Bonjour from an extremely hot France! It is too hot to think, much less write. My brain is melted.
There is something I have been curious about since beginning my Substack — and that is you, my readers. How do you find me? Why do you subscribe? Are you more conservative, liberal, or left? — not that those terms mean much anymore. A few of you know me personally (hi, friends!) but most of you do not. Even a year and a half in, I’m surprised and intrigued by each email subscriber that comes in. So I want to know — what are your stories?
When I think of what I would like to achieve with this project, it is to create a haven of sanity and decency for the politically homeless in an increasingly messed up and divided world. And to do that, I need you guys to be part of that haven, that community. So let’s talk to each other.
If you would indulge me, and have a few moments to spare, jump in the comments and let me know!
Where are you from?
What do you do?
What — if anything — was the moment or event that made you think that culture needs saving?
And tell me anything else you would like to share. Drop it into the comments ⬇️⬇️⬇️⬇️ or email me at jennyeholland@gmail.com.
And stay cool, where ever you are! Cheers to you and happy birthday to the Republique!
Yes, Happy Bastille Day. I think that I first became aware of you by reading a mention of you in something by Jodi Shaw. I subscribe to your Substack because I think that your writing is often wise and always erudite. You are an interesting lady. I am from the Midwest and retired. In recent years, I have become ever more concerned about the totalitarian impulses of those who consider themselves superior to the rest of us (from thoroughly indoctrinated college kids to adults in highly responsible jobs who should be old enough to know better). Truly the world is going downhill fast, but, if we are following Jesus Christ, we have nothing ultimately to fear as the world moves ever closer to his return.
If I could speak to my younger, far-left self and tell her/myself that in some years I would vote for Sarkozy, and then eventually for Marine Le Pen (twice); my younger, far-left self's eyes would pop and she/I would fall off a chair.
Oh, so you are in France! i'm very interested in Marine Le Pen -- when I was growing up her father's name was dog shit in my house (pardon the vulgarity) so to think she is the only force against this scary globalisation is confusing, to put it mildly. Is it true that the right and left wing united in France last week to defeat the Green Pass?
Her father's name is, and should always be, dog shit. (I love language. No apologies.)
But she made a big deal of separating from his worldview; and the world shifted.
The left and right DID unite against the fascist 'pass' last week. Good defeat for WEF puppet Macron (another piece of dog shit, along with his handler, Klaus Schwab).
I'm very interested in the new European populist right. Because they look and sound very much like what I used to think was the left!! Have you been following what's happening in Italy with Giorgia Meloni?
Equally interested! I wish I had a good idea based on solid sources. I'm very wary of the word 'populist' now, and I haven't seen enough about her from trustworthy sites to form any opinion (and none of my decent sources are covering Italian politics). Impossible to keep on top of anything now except where you already had fundamentals (and congrats to anyone who had a solid grip on Italian politics, haha!). Every day is a rollercoaster, everywhere.
All I pick up is that she's strongly anti-immigration, anti-EU, anti-choice...but these issues don't look the same to me in 2022 as they did in, say, 2012; so I give up. MSM indiscriminately throws around "neo-fascist" and "far right", which is frankly meaningless now. Do you have any insider perspective on her?
I find that the populist right media landscape is far more interesting, diverse, and analytical than the mainstream corporate media now is. Obviously they have their political bias, but it can easily be balanced out with some quick searches for the opposite view.
Thanks for link! I was enjoying Spectator until Plandemic hit. Then I couldn't stand its take on covid. I lost all my 'centre' and 'right' publications because they were all clueless on "the pandemic". Glad to see they covered her.
I'm entirely off the publications I read for 20ish years. They're all propaganda mouthpieces of one kind or another. Not attacking Spectator (which I don't consider MSM) – which is doing a good job on that – but what does MSM's 'right-wing nationalist populism' mean when the Dalai Lama also specifically criticized mass migration more than once; and said that nationals belong in their own nations (my paraphrase, but you can find him in his own words)? Italy will be interesting to watch.
I disagree that 'balance' can be found, or that it can be found easily. We're in a post-journalist world (and have been for decades without realizing it). Everyone has an agenda; an angle; a narrative. People now need to develop research and thinking skills they/we weren't taught. Abdicating our own thinking cost us dearly.
