robertsgriffin.com

WRITINGS


Three parts in this section, and I’ll add entries as time goes on:
  •  Books.  Comments and availability information on five books I have published since 1998.
  •  Recent Short writings.   Comments and availability information on my short writings produced since the publication early in 2006 of my latest book, Living White.  The most recent writing is listed first.  When something has not been published and is not scheduled for publication, it is available on this site. 
  • Short Writings, 2001-2005.  Published and unpublished short writings, absent commentaries, from 2001 to the publication of Living White.  Again, most recent first, and unpublished material is available here. 

Books

  • Robert S. Griffin, Sports in the Lives of Children and Adolescents: Success on the Field and in Life (Westport, Connecticut:  Praeger, 1998).
I had published two previous books on education, but this one was the beginning of things for me, where I found my voice and approach.  This sports book—or at least nominally it is a sports book, the publisher considered it a parenting book and I saw it as being basically about growing up--was directed at a general readership rather than the academic audience I had written to up until that time (I’m a professor of education), and it had a broader focus than the field of education.  It was also the beginning of integrating my personal story into my writing, a pattern I have continued.  I was immersed in sports as a kid and into my twenties and this book was an occasion for making sense of the effect that activity and preoccupation had on me.  I think this book is still worthwhile reading a decade after its publication, and I see it as linked to my later writing.  It is only available from the publisher in a very expensive hard copy edition.  The best way to obtain it is to get it from a library.  If it is not in the library’s collection, a reference librarian can order it through interlibrary loan.

  • Robert S. Griffin, While There’s Time: Conservatism and Individualism in Education (Philadelphia: Xlibris, 2005).
This book has a 2005 copyright, but it was written in the late 1990s concurrently with the sports book, so I’m listing it here.  It outlines my views on education, but as with all my writing beginning with the sports book it has a broader focus than its nominal topic.  It outlines a philosophical perspective I apply to making sense of everything in American life and my own life.  I’m not sure how to label this outlook, but it is an interplay of libertarianism and cultural conservatism.   It is available at Amazon and the Xlibris site. 

  • Robert S. Griffin, The Fame of a Dead Man’s Deeds: An Up-Close Portrait of White Nationalist William Pierce (Bloomington, IN: 1stBooks Library, 2001).
William Pierce, who died in 2002, was the chairman of the National Alliance, a white advocacy organization he founded.  The book recounts Pierce’s personal story from childhood on, identifies what shaped his thinking and actions, outlines his perspective on the issues of the day, and describes his day-to-day routine. The Fame book kept my frame of reference broad as I recounted Pierce’s views on history, philosophy, race, politics, economics, international relations, the media, education, men-women identities and relations, childrearing practices, and approaches to leisure.  I found Pierce to be a person of remarkable capability, decency, integrity, courage, and dedication. As impressed as I was with Pierce, however, I tried to be as objective and complete as I could in portraying him, and that included dealing with his limitations.  I was particularly struck by the contrast between the man I came to know and the demonic, sinister picture of him I had gotten from the mass media.  I hit me how much of what I know, or think I know, comes from mediated rather than direct experience.   That is to say, someone—a teacher, a media figure, a politician, an advocate for a cause--tells me and shows me what something is like.  If Pierce isn’t as he has been depicted, I asked myself, what else isn’t as it has been presented to me?  Who are these mediators of reality?  What are their interests, what are they selling?  This book changed my life forever.  I came away from my encounter with Pierce far more conscious of race from a white perspective and of myself as a white man and of my European cultural and historical roots. You can get this at Amazon, and Pierce’s organization, the National Alliance, sells copies—check its web site—and you can get it directly from the publisher’s web site.  
 
