Refuting anti-Christian Right

[Petr]

When the Romans could no longer fight well enough, when they began to rely on barbarian recruits and mercenaries for their protection (and this took place well before the ascendancy of Christianity; already by the 2nd century AD there were almost no Italians left serving in the legions), then they were inevitably doomed - old-school macho Romans like Cato the Elder would have agreed that if the Romans would ever cease to be "sons of Mars," there really would be no more purpose for their existence.

I think this point deserves further elaboration, for one of the most common (and effective) right-wing arguments against Christianity is simply the sophisticated form of this schoolyard taunt: "Christianity is for wimps." Or in other words, that Christianity promotes unmanly attitudes. That Christians can't fight well.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau (an ambiguous figure whose ideas have influenced both Far Left and Far Right) made this accusation in a clear, explicit manner in his book The Social Contract:

The Social Contract & Discourses

www.gutenberg.org

​

Under the pagan emperors, the Christian soldiers were brave; every Christian writer affirms it, and I believe it: it was a case of honourable emulation of the pagan troops. As soon as the emperors were Christian, this emulation no longer existed, and, when the Cross had driven out the eagle, Roman valour wholly disappeared.​

This was nice rhetoric (Rousseau was nothing if not an effective wordsmith), but any objective examination of historical evidence shows that the Roman people (understood in the old-school sense, the peoples of the Italian peninsula) had lost their warlike spirit already centuries before Constantine. And not because of spreading Christian piety, but because of the preference for soft material comfort (which is why pagan moralists had always opposed Epicurean hedonism, as detrimental to military spirit).

For ever since Augustus re-organized the empire and fixed its borders - and replaced the citizen army with mercenary recruits! - the burden of actual fighting fell more and more on the tough frontier peoples living on the Rhine and the Danube; above all others, it was especially the Illyrians, who were still hostile barbarians in the days of Augustus, who won the Roman Empire its victories in the 2nd and 3rd centuries AD:

https://books.google.fi/books?id=mQspAwAAQBAJ&lpg=PP1&hl=fi&pg=PA160#v=onepage&q&f=false​

​

Italians became the minority in the Senate by the end of the second century. The proportion of Italian soldiers in the legions dropped even faster. Already the minority under Vespasian, they almost vanished a century later.42​

But this was really the inevitable "dark side" of the celebrated Pax Romana - simply put, the longer peace lasted within the empire, the softer its peoples became! And one of the most fundamental insights of Fascist worldview is that too much civilization, too much peace and order, is a bad thing because it dilutes raw primitive strength.




The 3rd century historian Herodian of Antioch spelled it out in his description on the Roman civil wars of the 190s AD:

Herodian 2.11 - Livius

www.livius.org

​

[2.11.3] After crossing Pannonia, Severus came to the mountains of Italy; outstripping the news of his approach, he appeared in person to the people there before they had heard that he was emperor or that he was on his way to Rome. The cities of Italy regarded the approach of this formidable army with apprehension. The men of Italy, long unused to arms and war, were devoted to farming and peaceful pursuits.​

​

[2.11.4] As long as Roman affairs were governed by republican principles and the senate selected the generals who took charge of military affairs, all the Italians were under arms, and controlled the lands and the seas, waging wars with Greeks and barbarians. There was no place on earth, no place under heaven, to which the Romans did not extend the borders of their empire.​

​

[2.11.5] From the time when Augustus assumed control of the government, however, the princeps freed the Italians from the necessity of working and of bearing arms; establishing forts and camps for the defense of the empire, he stationed mercenaries in these to serve as a defensive bulwark on the frontiers. The empire was further protected by great barriers of rivers and mountains and impassable deserts.​

​

[2.11.6] When the people of Italy learned that Severus was approaching with a huge army, they were understandably dismayed by the unexpectedness of this development. Not daring to oppose him or try to stop him, they took up laurel branches and went out to meet him, welcoming him with open gates.​

And what Septimius Severus did in the 190s, the Visigoth king Alaric did about 200 years later - once he had managed to break through the frontier defences, the people of Italy could not resist him in any meaningful manner.


