looking at *Hitler* I see a validation of this reading: not because Alectryon is like the Nazis Lewis observes in Berlin in 1930, but vice versa, because the Nazis are like Alectryon. Also Hewitt sees a continuing thread from *The Art of Being Ruled* to *Hitler* in the motif of inversion: '"Inversion" - as both phenomenon and structure - is a continuing obsession in Lewis's work - and it is only in terms of the later *Hitler* writings that the political machinations of *The Art Of Being Ruled* can be understood' ('Wyndham Lewis: Fascism, Modernism, and the Politics of Homosexuality', 528). What I argue here is that this thread also runs through *The Childermass*, and in particular through Alectryon.

763 Trotter, 344-345. Trotter also notes in his study that Lewis, among other Modernists, 'regarded masculinity above all as a form of symbolic capital' (10).

764 Wagner, 58. Wagner refers to the Greek myth in which the young man Alectryon falls asleep while on guard for Ares and Aphrodite. Since it was the sun god who walked in on the couple, Ares punished Alectryon by turning him into a rooster, always announcing the appearance of the sun. Apart from the homonym cock Wagner makes use of, Hyperides sending Alectryon into the debate transforms it into an intellectual cockfight. Also note that the Bailiff was likened to a chicken earlier in the novel.

765 Cf. Lewis; *The Childermass,* 385.

766 Lewis; *The Art of Being Ruled,* 92.

767 These two characters, notably different from the Bailiffites, challenge the Bailiff and are killed as a consequence.

768 Jameson, 20-21.

769 Wagner writes: 'Satters and Pulley we detest, and should detest, from the start' to which is shortly afterwards added 'they are both male homosexuals' (294). Munton sees the homosexuality of the Hyperideans as their 'limiting feature': 'the Hyperideans' reality is limited by their chosen 'Greek' identity as homosexuals; they can never become sufficiently complex to be 'real' (in: Meyers 131).

770 Consider for example, the overly positive D. G. Bridson who states:

An occasional pinch of malice notwithstanding, Lewis had always been scrupulously fair to the Jews in all his books. Even in his most sustained attacks upon what he regarded as false doctrine—as in the case of his favourite adversary, Bergson—he had never been tempted to bring race in the argument. He had spoken in very friendly terms about many Jewish intellectuals, and when he found occasion to mention the Jewish race as such, it had always been in respectful terms (212).

Also Alan Munton, as usual, finds only positive things to say about Lewis: 'Towards the end of 1938 Lewis wrote a book about the Jews that is the most powerful philosemitic statement made by any modernist writer – or indeed any writer – at this time' (6).

771 Although, as Andrea Loewenstein suggests, his treatment of Jews could be considered as a paranoid element within his greater political argument:

Lewis's work reveals a similarly narcissistic paranoid system. At its base is a conspiracy spearheaded by women—in league with (depending upon the occasion) feminine homosexual men, Jews, children, nonwhites, members of the working class, communists, and various other groups. The white male, especially the white male artist and genius (of whom Lewis himself may be the only example of his time), is the victim and designated prey of this conspiracy (120).

A few pages later she sums up Lewis's anti-Semitism in the light of *The Jews: Are They Human?*, 'Lewis's hatred of Jews thus never had the phobic, obsessional quality we find in his misogyny or his homophobia' (141).

772 This would explain his use of anti-Semitic stereotyping in his book *The Jews: Are They Human?,* which despite the first impression the title gives is a tract in defense of Jews written during the first peaks of the continental *Judenverfolgung.* Ferrall has aptly summarised the problem with this particular book when he writes that 'Lewis's anti-antisemitism is not a form of philosemitism and for that reason barely disturbs the crudest of antisemitic stereotypes:…' (152).

773 Trubowitz in Miller, Tyrus, *Cambridge Companion to Wyndham Lewis* ;113. Moreover, in her study *Civil Antisemitism* she writes: 'Over the course of his work in the 1930s, Wyndham Lewis addresses—at times polemically, at other times with vigilant delicacy, and at still other times with distressing bigotry—the nature of modern anti-Semitic rhetoric in Britain' (145).

774 In *Hitler* he considers the *Judenfrage* a 'mere bagatelle', which should not hold back the *Blutsgefühl* between Brits and Germans (42). In *Left Wings Over Europe*, published in 1936, he speculates, in an attempt at cross-class empathy no doubt: '…a Durham miner must often have wished he were a Jew in the past six months; and no Jew can ever have wished himself a Durham miner.' (248)

775 David Ayers; *Wyndham Lewis and Western Man, 134.*

776 Loewenstein's study focuses on this aspect. In her introduction she writes: 'My subsequent close readings of the work of Wyndham Lewis, Charles Williams, George Orwell, Evelyn Waugh, Aldous Huxley, Hugh Massingham, and William Gerhadi confirmed the anomaly I had observed in [Henry] Greene. In the works of all these authors, male Jews seemed to reproduce either by parthogenesis or by attaching themselves to Gentile women: there were no female Jews to be seen. In addition, each male Jewish character seemed to exist in close proximity to, in reference to, or in opposition to one or more Gentile female characters.' (6).

777 Weininger was Jewish himself, and his troubled inner-conflict between his own Jewishness and his disdain of what he considered innate Jewishness, might have led to his suicide at the very early age of 23, only two years after the publication of the book that would eventually make him famous, but more crucially it might have lent credibility to his argument in many readers' eyes.

778 Lewis; *The Childermass,* 297.

779 Lewis; *Paleface,* 65.

780 Lewis; *The Childermass,* 379.

781 Wagner, 47.

782 Lewis; *The Childermass,* 211-213. This episode takes place in the first quarter of the political spectacle. It starts unannounced, after Bailiff described how he shaped and transformed the Time Flats, which indicates that he has creative power over the place, if his words can be trusted. The episode itself serves no immediate function for the trials. Instead it highlights the performativity of the political spectacle. The inclusion of German words already hints at a change of idiom here. This new idiom could be read as a mock-Yiddish English mix or hint at the Joycean parody that follows on the ensuing pages. Both readings can be connected with reference to Joyce's character Leopold Bloom.

783 Lewis; *The Childermass,* 157-162 and 242ff. Again consider Ayers: 'These others, however, serve to extend the Orientalism which is associated with the Bailiff […] and to enforce a parallel between the bourgeois state and oriental despotism' (*Wyndham Lewis and Western Man,* 127).

784 Lewis; *The Childermass,* 249.

785 Cf. Lewis; *The Childermass,* 372-373.

786 Lewis; *Paleface*, 258.

787 Brown, 130-131.

788 However, I am not alone in my reading of the Bailiff as Jewish. Consider, for example, David Ayers writing that '[t]he Bailiff is depicted as a Punch-like figure, his hooked nose and stooped posture recalling those of the malignant Jewish figures that litter Lewis's creative works from the 1928 revision of Tarr onward…' ('Lewis's Cultural Criticism'; In: Miller, Tyrus; *Cambridge Companion to Wyndham Lewis,* 146).

789 Cf. Lewis; *The Childermass,* 160-161 and 331.

790 Lewis; Wyndham; *Malign Fiesta,* 32.

791 The introduction of the *Judenstern* was inaugurated on 1 September 1941 by the 'Polizeiverordnung über die Kennzeichnung der Juden'. Paragraph 1 details who has to wear it and how: '(1) Juden, die das sechste Lebensjahr vollendet haben, ist es verboten, sich in der Öffentlichkeit ohne einen Judenstern zu zeigen.

