« Missing NY Sports Media | Main | Department of Pointless Playlist » The World-Spirit Through History14 Dec 2007 06:03 pm David Freddoso's been a great new addition to the whacky gang at the Corner: I'd also point to pre-war Europe, whose loss of religious faith (it's not like it started in 1960 — try 1660) had ghastly ideological consequences — Communism, German National Socialism — that led to countless deaths. Basically, the decline in religious fanaticism represented by the English Restoration in 1660 and the end of Oliver Cromwell's theocratic regime led directly to Nazism. Comments (66)
But if you move the goalposts back to 1660 (code for "Pre-Enlightenment"), then you put all the European wars fought because of religion back into play and perfectly justify the sentiment that Europeans are a-religous because religion is responsible for wars and massive amounts of bloodshed. You can't really have it both ways. 
I don't see what the problem is. Nazi-ism and Communism gave people something to believe in, and these people weren't believing in Christianity anymore. Since Christianity had been losing its pull on people for a while, they were vulnerable to these new, radical theories that appealed to the void left by their lack of faith in Christian religion. Or think of it this way; does anyone think those "isms" would've taken hold of a confidently Christian Europe? People wouldn't have had a need for a new world view if they believed the biblical one. You may not agree with that, but it isn't really a whacky idea.
"Wacky," not "whacky." Pet peeve, sorry.
I think the point to be made here is that if you had a "confidently Christian Europe", you would have continued to have religious wars. Maybe you wouldn't have had WWII - but you would have had the equivalent. You can't even say you wouldn't have had WWII, since Hitler was a Catholic, was supported by Catholics, and could quite conceivably have been integrated into a Catholic political movement which ended up exactly the same as Nazism - especially with regard to persecution of Jews. You might not have had an explicitly atheistic system like Communism - but then that started with Russian atheists, so how does a "Christian Europe" prevent that? The point is correct. They're trying to say that it's better to have religion than not. And that is not established by human history.
The unavoidable problems with returning to the pre-modern state for the NRO crowd merely starts with capitalism being simply impossible in the pre-modern state. Further, the pre-modern state really means relying on a fixed, landed rural aristocracy with a stable hierarchy (the urban democratic/oligarchic city-states of the Middle Ages almost all eventually fell to kings). The landed elite formulation is probably impossible in our very late-stage capitalism.
Um, no. It is a whacky idea. If I don't fanatically believe in Chrisitanity, I might believe anything else. That much is reasonable. But to say that because I don't believe in Christianity, what I believe instead is in any way likely to be terrible, like Naziism or Communism, is whacky.
P: Yours isn't just wacky, it's offensive. Atheism isn't a vacuum filled by the first thing (like Naziism) to come along. Atheists are people capable of thinking and seeing for themselves.
Okay, wacky.
Re: You might not have had an explicitly atheistic system like Communism - but then that started with Russian atheists, so how does a "Christian Europe" prevent that? Russia was a confident Christian country, but it one with an incompetent and reactionary government. Neither the Reformation nor the Enlightenment had made much of a splash there. Yet they still ended up with Lenin and Stalin. My guess is that religion really doesn't matter much one way or the other in these things.
The argument also seems historically inaccurate. Germany and Russia were some of the more heavily religious countries in Europe at the time the Nazis and Bolsheviks took over. Other heavily religious states - Spain and Italy - also succumbed to fascism. It seems some of the more secular European states fared the best in retaining a democratic form of government.
Blaming Nazism/Communism on secularism is like blaming them on the discovery of techniques of mass production: both developments were inevitable, neither are in themselves pernicious, and both exist the world over without in any way menacing world peace.
The idea that Hitler was a Catholic is preposterous. He was both a self-worshiper and a pseudo-believer in Norse and German mythology. That's why he was a fan of Wagner.
I guess that, for Freddoso, the Thirty Years War and the Counter-Reformation were the 'good old days'.
Well, the US has maintained much larger levels of Christianity in its populace than Europe, and we haven't had any reprisals of religious warfare...we did have a Civil War that wasn't really a religious conflict. Ideologies like Nazism and Communism were directly opposed to religion, and certainly were opposed by much of the religious establishments in both countries (and thus were invested in wiping out said religious establishment). In a world in which Christianity was a widely held, functioning world-view, that hadn't been largely discredited by centuries of religious warfare (ie, similar to what we have in the US), it seems unlikely that Nazism and Communism would be possible in their totalitarian forms. Now, does that mean that if Europe was still religious, the continent would be full of peace and ponies? Probably not, it's impossible to prove a historical counter-factual, especially one as broad as that. But, it's not like Freddoso's point is totally invalid.
People forget that it was the German Catholics who first stood up to Hitler when he began to euthanize retarded people (long before the Jewish laws were passed). Since Hitler came to power on January 30, 1933, and the first anti-Jewish law banning Jews from holding government jobs (think teachers, professors, judges, and civil servants, quickly followed by prohibitions on lawyers, doctors, tax consultants and notaries) was passed on April 7 of that year - 3 months before the Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring was passed, which only involved sterilization. The policy of actually "euthanizing retarded people" did not go into effect until 1939 - long after very serious legal and physical persecution of the Jews had been in effect.
