5 June, 2002Online ReactionElectric-review.com – Electric Review for short – is a high Tory review of politics, art and literature, featuring both original content and links to other sites. The site aims to provide occasional political comment and to review contemporary culture from a standpoint informed by anything other than rotten, soupy, unknowing and ignorant liberalism. Why bother to do this through a website? Well, some countries aren’t lucky enough to have a Conservative party. One such was, and is, America, where, to the outsider, Republican and Democrat historically distinguished as much in ideological terms as Fine Gael and Fine Fail do in today’s Irish Republic. To drag the Republican party towards something meaningfully ‘right wing’, some fifty odd years ago what became known as the ‘Conservative Movement’ came into being. Though this term covered a disparate range of factors from politicians to intellectuals, most of whom agreed on little, it was self-consciously used even then, and is not simply an historian’s invention. Its most concrete expression, and principle engine of change, was the founding in the mid 1950s of National Review by Bill Buckley. The self-proclaimed purpose of the magazine was ‘to stand athwart history yelling “stop!”’. Believe it or not, there are people here in the United Kingdom who wonder whether our own dear Tory party is, well, Tory enough. And adhering to the maxim, ‘traditional objectives, contemporary methods’, we’ve – a bit after everyone else – hit the web in the shape of ERO. The doggerel we've just quoted was one of Edwardian radical rightist, Lord Willoughby de Broke’s, favourites. He was a fox-hunting fanatic, known now, if at all, through Dangerfield’s line that his face ‘bore a pleasing resemblance to the horse, and his opinions [were] not more than two hundred years behind his time’. Like much liberal history of ultra Tory movements, this gets it exactly the wrong way round, for the point about Willoughby de Broke was that, being above all else a realist, he wanted to achieve his age-old goals through the most effective, and indeed, modern techniques. In the 1900s this led to his deep association with Leo Maxse’s barnstorming National Review (from which Buckley cribbed the name half a century later), the leading organ of diehard Tory opinion. Beyond Maxse’s magazine there were several dozen lesser Tory periodicals, including The Spectator. Compare and contrast with today: other than The Spectator, name (circulation no object) a British right wing magazine. Whereas, for those of you lucky enough to be within the broad bosom of the liberal left, there are New Left Review, Tribune, Prospect, the New Statesman, Red Pepper, and on and on it goes. In part, this reflects the splendid talent of the left for fratricidal factionalism, but it also points up the collapse of thinking on the right. One consequence of the electoral success of the Conservative party in the post-war period, allied to the hollowing out of its historic mission, has been a kind of nationalisation, or at least, partyifying, of thought on the right. ERO aims to spit against this trend. America has, sadly, led the way, with a profusion of right wing websites, all seeking to free Conservatism from the dead hand of party and caucus. Notable are such free-wheeling sites as LewRockwell.com, antiwar.com (seriously), and townhall.com. Other excellent conservative sites have come off the back of print sisters. These include, in particular, Buckley’s National Review and Rupert Murdoch’s neo-conservative Weekly Standard. Both these magazines have a genuine, live web presence, as opposed to their sites being merely ‘pop-up’ versions of their print editions. Obviously in Britain The Spectator should be the prime candidate for leading this charge, but it hasn’t as yet, the Herculean efforts of its online editor, Toby Young, evidently being to no avail. ERO embodies all the best traditions of the web, in that it is entirely the prisoner of those involved with it, and quite heedless of potential audience opinion. Something being dictated to by the market probably wouldn’t have thought that what the punters are crying out for are 2000 word high brow art essays alongside pitch-black reaction, but who cares? The beauty of the medium is that it’s so much easier to try and fail with a website than it is with e.g. an A5 journal. There’s also the truth, for those inclined to appreciate it, that even the most generous broadsheet is only going to be able to afford so much space to, oh, its music critic dilating upon William Christie’s latest interpretation of some under-considered Charpentier. If the strap line of the site is, ‘Out-of-date opinions by up-to-date methods’, is there also a goal? Well, if there is, it’s not what motivated something like the late Modern Review, which was essentially a journalistic enterprise. At a guess, and looking at what’s working in the States, a webzine, from right or left, that wanted to thrive would be littered with cheesy irony, pop-cult references, and a good smattering of straight-up politics. It’s fashionable to dismiss this latter ingredient, but consider your daily newspaper, assuming you have one – media coverage is still a lot more politics driven than people care to admit. ERO’s looking for a fight – readers are an accident.
Arts Editor: Bunny Smedley Publisher: [vacant] ERO, June 5, 2002 09:43 AM |