(2) Der Judenstern besteht aus einem handtellergroßen, schwarz ausgezogenen Sechsstern aus gelbem Stoff mit der schwarzen Aufschrift "Jude". Er ist sichtbar auf der linken Brustseite des Kleidungsstücks fest aufgenäht zu tragen.' The practice that visually stigmatised Jews as the other was easily communicated via countless photographs and quickly branded itself into public knowledge and cultural memory. While it does have a long tradition – Sloane writes: 'When Jews were required to wear distinctive clothing or markers, the color was almost always yellow, a constant from the Middle Ages to Auschwitz and Treblinka' (135) – it is most commonly associated with the Nazi persecution of the Jews.

792 As Neilson observes, this is also an attribute Lewis repeatedly used: '*The Revenge for Love* does not explicitly make this association, but Lewis's characterization of Isaac Wohl, the Jewish art forger who prefers "to be somebody else than 'to be himself,'" (230) closely parallels a Nazi anti-Semitism that characterized Jews as "infinitely mimetic beings, or, in other words, the site of an endless mimesis, which is both interminable and inorganic, producing no art and achieving no appropriation" (Heidegger 96)' (38).

793 Julius, *Trials of the Diaspora*, 53.

794 In fact, David Ayers sees the stand-off between Bailiff and Hyperides as 'the moment of mythic confrontation between Jew and Aryan' (*Wyndham Lewis and Western Man*, 126).

795 Lewis; *The Childermass,* 195.

796 When using the phrase 'protozoic slime' in any search engine almost all results link to Eliot's infamous poem.

797 Lewis; *The Childermass,* 195. Fittingly, the Bailiffites use 'Bloody Male' as an insult against Hyperides (ibid).

798 Lewis; *Hitler,* 41.

799 Loewenstein, 152.

800 Loewenstein, 151-152.

801 Italics in the original; *Protocols*, 174 and 148. The text continues: '... the intellectuals could not make anything out of the uttered words in their abstractness, [...] did not see that in nature there is no equality, cannot be freedom' (148). This reasoning corresponds to right-wing thought and portrays the Zionist Elders as consciously promoting false ideology in which they themselves do not believe, just as the Bailiff does in *The Childermass*. To the right-wing readers of the *Protocols* this again highlighted the undeniable truth of right-wing ideology.

802 What is more, a short scene in the first part of the novel also hints at another similarity between Pullman and the Bailiff. When Pullman becomes little miss Pullman, the governess, new hair starts to grow on his head most noticeably a sidecurl: 'A large ribbed curl develops gradually upon his right temple' (*The Childermass* 54). Thus the new hair-growth to mark his shift to the feminine equals or at least incorporates the hairstyle of orthodox Jews. Again the Jew and the feminine are connected. That this change involves Pullman rather than Satters is not only explained by his adherence to the Bailiff, but can also be read as yet another snipe at Joyce, on whom Pullman is partially modelled, or more precisely on Joyce's protagonist Leopold Bloom. Interestingly Lewis saw Bloom as the epitome of a Jewish cliché:

He possesses all the recognized theatrical properties of "the Jew" up-to-date – he is more feminine than *la femme*, shares her couvade, the periodicity of her intimate existence is repeated mildly in his own; he counts the beer bottles stacked in a yard he is passing, computing with glee the profit to be extracted from that commerce; but such a Jew as Bloom, taken together, has never been seen outside the pages of Mr. Joyce's book. And he is not even a Jew most of the time, but his talented irish author' (Lewis; *Time and Western Man,* 98-99.).

803 Both sequels are conventional satires in the sense that for readers it is most of the time clear which characters and actions to condemn and with whom readers should sympathise. In this way they offer a more straightforward ideological reading. On the contrary in *The Childermass* it was usually clear whom to abhor, but less clear with whom to agree. The whole issue of mis/trust makes *The Childermass* especially complex turning it into a satire that has the potential to strike at all political factions.

804 Cf., for example, Julian Murphet 'Lewis and Media', in: Miller, Tyrus; *Cambridge Companion to Wyndham Lewis.*

805 'It can be said with confidence that the structure of Lewis's politics is not "Right all the way," and not "Right-Left-Right," but "Left-Right-Left."' (Munton, 3).

806 Schenker; *Wyndham Lewis: Religion and Modernism*, 140-141.

807 Lewis; *Monstre Gai,* 173-174.

808 The fact that the Yenery is a malfunctioning ghetto underlines the fact that women should not be left to rule, and if they do, the effects are detrimental. This implicitly supports Lewis's earlier argument that the feminine principle coincides with the ruled.

809 Lewis; *Monstre Gai,* 175.

810 Compare it for example to 'fridging', a popular trope in comic books, where women have violence done to them, are killed, and more often than necessary are dismembered and put in fridges (hence the name) in order to further a male character's development, implying that men's hurt or protective instinct triggered by the deed is more profound than women's lives. Examples of this trope were collected on a website created by writer Gail Simone aptly titled 'Women in Refrigerators' (http://lby3.com/wir/).

811 Vegetarianism was already a topic for Lewis in *The Art of Being Rule,* see, for example, 56-65.

812 Lewis; *Monstre Gai,* 157.

813 Lewis; *Monstre Gai,* 157

814 Miller, *Anatomy of Disgust*, 9.

815 Lewis; *Monstre Gai,* 160-161.

816 Even though as has been often shown homophobia in a person does not necessarily imply that the same person is heterosexual.

817 Lewis; *Monstre Gai,* 165.

818 *Monstre Gai* paints a picture of society that has turned (some of) the existing hegemonies and the heterosexual matrix upside down. Third City is not only a place where homosexuality, vegetarianism, universal basic income and a car-free lifestyle have become the norm, but as the novel makes unmistakably clear, it presents a degenerate future version of British society as it existed back then. Readers are constantly reminded that Third City should be understood as a dystopia and not a utopia, a reading that only successfully works within a right-wing ideological matrix.

819 Lewis; *Monstre Gai,* 146.

820 Lewis; *Monstre Gai,* 197.

821 Lewis; *Monstre Gai,* 127.

822 Lewis; *Monstre Gai,* 219-220.

823 Lewis; *Monstre Gai,* 218.

824 Compare this to Pound's Canto LII in which the toothless Church is superseded by the new fascist axis.

825 Lewis; *Monstre Gai,* 221.

826 Lewis; *The Art of Being Ruled*, 93.

827 Lewis; *The Art of Being Ruled,* 93-94.

#### 6. 'Which Book Red Pilled You?' – Right-Wing Reception

828The title quote comes from Richard Spencer; @RichardBSpencer; tweet; 22 January 2017. The term 'red pilled' was adapted from *The Matrix* and is now firmly part of the right-wing lingo. Spencer even went so far as to declare it a key concept of the otherwise not yet well defined Alt Right: 'If there are two things—two root concepts—that define the Alt Right, they are *identity* and *the red pill*, that is, the concept of race and belonging and the ethic of seeing through the pretty lies of our time' (Emphasis in the original; Spencer, Richard; 'Why Trump Must Champion Universal Healthcare', 23 March 2017 <https://altright.com/2017/03/23/whytrump-must-champion-universal-healthcare/>). To be red pilled thus means to realise that the so-called dogmas of the current system (liberalism, democracy, diversity etc.) are fake and detrimental to the individual as well as the community.