  • Robert S. Griffin, One Sheaf, One Vine: Racially Conscious White People Talk About Race (Bloomington, IN: 1stBooks Library, 2004).
While writing the Pierce book, I encountered several hundred racially conscious white people.  Predominantly, they do not conform to the image of them the media has created: neo-Nazi bigots, menacing skinheads, ignorant thugs who commit hate crimes, and so on.  The seventeen white Americans, from across the country, both men and women, young and old, who offer their personal statements about race in this book aren’t public figures or leaders of organizations.  They aren’t on television and they don’t publish books or make movies.  Politicians don’t articulate their perspective or advocate their positions.  Journalists and intellectuals don’t write about them unless it is to belittle them.  Schools make no attempt to deal with them objectively.  In this book, you hear from them.  I didn’t alter, soften, or censor what they said or tell the reader what to think about them.   More than coming to know their thoughts on race, you’ll meet these people as human beings.  Two of them are no longer alive.  Democracy depends on the free exchange of ideas.  There are individuals and organizations that want to silence people of this sort, as well as punish anyone who tries to give them voice.  Available from the same sources as The Fame of a Dead Man’s Deeds. 

  • Robert S. Griffin, Living White: Writings on Race, 2000-2005 (Bloomington, IN: Authorhouse, 2006)
This book is made up of my writings on race through 2005.  Included are excerpts of my books and, in total or in large part, my short writings, as well as three unpublished articles and a speech.  The writings are ordered chronologically for the most part, and I provide commentaries to accompany them.  This gives the book a narrative line and lends an autobiographical quality to it.  In large part, Living White is my own story over the past seven years as it relates to race.  The book’s focus is on the personal, in contrast to the public, dimensions of the racial challenges that whites confront at this time.  The book is directed at a white audience and I hope it supports readers in living more honorable lives as white men and women.   Available from the same sources as The Fame of a Dead Man’s Deeds. 

If you want to get my view of American life and our individual lives, you could read the books in the order I have listed them here, beginning with Sports in the Lives of Children and Adolescence.   Add to that the short writings since the publication of my last book, Living White--they are listed in the "Recent Short Writings" section below--and then the material in the “Thoughts” section of this site.  If you only have the time or interest to read just one book, I suggest The Fame of a Dead Man’s Deeds.  If you want the latest and/or a sense of who I am,  read the thoughts in the order they are listed in the Thoughts section of this site, beginning with "On Foucault"--and you can read them in any order, they are self-contained.

Recent Short Writings

        • Robert S. Griffin, Gay Artists in Modern American Culture : An Imagined Conspiracy,  by Michael S. Sherry,
          essay/review, 11pp. 2008.

          An essay/review that considers gay artists' impact on American culture and the implications of their lives and
          creations for the white racialist movement.  It was submitted to The Occidental Quarterly, but the editor and I
          couldn't agree on revisions.  For better or worse, this is the form I think it should be in.  Read the full
          essay/review here.

          • Robert S. Griffin, An Undergraduate Educational Studies Program, 12 pp., 2008
       
           This is directed at university faculty in the field of education.  It is an outline of an undergraduate bachelor’s  
           degree program with a major concentration in educational studies that I put together—it is not in place anywhere.
           This program is not professional training nor is it designed to lead to licensure; rather, it is academic study, a
           scholarly exploration  of the field of education that parallels those in other fields, say, sociology or mathematics
           or literature. My assumption is that this would be a program offered by a college of education and that it would
           lead to a B.S. degree granted by that college.  Read the full program here.

         •”When They Attack,” essay, 4 pp., 2008
       
          Suggestions to white people whose racial identity and interests might bring them under attack. This is directed to
          racially  conscious white people of whatever stripe: white analysts, white advocates, white activists, white
          separatists, and white  supremacists.  While the focus in this writing is on racially-grounded assaults, it may
          apply to aggressions against those who  don’t defer to the ideologies and agendas of those currently in power in
          any area, diversity, gender, politics, whatever it is. Read the full essay here.
         
          •Robert Henri on Education, unpublished paper, 4pp., 2008

          Robert Henri (1865-1929) was an American painter.  Not long before his death, the Arts Council of New York
          designated him one of the top three living American artists.  Henri was also a popular and influential teacher of
          art.  Henri’s ideas on art  and life, including education, were collected by a former student and published in a
          book entitled The Art Spirit.  This writing is made up of statements by Henri dealing with education from this
          book. Read the full paper here.