Even the Leftist historian Will Durant observed:

THE LAST DAYS OF A GOD - Augustan Statesmanship 30 B.C..-A.D. 14 - THE PRINCIPATE 30 B.C.-A.D. 192 - Caesar and Christ - by Will Durant

THE LAST DAYS OF A GOD - Augustan Statesmanship 30 B.C..-A.D. 14 - THE PRINCIPATE 30 B.C.-A.D. 192 - Caesar and Christ: A History of Roman Civilization and of Christianity from Their Beginnings to A.D. 325 - by Will Durant

erenow.org

The very peace that Augustus had organized, and the security that he had won for Rome, had loosened the fibre of the people. No one wanted to enlist in the army, or recognize the inexorable periodicity of war. Luxury had taken the place of simplicity, sexual license was replacing parentage; by its own exhausted will the great race was beginning to die.

And again, it had emphatically not been devout Christians who had driven this change in Roman attitudes:

THE AMOROUS REVOLT - The Golden Age 30 B.C.-A.D. 18 - THE PRINCIPATE 30 B.C.-A.D. 192 - Caesar and Christ - by Will Durant

THE AMOROUS REVOLT - The Golden Age 30 B.C.-A.D. 18 - THE PRINCIPATE 30 B.C.-A.D. 192 - Caesar and Christ: A History of Roman Civilization and of Christianity from Their Beginnings to A.D. 325 - by Will Durant

erenow.org

These ancient themes might not have harassed Augustus; what made Tibullus, Propertius, and Ovid really disagreeable to a government that was finding it hard to enlist recruits for the army was the persuasive anti-militarism of this love-loose set. Tibullus laughs at warriors who forage for death when they might have been seducing women. He mourns for the age of Saturn, when, he imagines,

there were no armies, no hatred, and no war. . . . There was no war when men drank from wooden cups. . . . Give me but love, and let others go to war. . . . The hero is he whom, when his children have been begotten, old age overtakes in his humble cottage. He follows his sheep, his son follows the lambs, while the good wife heats the water for his weary limbs. So let me live till the white hairs glisten on my head, and I tell in my old man’s fashion of the days gone by.71​

 

[Grug Arius]

Comfort-seeking is the seed that sprouts empires but inevitably brings their downfall

Too much easy-livin' makes for soft people. It's a low-frequency, low-energy state of mind.

GNO this, as it's of practical use to individuals managing their own lives, and not just academic interest for historians and philosophers

Stop seeking comfort around the clock

 

[Petr]

When new people are introduced to the Dissident Right scene, they often get carried away, and feel tempted by "forbidden fruit" - espousing the most forbidden viewpoints possible, just to show their manly daring. This is why even well-meaning people can feel tempted to defend Nazi Germany.

But as noted here, serious Christians cannot see Nazism as anything more than "lesser evil" at best. Truth-loving Christians should not uncritically echo the biased and self-serving propaganda that the Shitlib system spouts against the Third Reich, but neither should they waste their time and energy in making any special apologias for this failed pagan empire:

 

[Petr]

"This is not the own you think it is."

You poor dumb heathen bastards, ultimately this kind of materialism has an equalizing influence in people's minds - for in godless universe everything is equally meaningless, as Benjamin Wiker explains:

Worshipping the state : how liberalism became our state religion : Wiker, Benjamin, 1960- : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

376 pages ; 24 cm

archive.org

All these reductionist views, including even the seemingly anti-democratic ones, such as Nietzsche’s, have a leveling effect. They destroy any natural hierarchy, undermine any notion that there is anything better or worse than anything else in our purposeless cosmos. All these views are therefore helpful to liberalism as tending to level any standard or limit that might infringe on our “right” to pursue any end we desire. Liberalism thus embraces a version of democracy, a notion of equality, that ultimately rests on nihilism. All notions of intrinsic order or nobility that would define and limit the human will are considered to be tyrannical, dismissed as hypocritical masks for self-interest. At bottom, there is nothing but the self-interested will.