829 Bridson, xi.

830 Julius; *T. S. Eliot, anti-Semitism and Literary Form*, 2.

831 Julius, 311-112.

832 For a fictional example consider Jonathan Littell's novel *The Kindly Ones*. Littell's novel, however, is not free from cliché as he makes his protagonist a sexual deviant, another persistent stereotype.

833 ['»Linksintellektueller« galt als Pleonasmus, »Rechtsintellektueller« als Oxymoron'] ('1979 – Der Sommer der Nouvelle Droite: Ein Gespräch mit Alain de Benoist'; in: *Sezession* 31, 11).

834 MacDonald, a now retired professor for psychology, whose main contribution to right-wing intellectual debates is his *The Culture of Critique Series*, which he describes as 'books on Judaism within a modern evolutionary perspective' (http://www.kevinmacdonald.net/books.htm). In more detail, MacDonald considers several intellectual and political movements of the 20th century, such as' 'the shift in immigration policy favoring non-European peoples', as a 'group evolutionary strategy by Jews in their competition for social, political and cultural dominance with non-Jews' (taken from: MacDonald, preface to *The Culture of Critique*, 1; <http://www.kevinmacdonald.net/PrefacePPB.pdf>). As a result, anti-Semitism could be seen as a logical response to this Jewish group evolutionary strategy. His study has proven influential on the Right and he is currently editor of *The Occidental Quarterly* as well as *The Occidental Observer*, both imprints of the Charles Martel Society, and a director of the radical right American Freedom Party.

835 Kevin MacDonald in a foreword to Greg Johnson's *New Right versus Old Right*; San Francisco: Counter Currents Publishing, 2013.

836 Cf. Reichel, 225.

837 Sorel, 162, footnote 19; italics in the original. Also see p. 228 and 274.

838 Lewis; *The Art of Being Ruled*; 353; italics in the original.

839 For Lewis, these forces are essentially capitalism, democracy and the Enlightenment notion of human equality; cf. Lewis, *The Art of Being Ruled*, 373-375.

840 In his essay on Paul de Man, Dasenbrock also remarks upon fascism's inherent attractiveness for artists: '...three key aspects of fascist ideology appealed to intellectuals inside and outside Italy: fascism as a modernizing dictatorship, as a form of socialism critical of Marxism, and as a theory of politics with room in it for art and the artist. [...] But the Corporatist ideology of fascism [...] has clear socialist roots and explains much of the appeal of fascism to intellectuals' (11).

841 The strongly neoliberal British New Right, which is commonly associated with or linked to Thatcherism, seems to be somewhat of an exception compared to its continental cousins. When I use the term 'New Right' in this chapter it will refer to the continental European New Right, unless specified otherwise.

842 A term used on the cover of the GRECE magazine *éléments* in August 1979.

843 Ives, Peter; *Language and Hegemony in Gramsci*; 71.

844 Ives, 2. Yet he is quick to add that this is at best a simplification of Gramsci's take on hegemony.

845 Gramsci, Antonio; *Selections from the Prison Notebooks*; 57-58.

846 Ives, 4-5.

847 Mostly likely Paul Gottfried, a paleoconservative thinker, has to be credited for coining the term 'alternative right' (see for example: Siegel, Jacob; 'Paul Gottfried: The Alt-Right's Jewish Godfather' or Johnson, Greg; 'The Alt Right Means White Nationalism…or Nothing at All') with Spencer simply taking it over as a selfdescription and morphing it into the catchier 'Alt Right'. In any case, it was definitely Spencer who popularised the term and who is generally associated with it.

848 Goldstein, Joseph; 'Alt-Right Gathering Exults in Trump Election With Nazi-Era Salute'.

849 Allsup, James; 'Richard Spencer: The Alt Right's Future in Trump's America', 1.2.2017, 0:58-1:05.

850 Greg Johnson, 'New Right vs. Old Right'.

851 Greg Johnson, 'New Right vs. Old Right'.

852 Greg Johnson, 'New Right vs. Old Right'.

853 One other quite banal reason is Spencer himself. His 'popularity' among the mainstream media seems to be a direct result of his defying the right-wing stereotype.

854 Spencer, Richard and Jonathan Bowden; 'The European New Right', podcast, 9. January 2012; originally hosted on radixjournal.com, which is no longer online. Transcript can still be found on Counter-Currents: <https://www.countercurrents.com/2016/08/the-european-new-right/>.

855 For a short introduction on Eichberg see Assheuer, Thomas and Hans Sarkowicz; *Rechtsradikale in Deutschland: Die alte und die neue Rechte;* 154-155.

856 In the American context one can also find 'Ethnonationalism', which seems to be essentially the same as ethnopluralism. Greg Johnson, for example, defines ethnonationalism as 'the idea that every distinct ethnic group should enjoy political sovereignty and an ethnically homogeneous homeland or homelands'. Furthermore, it is opposed to (liberal) multiculturalism and thus 'the best way to ensure peace and good will among peoples and preserve human racial, cultural, and religious diversity' (http://www.counter-currents.com/2012/06/frequently-askedquestions-part-1/).

857 @RichardBSpencer; tweet; 23 January 2017.

858 Another important issue is the concept of race. In the US the New Far Right is quite open to emphasise the central role of race: 'Race is an indispensable source of identity for individuals around the world and one of the most consistent and revealing predictive mechanisms in the social sciences' (Spencer, Richard and F. Roger Devlin; 'Race – Stalking the Wild Taboo'). Sometimes it is used as the single defining element (consider such terms as 'generic whiteness'. In Europe the emphasis on race is less pronounced, but the reference to a country's autochthonous population implies whiteness.

859 'There exists a right to differ. Every ethnic group has the right to preserve its culture, its rituals and tradition, ergo its ethno-cultural identity'. ['Es gibt ein Recht auf Verschiedenheit. Jede Ethnie hat das Recht, ihre Kultur, ihre Bräuche und Traditionen, also ihre ethnokulturelle Identität, zu erhalten.'] (https://www.identitaerebewegung.de/category/faq/).

860 The German *Identitäre Bewegung* writes on their website: 'Thus our protest is directed against the politicians responsible, who sacrifice the happiness of the autochthonous population as well as of migrants for their ideological and economic interests.   Among the Far Right this 'process' is also often referred to as 'white genocide'. Apart from immigration is has a strong focus on reproductive issues, such as miscegenation and higher birth rates of non-white people. Thus genocide in this context translates into being 'bred out of existence' rather than being actively exterminated.

861 In the manifesto of the shooter, fittingly titled *The Great Replacment*, this dynamic of replacement is posited as the trigger for the massacre. Using terms like 'the invaders' help to situate the attacker as a defender of his homeland and 'his people', an argument that already betrays *völkisch* notions. Here, the manifesto clearly shows the underlying racism of ethnopluralism, as race, especially whiteness, is the constitutive element of what the attacker terms 'his people'

862 The term 'mainstream' is an important yet problematic term. As I have argued in my theory chapter, 'the middle' does not necessarily represent the midpoint between left and right but the seat of power. The mainstream could be seen as denoting the majority in the middle of the political spectrum, yet more important is its connection to power which compels a certain adherence. When the Right uses the term 'mainstream' it usual refers to the hegemonic discourse, which is often imagined to be dominated by the liberal elites (in some rare instances also by conservative elites).  What is crucial for this chapter, is that the New Far Right deems the 'mainstream', those who are in power, from which they want to dissociate themselves, but which they after all want to become.