Hi Jenny. I have just written a (sorry, very long) email to you. But, for the other readers, and in a nutshell, I very much identify with what Cary said, only regarding the UK rather than the U.S. I had always been left/liberal (I'd still consider myself that now, but not in the current sense!) However, it seems the left has lost its way and is more about identity politics than real life concerns of the average Joe. I hate how things like Brexit, immigration and the trans movement have become so loaded. If you question issues such as mass immigration, you are labelled a racist, if you question whether trans women are real women, you are labelled transphobic, and on and on it goes. It's just sad to see that this is what political discourse has come to. Your writing is a beacon of hope and light and truly keeps me sane and enlightened. I came across you by chance, possibly through the Spiked website, but it was like coming home when I found you. Without a doubt, you are my favourite writer/thinker around. Thank you!
Hi, Jenny. Glad to hear you're having a nice time in France. Have you crossed paths with Le Tour? I'm a retired archaeologist and historian, grew up all over southern and central California, and have been married forty-two years. My wife and I used to consider ourselves liberals--we voted for Bill Clinton, which makes me cringe a little now--but as we gained more experience in life, learned more, and became property owners with all the responsibilities that entails, we found we were more centrist. The violent shift of the Democrat party and the left in general toward complete lunacy in the past several years was the final straw that turned us off. Trying to continue living in California, amid the havoc that has been wrought by fanatical leftists here, is particularly challenging. We still feel much the same about most things as we did when we were liberals, but we're Independents now, trying to assess each issue separately and rationally. I don't remember exactly how I discovered you on the internet, I think an article I was reading some time last year had a link to one of your essays. I found that you were able to articulate much of what I've felt in recent years about society and culture. Not only that, but you brought up ideas that hadn't occurred to me yet. You're a damned good writer, and I blush a bit to admit that I really like your personality (I've also seen some of your videos). After reading your stuff for free for quite a while, I started feeling guilty, so I subscribed. Toward the end of every week I find myself looking forward to whatever it is you'll be writing about, and watching my email for it to arrive. Anyway, have a lovely life, and please keep writing!
An archaeologist! What a cool job! Thank you for sharing a bit about your life -- I am watching what is happening in California with alarm. Though I'm a bit embarrassed to say I have never been!
Thanks to your support, and everyone else who subscribes, I will keep writing. I'll admit that sometimes I feel like there isn't much point, even just the other day I was saying to my husband that I should probably quit -- then I thought of your faithful readership and I stopped feeling sorry for myself. So thank you! It makes a big difference!
This Left-Right switch is fascinating, and one wonders not only why it has occurred, but when. It's not just a generational phenomenon, because it seems most of the Geezer Leftists (Geraldo, Dan Rather, Kerry, Max Boot, etc., have "mutated" along with the curve.
One general feature about this whole issue which I haven't seen anyone notice (let alone factor in seriously) is that we are not just talking about two camps and their respective actors -- one over here, one over there -- operating and arguing and fighting within a relatively neutral overarching field one could call "society". The overarching field itSELF IS one of the two camps, or has been taken over by one of the two camps. The Mainstream itself is Leftist. Leftists own the Mainstream; non-Leftists just rent space therein. This ought to game-change one's analysis of these issues; but time and again I see various pundits on various podcasts analyze away (e.g., on and on and on for 3 hours with James Lindsay and WokalDistance lol) every which way but loose about a luxurious complexity of trees, but all the while ignore the forest.
I've been meaning to answer this for a while and didn't want to forget because I really value your writing and therefore loved reading about the other readers because I know we must all be the most awesome people in the world, yes, in. the. world!
In a nutshell, I was born in Far Rockaway, New York. Italian grandparents, all four, immigrated from Italy through Ellis Island, settled in Brooklyn. I grew up living around (and sometimes with) my grandparents and always surrounded by my extended Italian family on both sides-Aunt, Uncles, cousins-one more outrageous than the next and all the most incredible, fun, hard working, no bull, life is beautiful kind of people. My parents were the best anyone could ever be blessed with-father a NYC cop-mother worked in a bank. My brother (oldest of my family) was the first to go college on either side of the family-Ivy League. I am 51 years old and my brother, sister and I would be considered all pretty darn successful by absolutely any conventional metric.