         •Traditionalist Education: A Needed Emphasis, article, 2008.            
        
        This is about a course I teach at the university, but I think a general reader will be able to find things to pick
         up on in this piece.   It deals with what I see is as the predominance of left-of-center, collectivist perspcctives
         in  the field of education to the virtual exclusion of other outlooks.  Read the full article here.
    
        • Ken Burns’ Show Business, unpublished article, 2007.

        This is an analysis of Ken Burns' seven-part documentary on World War II, "The War," shown on PBS in late
        September  and early October, 2007.  I critique the Burns documentary from the perspective of what I call the
        four rules of successful  show business.  This article will only be available on this site.  Read the full article here.
  • “The Tale of John Kasper,” unpublished article, 2007.
In 1956, twenty-six year-old John Kasper traveled to Clinton, Tennessee, which is just outside Knoxville, to combat school integration.  His exploits in Clinton received international media attention.  Rallies of whites in Knoxville in May and June of 2007 protesting the media’s underreporting of the rape, mutilation, and murder of two young white people by blacks took place while I was researching and writing about Kasper, and I brought them into the telling of Kasper’s story.  This article and picture will not be published and will only be available on this site.  Read the full article here.

  • Robert S, Griffin, book review, R. Cort Kirkland, Real Men: Ten Courageous Americans To Know and Admire (Nashville: Duke Cumberland House, 2005), unpublished, 2007.
This is a fleshed-out and, frankly, more honest response to this book than what I believe is going to be published in a Charles Martel Society newsletter, which is entirely favorable.  When I wrote the newsletter review, I decided I should hold back on negative comments because Kirkland is going to get enough static for writing a politically incorrect book and he didn’t need me piling on.  I may well have been right in thinking that, but there is something about me that can’t hold back in telling the truth in my writing—this newsletter review is the first time I have ever done that, and it will be the last--so the complete review is available here.

  • Robert S. Griffin, book review, Mattais Gardell, Gods of the Blood: The Pagan Revival and White Separatism (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2003), The Occidental Quarterly, Vol. 7, No. 1, Spring 2007, pp. 107-112.
This review gave me a chance to think more about whether the pre-Christian, nature-centered religions of northern Europe are more valid religious expressions of European heritage people than Christianity.  This consideration began in the Fame book and has shown up in several of my writings, including the review of The Conservative Bookshelf listed below.   This is a good book; I recommend it.  Check The Occidental Quarterly's web site for the review's availability.

  • Robert S, Griffin, “From Sex Symbol to French Patriot,” book review of Brian Singer, Brigitte Bardot: A Biography, American Renaissance, Vol. 18: No. 1, January 2007, pp. 8-10.  Note the themes of transcending early-life difficulties, personal change in mid-life, doing what’s right even if it is attacked and punished, and animal welfare.  Check American Renaissance’s web page for availability.  In every published article there is a give-and-take between the writer and the editor.  Not that it is necessarily better than the published review, here is my version of the review, a "director's cut," if you will.  
  • Robert S. Griffin, “A Knock on the Door,” article, American Renaissance, Vol.l7: No. 12, December 2006, pp. 11-13.
Adapted from Living White.  A recounting of my first experience of having the light shine on me for breaking ranks with accepted thinking on the race issue.  Check American Renaissance’s web page to obtain it.

  • Robert S. Griffin, Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension of American Racism, by James Loewen, book review, The Occidental Quarterly, Vol. 6: No.2, Summer 2006.
This gets into how university academics propagandize about race and make themselves look like scholars and princes of morality in the process.  You’ll pick up an edge from me in this one; the Loewens of the world grate on me.  Check The Occidental Quarterly’s web site for availability. 