 

[Petr]

The Nazis sometimes just gave their own "Aryanist" twist to Communist propaganda (especially in anti-clerical matters); after all, they shared the same grandparent in Jacobinism - it had been the Jacobin militants, followers of Rousseau, who first turned earthly patriotism or nationalism into an aggressive pseudo-religion that all society should bow down to:

Here they were recycling the famous Marxist assertion of Christian religion being "opiate for the masses":

 

[Petr]

You poor dumb heathen bastards, ultimately this kind of materialism has an equalizing influence in people's minds - for in godless universe everything is equally meaningless, as Benjamin Wiker explains:​

Even Revilo P. Oliver, that nasty anti-Christian, understood this logic, as he noted in this commentary on Buddhist nihilism:

http://www.revilo-oliver.com/rpo/RPO_NewChrist/chap11.htm

There was a certain Aryan strength in Gautama’s cosmic negation.6 It requires fortitude to reject life and to believe that all the things that we instinctively prize and desire, such as health, bodily vigor, sexual love, beauty, culture, wealth, learning, intelligence, and even our own individuality are all empty illusions, and that the greatest good is annihilation. It requires even greater fortitude to accept that belief together with its obscure and dubious corollary, which denies us the immediate release of suicide and imposes on us the painful necessity of dragging out an existence in which we reject everything that healthy men desire and for which they live. That is to endure a death in life. Whether there is truth in that cosmic negation is a problem that each man must solve by his own powers of reason, and a problem that only men of great courage will consider at all.​

​

The rejection of life, however, becomes a cowardly evasion when a perverse superstition enjoins it as a means of appeasing or pleasing a god whom we must believe, by an act of faith, to have promised that if we frustrate every instinct of healthy men and women, he will reward us after death with a blissful life of eternal idleness, which, by an even greater miracle, he will somehow prevent from becoming an infinity of boredom. If we abstain from sexual intercourse to avoid inflicting on others the curse of life and all its miseries, we are behaving rationally and even nobly, if the premise is correct; but if we frustrate our normal desires to please the caprice of a god who presumably endowed us with our instincts to inflict on us the pain of frustrating them to avoid being tortured by him eternally – a god, moreover, who is not even generous enough to help mankind to a speedy extinction, but wants it to reproduce itself and to preserve even its tares and monsters to provide his consecrated dervishes with plenty of business – we have become the cringing slaves of a mad master. If we declare that the manifest differences between races and between the individuals of every race become, for all practical purposes, infinitesimal in comparison with the vast futility of all human life, we are affirming a hope for the annihilation of all species of anthropoids capable of suffering or even of all species of animals that have sentient life; but if we believe that equality is enjoined by a god who so desires a mindless faith that he cherishes idiots and wants us to destroy every form of superiority except clerical wiles, we are simply contriving suicide for our race and a living hell for our descendants.​

 

[Petr]

Varg is very frustrated by the existence of Christian nationalism:

 

[Petr]

Even though I call Nazi Germany a "failed pagan empire," I still find it very impressive, in some ways even a dazzling historical phenomenon. So I can understand how those who possess only little historical knowledge, or mature wisdom, can easily become uncritical Third Reich fanboys, being so disgusted with the current shitlib system. Grass is always greener on the other side of the fence.

For one thing, nowhere else did right-wing neopagan revival become so serious and impressive as there. Nowadays, neopagans seem little more than sad little LARPers, but the 1930s seemed like the magical moment in time when heathen cults could really be resurrected (even though the Nazis actually came to power with the help of conservative Christian voters).

And yet, this startling early 20th century German pagan revival did not come out of nowhere. It had some definite historical precedents, like for example the Kulturkampf against the power of Roman Catholicism in Bismarckian Germany; this anti-clerical struggle against Rome in many cases turned into outright hostility towards Christianity itself among many militant German nationalists (like Georg von Schönerer for example).