863 Consider for example the debate in *The Guardian* about the use of the term 'altright'. In an opinion piece titled 'White nationalists? Alt-right? If you see a Nazi, say Nazi', Lindy West deplored the media's cooperation in rebranding the far right by their use of terms such as 'alt-right' or the general use of euphemisms. A couple of days later *The Guardian* style editors released an article explaining 'Alt-right: why the Guardian decided not to ban the use of the term' because 'it exists as a term that is used in the world, particularly in the US, and it is the media's job to describe and reflect the world as it is'. It furthermore specified that the use of the term 'alt-right' had to be 'followed by the brief but broad description of it being a far-right movement'. Similar discussions were featured in other media again showcasing that language is one of the key factors of the New Far Right.

864 This means that the individuals and movements included in this chapter do not (at the moment of writing) participate in parliamentary politics. At present also none of the groups featured here have their political stance fully represented by a governing party in their home countries.

865 J. M. Berger, 'Nazis vs. ISIS on Twitter: A Comparative Study of White Nationalist and ISIS Online Social Media Networks', 3. Berger's study is limited to Nazi and White Nationalist Twitter accounts, thus it might be a bit rash to extrapolate his findings to other groups on the right-wing spectrum. His follow-up study 'The Alt-Right Twitter Census: Defining and Describing the Audience for Alt-Right Content on Twitter' offers a more qualitative analysis of right-wing social media presence.

866 Between the first quarter of 2012 and the fourth quarter of 2016 the number of monthly active Twitter users in the US has doubled (from 34 million users to 67 million users). However, since mid-2014 the numbers have been relatively stable between 63 and 67 million. (https://www.statista.com/statistics/274564/monthlyactive-twitter-users-in-the-united-states/). This roughly corresponds to the development of international monthly active users (from 138 million in 2012 to 319 by the end of 2016 as well as a stalling in growth from 2015 onwards). (https://www.statista.com/statistics/282087/number-of-monthly-active-twitterusers/).

867 Bridson, 116. Bridson does not give a source for this, and there is a chance that it was Lewis himself who brought this into the debate in order to deflect from his earlier support of National Socialism.

868 Marsh, 126.

869 Consider the following: 'Later in the same speech, Kasper spoke of the nonchoice facing Americans in elections featuring two "hollow pumpkins"--: "the hollow Pumpkin on a pole in the White House" and the man who ran against him in the November elections, Adlai Stevenson. These remarks can be used as a gloss for lines in Canto 85, "This 'leader,' gouged pumpkin/ that they hoist on a pole" (85/565). Although his audience must have found Kasper's imagery extravagant, this is what *The Cantos* sound like when sent into action. One can be sure that Kasper's speeches routinely alluded to Pound's poem in this way.' (Marsh 183).

870 Marsh, xvi.

871 Cf. Marsh, 5.

872 'In 1949, while I was visiting Ezra Pound who was a political prisoner at St. Elizabeth's Hospital, Washington, D.C. (a Federal institution for the insane), Dr. Pound asked me if I had ever heard of the Federal Reserve System. I replied that I had not, as of the age of 25. He then showed me a ten dollar bill marked "Federal Reserve Note" and asked me if I would do some research at the Library of Congress on the Federal Reserve System which had issued this bill' (Mullins, Eustace; *Secrets of the Federal Reserve*, 2).

873 'This book was from its inception commissioned and guided by Ezra Pound. Four of his protégés have previously been awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, William Butler Yeats for his later poetry, James Joyce for "Ulysses" [Joyce never received a Nobel prize], Ernest Hemingway for "The Sun Also Rises", and T.S. Elliot [sic!] for "The Waste Land". [...] Pound played a major role in the inspiration and in the editing of these works -- which leads us to believe that this present work, also inspired by Pound, represents an on-going literary tradition. [...] His third and final vindication is this work, which documents every aspect of his exposure of the ruthless international financiers to whom Ezra Pound became but one more victim...' (Mullins, 3).

874 Quoted in: Parker, 109.

875 'The book was seized and the entire edition of 10,000 copies burned by government agents led by Dr. Otto John. The burning of the book was upheld April 21, 1961 by judge Israel Katz of the Bavarian Supreme Court. The U.S. Government refused to intervene, because U.S. High Commissioner to Germany, James B. Conant (president of Harvard University 1933 to 1953), had approved the initial book burning order. This is the only book which has been burned in Germany since World War II' (Mullins, 2-3).

876 Schmied, 7: 'unter unwürdigsten Bedingungen in einem amerikanischen Irrenhaus Internierten (offenbares Vorbild für die spätere sowjetische Praxis, Dissidenten in Nervenkliniken zu isolieren)...'.

877 Schmied, 85.

878 The rhetorical trick of making the critics of fascists the real fascists is quite common. Here is an example from Wyndham Lewis's second autobiography: 'The thinker or the artist can no longer, it is affirmed, be permitted 'to dissociate himself from the community'. This may be paraphrased as follows: no *unofficial*, or private, or outside criticism […] is to be tolerated. […] Such type of thinking, by whatever name it may go, is merely fascism' (*Rude Assignment*, 75). Schmied does not formulate it as clearly, but his recurrent insistence of the unfairness of Pound's treatment and his silence on Pound's own politics, suggest an implicit analogy.

879 Stock, 91-92.

880 Marsh, 4.

881 Marsh, 27.

882 McDonald, Gail; 'Eliot and the New Critics'; In: Chinitz; *A Companion to T. S. Eliot*, p. 413. Also compare Terry Eagleton's comment on New Criticism: 'If poetry was to be the new organic society in itself, the final solution to science, materialism, and the decline of the 'aesthetic' slave-owning South, it could hardly be surrendered to critical impressionism or soggy subjectivism' (Eagleton, Terry; *The Ideology of the Aesthetic*, 47).

883 The 12 Southerners were a group of twelve American poets, essayists and novelists with close ties to the Southern United States, who included John Crowe Ransom, Donald Davidson, Frank Lawrence Owsley, John Gould Fletcher, Lyle H. Lanier, Allen Tate, Herman Clarence Nixon, Andrew Nelson Lytle, Robert Penn Warren, John Donald Wade, Henry Blue Kline, and Stark Young.

884 12 Southerners, 6.

885 Owsley's text is rife with overt racism. Consider for example the following passage: 'Negroes had come into the Southern Colonies in such numbers that people feared for the integrity of the white race. For the negroes were cannibals and barbarians, and therefore dangerous. No white man who had any contact with slavery was willing to free the slaves and allow them to dwell among the whites. Slaves were a peril, at least a risk, but free blacks were considered a menace too great to be hazarded. Even if no race war occurred, there was dread of being submerged and absorbed by the black race. Accordingly, all slaveholders and non-slaveholders who objected to slavery, objected even more to the presence of the free negro' (77). While it might be possible that not all of the 12 Southerners subscribed to this sort of stark racism there remains no doubt that when they speak of the Southern tradition and the connection between the people and the soil they speak of white people only.

886 12 Southerners, 159.

887 Julius; *T.S. Eliot, Anti-Semitism, and Literary Form*; 304, emphasis in the original.

888 <http://www.counter-currents.com/about/>.

