The beast we bred in Brussels has broken out of prison And squats today on Europa’s breast. It was not made To keep us safe from harm but locked in indecision. And now he crawls the unlit kerbs of every street at night, Preying on the victims they’ve assigned for sacrifice, And every park and … Continue reading God is Greater
The Cathedral in Ruins
If it were announced to you that the enemy had invaded your cities, your castles and your lands; had ravished your wives and your daughters, and profaned your temples, which among you would not fly to arms? — St. Bernard of Clairvaux, sermon for the Second Crusade preached at Vézelay in 1146 (Joseph-François Michaud’s Histoire … Continue reading The Cathedral in Ruins
Culture Wars: The Piper and the Archer
1. The Death of Art The death of art has been proclaimed for at least a century, most loudly, perhaps, by Dada during the Great War in Europe; but its clarion call has been sounded with diminishing ferocity over the last few decades. Initially, under the neoliberal revolution and fiat economies of the 1980s, the … Continue reading Culture Wars: The Piper and the Archer
Culture Wars: Art, Politics and Capitalism
Culture Wars: Art, Politics and Capitalism by Simon Elmer Hardback: £45.00 Paperback: £25.00 Look Inside Description Written between 2016 and 2024, four years either side of lockdown, the articles collected in this volume have the benefit of straddling this watershed in Western capitalism, and of documenting, from the battlefields of the culture wars … Continue reading Culture Wars: Art, Politics and Capitalism
Crossing the Jinsha River
In the upper reaches of Tiger Leaping Gorge, Where the rapids of Jinsha River cut their way xxxxBetween mountains of unmelting snow In a torrent of gold water and silver spray, xxxxAnd the shadowed cliffs on either side Ascend to sunlit peaks five-thousand metres high — Chinese tourists, beneath masks and white umbrellas, Queue patiently … Continue reading Crossing the Jinsha River
Replacement Immigration. Part Two: The Colonisation of the UK
4. Debunking Reality The management of the response to the Southport murders I looked at in Part One of this article, largely by the same political organisations and media companies that turned the vote of 20 percent of the UK electorate into the extremist government of Keir Starmer, is not the only way in which … Continue reading Replacement Immigration. Part Two: The Colonisation of the UK
Replacement Immigration. Part One: A Two-Tier State
1. An Extremist, Minority Government In Part Two of The Road to Wigan Pier, first published in 1937, George Orwell wrote at length about the threat of fascism in England. He was out in his reckoning about when it would arrive, and England today is a very different place to what it was then; but … Continue reading Replacement Immigration. Part One: A Two-Tier State
Tiger Leaping Gorge
Her eyes were the empty buds of a beech tree in the autumn, Her lips the honeyed sapwood beneath the curled bark of her skin, The dark down on her forearms were the stripes on a tiger’s coat, Her wrists the burnished tree bole from whose stump white flowers blossom, And her hands, which picked … Continue reading Tiger Leaping Gorge
The Circus
Ants on the locust tree assume a great-nation swagger xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx— Mao Zedong, 1963 xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx1 On this nameless junction, where Fuzhou Road Crosses Jiangxi Road on its way to the Bund, For a hundred years the British Concession In the Far East — Shanghai’s City of London; And where, today, a red light means ‘stop’ But … Continue reading The Circus
Case Studies in Estate Regeneration
My old friend and sometime adversary, the architect Patrik Schumacher, once declared that the ‘unique and exclusive concern of architects’ is what he described as the first few millimetres of a building.[1] By this he meant a building’s form, its exterior and interior surfaces, the sculptured and engineered façade or envelope behind which whatever goes … Continue reading Case Studies in Estate Regeneration
Simon Elmer 