My parents walked around with no money in their pockets to send us to Catholic/Private schools. In mine and my siblings high schools (we were all sent to different schools, different towns for various reasons) there were a lot of rich kids. We did not have scholarships or aid and we all always worked as soon as we could. We were obviously not rich (to say the least) but I never felt jealous of my wealthy friends. I just felt that was what I wanted to achieve-it totally excited me. I loved seeing their beautiful homes etc and being exposed to so many different influences. I thought it was all so cool, my eyes were opened as my parents had wanted.
I moved to Manhattan in 1993, worked my way up in Advertising (my college performance was less than stellar) and ended up owning my own company with my husband as we still do today.
We just moved out of Manhattan, sold the house in the Hamptons, that I loved so much too- living between Maine, Florida with a lot of Europe hopefully, in between. Never, EVER thought I'd leave NY, oh and my siblings sold everything and are living with their families in Florida now too.
Here's the thing- they locked us down, what a term, huh, for covid but now with digital only work, we are freer than ever. Think about it. I have this deep, real feeling like God, with the brush of his pinky and a "pffft" used this bad for good. We endured two years of hell in NY with no basic freedom (mask up!) but now we are already living a life so incredible. A way of life I had only once dreamed about.
My husband and I are independent politically but much more Conservatively aligned.
Sorry for the extravagant use of parentheses and bad grammar, incomplete sentences etc but I wanted to write fast and freely or else I realized I would never get this out. So much more to say but I wanted you to know that I treasure you all on this forum so very much. God Bless you guys and Jenny, you are the the BEST! Salut.
There seems to be a growing subculture of, for want of a better term, Sorta-Kinda-Anti-Left-Leftists-Who-Didn't-Leave-the-Left,-the-Left-Left Them. Bhogosian, Shaw, Boyce, Lindsay, Holland, Tim Poole, Rogan, Rubin... the list goes on and on. What I'd like to see is some kind of symposium featuring all of them (or as many as possible) exploring the question: Why the hell are you still a Leftist?
Yes - that is a valid question. But I go back and forth, sometimes I have a reaction that is strongly class-aware or anti-elites or anti-corporate and I think, I must still be on the left, even though I also loathe the left. Confusing! And I was taught that right-wing meant heavy-handed state power. But mostly, I just get frustrated with how utterly shit the 'left-right' definitions are. They need to be done away with. They do more harm than good. I think now we just need understand things in terms of 'are you pro-human or pro-institution? Are you pro-person or pro-state?' For the first time in my lifetime, those things are openly and obviously in opposition to each other. Also big capital has been backing state monopoly for over a century -- first in the form of Stalinism and now the CCP -- so even big capital is "left-wing." As we are also seeing in the crazed woke corporations. Definitions matter, and in this case, our definitions are completely misleading.
Left and Right seem to have flip-flopped. Especially the garden-variety Left. It's hard to conceive of the typical counter-cultural Leftist of the 60s becoming gung ho about supporting the State and Big Pharma in coercive pandemic measures. Those Leftists used to be cynical and skeptical at the very least about the System, the State, the Establishment, the Mainstream, "the Man". Now the vast majority of Leftists resemble true-blue Brownshirts in their love of the Fatherland. Jimmy Dore has spoken to this well. Which segues into another odd phenomenon: the entire Mainstream seems to have become Leftist. Meanwhile, Leftism has become extremist, so we have the additional odd phenomenon of an extremism that is now mainstream.
I agree more or less with your appeal to transcend the L-R rhetoric; but the irony (and frustration) is that if one pursues issues in a pro-person / anti-state vein too much in our climate now, the Mainstream (i.e., the Left) will accuse you of being right wing (which also in their mind increasingly coincides with conspiracy theory kook).