But I find it interesting that as radical and unprecedented as German militant neopaganism was, it was mirrored by a similar movement in imperial Japan around the same time. Like Germany, Japan had only recently joined the ranks of great powers, and the consequent mixture of insecurity and pride led many militant nationalists to feel revulsion at the thought that their ancestors had once devoutly worshipped "alien" figures like Christ and Buddha.

Bismarck's Kulturkampf against the Roman Catholic church found its equivalent in this anti-Buddhist campaign that rapidly modernizing Meiji Japan performed around the same time - Shintoists and Buddhists had persecuted Christians together in the Shogunate period, but this "half-Shinto, half-Buddhist" theocracy was now demolished, and all spiritual power was concentrated to the emperor alone, so to speak:

Haibutsu kishaku - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Haibutsu kishaku (廃仏毀釈) (literally "abolish Buddhism and destroy Shākyamuni") is a term that indicates a current of thought continuous in Japan's history which advocates the expulsion of Buddhism from Japan.[1]​

...​

The violence marked permanently every region of the country. Between 1872 and 1874, 18 thousand temples were eradicated, and maybe as many again from 1868 to 1872.[4] Japanologist Martin Collcutt believes Japanese Buddhism was on the verge of total eradication.[4]​

​

The violence had just released pent-up popular anger at the Buddhists which had been brewing for centuries because of their close alliance with the Tokugawa in the danka system,[5] an alliance from which the religion had derived immense benefit. Although the shogunate's official philosophy was lay Neo-Confucianism,[6] Buddhism had become an integral part of the state as a consequence of the Tokugawa's anti-Christian policy. ​

Yukio Mishima, the greatest of Japanese nationalist writers, depicted in his novel Runaway Horses the anti-Buddhist sentiments of fanatical Shinto nationalists in the 1930s, which of course remind us of the anti-Christian attitudes of German Nazis (complaints about the international and unmanly character of alien-origin religion):



https://books.google.fi/books?id=YuBjNSmZ7pUC&lpg=PP1&hl=fi&pg=PA242#v=onepage&q&f=false

 

[Petr]

Here is another example of Nazism's "Jacobin," or left-progressive ancestry showing itself - criticizing the Pauline teaching of submitting to higher powers (as the Nazis liked to pretend that their system had "freedom" of some kind, or that they were somehow different from "slavish Orientals" like the Soviets who fought under the tyranny of commissars, etc.).

Taking issue with the Biblical notion of work as a curse, even though proud Aryan aristocracies practically agreed with it, as they always considered any other toil besides fighting as something beneath them, and to be left to inferiors - helots, slaves and serfs.

And even some Nazi feminism, as this propaganda (aimed at young girls) sought to alienate people from the old-school reactionary Biblical teaching that women must stay silent in the church.

(This is not so weird as it looks; in his polemical, mocking piece "The Case of Wagner," Friedrich Nietzsche argued that Richard Wagner, who definitely was a sort of German Jacobin and believed in "National Socialist" ethics, had sought to preach proto-feminist views in The Ring epic: "His principal undertaking, however, is to emancipate woman,—“to deliver Brunnhilda.”… Siegfried and Brunnhilda, the sacrament of free love, the dawn of the golden age, the twilight of the Gods of old morality—evil is got rid of.…" Wagnerian women, like all those screaming valkyries, are indeed not silent, but shouting their lungs out.)​

 

[Petr]

Mircea Eliade, the famous Romanian expert of religions (who was one of those brilliant scholars who were accused of harboring Fascist sympathies), agreed with C.S. Lewis that Nazism could find only rather deficient support in Germanic mythology when it came to "last things"; if the Nazis wanted an Aryan mythos with more optimistic eschatology, they should have applied themselves to Persian Zoroastrians (and perhaps they indeed did, with their crude semi-Manichean dualism where the Jews played the role of nearly omnipotent devils):

Myths, dreams, and mysteries : the encounter between contemporary faiths and archaic realities : Eliade, Mircea, 1907-1986 : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

256 pages ; 22 cm

archive.org

 

[Petr]