  • Robert S. Griffin, “Afterword,” in Samuel Francis, ed., Race and the American Prospect, (Mt. Airy, MD: Occidental Press, 2006, pp. 425-431).
Sam Francis died in February of 2005—this was his last book.  Sam was a leading traditionalist conservative thinker and an exemplary human being.  I’ve been inspired and gained direction from Sam.  Note the discussion of how those who control the public discourse marginalize people like Sam.  And note too the Bret Easton Ellis and Michel Houllebecq quotes and the meaning I gave them. They reflect the nihilistic impulse I’ll talk about in the “Thoughts” section of this site.

  • Robert S. Griffin, The Conservative Bookshelf: Essential Works That Impact Today’s Conservative Thinkers, book review, The Occidental Quarterly, vol. 5, no. 2, Summer 2005.
This is a fine book.  Note my discussions of Christianity, individuality, and contemporary artists in light of conservatism.  Check The Occidental Quarterly’s web page for availability.


Short Writings, 2001-2005

  • Robert S. Griffin,  “Ole Miss, New Miss: American Renaissance Ad Shines a Light on the University of Mississippi,” American Renaissance, vol. 16, no. 6, June 2005, pp.11-13.  Also in my book, Living White.
  • Robert S. Griffin, “Epilogue,” written for a Swedish language version of The Fame of a Dead Man’s Deeds: An Up-Close Portrait of White Nationalist William Pierce, 2006.  It appears this book will not be published.  Available here.
  • Robert S. Griffin, “While There’s Still Time: Reflections on a Book Project,” 2005, included in Living White. 
  • Robert S. Griffin, “Out of Bounds,” commentary submitted to American Renaissance, unpublished, 2005. Available here.
  • Robert S. Griffin, “Education for the Second Vermont Republic—Or the Current One,” article, 2005.  Submitted to a magazine of the organization, Second Vermont Republic (see its web site), unpublished.  Available here.
  • Robert S. Griffin,  “Going Public: Being Seen, Heard, and Felt in Mainstream America,” The Occidental Quarterly, vol. 4, no. 4, Winter, 2004.  Also in Living White.
  • Robert S. Griffin, “Belgium in July,” Citizens Informer, Vol. 35, No. 5, Fall 2004, pp.1, 5, 6.  Also in Living White.
  • Robert S. Griffin, “Interview with Robert S. Griffin, “ written answers to questions, Blood, Soil, Honour, and Loyalty, May 2004.  Also in Living White.
  • Robert S. Griffin, “Abraham Lincoln: A New Look at Abraham Lincoln, His Agenda, and an Unnecessary War,” book review, The Occidental Quarterly, Vol. 4, No. 2, June 2004.  Also in Living White.
  • Robert S. Griffin, “Displaced: A Racially Aware White American Talks About Home,” American Renaissance, Vol. 15, No. 6, 2004, pp. 1-3.  Adapted from Living White.
  • Robert S. Griffin, “My Experience With George Lincoln Rockwell’s This Time the World, National Vanguard, No. 122, March-April 2004, pp. 30-31.  Also in Living White.
  • Robert S. Griffin, “The Need for Positive White Visions and Actions,” essay, 2004, included in Living White. 
  • Robert S. Griffin, “Racism: A Short History,” book review, The Occidental Quarterly, Vol. 3, No. 4, November-December 2003.  Also in Living White.
  • Robert S. Griffin, “David Starr Jordan: Racial Exemplar,” National Vanguard, number 121, November-December, 2003, pp. 3-8.  Also in Living White.
  • Robert S. Griffin, “William Pierce: A Reminiscence,” National Vanguard, No. 119, January-February, 2003, pp. 3-9.  Also in Living White.
  • Robert S. Griffin, “Living White: A Personal Challenge and Responsibility,” The Occidental Quarterly, Vol. 2, No. 4, Winter 2002.  Also in Living White.
  • Robert S. Griffin, “The New White Nationalism: It’s Challenge to Integration,” book review, The Occidental Quarterly, Vol. 2, No. 3, Fall 2002.  Also in Living White.
  • Robert S. Griffin, “Rearing Honorable White Children,” American Renaissance, Vol. 12: No. 10, October 2001, pp. 1-3.  Also in Living White.