From a Foreign Front

Three years ago today, someone named WorldbyStorm posted an essay on a website called The Cedar Lounge Revolution. The subtitle of the blog is "For lefties too stubborn to quit." It looks like this blog is based in Ireland. The title of WorldbyStorm's essay is "Science fiction and competing narratives as regards history and progressiveness." You can reach it by clicking here.

In the comments section, a man named Mike Atkinson mentioned my name. Here is what he wrote about me:

Or "Weird Tales" historian Terence E. Hanley writing lengthy online tirades screaming abuse at anyone of the vaguest liberal or progressive tendency.

Today, after stumbling across it, I wrote a long reply to Mr. Atkinson's comment. You can read my comment by clicking on the same link. His comment came at the end of several months of my writing about totalitarianism, utopianism, liberalism, and progressivism, also about the controversy involving weird fiction, fantasy, and Weird Tales magazine from 2012 and after. Maybe I ruffled Mike Atkinson's feathers a little with what I wrote.

Anyone who reads this blog must know by now that I have a difference of opinion with the progressive, leftist, socialist, Marxist, statist, totalitarian worldview. (I'll leave "liberal" off that list, as liberalism is another thing.) But I don't recognize myself in Mr. Atkinson's comment, and I wonder if anyone of you might. I invite comments on my own blog. You may also want to leave comments on the website The Cedar Lounge Revolution. I should tell the authors of that blog that my family comes from the left side of Ireland--left on the map, that is, or western Ireland, Strokestown to be exact, which has a museum devoted to a disaster ultimately attributable, in my opinion, to the depredations of the State.

Thanks for reading.

Original text copyright 2018, 2023 Terence E. Hanley