889 At the time of writing (March 2017) *Breitbart.com* is (supposedly) the 49th most visited site in the US, while its global rank is currently 233. The site has seen a sharp spike in visitors since the Trump election in 2016 (cf.: http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/breitbart.com). On its *Facebook* page, *Breitbart* states that it has 45 million monthly readers (last checked March 20th 2017). Andrew Anglin's *The Daily Stormer* is, according to himself, 'the world's most viewed alt-right web site', a claim the SPLC corroborates stating that 'in July, four months before Trump's win, The Daily Stormer had become the most popular Englishlanguage website of the radical right', although neither gives any figures. (https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/intelligence-report/2017/eye-stormer). In November 2016 Anglin wrote that his site had 'approximately 140,000 unique visitors a day' (<http://www.dailystormer.com/support-the-daily-stormer/>). The reliability of these figures is a matter of debate. Josh Harkinson, in an article for *Mother Jones*, compared the Alexa rankings of *Breitbart*, *The Daily Stormer* and *Stromfront* to figures supplied by the analytics firm comScore, which seems to confirm that *Breitbart* and *The Daily Stormer* inflate the number of visitors. For *The Daily Stormer* comScore shows less than hundred thousand unique monthly visitors in mid-2016 and no growth, a far cry from Anglin's claim of four million visitors; for *Breitbart* comScore analysed a growth from 13 to 19 million unique visitors between February and October 2016, considerably less than the numbers *Breitbart* published (Harkinson, Josh; 'White Supremacist Sites Claim Their Traffic Is Booming. Actually, No'). According to the figures Johnson released in April 2017, *Counter-Currents*  sees a steadily increasing readership, starting with 6,145 unique monthly visitors at its inception in June 2010 growing to 187,296 unique monthly visitors in March 2017. In 2016 the website had roughly 1,6 million unique monthly visitors. Interestingly the growth in readership is quite linear and stable; it thus seems that *Counter-Currents* relies less on external political events to attract (new) visitors. For example the 2016 presidential election triggered no significant rise in readership (<https://www.counter-currents.com/2017/04/counter-currents-nanr-newslettermarch-2017/>)

890 Greg Johnson, 'A Message to New Readers' (http://www.countercurrents.com/2016/12/a-message-to-new-readers/). One should note that Johnson's use of the traditional IQ scale (instead of saying that the website is aimed at educated readers or the like) could be seen as an implicit nod to research that claims that there is a link between race and IQ; see for example: *The Bell Curve* by Richard J. Herrnstein and Charles Murray (who is conservative but not on the far Right), which has become a staple in right-wing debates on race, as well as books by Richard Lynn such as *The Global Bell Curve*, *The Chosen People: A Study of Jewish Intelligence and Achievement*, *IQ & Global Inequality*, and *Race Differences and Intelligence*, all of which are issued by Washington Summit Publishers, the sister organisation of the National Policy Institute, of which Spencer is currently president and director. At present their website *www.washsummit.com* is no longer active.

891 His other works are published by *Wermod and Wermod*, a right-wing venture with Alex Kurtagic as its editor-in-chief. Bowden also featured in a 15-part podcast with Richard Spencer from 2012, and can now be found at radixjournal.com/podcasts.

892 A counter-canon here would entail not the deconstruction of the mainstream canon to introduce previously unrecognised literature by marginalised voices but the production of an alternative ideologically motivated canon which would include largely well-known authors but which highlights their ideological allegiance to the (Far) Right.

893 Sternhell, Zeev; *The Anti-Enlightenment Tradition*, 330.

894 See Theory chapter 19-20.

895 Blurbs by Charles Krafft, Leo Yankevich and James J. O'Meara in that order. Bolton, Kerry; *Artists of the Right*; Back cover.

896 Foreword by Greg Johnson, in Bolton, iii.

897 'West-Coast White Nationalism is [Johnson's] term for the blending of white racial consciousness with liberal or Left-wing positions on such issues as capitalism, environmentalism, zoning, abortion, drug legalization, homosexuality, and religious pluralism. [...] A more accurate term for West-Coast White Nationalism might be the Racially-Conscious Left, although it is a non-egalitarian outlook, and if the Left-Right split is on the essential issue of equality versus inequality, then the Racially Conscious Left really isn't Left-wing at all. But it may be as far to the Left as one can reasonably go.' (Johnson, Greg; 'What Is "West-Coast White Nationalism"?' <http://www.counter-currents.com/2012/06/frequently-asked-questions-part-2/>).

898 In how far the political allegiances of these authors constitutes an 'embarrassment to the Left' is debatable. While I would agree with Johnson that there exists a dilemma for part of the Left of acknowledging these authors' literary achievements despite the inherent ideology; for parts of the Left the traditional canon and its predominantly white male writers have long lost authority. The problem here is that Johnson brushes over the heterogeneity of the Left (and the liberal mainstream which he certainly includes) and does not see or care about the differing opinions on the matter among the Left, possibly because this would also weaken his argument.

899 Consider for example: 'The reason that White Nationalists develop *out of* conservatism is that conservatism itself is *not* an adequate framework for the preservation of the white race. It is not intellectually adequate, because it is beholden to race-blind universalism and egalitarianism. It is not institutionally adequate, because even if the conservative movement would fight for our race, it loses every important battle.' (italics in the original; Johnson, Greg; 'What is the relationship of the [North American New Right] to conservatism?' <http://www.countercurrents.com/2012/06/frequently-asked-questions-part-2/>).

900 In an interview with Michael R. Burch. Also consider the following statement from Salemi concerning his politics: 'It's not just pro-Israeli neocons who are trying to force their will on the world.  American liberals are now in full imperialist mode, ready to go anywhere in the world to impose the liberal worldview and agenda on recalcitrant and benighted populations. Hillary Clinton is a horrifyingly authoritarian bitch, and her presidency would be as warmongering as Hitler's Third Reich.' ('Interview with Dr Joseph Salemi', *The Hyper Texts)*.

901 Johnson, in: Bolton, iii.

902 Johnson's reading here clashes very nicely with 'traditional' literary scholarship on these writers, where one often finds the common explanation that the prejudices these men upheld were just the norm during their time.

903 Bolton, Back cover.

904 Which might be due to their being originally published in a book called *Thinkers of the Right: Challenging Materialism*.

905 Bolton, 113.

906 Bolton, 114.

907 Bolton, 100. I would also disagree with Bolton that Pound started the Vorticist movement and that Henri Gaudier-Brzeska was the 'original impetus'. In all likelihood, it was Lewis who was the mastermind behind Vorticism. Even though Pound did come up with the name, it was Lewis who was editor of *BLAST* and who contributed extensively to it, compared to Pound.

908 Bolton, 119; this is a direct quote from Peter Ackroyd's *Ezra Pound and His World*.

909 Quoted in Bolton, 112.

910 Both Bolton, 109.

911 This is of course subject to copyright terms and might have changed since Bolton wrote these essays. I checked one of the biggest digital libraries, *archive.org*, which hosts a digital downloadable copy of both texts. The currently available version of *Social Credit* was uploaded on 24 February 2011, *Jefferson and/or Mussolini* on 27 April 2016. A noteworthy detail about the latter text is the username of the person, who uploaded the file, 'Redpilled\_Reader', which shows that it is the Right, who is interested in the survival and accessibility of these texts (<https://archive.org/details/JeffersonAndOrMussoliniPound1935>).

