Jonathan Bowden was a paradox: on the one hand, he was an avowed
elitist and aesthetic modernist, yet on the other hand, he relished
such forms of popular entertainment as comics, graphic novels,
pulps, and even Punch and Judy shows, which not only appeal to the
masses but also offer a refuge for pre- and anti-modern aesthetic
tastes and tendencies. Bowden was drawn to popular culture because
it was rife with Nietzschean and Right-wing themes: heroic
vitalism, Faustian adventurism, anti-egalitarianism, biological
determinism, racial consciousness, biologically-based (and
traditional) notions of the differences and proper relations of the
sexes, etc. Pulp Fascism collects Jonathan Bowden's principal
statements on Right-wing themes in popular culture drawn from his
essays, lectures, and interviews. These high-brow analyses of
low-brow culture reveal just how deep and serious shallow
entertainment can be. About 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 Bowden it was the
image of the cultured thug. I give you Jonathan Bowden: cultured
thug." -Greg Johnson, from the Foreword "Jonathan Bowden was
uniquely gifted as a cultural critic and revisionist, willing to
explore the obscure areas of high and low culture, and apply ideas
from the former to the analysis of the later, starting always from
the supposition that inequality is a moral good. Bowden's texts are
dense and rich with reference and insight, yet remain entertaining
and replete with humor." -Alex Kurtagi "Many men give speeches;
Jonathan Bowden gave orations. To experience one of Bowden's
performances must have been something like hearing Maria Callas in
her prime or witnessing one of Mussolini's call to arms from a
Roman balcony. "As an intellectual, Jonathan was a Renaissance man,
or perhaps a bundle of contradictions: his novels and paintings
were of Joycean complexity, and yet, in his orations and
non-fiction writings, he was able to cut to the essence of a
philosophy or political development in a way that was immediately
understandable and, indeed, useful for nationalists. "Pulp Fascism
could be called Bowden's 'unfinished symphony'- his attempt (not
quite realized) to reveal the radical, ambivalent, and, in some
cases, shockingly traditionalist undercurrents in pop culture.
"That which envelops our lives is taken for granted . . . and thus
rarely properly analyzed and understood. Bowden brings new life to
those characters and comic-book worlds we too often dismiss as
child's play." -Richard Spencer About the Author Jonathan Bowden,
April 12, 1962-March 29, 2012, was a British novelist, playwright,
essayist, painter, actor, and orator, and a leading thinker and
spokesman of the British New Right. Born in Kent and largely
self-educated, Bowden was involved with a series of Right-wing
groups for which he was a popular speaker, including the Monday
Club, the Western Goals Institute, the Revolutionary Conservative
Caucus, the Freedom Party, the Bloomsbury Forum, the British
National Party, and finally the New Right (London), of which he was
the Chairman. Bowden was a prolific author of fiction, philosophy,
criticism, and commentary.