Can't we push the loss of religious faith in Europe back to the Renaissance? Isn't the logical of endpoint Dave's argument that we'd be better off in the Dark Ages, with the Church as the central focus of life (living as serfs in feudal kingdoms--and don't think for instant that the Corner folks don't wish serfdom on 98% of the rest of us)?
jamie writes: "In a world in which Christianity was a widely held, functioning world-view... it seems unlikely that Nazism and Communism would be possible in their totalitarian forms."
Re P's comment "I don't see what the problem is. Nazi-ism and Communism gave people something to believe in, and these people weren't believing in Christianity anymore" 1) Gee, I wonder where Catholic Adolph Hitler got his idea for "The Final Solution"?? Could it have been from the Catholic Church's historical tradition -- e.g, the Albigensian http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albigensian_Crusade When asked by a knight how one could distinguish the heretics from innocent Christians, papal legate Arnaud Amalric replied "Kill them all --God will recognize his own." 2) One wonders how the people of Europe could have failed to appreciate the warm fellowship of Christianity , given the benevolent example and charity shown by the robber barons and capitalists during the Great Depression. And at Versailles. And Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and Hamburg. I suppose that it was Lucifer, not benevolent Christians, who caused all those hundreds of thousands of women and children to burn in their own body fat. 3) Why on earth did eleven native-born Americans turn pale at the idea of a US monopoly on nuclear bombs -- and give Stalin the design?
I suppose that it was Commies and Nazis who were slaughtering hundreds of thousands during WWI. No, wait..
I suppose that during the Cold War, hundreds of US ICBMs were NOT aimed at the cities of Russia -- that the President of the USA was not prepared to order the deaths of 100 million Russian civilians. After all, Christians don't fight wars that way, do they?
"The idea that Hitler was a Catholic is preposterous." Read his bio. "He was both a self-worshiper and a pseudo-believer in Norse and German mythology. That's why he was a fan of Wagner." True - but he also was reared a Catholic and incorporated Catholic concepts into his propaganda. He frequently compared himself to Jesus Christ in many of his speeches, either directly or figuratively. Also, what is a "pseudo-believer"? Hitler had various occult influences and was apparently interested in various pseudo-scientific theories from people like Haushofer, but there is no evidence to suggest that he ever rejected Catholicism in the manner Lenin did - by pulling off his cross and spitting on it.
And it was German Catholics who praised his ascendancy to power as Chancellor. I specifically remember the quote of a Catholic nun who was pleased that "that nice Mr. Hitler" had come to power. The reality is that the official position of the Catholic Church at the time was that the Jews were bad people because they killed Christ (they didn't, that was the Romans - not to mention that there is reason to believe that Christ wasn't even crucified - not to mention that some people don't even think he existed except as an amalgam of various other people.) They may not have explicitly supported the Holocaust, but they definitely contributed to the common meme of anti-Semitism prevalent at the time. I just found an interesting Web page on this: Published by the Freedom From Religion Foundation, Inc. "Born and bred a Catholic, he grew up in a religion and in a culture that was anti-semitic, and in persecuting Jews, he repeatedly proclaimed he was doing the "Lord's work." You will find it in Mein Kampf: "Therefore, I am convinced that I am acting as the agent of our Creator. By fighting off the Jews, I am doing the Lord's Work." Hitler said it again at a Nazi Christmas celebration in 1926: "Christ was the greatest early fighter in the battle against the world enemy, the Jews ... The work that Christ started but could not finish, I -- Adolf Hitler -- will conclude." In a Reichstag speech in 1938, Hitler again echoed the religious origins of his crusade. "I believe today that I am acting in the sense of the Almighty Creator. By warding off the Jews, I am fighting for the Lord's work." Hitler regarded himself as a Catholic until he died. "I am now as before a Catholic and will always remain so," he told Gerhard Engel, one of his generals, in 1941. There was really no reason for Hitler to doubt his good standing as a Catholic. The Catholic press in Germany was eager to curry his favor, and the princes of the Catholic Church never asked for his excommunication. Religions encourage their followers to hold authority in unquestioning respect; this is what makes devout religionists such wonderful dupes for dictators. When Hitler narrowly escaped assassination in Munich in November, 1939, he gave the credit to providence. "Now I am completely content," he exclaimed. "The fact that I left the Burgerbraukeller earlier than usual is a corroboration of Providence's intention to let me reach my goal." Catholic newspapers throughout the Reich echoed this, declaring that it was a miraculous working of providence that had protected their Fuhrer. One cardinal, Michael Faulhaber, sent a telegram instructing that a Te Deum be sung in the cathedral of Munich, "to thank Divine Providence in the name of the archdiocese for the Fuhrer's fortunate escape." The Pope also sent his special personal congratulations! Later the Pope was to publicly describe Hitler's opposition to