912 Both quotes from 'If So the Man You Are'; in: Lewis, Wyndham; *Collected Poems and Plays,* 59 and 60 respectively.

913 Bolton, 141. An error, which inadvertently damages Bolton autobiographical reading even further, is his apparent misdating of Lewis's poem. Included in his subchapter, titled 'Return to England' dealing with Lewis's life after the Second World War, Bolton writes: 'A post-war poem, "If So the Man You Are," autobiographically continues to reflect some of Lewis's abiding themes;' (140-141). Yet, 'If So the Man You Are' is not a post-war poem in the context of the Second World War; it was published in 1933. So why does Bolton assume 'If So the Man You Are' to be a post-war poem? The answer might be again Bolton's use of sources. Turning to *The Penguin Anthology of Contemporary Verse* one realises that its editor, Kenneth Allott, did not include the poems' dates of publication. In the chapter on Lewis he brings in a short statement by Lewis about his poetry, and these notes are from 1948 (Cf. Allott, Kenneth; *Penguin Book of Contemporary Verse 1918-60*, 72), the date Bolton wrongly assumes to be the publication date of 'If So the Man You Are' (as stated in his footnote).

914 Bolton uses one quote from *The Art of Being Ruled* as opposed to four references to Campbell's article.

915 There is one quote from *Left Wings Over Europe,* one which does not even reflect the main argument of the book. About *Hitler* Bolton writes: 'An early appreciation entitled *Hitler* was published in 1931, sealing Lewis's fate as a neglected genius' (133). It fits Bolton's central narrative that Lewis was unfairly shunned by the mainstream for his 'unsavory' politics, but this very curt brushing over also seems to suggest that Bolton has not actually read the book and thus cannot make any definite statements about its contents. *Count Your Dead: They Are Alive!* is simply not mentioned at all.

916 Consider, for example, Johnson on the topic: 'White Nationalism makes the most sense in the context of European colonial societies like the United States, in which older white ethnic identities have been undermined through the blending of distinct European immigrant stocks, creating an ever more blended, generic white identity. [...] In Europe, where old national and regional identities remain robust, generic whiteness and White Nationalism, if adopted as one's *primary* identity and political philosophy, would actually promote the breakdown of distinct identities and the homogenization of Europe. However, a sense of European identity can still supervene upon more compact national and regional identities.' (<https://www.counter-currents.com/2012/06/frequently-asked-questions-part-1/>). So while Lewis talks about the European melting pot there would be a way to relate this to (contemporary) America.

917 Bolton, 138.

918 Lewis; *Paleface*; 257.

919 Lewis; *Paleface*; 276.

920 @RichardBSpencer; tweet; 7 May 2017. Note that Spencer often uses 'European' denoting 'white', thus a European political party means a political party of and for European whites.

921 Bolton, 120.

922 The fact, that in the meantime Counter-Currents published a follow-up book, titled *Some More Artists of the Right*, which includes T. S. Eliot, can be seen as evidence that this audience exists.

923 New Right here refers to the 'London New Right', 'a forum created by Jonothon Boulter and Troy Southgate', which was chaired by Bowden until 2012 (http://www.jonathanbowden.co.uk/about.html). In a now defunct yahoo group, they spell out their aim as: 'New Right is strongly pan-European, defiantly elitist and necessarily metapolitical' (<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/new\_right> now archived), thus they can be subsumed under the term 'New Far Right'. The group is no longer active.

924 Bowden, Jonathan; 'Ezra Pound'.

925 Ibid. Bowden actually uses the word 'friendship' not relationship in his speech; and the audience reacts with laughter to the anecdote of Kasper's bookshop in Greenwich Village. Kasper was never charged about his potential involvement – he was said to have procured the dynamite – in the bombing of Hattie Cotton Elementary School in Nashville. Also note how Bowden downplays the bombing ('when there were no children there') while overemphasising its level of desegregation ('which was desegregated'), when in fact, prior to the bombing the school had admitted exactly one black student, a six-year old girl.

926 The original 'Shakespeare and Company' was founded by Sylvia Beach, while the shop now in existence was founded by George Whitman, initially called 'Le Mistral', and later re-named to 'Shakespeare and Company' in honour of Sylvia Beach. *The Egoist Press* was set up by Harriet Shaw Weaver; while the periodical *The Egoist*, formerly *The New Freewoman*, was founded by Dora Marsden. Weaver financially supported the magazine and later became its editor; only the name change is said to have been Pound's idea who also worked as an editor.

927 See video 'Jonathan Bowden – 'Ezra Pound'. 33rd New Right Meeting' roughly 16:12-16:17.

928 Ibid; 34:56 and further.

929 Consider the following quote: 'Pound was unusual in that as an artist he should have no right to talk about these matters about which he could be presumed to know little. Cross the margin, cross the line into politics' (Bowden, 'Ezra Pound').

930 Bowden; 'Ezra Pound'.

931 Bowden; 'Ezra Pound'.

932 Bowden; 'Ezra Pound'.

933 Bowden has written separate articles on Lewis's *Tarr*, *The Childermass* and *Apes of God*, which can all be accessed on *Counter-Currents*.

934 Bowden, Jonathan; 'Elitism, British Modernism and Wyndham Lewis'

935 A claim that can easily be refuted. It seems that today's criticism is much more obsessed with *Hitler* than contemporary criticism was; cf. chapter 5 on Lewis.

936 Bowden; 'Elitism, British Modernism and Wyndham Lewis'.

937 Bowden; 'Elitism, British Modernism and Wyndham Lewis'.

938 Bowden; 'Elitism, British Modernism and Wyndham Lewis'.

939 Bowden; 'Elitism, British Modernism and Wyndham Lewis'.

940 An observation Bowden is also keen to mention in his separate article 'Wyndham Lewis *Tarr*: An Exercise in Right-Wing Psychology', although he never specifies why this should be important.

941 Bowden; 'Wyndham Lewis'.

942 In another article on the book he introduces *The Childermass* as 'probably one of the most difficult [novels] written in the last century', and later remarking again upon its 'unreadability'. (Bowden, Jonathan; 'Wyndham Lewis' *Childermass*: Black Metal, Without the Music').

943 Cf. Bowden; 'Wyndham Lewis' *Childermass*: Black Metal, Without the Music'.

944 Which can be related back to the whole idea of 'red pilling' the people, i.e. to make them, in Spencer's words, 'see[] through the pretty lies of our time'.

945 It is no coincidence that Bowden would associate *The Childermass* with Black Metal (and not with any other similar music genre), as especially Black Metal is often rightly or wrongly associated with far right-wing ideology and even has its own right-wing subgenre, National Socialist Black Metal (or NSBM for short). As an example: Alex Kurtagic, editor-in-chief of *Wermod and Wermod*, which publishes a large segment of Bowden's writings, also founded the record label Supernal Music, which specialises in Black Metal, and Kurtagic's artworks have also been featured on album covers of Black Metal bands, such as Dimmu Borgir. The relationship between Black Metal and right-wing ideology is more complex than the space of a footnote permits; a more detailed analysis can be found in Christian Dornbusch and Hans-Peter Killguss; *Unheilige Allianzen: Black Metal zwischen Satanismus, Heidentum und Neonazismus*.