The Nazis sometimes just gave their own "Aryanist" twist to Communist propaganda (especially in anti-clerical matters); after all, they shared the same grandparent in Jacobinism - it had been the Jacobin militants, followers of Rousseau, who first turned earthly patriotism or nationalism into an aggressive pseudo-religion that all society should bow down to:​

​

When pagan Nazis accuse Christianity of being "the grandmother of Bolshevism," and stuff like that, it is only fair and square that we return the favour and point out the presence of levelling Leftist radicalism within the Nazi ethos itself. For it is obvious that even though German jingoists might have furiously denied it, Völkisch nationalism was greatly influenced by the French Revolution, which shook the foundations of traditional aristocracies.

Even such a hero of German nationalism as Frederick the Great had been utterly devoted to French literature, and he was downright schizophrenic in his dual role as a stern Prussian patriarchal ruler on one hand, and an enthusiastic correspondent (and clandestine co-conspirator against Christianity) with subversive cosmopolitan philosophes on another.

And then, in a Hegelian dialectical manner, those German nationalists who in 1813 rose against the Napoleonic rule had themselves been indirectly influenced by French democratic ideas, as they did not want a mere return to the old reactionary order but a new society (that yet respected traditions) where the German Volk would be one and united.

The chauvinistic German radicals (like Richard Wagner for example) who proclaimed the supremacy of their country's Kultur basically reasoned: "No more will the noblemen be a separate master race - for we are all members of the master race!" In other words, the class or caste differences were minimized while racial differences were emphasized.

And once again, we find a close parallel to this kind of "democratized elitism" in the 19th century Japanese history - all the people of Japan were proclaimed to be descendants of gods:

Hirata Atsutane - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Among Hirata's more enduring contributions to Japanese thought was to remind that all Japanese were descended from the kami, not only the Imperial family and certain aristocratic families. As he put it, "this, our glorious land, is the land in which the kami have their origin, and we are one and all descendants of the kami. For this reason, if we go back from the parents who gave us life and being, beyond the grandparents and great-grandparents, and consider the ancestors of ancient times, then the original ancestors of those must necessarily have been the kami."[4]​

 

[Petr]

The famous Lebanese poet Kahlil Gibran also protested against this stereotype:

http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks03/0301451h.html#55

The enemies of Jesus say that He addressed His appeal to slaves and outcasts, and would have incited them against their lords. They say that because He was of the lowly He invoked His own kind, yet that He sought to conceal His own origin.​

​

But let us consider the followers of Jesus, and His leadership.​

In the beginning He chose for companions few men from the North Country, and they were freemen. They were strong of body and bold of spirit, and in these past two-score years they have had the courage to face death with willingness and defiance.​

​

Think you that these men were slaves or outcasts?​

​

And think you that the proud princes of Lebanon and Armenia have forgotten their station in accepting Jesus as a prophet of God?​

​

Or think you the high-born men and women of Antioch and Byzantium and Athens and Rome could be held by the voice of a leader of slaves?​

 

[Petr]

Look at this embarrassing two-step: Varg Vikernes begins by touting scientific secularism like some fedora-wearing village atheist:



...but in the next breath he admits that "scientism" has become a rather big problem. In fact, a problem as great as Christianity itself! (Which, coming from Varg, says a lot.) Of course, he tries to just blame the scheming Jews for it all (or to make insinuations to that effect):




But this is basically what Nazi anti-Christianity largely amounts to: parroting the anti-Christian Enlightenment narrative for some time, or to some extent, but then concluding that "this Enlightenment business has now gone too far!" - much like some typical Liberal who begins to have misgivings about certain aspects of Progressive ideology when Far Left radicals begin to get too close to his own comfort zone:

The original Nazis already liked the anti-clerical aspects of the Enlightenment, but felt deep hostility towards its crown and glory, the French Revolution and the egalitarian ideology it spawned.

As I said, they were basically saying: "the Enlightenment radicalism has gone too far!"

