Kerry Bolton on Why We Write

I have been asked by Dr. Johnson to contribute to this series. It is ironic really because I have spent 30 years writing and mostly self-publishing, and I am barely heard of anywhere. A few days ago I was contacted by an Italian, a young doctor of philosophy, who asked why I am not well known in Italy despite what I suppose would seem to be quite a large output of articles, essays, books, and booklets over the years.

So “why do I write” if I have spent over 30 years being largely ignored? In such circumstances one must put the reason down to some kind of inward compulsion, a drive, or what some unkind types might call an “obsessive-compulsive disorder.” Abraham Maslow, whom I should probably not cite in this forum, referred to a “hierarchy of human needs” at the base of which were the fundamental biological drives, and at the apex the individual creativity that leads to self-actualization or what Jung might call individuation.

It is another irony that the extreme Left seems to regard me as an individual of supreme importance to the “Right” in New Zealand, the master-mind behind any and every grouplet that appears on the “Right,” either covertly or overtly, including many of which I’ve never actually heard.

Another irony is that those most interested in obtaining my literary output have until recently largely been the liberal-dominated University and public libraries, and even a few mainstream bookshops. The “Right” in New Zealand is too inane, and New Zealanders in general too devoid of ideology or a sense of history, to constitute a reading public.

I have not been a good self-promoter, partly because being a bit of a neo-Luddite I have an aversion to the internet, computers, and technology in general. Unless my wife had prevailed upon someone to give me a computer about twelve years ago I would still be using an electric typewriter, scissors, and paste.

It is only over the past year, after exposing the Van Leeuwen thesis scandal, that I fully came to realize the truly corrupt and scandalous mediocrity of New Zealand tertiary education, and pushed myself to submitting some of my work in wider directions. (The Van Leeuven scandal involved New Zealand’s leading advocate of Zionism, Dov Bing, a political science lecturer. Bing had a central role in the hounding of Dr. Joel Hayward out of New Zealand academia. Big rather unkindly tried to shut me up by threatening a bizarre $3,000,000 defamation suit.)

Consequently, over the past few moths, I have had an essay on Yockey translated into French by Dr. Christian Bouchet; I am told that one of my essays will be translated soon into Russian by an analyst involved with Moscow State University; I have recently had an essay on Russo-Chinese relations published in a refereed scholarly journal; Dr. Paul Gottfried was kind enough to give my book Thinkers of the Right a glowing review; Dr. Johnson has opened The Occidental Quarterly and TOQ Online to my writings, and I am now assisting with the establishment on an Academy of Social and Political Research which will bypass the worthless establishment tertiary education systems, and issue its own scholarly journal.

So it is only in recent months that I am actually seeing anything tangible for my labors. “Why I write” can be answered I think in regard to uncompromising attitudes towards justice, “doing the right thing,” taking individual responsibility, “fair play,” an empathy for the underdog, the old “British” stuff that is today denigrated in every possible manner via every imaginable media.

Over 20 years ago a sociologist named Paul Spoonley wrote a book called The Politics of Nostalgia. It was on the supposed “extreme Right” in New Zealand. Spoonley wanted to establish an academic career by presenting himself to academia and the news media as an expert on a non-existent “extreme Right-wing threat” in New Zealand.

I was one of those featured in the book as an activist with the now long since defunct New Force/Nationalist Workers Party. Being 30 when the book came out in 1987 I was both bemused and annoyed that I — as a “radical,” a “revolutionary” could be considered a reactionary, a “nostalgic.”

Several decades of realities have reshaped my outlook and I profess to being nostalgic, to adhering to “the politics of nostalgia.” I am sufficiently old enough to recall when New Zealand was not crime ridden; when life was not cheap; when there was not what seems to be widespread sociopathology among the general population, from murder to drunken driving; when children respected their parents and the authority of their teachers; when most New Zealanders still looked to Britain as the “Mother Country”; when even mainstream politicians could refer to Britons as our “kith and kin,” which if said now would result in a chorus of jeers about “racism”; when the role of the state in economic direction was recognized whether the government was supposedly “conservative” (National), or social democratic (Labour); when children listened to nursery rhymes and not hip hop; when ‘heroes’ were drawn from historic annals (the TV series for children dramatized the lives of Sir Francis Drake, Ivanhoe, Daniel Boone, William Tell, Robin Hood) and were not drug soaked neurotic “stars”; when news announcers still spoke with British accents and precise diction was a necessity for their employment; when we stood for “God Save the Queen” (then our National Anthem) at the start of movies.