946 I've taken this phrase from a foreword by Johnson for Bowden's (posthumous) essay collection *Pulp Fascism*: 'Jonathan Bowden said that greatness lies in the mind and in the fist. Nietzsche combined both forms in the image of the warrior poet. For Jonathan, it was the image of the cultured thug.' (v).

947 Bowden; 'Elitism, British Modernism and Wyndham Lewis'

948 Both in Bowden, Jonathan; 'Wyndham Lewis' *The Apes of God'*, in which a few lines later he also speaks of the novel as 'a gargantuan effort'.

949 Both in: Bowden; 'Elitism, British Modernism and Wyndham Lewis'.

950 Bowden; 'Elitism, British Modernism and Wyndham Lewis'.

951 Cf. Bowden; 'Elitism, British Modernism and Wyndham Lewis': 'One publisher, Grayson & Grayson, a publisher that no longer exists, was sent the manuscript of Tarr by Lewis and they returned it saying, "We can't publish your book, because it's too strong." Too strong!'.

952 Bowden; 'Elitism, British Modernism and Wyndham Lewis'.

953 Consider for example: 'Eliot's a less sexy person to talk about from the perspective of the people in this room and the traditions that a group like this could be said to feed upon, but that doesn't mean that he shouldn't be looked at and, if you like, is to the Left of Pound and Lewis by quite a considerable way, and yet in actual fact he's still to the Right of most other tendencies that exist' (Bowden, Jonathan; T. S. Eliot, Part 1').

954 In his final paragraph to the book, Julius writes: '[Litvinoff's 'To T. S. Eliot'] is a work divided by love and dismay, in which Litvinoff wrestles to find in the language of his despiser the means by which he may both honour and challenge him. [...] 'To. T. S. Eliot' is a work of resistance and respect. I wish my book to be regarded as another such work.' (*T.S. Eliot, Anti-Semitism, and Literary Form*; 218)

955 Julius; *T.S. Eliot, Anti-Semitism, and Literary Form*; 33.

956 Cf. Julius; *T.S. Eliot, Anti-Semitism, and Literary Form*; 'Postscript: Fourteen propositions responding to critics'; 302-335.

957 An article by Andrew Joyce, another right-wing intellectual, may bestow some light on this issue. Titled 'T. S. Eliot and the Culture of Critique' it tries to refute Julius's argument. Ironically Joyce does so by recounting Eliot's 'real-life interactions' with Jews and attempts to demonstrate how they were translated into his poetry. Thus while he criticises Julius for his supposedly personal attack on Eliot, he uses biographical evidence to refute this attack. (<https://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/2016/12/06/t-s-eliot-and-the-cultureof-critique-part-two/>).

958 Bowden; 'T. S. Eliot'.

959 Cf. Bowden; 'T. S. Eliot'.

960 Bowden; 'T. S. Eliot'. What Bowden refers to are two separate things: there is the dedication to Pound, followed by a line in Provencal, 'il miglior fabbro', taken from Dante. The 'quote in Latin and Greek' is the story from the *Satyricon* of the immortal Sybil wishing for the release of death.

961 Bowden; 'T. S. Eliot'.

962 Bowden, Jonathan; 'T. S. Eliot'.

963 Bowden; 'T. S. Eliot'.

964 Cf. Bowden; 'T. S. Eliot'.

965 Bowden; 'T. S. Eliot'.

966 Bowden; 'T. S. Eliot'. He specifies this idea earlier in his talk: 'This is why hierarchical elitism is so important, because if there is nothing above you, then there's nothing to look forward to, there's nothing to transcend to, there's nothing to abide by that is beyond and outside one's often quite trivial concerns. The mass of people today live completely buried in their trivial concerns, and most forms of culture are forms of entertainment. Eliot represented one of the last generations where the more classical and restorationist attitudes toward culture prevailed'.

967 Bowden; 'T. S. Eliot'.

968 'We see in Pound and Eliot's generation the belief that the Western world can revive, that Spengler's doctrine of the decline of the West in 1918 and thereafter, need not be fulfilled. Whether they favored a form of caesarism to come up from below and rescue the West and its impasse socio-economically in the 1930s–or whether they believed in forms of classical and restorationist conservatism, with an existing elite toughening its game and imposing upon society a vision more conduit with structures in the past, which would have been Eliot's cultural vision–is neither here nor there. But all of them represent in some ways the last flowering of a particular type of Western intellectuality the likes of which you don't see in the postwar period.' (Bowden; 'T. S. Eliot, Part 1'). This view seems to apply to postconversion Eliot rather than pre-conversion Eliot.

969 Bowden; 'T. S. Eliot'.

970 Bowden; 'T. S. Eliot'.

971 Bowden; 'T. S. Eliot'.

972 Bowden; 'T. S. Eliot'.

973 Original quote can be found here: <https://www.splcenter.org/fightinghate/intelligence-report/2002/death-truth-telling-gentleman>; in the context of *TOQ* it can be found here: <http://www.toqonline.com/about/>.

974 Cf. <http://www.toqonline.com/about/> Also consider the following selfadvertisement: 'You will not only find the articles fascinating and informative, you will also be supporting the work of scholars who are part of a community defending our people and our culture with the highest level of integrity and intellectual sophistication'. <http://www.toqonline.com/blog/today-subscribe-to-theoccidental-quarterly/>.

975 <www.toqonline.com/blog/today-subscribe-to-the-occidental-quarterly->.

976 Ibid. This line of reasoning continues as follows: 'Politically aware Whites must understand that the elites that dominate culture and the political process in the West are intellectually and morally bankrupt. The domination of the mass media and the academic world by elites that are hostile to White identity and interests is a major barrier for educated Whites to act on behalf of their interests'.

977 Cf. <http://www.toqonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/toqspring2017-cover-big-795x1122.jpg>.

978 When I wrote this thesis the blog had already been neglected with the most recent article dating from 18 April 2016. It seems that the blog was purged or relocated to TOQ's sister site *The Occidental Observer* during the redesign of the TOQ website. Seeing that digital reprints of articles from previous TOQ issues are now published on *The Occidental Observer* it is probably the latter. The post on Eliot's 'Gerontion' was not migrated. One can, however, still access it through the Wayback Machine.

979 These two critical comments are no longer available on the *TOQ* website. They seemed to have been deleted along with a number of other comments; an issue I address in more detail below. An archived version of the post reveals the original twelve comments:

<http://web.archive.org/web/20140312215748/http://www.toqonline.com/blog /gerontion-by-t-s-eliot/>.

980 Archived version of the blog post can be found here: <http://web.archive.org/web/20140312215748/http://www.toqonline.com/blog /gerontion-by-t-s-eliot/>. All further quotes by 'Yggdrasil' are taken from this source.

981 Eliot; *After Strange Gods*; 19-20.

982 What seems interesting in this light is the decision of the moderator of *TOQ Online* to delete nine of the original twelve comments under this post. This removed all the negative voices, but it also erased some of the more positive comments.

983 Cf. <https://staatspolitik.de/institut>. *Institut für Staatspolitik* could be translated to Institute for National Policy. I am not aware of any connections between the American *National Policy Institute* and the *Institut für Staatspolitik* despite the similarity in name, ideological orientation and function.

984 Cf. <https://staatspolitik.de/institut>.

985 ['die bedeutendste rechtsintellektuelle Zeitschrift in Deutschland'] <https://sezession.de/konzept>.