Adolf Hitler gives us a good example of this attitude. A sworn foe of all "priestly babble" himself, he records in Mein Kampf how he felt great repugnance at the way Socialist agitators in the Vienna of his youth attacked conservative prejudices - we can assume that for him, criticism of traditional Christianity was just fine, but attacking nationalism, now that was just outrageous! (And Hitler had not even seen the madness that modern "enlightened" scientism would make of the matters of gender and sex.)

MEIN KAMPF by Adolf Hitler: Volume 1, Chapter 2 - Years of Study and Suffering in Vienna

Free, online, full text of Adolf Hitler's book "Mein Kampf": Volume 1, Chapter 2 - Years of Study and Suffering in Vienna

mondopolitico.com

In any case, what I heard was of such a nature as to infuriate me in the extreme. These men rejected everything: the nation as an invention of the 'capitalistic' (how often was I forced to hear this single word!) classes; the fatherland as an instrument of the bourgeoisie for the exploitation of the working class; the authority of law as a means for oppressing the proletariat; the school as an institution for breeding slaves and slaveholders; religion as a means for stultifying the people and making them easier to exploit; morality as a symptom of stupid, sheeplike patience, etc. There was absolutely nothing which was not drawn through the mud of a terrifying depth.​

 

[Petr]

When pagan Nazis accuse Christianity of being "the grandmother of Bolshevism," and stuff like that, it is only fair and square that we return the favour and point out the presence of levelling Leftist radicalism within the Nazi ethos itself. For it is obvious that even though German jingoists might have furiously denied it, Völkisch nationalism was greatly influenced by the French Revolution, which shook the foundations of traditional aristocracies.​

​

Even such a hero of German nationalism as Frederick the Great had been utterly devoted to French literature, and he was downright schizophrenic in his dual role as a stern Prussian patriarchal ruler on one hand, and an enthusiastic correspondent (and clandestine co-conspirator against Christianity) with subversive cosmopolitan philosophes on another.​

In one of his sallies against narrow-minded German chauvinism, Friedrich Nietzsche drew attention to this matter, how much the the German idea of nationalist virtue had been influenced by Latin and French models - from his Human, All Too Human:

The complete works of Friedrich Nietzsche : Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm, 1844-1900 : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

The metadata below describe the original scanning. Follow the All Files: HTTP link in the View the book box to the left to find XML files that contain more...

archive.org

216. “GERMAN VIRTUE.”—There is no denying that from the end of the eighteenth century a current of moral awakening flowed through Europe. Then only Virtue found again the power of speech. She learnt to discover the unrestrained gestures of exaltation and emotion, she was no longer ashamed of herself, and she created philosophies and poems for her own glorification. If we look for the sources of this current, we come upon Rousseau, but the mythical Rousseau, the phantom formed from the impression left by his writings (one might almost say again, his mythically interpreted writings) and by the indications that he provided himself. He and his public constantly worked at the fashioning of this ideal figure. The other origin lies in the resurrection of the Stoical side of Rome's greatness, whereby the French so nobly carried on the task of the Renaissance. With striking success they proceeded from the reproduction of antique forms to the reproduction of antique characters. Thus they may always claim a title to the highest honours, as the nation which has hitherto given the modern world its best books and its best men. How this twofold archetype, the mythical Rousseau and the resurrected spirit of Rome, affected France's weaker neighbours, is particularly noticeable in Germany, which, in consequence of her novel and quite unwonted impulse to seriousness and loftiness in will and self-control, finally came to feel astonishment at her own newfound virtue, and launched into the world the concept “German virtue,” as if this were the most original and hereditary of her possessions. The first great men who transfused into their own blood that French impulse towards greatness and consciousness of the moral will were more honest, and more grateful. Whence comes the moralism of Kant? He is continually reminding us: from Rousseau and the revival of Stoic Rome. The moralism of Schiller has the same source and the same glorification of the source. The moralism of Beethoven in notes is a continual song in praise of Rousseau, the antique French, and Schiller. “Young Germany” was the first to forget its gratitude, because in the meantime people had listened to the preachers of hatred of the French. The “young German” came to the fore with more consciousness than is generally allowed to youths. When he investigated his paternity, he might well think of the proximity of Schiller, Schleiermacher, and Fichte. But he should have looked for his grandfathers in Paris and Geneva, and it was very short-sighted of him to believe what he believed: that virtue was not more than thirty years old. People became used to demanding that the word “German” should connote “virtue,” and this process has not been wholly forgotten to this day.​