I recall my first year at college when we still had to line up for inspection to ensure that hair length and tidiness of clothes were in order (the last year that was enforced in schools). School military cadets had just become a thing of the past. Maori were still largely rural based, and race relations were good for all, although Maori were looked upon by many with a patronizing, colonial manner. There was no pervasive guilt complex about “white colonialism.” We still had assets under state control, and there were restrictions on foreign ownership.

Now New Zealand is a part of Asia. The China Free Trade Agreement is the basis of our economic outlook. There is only one bank not owned from outside New Zealand. Multicultural agendas are imposed by force of law. The Treaty of Waitangi has become the “founding document of New Zealand.” New Zealand is officially bi-lingual, and nobody is much good at either language. Voting forms are translated into several dozen languages, leaving me to wonder that if someone doesn’t have a minimal knowledge of the English language, what understanding of the electoral and political processes does he have that should entitle him to vote?

The arts have degenerated to the point where a pile of rubbish dumped on a gallery floor on the written instructions of the ‘artist’ living in Berlin, recently won the prestigious Waikato Contemporary Art Award.

Children as young as preschool are out of control; they have no respect for parents, teachers, or police. Green Member of Parliament Sue Bradford whose political history involved communism, last year had enacted her bill to outlaw smacking as a means of parental discipline. Now parents can be jailed and their children taken by social welfare departments.

Lack of respect for person and property is rampant, whether in the form of murder, mugging, or minor yet aggravating actions such as breaking letterboxes, loud music that encroaches on the peace of mind of neighbors from blocks away; adolescent parties that become street riots; graffiti, ‘boy racers’, smashed glass in the streets . . . all are signs of social decay to some extent.

Increasing working hours have made a mockery of the 40 hour week for which our pioneer forefathers fought, and the family suffers as a result. New Zealanders are now billions in debt on their credit cards whereas until quite recently there was no such usurious entity in New Zealand (I am one of the few New Zealanders who will not have a usury card, and never will.)

Abortion is rampant, around 18,000 aborted fetuses per year, mostly sanctioned on ‘psychological grounds’ and not mainly involving unwed teenagers, but women in their late twenties and early thirties who see children and family as interfering in their social lives or careers. Conversely, some of the scum of the earth breed rampantly and there is bewilderment as to why New Zealand has such a high rate of child abuse.

Years ago I read Spengler. For years I have seen his forecasts slowly unfold in New Zealand before my eyes, every time I read the newspaper or even walk the dog down the street and see smashed glass glittering over the pavements, testimony to the bastardous louts who run rampant without thought for anyone or anything besides their immediate self-gratification. (And what is one to make of those more respectable citizens who can’t even take the responsibility upon themselves to be bothered to clean up the shards over their own drive-ways and footpaths, presumably on the basis that it was not their doing?)

I recognise the myriad ways such as those mentioned which in aggregate are spelling out the words: social and cultural decay. Some of what I write of the above might seem trivial, or “belly-aching” as we might say in New Zealand, yet all in some manner reflect New Zealand as a microcosm of the Western Civilisation in its cyclic predicament as foretold by Spengler.

Yet, for all the pessimism, where there is will there is hope; where there is a spark there might one day be a cleansing fire. The very least we can do is to heed the counsel of Evola and “ride the tiger.”

I simply do not like what I see taking place, and am not inclined to stay silent. I don’t believe in backing down for any reason, nor do I believe that the bastards who are laying waste to our civilisation should be permitted to proceed without being called to account. Since I am not a great painter, musician, poet, organiser, or orator I can at least scribble my thoughts and try to put them “out there” for anyone who might care to read them, whether they are accepted or rejected, useful or useless. It is part of who I am, and always will be.