986 Cf. ibid ['Ziel unserer Zeitschrift ist es nicht, möglichst viele Leser zu erreichen.  *Sezession* currently has 3000 regular subscribers.

987 Cf. Ibid. ['Vieles, was an der AfD und an anderen Widerstandsprojekten grundsätzlich, kompromißlos, nicht verhandelbar und angriffslustig wirkt und ist, wurde in unserer Zeitschrift vorausgedacht, ausformuliert und in die Debatte erst eingespeist']. This also shows the proximity of *Sezession* to the *AfD*. The term 'national resistance' is a translation of the German term 'Nationaler Widerstand', which is a term coined by the German Far Right as a self-designation. Also compare the selfconception of the *Sezession* to Spencer when he claimed that 'it is up to the alt-right to formulate the ideas and policies to guide the new administration [...]  Kubitschek, n. p.

995 ['die Konzentration von Kräften um einen gemeinsamen Mittelpunkt'] Kubitschek, n.p.

996 Despite one of Nevinson's pictures being published in *BLAST 2*, it was his cooperation with Marinetti on a manifesto that triggered what was to become the Vorticist group to position themselves as distinct from Futurism.

997 It is noteworthy that Kubitschek here implies that the exclusionary tendency of fascism was part of its negative side, while he earlier commended the avant-garde's exclusionary tendency. This way lauding the avant-garde and their supposed qualities such as manliness, aggressiveness and arrogance allows Kubitschek to equally laud authoritarian qualities without explicitly praising the corresponding authoritarian political movements. Attaching these authoritarian traits to the avant-garde gives them intellectual validity and presents them as productive and creative forces.

998 Kubitschek, 31.

999 MacDonald in: Johnson; *New Right versus Old Right*.

1000 Internet meme culture revolves around the creation, sharing and reworking of memes, i.e. a unit carrying an idea, concept, or social practice often in the form of an image macro, hashtag, gif or video. The interactive nature of the Internet facilitates the rapid transmission and the considerable impact of individual memes, which explains their relevance for the fields of marketing, politics and 'the culture war'. Angela Nagle has written a book-length study on the subject of the Right and internet meme culture titled *Kill All Normies: Online Culture Wars from 4Chan and Tumblr to Trump and the Alt-Right*.

1001 Originally created by Matt Furie as a 'peaceful frog-dude' for his 'Boy's Club' on Myspace it is now almost exclusively associated with right-wing online culture (Cf. Hunt, Elle; 'Pepe the Frog creator kills off internet meme co-opted by white supremacists'). It is now even listed in the Anti-Defamation League's 'Hate Symbols Database' (<https://www.adl.org/education/references/hate-symbols/pepethe-frog>). The later addition of Kek was more coincidental: the term 'kek' originates from gaming culture and was a synonym/translation for 'lol' (laughing out loud) in *World of Warcraft*. Only when the connection was made to the Egyptian frog deity, Kek and Pepe became linked. The idea of Kek as a deity is often humorously upheld, for example in such phrases as 'Praise Kek'.

1002 Cf. Koch, Heiko; *Casa Pound Italia: Mussolinis Erben;* 106.

1003 For further reading one can turn to Heiko Koch's *Casa Pound Italia: Mussolinis Erben*who analyses the movement from a distinctly left-wing perspective or Martin Lichtmesz's article 'Casa Pound' in *Sezession* 34 for a right-wing perspective.

1004 Colin Liddell; 'In the House of Pound'; AlternativeRight.com (published 5 February 2012). AlternativeRight.com was shut down essentially after a conflict of interest between Spencer and Liddell. Spencer went on to set up altright.com, while Liddell created alternative-right.blogspot.com as a sequel to the old website, which also has an archive with many of the older articles from the original side.

1005 Fittingly Pound's short biography on the Casa Pound website features a paragraph that paints a consciously misleading picture of Pound's trial and his time at St Elizabeths. They write that after his return to the US he was declared crazy, which is true but conveniently omits that the insanity plea was a strategy of the defence to save Pound from worse punishment. As discussed above his time at St Elizabeth was not as dire as portrayed here ('segregated in complete isolation', in fact, Pound's segregation from other inmates was a privilege dealt to him).

1006 In the interview Iannone states: 'Usury is the worst thing. It is the head of the octopus. It is it that initiated the wars that are starting around the Mediterranean Sea, which generates illegal immigration and destruction. It is it which creates unemployment, debts. It is it that threatens the future of our children, which make them weak and ready for the massacre.'.

1007 ['Sviluppa la sua teoria sull'usura come fonte delle guerre moderne e dello strangolamento dei popoli.'] < https://www.casapounditalia.org/ezra-pound/>.

1008 <http://www.casapounditalia.org/p/ezra-pound.html>.

1009 Kurtagic, Alex; 'Interview with Greg Johnson'.

1010 Joyce, Andrew; ''T.S. Eliot and the Culture of Critique'; <https://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/2016/12/06/t-s-eliot-and-the-cultureof-critique-part-two/>.

1011 This seems to correspond to the current dearth of what one could call rightwing art production; there is very little contemporary right-wing art, i.e. art that offers an aestheticised version of right-wing ideology; exceptions like Alex Kurtagic's *Mister* and novels by Harold Covington duly noted. Here again comments by Johnson such as '[o]ne of my aims for Counter-Currents/North American New Right is to foster and promote a white artistic movement' shows that there is an awareness for the importance of (right-wing) art production' (Kurtagic; 'Interview with Greg Johnson').

#### 7. Do Civilized Peoples Execute Their Poets?

1012 Cf. Carroll; *French Literary Fascism*, 273-274. Brasillach was executed by firing squad on 6 February 1945.

1013 In his article 'Unravelling Atomwaffen: Exposing America's New Nazi Militants', Jake Hanrahan included a screenshot that shows a reading list recommended by Woodward, who writes: 'Since I promised you all a reading list of various materials that shaped my political philosophy, here you go -'. It features Pound's *Cantos*, and Machiavelli's *The Prince*, among staples of the New Far Right.

1014 This was also commercially exploited. An edition of the Pisan Cantos features a picture of the outdoor cells of the Pisan prison camp, linking the poems back to the place of their genesis, but also to the theme of incarceration.

#### BIBLIOGRAPHY

In: *Criticism*, Vol. 26, No. 4 (fall, 1984), pp. 355-382.

Verlag, 1996.

Image Sources

Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot, and Wyndham Lewis have all, to varying degrees, been the subject of studies that explore their ideology. All too often, however, these studies have not tackled the issue adequately, limiting their analytical approach to fascism or other phenomena such as anti-Semitism. Frequently, they have also sought to exculpate these writers or to normalise their political tendencies in an effort to circumnavigate the dilemma of how to address the paradox of right-wing artists who are both harbingers and opponents of the imagined trajectory of progressive modernity. This interdisciplinary study analyses the connections between literary Modernism and right-wing ideology. Moreover, it is the first academic study to explore the reception of these Modernist authors by today's far right, seeking to understand in what ways they use strategic readings of Modernist texts to legitimise right-wing ideology. By raising fundamental questions about the relationship between aesthetics and politics, this study ultimately challenges its readers to see their cultural practices as political. It wants to make visible and problematize the interdependencies of right-wing ideology and cultural production as well as reception in order to explain the (far) Right as a phenomenon deeply rooted in European history and cultural development. It thus lays bare the misconceptions, the gaps as well as the complicity in the debate about right-wing ideology in literature.

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