Travels in Cultural Nihilism By Richard Miller

     James Reed did a review of this book: Stephen Pax Leonard, Travels in Cultural Nihilism, (Arktos, London, 2017), here:
   https://blog.alor.org/index.php/travels-in-cultural-nihilism-by-james-reed

     However, that was a review based on a review, but now I have read this excellent book and have a few words to add here. First, this is our kind of book written by a British academic, Dr Leonard being at the time a Fellow of Exeter College Oxford. I was curious enough to search the web to see if he still held a fellowship, or was made redundant, but in all honesty he still seems to be in the academic system:
  https://www.anthro.ox.ac.uk/people/dr-stephen-pax-leonard

     Not only that, but he proudly displays his book as part of his academic output. This is surprising because basically Leonard says much of what the contributors at this site have been saying about the ethno-racially caused collapse of Europe due to mass immigration, especially of Muslims. The book deals extensively with the Swedish decay, but being published in paper, and in 2017, much of the book is dated, not incorrect, but the situation has got so much worse. Again, readers can access a large number of articles published at our site, www.alor.org,  on Sweden. On this point, Leonard ponders why societies such as Sweden, facing impending collapse, still have majority support for multiculturalism policies, but recent polls indicate that in Europe public opinion is beginning to sour about open acceptance of unending migration, a matter that others have discussed at this site.

     As an academic, Leonard devotes considerable attention to the collapse of free thought on the Western university campus, the “waste lands of groupthink,” and the domination of discourse by the antics of “champagne socialists.” In the 1960s these creatures championed orthodox Marxism, but beginning in the 1970s and accelerating in the 1980s, they went full diversity mode, with the fanaticism of a fundamentalist religion, all backed by taxpayer’s money. Leonard diagnoses this evil disease well, but his ultimate solution is a little limp: conservative academics need to oppose this orthodoxy and fight it (p. 31) Yes, fine, and he has done this, but, the new class have worked ceaselessly to eliminate academics like him from the system. In Australia, there is no-one working as an academic at any university who could do what Leonard is doing. He is the singularity. Thus, he fails to fully appreciate his own argument about the utter level of corruption of the universities in the West.

     After all, the elite are not fooling around: “this is a civil war; a war between people who want to preserve their traditions, cultural heritage and freedom and those who preach liberalist multiculturalism and who will defend a whole schema of freedom infringements in order to achieve it.” (p. xix) In doing so, the new class have moved to embrace anyone who can act to destroy tradition values, and they align themselves with this other, and defend and nurture them, encouraging their growth. In a sense, then, the new class elites are partners in a form of cultural terrorism, more dangerous than any knife or truck attack.

     What is to be done? As usual, this is the weakest part of any book or article on these sorts of crippling topics, because answers are hard to come by beyond coming up with some way of getting the lead back into the white man’s pencil, so to speak. Leonard says that the ideologies which have produced this crisis are being revealed as self-defeating. (p.286) He hopes that communities of strong localists, schooled in philosophies of anti-globalism and financial independence, will soon emerge to challenge the rotting status quo. In particular, globalist organisations such as that the EU needs to be dismantled. Yes, that is a good start, but we need a more comprehensive program than the suggestions made by Leonard in the closing chapter of his book. That is what we try to provide at this site, ranging from financial reform to Alt Right Traditionalist philosophy.