 

[Petr]

Debate about the wisdom of Nietzsche, or lack thereof:

 

[Petr]

I have now found from the Internet Archive a proper edition of G.L. Rockwell's book White Power, which was like the classic "mission statement" of the WN 1.0 movement. And I do not mean to self-righteously condemn or sneer here, but I simply shake my head in slight disbelief and note that it was no wonder that WN 1.0 never went anywhere if becoming a member of not just "Hitler fan club" but almost literal Hitler cult was made an inherent part of it. (That of course was not the only reason for the failure, but it is useless to pretend that this was not a significant factor.)

I cite here just this one passage from the book's introduction, written by Matt Koehl - this was clearly the kind of stuff Rockwell taught his followers, and no wonder he became radioactive to vast majority of White people, in spite of all the things he did get right. It is just a simple chemical fact that even if you put some very delicious and healthy ingredients in a brew, it won't do any good if you then add in some 5 % deadly poison!

The revisionist Michael A. Hoffman II once wrote that he never calls any people living in modern times as "Nazis," because as far as he was concerned, Nazism was a religion based on the messianic role of Adolf Hitler, and since Hitler is dead, Nazism is dead as well. But we can see that some neo-Nazis tried to resurrect that messiah - but in vain, for Hitler stays dead and has not risen to rule on God's right hand, like Someone else did.

This was not just some LARPy "street theater", like some have claimed Rockwell was doing, this was genuine idolatry - worship of a failed race-messiah:

White power : Rockwell, George Lincoln, 1918-1967, author : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

vi, 366 pages : 23 cm

archive.org

To me, "WN 2.0" is largely about realizing that this kind of ideology was cringe and a road to Nowheresville.

 

[Petr]

Here is a long Twitter post about the French Nietzschean and Fascist collaborator Pierre Drieu La Rochelle. I found the most interesting part to be his description of what it was like growing up as a middle-class Frenchman in the early 20th century, just before the start of the First World War - he clearly got militantly anti-clerical education that was soaked in the Masonic spirit of Laïcité of the French Third Republic, and he felt greatly let down by it:

I was never without faith, without this faith, but because of the post-war depression and solely because of this unfortunate state to which my people had fallen - under the influence of an education that was called "rationalist" but which is by no means reasonable, which is not humanist either, and which echoes all the disadvantages of Christianity while destroying its advantages - I doubted that I would ever attain this ideal. And I suffered terribly from not being able to experience it.​

This is indeed one of those things where Nietzscheans and Christians can find "common ground" in - thinking that egalitarian, materialistic-atheistic Enlightenment thought is bad and corrupting. Both Christian reactionaries and Fascists can see the necessity of spiritual counter-revolution against the ideas of 1789. For this worldview does not only destroy spirit in religious sense, but it also eventually withers away, with its utilitarian calculations, the spirit of heroism that La Rochelle thirsted for:

​

Because for me this is the essential merit of fascism: that it introduced into the political register this great moral achievement of the 20th century, this complete spiritual restoration of the human body, the revaluation of health, strength, vitality, heroism. These concepts had been completely forgotten or had been deleted from the rationalist, intellectualist educational plans proposed by the doctors of progress, democracy, internationalism and left-wing socialism.​

Even if you think, as many Nietzscheans do, that some of the worst Enlightenment ideas were merely "secularized Christianity," like the concept of universal equality for example, you can still agree with La Rochelle that this was like the worst of both worlds, adopting the most utopian Christian notions while at the same time removing those theological safeguards that had prevented them from getting out of hand.