Yes, the left has absolutely become the new right. One hundred percent. That's why the definitions have totally lost their meaning and are now just misleading people who are not true authoritarian/fascists but still associate the right with being just that. Those people are essentially the biggest problem, because they continue to resist the reality that the switch has happened and cleave to the idea that the right is scary and bad and the left has the solution, the left are still the 'good guys.' If they could adapt their rigid definitions to what is actually happening the extremism you mention would go away. I've been called right wing more times than I can count by friends -- many of them former friends -- and I just don't care any more because it doesn't have any real meaning. My politics -- and I don't even think I am political -- are really just common sense.
Yes, Happy Bastille Day. I think that I first became aware of you by reading a mention of you in something by Jodi Shaw. I subscribe to your Substack because I think that your writing is often wise and always erudite. You are an interesting lady. I am from the Midwest and retired. In recent years, I have become ever more concerned about the totalitarian impulses of those who consider themselves superior to the rest of us (from thoroughly indoctrinated college kids to adults in highly responsible jobs who should be old enough to know better). Truly the world is going downhill fast, but, if we are following Jesus Christ, we have nothing ultimately to fear as the world moves ever closer to his return.
Thank you for always commenting, Susan. I always enjoy reading what you have to say.
Here you go:
If I could speak to my younger, far-left self and tell her/myself that in some years I would vote for Sarkozy, and then eventually for Marine Le Pen (twice); my younger, far-left self's eyes would pop and she/I would fall off a chair.
(Awkward phrasing, but you get it!)
Oh, so you are in France! i'm very interested in Marine Le Pen -- when I was growing up her father's name was dog shit in my house (pardon the vulgarity) so to think she is the only force against this scary globalisation is confusing, to put it mildly. Is it true that the right and left wing united in France last week to defeat the Green Pass?
Her father's name is, and should always be, dog shit. (I love language. No apologies.)
But she made a big deal of separating from his worldview; and the world shifted.
The left and right DID unite against the fascist 'pass' last week. Good defeat for WEF puppet Macron (another piece of dog shit, along with his handler, Klaus Schwab).
I'm very interested in the new European populist right. Because they look and sound very much like what I used to think was the left!! Have you been following what's happening in Italy with Giorgia Meloni?
Equally interested! I wish I had a good idea based on solid sources. I'm very wary of the word 'populist' now, and I haven't seen enough about her from trustworthy sites to form any opinion (and none of my decent sources are covering Italian politics). Impossible to keep on top of anything now except where you already had fundamentals (and congrats to anyone who had a solid grip on Italian politics, haha!). Every day is a rollercoaster, everywhere.
All I pick up is that she's strongly anti-immigration, anti-EU, anti-choice...but these issues don't look the same to me in 2022 as they did in, say, 2012; so I give up. MSM indiscriminately throws around "neo-fascist" and "far right", which is frankly meaningless now. Do you have any insider perspective on her?
I've only heard about her from the MAGA right-populist, though I did find this interesting article on her:
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/could-giorgia-meloni-become-italy-s-next-prime-minister-
I find that the populist right media landscape is far more interesting, diverse, and analytical than the mainstream corporate media now is. Obviously they have their political bias, but it can easily be balanced out with some quick searches for the opposite view.
Thanks for link! I was enjoying Spectator until Plandemic hit. Then I couldn't stand its take on covid. I lost all my 'centre' and 'right' publications because they were all clueless on "the pandemic". Glad to see they covered her.
I'm entirely off the publications I read for 20ish years. They're all propaganda mouthpieces of one kind or another. Not attacking Spectator (which I don't consider MSM) – which is doing a good job on that – but what does MSM's 'right-wing nationalist populism' mean when the Dalai Lama also specifically criticized mass migration more than once; and said that nationals belong in their own nations (my paraphrase, but you can find him in his own words)? Italy will be interesting to watch.
I disagree that 'balance' can be found, or that it can be found easily. We're in a post-journalist world (and have been for decades without realizing it). Everyone has an agenda; an angle; a narrative. People now need to develop research and thinking skills they/we weren't taught. Abdicating our own thinking cost us dearly.
