web analytics
Categories
Civil war Harold Covington Tom Sunic

Tom Sunic on Covington’s novels

One must mention the name of Harold A. Covington, a postmodern novelist whose works represent a good Bildungsroman for any White nationalist. Over several thousand pages, Covington uses the classic approach in the description of postmodern heroes who always try to surpass themselves—in the face of cosmic vagaries.

However, the plots of his best-known war novels are not situated in ancient Greece or Rome, but in a balkanized and dying America. Covington is also an author of several historical novels whose plots revolve around 15th- and 16th-century Europe. His war novels, therefore, may be the reason why his message may be closer and more comprehensible to a modern reader than Homer and the ancient classics.

Let us leave aside the political plausibility or post-historical veracity of Covington’s novels dealing with the war of White independence at the beginning of the 21st century in the Pacific Northwest. What needs to be singled out in Covington’s prose is his language, his ability to construct both real and surreal plots, and above all his skill to administer a good dose of empathy with his diverse characters.

And indeed there is a whole gallery of diverse characters in his novels—from disfranchised poor Whites from the South who were once victims of positive discrimination and who have now landed in the embattled Northwest, to ritzy and sold-out WASP politicians in DC, vying to be more Jewish than the Jews themselves. Each of his numerous characters is carefully situated in his own timeframe, each carrying his own clusters of conflicting memories, often haunting him for the rest of his life.

Covington, as much as he dissects the mindset of his warring heroes does not just examine their self-proclaimed racial awareness, but focuses instead on their historical consciousness. The reader won’t find characters blaring “White power!” or sporting swastikas, or endlessly debating about the ominous Jews. The frequent monologues by his characters bear witness that their individual memories are seldom sweet. Even in a pristine environment of the Northwest Republic, residents are immersed in their own Shakespearean dilemmas of being vs. not being.

In most cases the racial awareness of Covington’s characters is coupled with their reminiscences of the haunting times of bygone eras. Thus, in his latest novel Freedom’s Sons depicting the nascent Northwest Republic, we come across a man who serves as one of the chiefs of the Northwest secret police. But this man has also a past; he is not just an empty White slate. His grandparents, back in the mid-20th century had fled communist Czechoslovakia and settled in the city of Chicago—only to discover another form of paleo-communist aka liberal insanity. Their progeny, the future settlers in the Northwest, realized that in the land of the free and the home of the brave, they were not just subjects to the terror of affirmative action, but also victims of serial burglaries and rampant Black crime. Finally, after much procrastination they decided to move to the Northwest, encountering on their way both physical and psychological roadblocks which in many ways reflected the predicaments they had once encountered in communist Europe.

__________________________

Tom Sunic’s full article can be read here and here.

16 replies on “Tom Sunic on Covington’s novels”

My problem is that Sunic isn’t bringing us back to the Classics. Though I haven’t read Covington, I will make a safe and educated guess that his works are of picayune literary value.

IFA (link)

Yes, I read that. However, I’m unimpressed as I want some serious and in-depth reviews to be penned. O’Meara (don’t ask me which one) wrote an erudite essay on James’s diaries once. It was quite impressive.

What I want is intelligent WNs opining on real Culture. I want them to distill the necessity of reading the Classics – and not just the trite few like “The Iliad” or “Merchant of Venice”. Why don’t we have the equivalent for Beethoven’s oeuvre?

You know why.

IFA

Speaking about Ludwig Van, I have at an arm’s length the deluxe, 200-year anniversary table book that Deutsche Grammophon edited (alas, I don’t have the accompanying albums of Beethoven’s complete opuses because I was broke when the collection appeared in the stores long time ago). I’ve been reading it and am tempted to add excerpts here, just as I am doing with Kenneth Clark. But I doubt anyone, except you, will take notice…

By the way, do you know that Covington chose Luther’s Mighty Fortress as the hymn for the Northwest Republic?

Thanks for the compliment. I was unaware of Covington’s use of that chorale tune. It’s definitely to his credit.

IFA

Luther’s Mighty Fortress

A people that must sing such music is certainly prone to suicide. I’ve always felt that the protestant culture is of particular ugliness and coldness. Lack of beauty and warmth is killing.

Pit,

I am no fan of Luther, but as you can appreciate, I empathize with him because he suffered exactly the same fear of eternal damnation that nearly drove both of us mad (the difference is that his defence mechanism was to protest against the Church, while I became an apostate its dogmas). As to the religious music itself, Luther was an amateur. The real German professionals of religious music would be Bach and Handel. In the next episode of Civilisation Clark said:

The sound of Bach’s music reminds me a curious fact that people don’t always remember when they talk about the eighteenth-century—that the great art of the time was religious art.

Luther had been a fine musician—he wrote music and sang with (surprisingly enough) a sweet tenor voice. And although the Lutheran reform prohibited many of the arts that civilise our impulses, it encouraged church music.

In small Dutch and German towns the choir and the organs became the only means through which men could enter the world of spiritualised emotion; when the Calvinists, in their still more resolute purification of the Christian rite, prohibited organs and destroyed them, they caused more distress than they had ever caused by the destruction of the images.