Russia as a "highminded gallantry in defense of the foundations of Christian culture." Several German bishops openly supported Hitler's invasion of Russia, calling it a "European crusade." One bishop exhorted all Catholics to fight for "a victory that will allow Europe to breathe freely again and will promise all nations a new future." Biographer John Toland wrote of Hitler's religion: "Still a member in good standing of the Church of Rome despite detestation of its hierarchy, he carried within him its teaching that the Jew was the killer of god. The extermination, therefore, could be done without a twinge of conscience since he was merely acting as the avenging hand of god -- so long as it was done impersonally, without cruelty. Himmler was pleased to murder with mercy. He ordered technical experts to devise gas chambers which would eliminate masses of Jews efficiently and 'humanely,' then crowded the victims into boxcars and sent them east to stay in ghettos until the killing centers in Poland were completed." Jews, of course, were not the only "holy" victims. In Yugoslavia, Hitler installed a Croatian, Ante Pavelic, as his puppet, and Pavelic, a Catholic like Hitler, began extermination of the Serbs, who were Greek Orthodox. One of my relatives by marriage is a Yugoslavian, a Serb, who survived World War II by going "underground" with the advent of Nazism in his country. Out of his immediate family of 17 (this includes his parents, siblings, aunts, uncles and first cousins), only three survived. His mother and sister just disappeared, his mother shortly after being given the opportunity to convert to Catholicism, an offer she refused. The Vatican was not unaware of the massacres conducted in Yugoslavia in the name of Catholicism, but Pope Pius remained diplomatically quiet. In fact, one of his actions was to receive Ante Pavelic in private audience, thereby giving his blessing to this regime." Tell me again that Hitler was not Catholic and how the Catholic religion would have prevented Nazism.
Guys, this is just retarded. Europe was hugely, massivly Christian from 1660 up until the last 100 years or so.
I think that you're missing the reference. It's not to the English Restoration or Oliver Cromwell, but rather to the end of the Thirty Years' War and the Treaty of Westphalia, i.e., the development of the modern, secular state. (The 1660 reference is just for parallelism. We're speaking in generalities here.) Freddoso may overstate the point--the secular state didn't just lead to Nazism and Communism, after all--but the idea that Freddoso's point is dumb is just, well, dumb.
I appreciate the Catholics=Nazis almost as much as I enjoy the Jews=Communists. Nice work all around people.
1) Re iban's comment "The idea that Hitler was a Catholic is preposterous. He was both a self-worshiper and a pseudo-believer in Norse and German mythology " "Hitler had been brought up as a Catholic and was impressed by the organization and power of the Church. It hierarchical structure, its skill in dealing with human nature, and the unalterable character of its Creed, were all features from which he claimed to have learned. For the Protestant clergy he felt only contempt: ' They are insignificant little people, submissive as dogs, and they sweat with embarrassment when you talk to them. They have neither a religion they can take seriously nor a great position to defend like Rome.' It was 'the great position' of the Church that he respected, the fact that it had lasted for so many centuries; toward its teaching he showed the sharpest hostility. In Hitler's eyes Christianity was a religion fit only for slaves; he detested its ethics in particular."
djs - I guess it's true that fascism and communism probably wouldn't have emerged in the absence of the modern nation-state. It's also true that they wouldn't have emerged if the human race had never discovered fire. Thanks a lot, stupid cavemen! "Dumb" is too kind.
The argument's not about atheism. Rather, it's about ideology. Before modern philosophy got turned into a mass ideology (the social contract theory as it gradually became popular dogma over the course of the eigthteenth and nineteenth century), people didn't have ideologies: theories where, once you get this perfect state (capitalism or Marxism or the Thousand Year Reich or the perfect regime of Liberty), that state will rule permanently into the distant future. Aristotlean and Platonic philosophy argue that states go in cycles. Good ones become bad ones, bad ones eventually can become good ones. Before modern ideology, you just wait until you have a chance to implement a just or better state, which itself won't last forever. Thus, there's no reason for the hugely violent, incredibly massive ideologically driven revolutions, ethnic cleansings, genocides and so on since 1760 or so. In short, under modern ideology, you're playing for keeps; before modern ideology, you're playing for running a small state for a few decades. That space of the modern ideological state can only operate when Christendom has fallen - especially later Christendom, which was quite wedded to Aristotlean philosophy. The primary political textbook of the era - Giles of Rome's De Regimine Principum - is explicitly a gloss upon Aristotlean political theory (as is Thomas Aquinas and Bartholomew of Lucca's De Regimine Principum). It's not atheism that's the problem (after all, Aristotle certainly wasn't a Christian and was hardly even a conventional believer in the Greek gods, and St. Thomas and Maimonides are reading Aristotlean philosophy day and night) - it's the particular atheism of modern philosophy that's problematic.
Re: "The idea that Hitler was a Catholic is preposterous." Hitler was baptized a Catholic and attended church as a child and teenager. He became apostate as a teenager. We've been over this tedious argument before. The man was a politician and gave nicey-nice speeches about religion when it suited his purpose. If that makes one a devout Christian, then the Christian Right in this country is correct and all our Founding Fathers were faithful Bible-believing Christians too. In any event, Christianity's Jewish roots make it impossible to credit that Naziism could have had anything but contempt for Christianity when not required to be diplomatic on the subject in public. Re: In Yugoslavia, Hitler installed a Croatian, Ante Pavelic, as his puppet, and Pavelic, a Catholic like Hitler, began extermination of the Serbs, who were Greek Orthodox. This did not happen at Hitler's behest. The Croats were free agents in that genocide, horrifying even the Nazi ambassador.
"Russia was a confident Christian country, but it one with an incompetent and reactionary government. Neither the Reformation nor the Enlightenment had made much of a splash there. Yet they still ended up with Lenin and Stalin. My guess is that religion really doesn't matter much one way or the other in these things." We're not talking about "religion" in any sense which would be easily accessible today. Russia's Christianity by the nineteenth century was hardly confident, and wasn't really at the center of even the tsarist conception of the state by then. By that point, even the conservative tsarist argument was more of a cultural one - "the Russian Orthodox is a center of Russian culture as is the tsar". But note they rarely claimed that the Russian Orthodox faith was simply the true one, more true than all others for everybody everywhere (i.e. the English and Americans and Chinese and everyone else should all simply convert to the Russian Orthodox Church because it's the true one). They were simply retaining the Russian Orthodox Church for cultural/historic reasons - and the concept of "culture" is an invention of modern philosophy. I.E. modern philosophy was determining what was to happen to Russian Christianity, rather than vice versa.
" It's not to the English Restoration or Oliver Cromwell, but rather to the end of the Thirty Years' War and the Treaty of Westphalia, i.e., the development of the modern, secular state." So he's basically nostolgic for the dark ages.
I don't know, it seems the Roman Empire, the Christian crusaders, and the Spanish Empire were pretty good at genocide and ethnic cleansing.
Everything before 1660 is the Dark Ages? Nice. He could equally well be advocating the Roman Republic, the Athens of Pericles, Ming China, Heian Japan, Renaissance Florence, the regime of the Aztecs or thousands of other potential regimes.
Re burritoboy's comment "Aristotlean and Platonic philosophy argue that states go in cycles. Good ones become bad ones, bad ones eventually can become good ones. Before modern ideology, you just wait until you have a chance to implement a just or better state, which itself won't last forever. Thus, there's no reason for the hugely violent, incredibly massive ideologically driven revolutions, ethnic cleansings, genocides and so on since 1760 or so. In short, under modern ideology, you're playing for keeps; before modern ideology, you're playing for running a small state for a few decades" Aristotle's PUPIL , Alexander the Great, probably exterminated a greater percentage of the existing population than did Hitler. Certainly there was nothing to distinguish between the two re egotism, aims, and methods.
cw: So he's basically nostolgic for the dark ages. No, he's nostalgic for the Wars of Religion, the Inquisition, witch-hunts, and universalist fantasies about one Holy Christendom. Which after 1648 were on the wane for very good reasons in Europe. The English had their own experiment in building a Shining City On The Hill from 1649-1660: not only did the Puritans shoot out the stained glass windows of Canterbury Cathedral with cannon, they even banned stage plays and public celebrations of Christmas. And that is what Mr. Freddoso wants to bring back. Ignatius Loyola, John Calvin, or Oliver Cromwell: take your pick.
"He could equally well be advocating the Roman Republic, the Athens of Pericles, Ming China, Heian Japan, Renaissance Florence, the regime of the Aztecs or thousands of other potential regimes." Those aren't christian regimes. Freddso is a Christian gentleman. I guess he might be jonesing for the rome under the christian emporors. Who knows what he meant. It's such a dumb comment without context. It's funny too. Until now, the earliest era I've heard conservatives pinning for was the McKinlly era.
Re JonF's comment "Hitler was baptized a Catholic and attended church as a child and teenager. He became apostate as a teenager" Compare and contrast the structure of the Nazi Party ( universal domination, no tolerance of "others", one leader, ONE faith, indifference for the conscience or decisions of the individual) with that of the Catholic Church.
Oh, yes. I left out "relentless lust for power".
1) Better yet, compare and contrast the Holocaust with the deaths of Africans from an Aids 2) Or compare and contrast Hitler's demand that subordinates obey the "fuhrer principle" with David Freddoso's views on how Catholic politicans must make political decisions: see http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=4003
In any event, Christianity's Jewish roots make it impossible to credit that Naziism could have had anything but contempt for Christianity when not required to be diplomatic on the subject in public. That's your Christianity. Modern dispensationalism (which is practiced mainly by American fundamentalists, not the vast majority of Christians worldwide) is the abberation, replacement theology which says that God's contract with the Jews as a tribe ended after Christ and anyone who didn't convert was part of the "synagogue of Satan" was a near universal tenet of the Christian faith during Hitler's life.
Charles Darwin would disagree with that "thought" 1660? "confessing to a murder" was real in a religion-controlled science community in 19th century Europe.
Charles Darwin would disagree with that "thought" 1660? "confessing to a murder" was real in a religion-controlled science community in 19th century Europe.
Re: Aristotle's PUPIL , Alexander the Great, probably exterminated a greater percentage of the existing population than did Hitler. Alexander's wars were probably no bloodier than Napoleon's, allowing for smaller forces and the lack of firearms. Which is to say they certainly killed people, but Alexander was not on a crusade to eliminate "Untermenschen", or even enemy armies. His usual tack with defeated foes was to offer to induct them into his own army (soldiering paid well under a victorious leader so that was not a bad deal). And the number of cities he put to the sack-- a universal practice back then-- can be counted on the fingers of one hand. Re: Can't we push the loss of religious faith in Europe back to the Renaissance? No, because the Renaissance did not challenge the Church; in fact the Church was very much a part of it. If an anti-modernist conservative could settle on a good era for Christendom it would probably be the late 15th century, for a whole bunch of reasons. The major wars of the late Middle Ages (100 Years War, War of the Roses, etc.) were over. The Tudors, Valois, Habsburgs, and Ferdinand and Isabella had brought peace to their respective countries. The Muslims were about to lose their last to hold in Spain, and the Mongols had been tossed out of Russia. Modern science had not yet challenged Church doctrine, but modern capitalism (at least modern banking) was on the rise in Italy and the Netherlands. Prince Henry's proteges were about to round Africa thereby eliminating the Middle Eastern middleman and chokepoint in trade. The Black Death was long over, but the population still had yet to recover so living well under the Malthusiuan limits Europe enjoyed an unprecedented living standard. Learning flourished-- but under the Church's auspices. There were no major heresies (the Hussites had been quelled,the Waldenses isolated). Governments were strong enough to keep the peace and provide for the rule of law, but not so strong as to stamp out local freedoms (absolute monarchy belongs to a later era). Art and music were at an apogee- again, under the Church's auspcies (remember how many Renaissance masterpieces were works of religious art). In short, those were the true salad days of an avowedly Christian civilization. Yes, there was the business with the Turks in the Balkans, but that was the only dark cloud on the scene.
Freddso is a Christian gentleman. That sentence chills me to the bone. By the way, Poles are among the most devoutly religious (Catholic) people in Europe. They are also among the most anti-Semitic. Then and now. Poland is a cesspool of anti-Semitism. It made the Nazis' job so much easier that most of the death camps were located there. After the U.S. and the Soviet Union liberated the camps, most of the tiny remnant of Jews who were still alive ended up having to leave in the months and years after the war. Jews were beaten, terrorized, murdered after the war in shockingly high numbers given the fact that the war was over. Freddoso's notion that Europeans had "lost their religion" by 1660 is absurd on its face, but it's almost beside the point. Europeans' Christian religious fervor or lack thereof had zero to do with Nazism. The two major causes of WWII were WWI -- specifically, the Versailles Treaty -- and the Depression. The Depression was a more indirect cause, but it was significant, because it complicated the economic hardship from the crippling war reparations and just became another huge factor that played into Germany's need for a scapegoat. And the racist virulence of anti-Semitism as it developed in Germany had been years in the making -- long before Hitler was born, much less came to power. You're talking about almost 2,000 years of persecution against the Jews, including many, many pogroms and other massacres that fell far short of the Holocaust obviously but in a very real way were practice for it. And through all this time, or most of it, Europe was fervently, devoutly, single-mindedly Christian. The blood libel, the "Jews killed Christ" meme, the "pound of flesh," and all the rest of the canards that have been used to terrorize and oppress Jews through the centuries were in the very air that Christians breathed. How anyone can say that a society steeped in Christian faith and belief would not have turned to Nazism is truly beyond my ability to comprehend.
Freddoso may overstate the point--the secular state didn't just lead to Nazism and Communism, after all--but the idea that Freddoso's point is dumb is just, well, dumb. No, Freddoso is just plain dumb. It doesn't cover the Russian case, and Russia is where Communism triumphed. And it finds the cause of events that happened after 1914 in events which had happened 250 years earlier, as if the events of the intervening centuries had never taken place. The paleocon position holds that almost everything that has happened during the last 500 years in Europe and America has been bad. They're trimming it so that Protestants don't feel threatened, but Luther and Calvin were two of the worst. If you want to reject half a millenium of history, finding the whole meaning of that period in Stalin in Hitler is what you would do. The neocons would be paleocons if they were allowed to be, but they're non-Catholic, except for Bill Bennett.
Re: Modern dispensationalism (which is practiced mainly by American fundamentalists, not the vast majority of Christians worldwide) is the abberation Let's remember that Nazi racial doctrine had nothing to do with theology. A Jew was a Jew was a Jew even if his ancestors had been worshipping Father, Son and Holy Spirit was ten generations. It was about genes, not creeds. And since Jesus, Mary, John the Baptist, all twelve Apostles, Paul and assorted others were all Jews by race, they were all Untermenschen. How could a true-believing Nazi venerate such folk and worship a Jewish-incarnate God? That circle doesn't square. True, people are illogical, but at its heart of hearts Naziism could not be reconciled to Christianity in any form whatsoever.
"Let's remember that Nazi racial doctrine had nothing to do with theology. A Jew was a Jew was a Jew even if his ancestors had been worshipping Father, Son and Holy Spirit was ten generations." You get a similar ideology promoted in fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Spain against Marranos and Moriscos (descendents of Jewish and Muslim forced converts). They didn't have genetics in those days but they did develop an ideology of 'purity of blood' (limpieza de sangre).
Nazi-ism and Communism gave people something to believe in, and these people weren't believing in Christianity anymore. My God, our school systems are truly failing us, that's really all I can say.
Let's remember that Nazi racial doctrine had nothing to do with theology. The whole thing was hokum, the modernized antisemitus of the nazi's was old fashioned judenhass dressed up with scientific language.
Fredoso has it absolutely right. This is why the most religious societies of our time is where freedom springs eternal. Everywhere from Saudi Arabia to Iran.
Re: The whole thing was hokum, the modernized antisemitus of the nazi's was old fashioned judenhass dressed up with scientific language. I don't think so. Let's remember that Nazi racial doctrine applied to other folks as well: Blacks, the Roma, the Slavs, etc. Sure these folks were fitted into that doctrine by virtue of their being longtime targets of German bigotry, but the racial doctrine had a life of its own and the Nazis gave every evidence of believing it. Even with the truly wicked and benighted I think it is proper to give them credit for being sincere in their errors unless massive and blatant hypocrisy suggests otherwise. For example, I think Lenin, Stalin and their henchmen really did believe they were creating the true Communist state no matter how many eggs they had to break. Brezhnev and his gang, a good deal less so, which is one reason the Soviet Union finally deflated like a leaking balloon. Re: This is why the most religious societies of our time is where freedom springs eternal.
I don't think the Serbian Orthodox Church is terribly pleased when referred to as Greek. Orthodox Christianity is multifaceted, but tends to be organized along national lines (Russian, Ukrainian, Bulgarian, etc.) -- although the Ecumenical Patriarch in Constantinople has traditionally been an ethnic Greek. The American tendency to refer to all Orthodox Christians as Greek is really quite annoying.
Whatever his private opinions of Christianity, Hitler was careful not to criticize it in public, and one can therefore hardly say that he came to power because the German people had lost their faith in Christianity. On the contrary, one can just as well argue that he came to power because the Getrman people were convinced that support for Hitler was conistent with Christianity. For one of Hitler's many public statements: “And now Staatspräsident Bolz says that Christianity and the Catholic faith are threatened by us. And to that charge I can answer: In the first place it is Christians and not international atheists who now stand at the head of Germany. I do not merely talk of Christianity, no, I also profess that I will never ally myself with the parties which destroy Christianity. If many wish today to take threatened Christianity under their protection, where, I would ask, was Christianity for them in these fourteen years when they went arm in arm with atheism? No, never and at no time was greater internal damage done to Christianity than in these fourteen years when a party, theoretically Christian, sat with those who denied God in one and the same Government.”
RE Ed Marshall's comment " the modernized antisemitus of the nazi's was old fashioned judenhass dressed up with scientific language" The question is what allowed Hitler and the Nazis to use Jews as scapegoats among a people who had welcomed Jews for centuries. Certainly had provided Jews a sanctuary against the pogroms of the Russian Tsars starting circa 1860. In my opinion, one thing that hurt was American and British Zionists proclaiming in the later stages of WWI that German Jews should support the allies because of Britain's Balfour Declaration creating Israel. As David Lloyd George noted in his Memoirs, the Zionists held up their end of the bargain --tied up large units of Germans in the Ukraine. The second thing that hurt was radical Social Democrats and Communists overthrowing the German Kaiser by labor strikes at a critical stage late in the war. For German war veterans who had endured 4 years of horror in the trenches, that act was infuriating. Some --not all -- of the prominent leaders of the radical splinter of Social Democrats and Communists were Jewish. German Jews as a group were not disloyal to Germany -- there were German Jewish veterans of WWI who held the Iron Cross. SOme of Hitler's lies are obvious. E.g, he claims that Germany's position in 1918 was not hopeless -- because the Communist revolution in Russia had taken a major enemy of Germany out of the War. But he didn't not --in that paragraph --acknowledge that some of the leaders of the Russian Communists doing Germany this favor were Jewish. Hitler got his start after WWI as an agent --a spy --for German military intelligence. That military created several Big Lies well before Hitler in order to avoid accountability for dragging Germany into a disasterous war. One of those Lies was the "stab in the back" -- that Germany was not defeated in 1918. Memos from Heidenberg and other military leaders to the Weimar leaders acknowledge that Germany's situation was pretty hopeless. The historical pattern of Jews paying as a people for the acts of a few extremists is one reason why America's Jews should not be indifferent to the disloyal manipulations of the Neocons and the Israel Lobby. Alan Greenspan has recently noted that our economy has financial AIDS -- that it is heading for a recession. Possibly a very deep recession.
Someone mentioned them briefly upthread, but Franco and the Spanish fascists were extremely religious and had the backing of the Catholic Church in their war against the Spanish Republic. Meanwhile religious faith waned early in Britain and Scandinavia, and they managed to avoid extremism entirely. Some people just don't have any idea what they are talking about
By the way, Poles are among the most devoutly religious (Catholic) people in Europe. They are also among the most anti-Semitic. Then and now. Poland is a cesspool of anti-Semitism. That is perhaps one of the most incredibly ignorant things I've heard in a long while. Anti-Semitism exists everywhere in one form or another (including right here in the grand ole US of A). Having spent a semester in Poland when I was in college, I can tell you, that you are very much mistaken . . .
By the way, Poles are among the most devoutly religious (Catholic) people in Europe. They are also among the most anti-Semitic. Then and now. Poland is a cesspool of anti-Semitism. That is perhaps one of the most incredibly ignorant things I've heard in a long while. Anti-Semitism exists everywhere in one form or another (including right here in the grand ole US of A). Having spent a semester in Poland when I was in college, I can tell you, that you are very much mistaken . . .
A wingnut on the NRO's The Corner makes a ahistorical broad assertion in order to make ideological hay and to get lots "That's Right, fucking Atheistic Liberals" from his audience. And folks here try to seriously meet his so unserious argument. Folks, history is so contingent, and the causes of events such as Hitler's rise to power in Germany or the November Revolution so often bizarre and mysterious that one can make any kind of crank argument. If there was an essential precondition, it was not the Enlightenment (the Wars of the French Revolution are enough to lay at its doorstep), but WWI, started by Governments controlled by His Most Catholic Majesty, the Emperor of Austria, and His Royal Highness and Head of the Evangelical Church of Prussia, the Kaiser. Also a little weird, given Cromwell's radical tendencies and his occasional patronage of the Levelers, that an NRO writer picks the year of the Restoration as the beginning of the Downfall of Western Civilization. The Commonwealth was not a conservative state.
Kathy wrote: "By the way, Poles are among the most devoutly religious (Catholic) people in Europe. They are also among the most anti-Semitic. Then and now. Poland is a cesspool of anti-Semitism. It made the Nazis' job so much easier that most of the death camps were located there." The reason why the death camps were located in occupied Poland is because 3 million plus Jews lived in Poland at the outbreak of WWII, more than in any other country in Europe. This was due to Poland's long history of tolerance for Jews. Anti-semitism was on the rise in Poland in the years leading up to WWII, and there was violence and property-destruction on a small scale, but to make the leap that this environment inexorably led to the death camps is ludicrous. It was neo-pagan German National Socialism that brought about the destruction of 3 million Polish Jews, not Catholicism. Millions of Catholic Poles, including thousands of Catholic priests, were also murdered in the Holocaust. Some of them, like St. Maximilian Kolbe, were sent off to Auschwitz precisely because they protected Jews. I also doubt that you will find a more virulent strain of anti-semitism in Europe today than in largely-secular France, as the Muhammed al-Dura hoax reveals in all of its ugliness.
"Those whose faith in God and the Legion have no boundary should enter our ranks. Those who waver and doubt should stay out." Corneliu Codreanu,
Re torouke's comment "The reason why the death camps were located in occupied Poland is because 3 million plus Jews lived in Poland at the outbreak of WWII, more than in any other country in Europe. This was due to Poland's long history of tolerance for Jews" 1) The history of Poland -- and of the Jewish experience in Poland -- is complex. However, the meta-patterns appear thus: a)It was the Polish KINGs --NOT the Catholic Church -- who made Poland a refuge for Jews. Indeed, The Catholic Church in Poland --over hundreds of years -- constantly attacked the Jews . b) Jews were welcomed by the Kings for the same reason that other immigrants were welcomed : Poland has always been a hopeless shithole. Caught between Russia and the Great Powers of Europe and posssessing no natural defenses, Poland has been raped and plundered for millenium. Polish kings constantly needed to replenish a land and economy devastated by the invasions of the Huns, Mongols, Russians, Cossacks,etc etc etc. c) For the same reason, pleasure-loving Catholic Bishops didn't get a hold till late in the day and that hold was tenuous. Poland was far from Rome, she was on the interface between Roman Catholicism and the Russian Orthodox Church, and Catholicism was associated with the despised Germanic and Swedish invaders. d) Over time, however, the Church managed to scapegoat the Jews. If the prayers of Catholic Bishops prove totally ineffectual against the Black Plague, the answer was simple: God is punishing you for fraternizing with the Jews. A foreign invader from Sweden or Germany comes in and rapes your women/burns your farms? It's the Jews' fault. Drip. Drip. Drip. The fact the the foreign invader is Catholic was ,of course, not discussed. e) On the other side, Russian anti-Semiticism led th Tsars to force most of the Jews out of Russia and into the Polish Pale of Settlement circa 1800. See
Don Williams, Kathy: please learn European history, and remember, it is COMPLICATED because there were DIFFERENT countries there, and worst of all, they were chaging quite a bit over time. For example, between 11th and 17th century Russia was not a major power. Germany was not a major power either for many centuries (ostensibly an empire, it was a bunch of very quarellsome principalities. Mongols invaded Poland but once, Tatars -- many times, but never seriously. Huns, never. Now, there was basically no Black Death in Poland (and thus the story about bishops accusing Jews for a non-existant plague is particularly preposterous). While Western Union was depopulated, Polish lands increased population and as a result, in 15th century Poland became a major power and Jews were flocking to the lands of Commonwealth (Rzeczpospolita, Poland and other lands, chiefly Lithuania) escaping repression and poverty elsewhere. For more than 200 years Poland was the most tolerant among larger European states, having nobility that was Catholic, Greek Orthodox, later in large part Protestant, with a small group of loyal Muslim. Jews were numerous, but there were also smaller communities like Armenians. Inquisition never operated in the Commonwealth. Things went seriously wrong in 17th century, which in a larger perspective, was probably worse than 20th. Poland underwent a series of calamitous wars that washed away most of the previous tolerance, Germany underwent fuckety calamitous 30 year war, Bohemia loosing half of the population and other areas roughly a quarter (like in Poland). Lots of countries had lesser religious wars, including England, and the total toll in death and destruction was pretty bad. So here were are, 1660, after 40 years of slaughter and repressions all over the continent, whole provinces turned to wasteland, invariably In The Name of God, and some folks started to doubt inerrancy of religion? What was wrong with them? Except that this is false, and one century makes a lot of difference. Basically, 1660 was the beginning of a bout of religious intolerance almost everywhere in Europe, and hundred years later many elite members started to think that this is ridiculous. If few people noticed the hypocrisy of states and clergy engaging in repression and calling it morality, and then many, the chief reason was that it was how the things were. By the way, in Polish wars before 1660 the chief opposition was between Ukrainians/Cossacks and Polish nobles (with Swedes, Russians, Tatars, Turks and Transylvanians making their own appearances). Jews, to their misfortune, were the loyal helpers of the nobles, so their shared the enmity of the Cossacks, but not the military capabilities of the Polish nobility. Nobles were massacred too, but it was not one sided. Being an exile community in the middle of a bloody civil/ethnic/class/religious war is not good.
Whacky apparently means "self-evident." I mean, jeez, do you think NIETZSCHE would find Freddoso's idea "wacky"? On a certain level power is its own justification and a tyrant, Christian, neo-pagan or atheist, will find justification in the nearest faith for the slaughter he wishes to commit. But there's a coarse, brutal utilitarianism in both Nazism and Stalinism that comes clearly out of a statist rejection of Christianity's notions of individual virtue and worth. Denying that is like denying that there's materialism in capitalism or something.
"I think a devout Buddhist or Wiccan society would have a very different culture (and politics) than a devout Fundamentalist Christian or Muslim one." True, but look to modern-day Burma, or the Tamil Tigers, or Imperial Japan for examples of brutal governments or movements emerging from Buddhist or Shinto/Buddhist societies. Wiccanism is a modern invention, so who knows what kind of society it would have created. But contemporary accounts (Caesar, Diodorus Siculus) don't exactly inspire confidence that the Celtic and Nordic pagan religions Wiccanism claims to use as inspiration weren't more brutal than that which replaced them: the Icelanders dumped their pagan religion (in a markedly rational process for an essentially anarchist society) in the [vain] hope it'd reduce the lethal feuding in their society. And I'll shove anyone who disagrees with me into a Wicker man.
"I think that you're missing the reference. It's not to the English Restoration or Oliver Cromwell, but rather to the end of the Thirty Years' War and the Treaty of Westphalia, i.e., the development of the modern, secular state. (The 1660 reference is just for parallelism. We're speaking in generalities here.) Freddoso may overstate the point--the secular state didn't just lead to Nazism and Communism, after all--but the idea that Freddoso's point is dumb is just, well, dumb." Actually, that makes it *even* dumber. The "end of the Thirty Years War and the Treaty [sic] of Westphalia" did not mark "the development of the modern, secular state." It left established Churches in the Protestant states and greater state control over religion in most Catholic countries. Non-communist Europe, for that matter, did not generally secularize until after WW2, when opposition to religion's role in politics rapidly collapsed in a matter of decades.
That should have read "support for religion's..."
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Heads in the Sand
That may be one of the stupidest things ever written at the Corner.
Which is saying rather a lot, considering.
Posted by Kurt Montandon | December 14, 2007 6:28 PM