Hi Jenny. I have just written a (sorry, very long) email to you. But, for the other readers, and in a nutshell, I very much identify with what Cary said, only regarding the UK rather than the U.S. I had always been left/liberal (I'd still consider myself that now, but not in the current sense!) However, it seems the left has lost its way and is more about identity politics than real life concerns of the average Joe. I hate how things like Brexit, immigration and the trans movement have become so loaded. If you question issues such as mass immigration, you are labelled a racist, if you question whether trans women are real women, you are labelled transphobic, and on and on it goes. It's just sad to see that this is what political discourse has come to. Your writing is a beacon of hope and light and truly keeps me sane and enlightened. I came across you by chance, possibly through the Spiked website, but it was like coming home when I found you. Without a doubt, you are my favourite writer/thinker around. Thank you!
Thank you Nicky for your support -- and I just wrote back to your email!
Hi, Jenny. Glad to hear you're having a nice time in France. Have you crossed paths with Le Tour? I'm a retired archaeologist and historian, grew up all over southern and central California, and have been married forty-two years. My wife and I used to consider ourselves liberals--we voted for Bill Clinton, which makes me cringe a little now--but as we gained more experience in life, learned more, and became property owners with all the responsibilities that entails, we found we were more centrist. The violent shift of the Democrat party and the left in general toward complete lunacy in the past several years was the final straw that turned us off. Trying to continue living in California, amid the havoc that has been wrought by fanatical leftists here, is particularly challenging. We still feel much the same about most things as we did when we were liberals, but we're Independents now, trying to assess each issue separately and rationally. I don't remember exactly how I discovered you on the internet, I think an article I was reading some time last year had a link to one of your essays. I found that you were able to articulate much of what I've felt in recent years about society and culture. Not only that, but you brought up ideas that hadn't occurred to me yet. You're a damned good writer, and I blush a bit to admit that I really like your personality (I've also seen some of your videos). After reading your stuff for free for quite a while, I started feeling guilty, so I subscribed. Toward the end of every week I find myself looking forward to whatever it is you'll be writing about, and watching my email for it to arrive. Anyway, have a lovely life, and please keep writing!
An archaeologist! What a cool job! Thank you for sharing a bit about your life -- I am watching what is happening in California with alarm. Though I'm a bit embarrassed to say I have never been!
Thanks to your support, and everyone else who subscribes, I will keep writing. I'll admit that sometimes I feel like there isn't much point, even just the other day I was saying to my husband that I should probably quit -- then I thought of your faithful readership and I stopped feeling sorry for myself. So thank you! It makes a big difference!
This Left-Right switch is fascinating, and one wonders not only why it has occurred, but when. It's not just a generational phenomenon, because it seems most of the Geezer Leftists (Geraldo, Dan Rather, Kerry, Max Boot, etc., have "mutated" along with the curve.
One general feature about this whole issue which I haven't seen anyone notice (let alone factor in seriously) is that we are not just talking about two camps and their respective actors -- one over here, one over there -- operating and arguing and fighting within a relatively neutral overarching field one could call "society". The overarching field itSELF IS one of the two camps, or has been taken over by one of the two camps. The Mainstream itself is Leftist. Leftists own the Mainstream; non-Leftists just rent space therein. This ought to game-change one's analysis of these issues; but time and again I see various pundits on various podcasts analyze away (e.g., on and on and on for 3 hours with James Lindsay and WokalDistance lol) every which way but loose about a luxurious complexity of trees, but all the while ignore the forest.
I've been meaning to answer this for a while and didn't want to forget because I really value your writing and therefore loved reading about the other readers because I know we must all be the most awesome people in the world, yes, in. the. world!
In a nutshell, I was born in Far Rockaway, New York. Italian grandparents, all four, immigrated from Italy through Ellis Island, settled in Brooklyn. I grew up living around (and sometimes with) my grandparents and always surrounded by my extended Italian family on both sides-Aunt, Uncles, cousins-one more outrageous than the next and all the most incredible, fun, hard working, no bull, life is beautiful kind of people. My parents were the best anyone could ever be blessed with-father a NYC cop-mother worked in a bank. My brother (oldest of my family) was the first to go college on either side of the family-Ivy League. I am 51 years old and my brother, sister and I would be considered all pretty darn successful by absolutely any conventional metric.
My parents walked around with no money in their pockets to send us to Catholic/Private schools. In mine and my siblings high schools (we were all sent to different schools, different towns for various reasons) there were a lot of rich kids. We did not have scholarships or aid and we all always worked as soon as we could. We were obviously not rich (to say the least) but I never felt jealous of my wealthy friends. I just felt that was what I wanted to achieve-it totally excited me. I loved seeing their beautiful homes etc and being exposed to so many different influences. I thought it was all so cool, my eyes were opened as my parents had wanted.
I moved to Manhattan in 1993, worked my way up in Advertising (my college performance was less than stellar) and ended up owning my own company with my husband as we still do today.
We just moved out of Manhattan, sold the house in the Hamptons, that I loved so much too- living between Maine, Florida with a lot of Europe hopefully, in between. Never, EVER thought I'd leave NY, oh and my siblings sold everything and are living with their families in Florida now too.
Here's the thing- they locked us down, what a term, huh, for covid but now with digital only work, we are freer than ever. Think about it. I have this deep, real feeling like God, with the brush of his pinky and a "pffft" used this bad for good. We endured two years of hell in NY with no basic freedom (mask up!) but now we are already living a life so incredible. A way of life I had only once dreamed about.
My husband and I are independent politically but much more Conservatively aligned.
Sorry for the extravagant use of parentheses and bad grammar, incomplete sentences etc but I wanted to write fast and freely or else I realized I would never get this out. So much more to say but I wanted you to know that I treasure you all on this forum so very much. God Bless you guys and Jenny, you are the the BEST! Salut.
Thank you for sharing that with me! I loved to hear about your story. I will respond via email.
There seems to be a growing subculture of, for want of a better term, Sorta-Kinda-Anti-Left-Leftists-Who-Didn't-Leave-the-Left,-the-Left-Left Them. Bhogosian, Shaw, Boyce, Lindsay, Holland, Tim Poole, Rogan, Rubin... the list goes on and on. What I'd like to see is some kind of symposium featuring all of them (or as many as possible) exploring the question: Why the hell are you still a Leftist?
Yes - that is a valid question. But I go back and forth, sometimes I have a reaction that is strongly class-aware or anti-elites or anti-corporate and I think, I must still be on the left, even though I also loathe the left. Confusing! And I was taught that right-wing meant heavy-handed state power. But mostly, I just get frustrated with how utterly shit the 'left-right' definitions are. They need to be done away with. They do more harm than good. I think now we just need understand things in terms of 'are you pro-human or pro-institution? Are you pro-person or pro-state?' For the first time in my lifetime, those things are openly and obviously in opposition to each other. Also big capital has been backing state monopoly for over a century -- first in the form of Stalinism and now the CCP -- so even big capital is "left-wing." As we are also seeing in the crazed woke corporations. Definitions matter, and in this case, our definitions are completely misleading.
Left and Right seem to have flip-flopped. Especially the garden-variety Left. It's hard to conceive of the typical counter-cultural Leftist of the 60s becoming gung ho about supporting the State and Big Pharma in coercive pandemic measures. Those Leftists used to be cynical and skeptical at the very least about the System, the State, the Establishment, the Mainstream, "the Man". Now the vast majority of Leftists resemble true-blue Brownshirts in their love of the Fatherland. Jimmy Dore has spoken to this well. Which segues into another odd phenomenon: the entire Mainstream seems to have become Leftist. Meanwhile, Leftism has become extremist, so we have the additional odd phenomenon of an extremism that is now mainstream.
I agree more or less with your appeal to transcend the L-R rhetoric; but the irony (and frustration) is that if one pursues issues in a pro-person / anti-state vein too much in our climate now, the Mainstream (i.e., the Left) will accuse you of being right wing (which also in their mind increasingly coincides with conspiracy theory kook).
Yes, the left has absolutely become the new right. One hundred percent. That's why the definitions have totally lost their meaning and are now just misleading people who are not true authoritarian/fascists but still associate the right with being just that. Those people are essentially the biggest problem, because they continue to resist the reality that the switch has happened and cleave to the idea that the right is scary and bad and the left has the solution, the left are still the 'good guys.' If they could adapt their rigid definitions to what is actually happening the extremism you mention would go away. I've been called right wing more times than I can count by friends -- many of them former friends -- and I just don't care any more because it doesn't have any real meaning. My politics -- and I don't even think I am political -- are really just common sense.