If you “haven’t read Covington” any “guess” you make is of “picayune literary value”.

Covington’s Northwest novels are available online free of charge. You can also buy them on Amazon and Lulu. I apologize for not having the link for the free downloads handy. Go [here] and click on the tab for Northwest novels.

Personally , I have found his books to be well written with references to “classical” works.

I can understand Europeans not appreciating Covington. White Nationalism, I feel, is a colonial thing that does not translate well into Europe.What I do not understand is people dismissing Covington’s work without reading it. He also does a one hour podcast each week. Go to the website and click on the Radio Free Northwest tab. Over two years of podcasts are available.

¡Hola, Chechar!
I will notice for sure!
I am checking your blog every now and then and it has become as beautiful as the old one and as interesting as ever.
At the moment I am into a bit different area, reading Bill Cooper and Fritz Springmeier, which I discovered just a few weeks ago. Heavy stuff, but real food for thought. Mind-control is something I meant to dig into since long time. Not that I understand anything yet, but it is a start:-)
Springmeier also talks about the control of churches by freemasonry.
I am not sure if you ever wrote anything about it. Are you familiar with this subject?
By the way, I reread bits from the Quartett quite often just to feel better. One can say many things about Covington, but not that he is not inspiring.
Keep up the good job!

Roman

Hey Roman, Nice to hear from you again! My next post about the Kenneth Clark series will be crucial. Hope you’ll like it. Cheers.

(P.S. No: I’m not familiar with those authors.)

@Pit
Actually I consider it extremely beautiful, transcending the borders between various versions of Christianity. And I don’t think there were more cases of suicides in Evangelical culture than Catholic or Orthodox. I wrote Evangelical, in German Evangelisch, because Germans never use term Protestant. It has been probably invented by Catholics for propaganda purposes. In my country, Poland, dislike towards Evangelicals is quite pronounced, slightly more than dislike towards Orthodox Christian.
I always thought it was a bit suspicious, because during Golden Age of Commonwealth in 16th and 17th century, there were Evangelicals present in all parts of society. Decline started when they were forcibly converted to Catholicism or expulsed or worse. Near where I come from there is a village called Martyrs, because a Calvinist family has been hunted down and killed there.

Roman, I didn’t mean individuals to suicide but the culture when experiencing contrast with a different culture.

Above, Chechar quotes this:

when the Calvinists, in their still more resolute purification of the Christian rite, prohibited organs and destroyed them, they caused more distress than they had ever caused by the destruction of the images

So it seems to me that puritan protestant churches very much tend to suffer a dearth of… what is it actually… of warmth, emotion, joy. And when getting in contact with cultures that represent that more, they develop a lot of self-doubt. This does not imply suicide; but it may imply weakness, and the tendency to cultural AIDS: inability and unwillingness to defend the own culture where it is experienced as cold and emotionally insufficient.

And I think one can say that the demise of the west is actually a demise of the Northern European and those are protestants. I think the southern, roman countries are much less self-hating and ethno-masochistic (ok, I’m aware of the auto-genocide of the Spanish in the Americas, that gives a different perspective).

Only a guess. Possible that the protestant culture simply fits that kind of people, the Germans, Dutch, Northern Europeans, and that they are eventually ok with that culture. Then again, we have the evidence of cultural AIDS and … if not suicide then at least a lack of resistance to extermination, so maybe there is something about it.

But I respect your enjoying that culture and music; I just mentioned my impression of it. And I want to add that I also always experienced this coldness in Bach. It’s a strange phenomenon, a lot of Bach’s music is extremely beautiful, take Das Wohltemperierte Klavier, violin concertos, Matthäus-Passion. Yet, always that coldness.

And Chechar, since you recently wrote about architecture (which I very much appreciate; what’s going on in architecture, in my conspiracy-oriented mind I very much want to rate as just another genocidal effort): protestant churches show considerable ugliness. They have always appeared cold. But the recent ones from the last decades are the trendsetters in murder by architecture. It’s beyond description.

So if someone has an idea what that means, I would really be grateful as I’m wondering about that phenomenon around Protestantism for a long time now.

Re: coldness. I would venture to say that, compared to Schoenberg (which caused tremendous harm to classical music) Bach sounds like warm indeed! Schoenberg, not Bach, was the one who tried to kill all emotion in music.

Re: Schoenberg killing emotion in music, I agree. He was your typical Jewish charlatan. There’s no emotionality discernible in his hideous (de)compositions when there’s no tonic center to which the piece can resolve to. Thus, I find his use of dynamic markings to be asinine as well.

So if someone has an idea what that means, I would really be grateful

I know what it means. See these Civilisation entries and search for the word “architecture”.

Later today my post will epitomize Clark’s architectural philosophy with his views about New York and the westerners’ new gods, Satan and Mammon. Pay special attention to what Clark will say about Blake. Yeats will get the last word.

Stay tuned…

Comments are closed.