 

[WillTell]

Here is a long Twitter post about the French Nietzschean and Fascist collaborator Pierre Drieu La Rochelle. I found the most interesting part to be his description of what it was like growing up as a middle-class Frenchman in the early 20th century, just before the start of the First World War - he clearly got militantly anti-clerical education that was soaked in the Masonic spirit of Laïcité of the French Third Republic, and he felt greatly let down by it:





This is indeed one of those things where Nietzscheans and Christians can find "common ground" in - thinking that egalitarian, materialistic-atheistic Enlightenment thought is bad and corrupting. Both Christian reactionaries and Fascists can see the necessity of spiritual counter-revolution against the ideas of 1789. For this worldview does not only destroy spirit in religious sense, but it also eventually withers away, with its utilitarian calculations, the spirit of heroism that La Rochelle thirsted for:

​

Even if you think, as many Nietzscheans do, that some of the worst Enlightenment ideas were merely "secularized Christianity," like the concept of universal equality for example, you can still agree with La Rochelle that this was like the worst of both worlds, adopting the most utopian Christian notions while at the same time removing those theological safeguards that had prevented them from getting out of hand.

You make the most thought provoking posts. THANK YOU. You are a huge credit to any serious discussion.

The utopianist elements inside Christianity is absolute poison that is SO EASY for even the best of us to fall into from time to time.

 

[Petr]

You make the most thought provoking posts. THANK YOU. You are a huge credit to any serious discussion.

The utopianist elements inside Christianity is absolute poison that is SO EASY for even the best of us to fall into from time to time.

Further complicating these issues is the fact that there are some major differences between Christian denominations - the RCC differs considerably from the Eastern churches, and Protestants differ from them both.

A concrete example of this is how in the High Middle Ages, RC thinkers like Thomas Aquinas synthesized pagan philosophy with Biblical thought; and this is the source from which the abstract philosophical theories about "natural law," "natural rights" and eventually "natural liberty and equality" emerged from. The philosophy of antiquity came to us via medieval Scholastic interpreters, who left their mark on the whole Western thought.

The Eastern Orthodox civilization, since it lacked this Scholastic background, never adopted the same kind of worldview of "natural rights" which the countries influenced by the RCC did, and which became fully secularized in the Enlightenment, reaching its climax in the great French Revolution of 1789. (Some fundamentalist Protestants have also refused to accept the concept of "natural law," as understood by Scholastic thought, that was influenced by pagan philosophy; after all, this is simple fundie logic: "I do not find this concept of "Equality" you talk so much in the Bible.")

As is noted here:

Stoicism And Its Influence : Wenley, R.m. : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

Book Source: Digital Library of India Item 2015.103687dc.contributor.author: Wenley, R.m.dc.date.accessioned: 2015-07-01T18:27:32Zdc.date.available:...

archive.org

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In point of fact, a tendency ensued to erect two abstractions: on the one hand, a Jus Naturale or Lex Naturalis whereby men share in the moral order of the universe deducible by unaided ‘natural reason’: on the other, a Jus Divinum, revealed to humanity with supernatural intent, to wit, the preservation of the absolutely valuable single soul to immortal life. When the former is subordinated to the latter, and by an authoritative organization, all may go well. But, when Cynic rationalism, guiltless of revealed sanctions, returns to magnify the former, the ‘unwritten’ law may justify any abrogations and in any interest. “Universal consent is the voice of nature,” as Cicero said; but, consent about what? Allow an ideal of excellence to penetrate practical politics, and you have adopted an ethical conception in semi-legal guise which may lead very far afield. Thus, going behind the attitude of the Roman jurisconsults, the legal renaissance of the eleventh century hinted the possibility of a code superior to, and therefore capable of abrogating, man-made laws. So long as “divine law” interpreted by the Church Universal remained powerful, tangential novelties were stayed. But, with the disintegration accompanying the Renaissance and Reformation, the Stoic doctrine might presage anything, from ‘national’ rights to counsels of political despair. The ‘modern’ world was to furnish many examples.​

 

[Petr]

Hat tip to Nikephoros for finding this fine specimen of Far Right neopagan version of anti-colonialist narrative: