How is Homage different than Animal Farm and 1984?

IIRC, didn't Adof Hitler freely admit that most of his ideas were borrowed from Marx? I mean, it was called National Socialism, wasn't it.

How on earth did the universalist Enlightenment tradition lead to the parochial notion of Blut Und Boden?

Darwin led to the parochial notion. The strain of rationalism which equates humanity with other matter leads to the cult of race and nation. Species compete for food and territory in nature. Why not nations? Marx characterized classes as competitors. In Nazism "race" was the category which stood for species in competition with others. All very rational and thought to be supported by "science". At it's inception, Christianity was universalist, oblivious to race, nation or class with no basis in science or reason, only conscience and the acknowledgement of the potential for both good and evil in the acts of men. The enlightemment proclaimed that reason alone transcends the superstitious/spiritual which had defined the never changing nature of man as capable of both good and evil on his own regardless of the social structures or institutions which govern. Reason allows man to believe himself the final authority in all matters. The height of arrogance and hubris in light of the track record of "Pure Reason" applied.

David Ramsay Steele had great piece a few years ago called "The Mystery of Fascism", which explained how interwined the two ideoglogies are. Steele writes, "Fascism was a movement with its roots primarily in the left". His piece begins with Mussolini arriving in Switzerland in 1902, 18 years old and unemployed, "starving and penniless. All he had in his pockets was a cheap nickel medallion of Karl Marx."

By the early 1930s, "Stalin supplied Mussolini with the plans of the May Day parades in Red Square, to help him polish up his Fascist pageants."

And by all accounts, Stalin was genuinely surprised when another European friend began knocking on his door in June of 1941...

Optimism, hope and idealism were associated with Marxism in a way that was impossible with fascism. The theory of fascism wanted to crush Jews, the disabled, trade unionists and many others. The theory of Marxism wanted a better world for all.

Unless you were a kulak, a bourgeois, a member of certain central European ethnic groups or Russian minority populations, a Romanov, a Trotskyite, a liberal, a Menshevik, an intellectual (Yes, even them!), a Christian, a follower of traditional Chinese social customs, a prisoner of the Gulag, or an otherwise unpropagandized human being.

Gimme an 'effin break!

The strain of rationalism which equates humanity with other matter leads to the cult of race and nation.

"Race" and "nation" may carry rationalist overtones, but that's because they are both poor renditions of the Nazist "Volk", which evokes a strongly mystical sense of destiny and belonging.

For the most part the Nazi conquest of Europe had nothing to do with a Napoleontic desire for empire, but with the desire to reclaim and expand their "Lebensraum" in accordance with their supernatural sense of entitlement.

Christianity was universalist

Except for the 50-odd percent women and the vengeful God of the Old Testament?

Reason allows man to believe himself the final authority in all matters.

Quite the contrary, since Reason springs from doubt.

The claim that unlike, Marxism, Nazism (or in its own way, Italian Fascist Futurism) had no utopian underpinnings or aspirations is sheer ignorance.

E.g., the development of the new ubermensch and the overall glorification of German culture, the spreading of that glorious culture over a unified Europe (and perhaps, world) under a Thousand Year Reich, city planning and architecture on a huge scale, official prescriptions regarding aesthetics and the beautiful (and what is not), an affordable car for every family and impressively engineered autobahns on which to drive them.

And of course, the eradication of the Jews and certain Gypsy groups, and the enslavement of the Slavs.

Can't get much more utopian than that.

Marxism was vicious to its core. Its "ideals" was vicious, not only its operation. Must these :ideals" be spelled out? Envy, covetousness, hatred, desire for revenge. contempt for truth, impiety--is there anything good about these "ideals?" Is is possible that any person of understandking, experiencwe, or historical knowledge would not have know that the "dictatorship of the proletariat," "democratic centralism," and all those other "ideals" which this criminal conspiracy had the effrontery to even commit to writing would result in anything other that Hell on Earth?

If Marxist "ideals" are your ideals, you are not merely a misguided fool, but an enemy of humanity. You have no right not to have known that this abomiination had been the Devil's work all along.

We read recently of a schoolchild holocaust research project which sought to collect six million paperclips for a memorial. The children wound with an exta ten million clips: not even half enough for a Gulag remembrance.

Marxism was certainly not, as the Commie writer lies, "based on rationalism, science , and progress." It was, on the contrary, based on blind reaction to The Western idea, most explicitly in its dominalnt variant, Leninsm (There was a real infantile disorder!). Americans have much to be proud of for having faced this monstrosity over the nuclear gunsight for all those years ontil its own "contradictions" drqgged it back down into the gates of Hell.

Dutch:

"the desire to reclaim and expand their "Lebensraum" in accordance with their supernatural sense of entitlement."

Yes, we often hear how fascism, especially Nazism, was a throwback to the pagan, mystical days that pre-dated the Enlightenment. Funny thing about pagans, though, they actually had gods and they seem to have spent a fair amount of time worshipping them and worrying about whether they were happy or not. Warlike as they were, I was unaware that it was a bedrock tenet of traditional German paganism that other peoples were to be exterminated. I don't recall ever seeing accounts of how the SS sought the guidance of Odin or how the German High Command fretted about whether the invasion of Russia would please Thor. What happened to all those temples the Nazis built? Where were the priests?

To say reason springs from doubt is like saying Blod und boden springs from love of family and community or that Marxism springs from concern for the poor. Nazism was based upon the idea that history and science proved the cultural and genetic superiority of Aryans and that they were unconstrained by any supernatural authority in their freedom and right to live out the logical, rationalist implications of that. Bad logic and science? In hindsight, of course, but logic and science nonetheless. You really should show Thor and Odin more respect.

Lou:

Surely it is hard to make the case that Marxism was a reaction against "the Western ideal". Would you say the same of More's Utopia and Plato's ideal state? Would you argue that any readers thereof have "no right not to have known that this abomination had been the Devil's work all along." If so, you have a higher regard for man's foresight than I.

Fascism is correctly understood as national socialism. Instead of bestowing the 'blessings' of the Marxist utopia on everyone, it limits them to a fortunate few, linked by race or religion or ethnicity. All non-members of the group are merely grist for the mill. Thus, Hitler could see his intellectual inspiration in the Catholic proto-fascist Karl Lueger and his Christian Socialists. Liberation theology and Christian Democracy have the same underpinnings.

The distinctions to be made between and among Stalin, Hitler, DeGaulle, Franco, DeValera, Peron and Lenin are essentially meaningless. Merely matters of degree.

Peter B. doesn't know about about the SS worshippers of Wotan (Odin was his Norse name)? Well then, he hasn't read very much about the SS. The Nazis had actual pagan temples, and had a whole, made-up hodge-podge of wild fantasies, including reincarnation, nature-worship and even Arian Christianity. Did they have "priests?" They had people who took that role in pagan ceremonies. Were there temples? Yes, there were. Photrographs of these may be seen in various books on the SS.

By the way, it was Donner, not Thor. The SS called their gods by the German names, not the Scandinavian, got it?

As to the other point, Marxism was not addressed to abstract philosophizing, but was a striving to unleash hatred and resentment in an orgy of bloodshed and destruction. Read their literature. That's what it's all about.

Lou

Depends on how you define German .

Lots of powerful Americans in history were Masons with silly handshakes and oaths and incantations at odds with their public duties. Whatever romantic silliness the ranks of the SS indulged in after hours, the movement was hardly guided by common beliefs in the will of Thor. Er, Donner.

As to Marxism, I suggest it was all-too-addressed to abstract philosophizing. Surely you don't believe everyone who was attracted to Marxism in the last hundred and fifty years was driven by bloodlust.

Mike - Exactly right, Hitler was a Marxist.

John Ray has an excellent set of Marx/Engels quotes illustrating some of the commonalities at http://marxwords.blogspot.com.

Some examples:

Marx hated the Jews: how repellent the Israelite faith is to me

Marx saw the Jews as counter-revolutionaries: "And as for the Jews, who since the emancipation of their sect have everywhere put themselves, at least in the person of their eminent representatives, at the head of the counter-revolution -- what awaits them?"

Marx believed in dictatorship: Every provisional political set-up following a revolution requires a dictatorship, and an energetic dictatorship at that.

Engels believed Germany has the right to conquer other lands: "By the same right under which France took Flanders, Lorraine and Alsace, and will sooner or later take Belgium -- by that same right Germany takes over Schleswig; it is the right of civilization as against barbarism, of progress as against stability. Even if the agreements were in Denmark's favor -- which is very doubtful-this right carries more weight than all the agreements, for it is the right of historical evolution"

Marx wanted to destroy the family: after the earthly family is discovered to be the secret of the holy family, the former must then itself be annihilated in theory and in practice.

While pagan occult worship was not part of "mainstream" Nazism, it was important to Himmler and the SS. He built the Wewelsburg Castle into an occult temple where he and his acolytes performed pagan ceremonies, and the SS was slowly replacing society's rites with new SS ones. There was an SS wedding ceremony for example. Was Himmler's occult paganism the same as the actual pagan Germans? No. Did he actually believe it? Yes. Did he intend to replace Christian and secular beliefs in German society with his occult ideas? Yes.

There was a deep mysticism in Nazi philosophy. Alfred Rosenberg's Myth of the 20th Century, the book of Nazism's "official philosopher," began with a history of Atlantis. The SS sent expeditions to Tibet to find the root Aryan race of Madame Helena Blavatsky's Theosophy. Goebbel's Propaganda Ministry put Nostradamus' prophecies on radio because he thought they predicted a Nazi victory.

The entire concept of the Fuhrerprinzip and the ideals of Blood and Soil go back to the Wandervoegel movement and romanticism, which is irrational and was done as a response against the Enlightenment.

And while I do not know if Himmler ever performed oracular ceremonies to Odin to determine the auguries for the invasion of Russia, I do know that its approximate summer date was deemed OK because the occult science of the World Ice Theory told Hitler the coming winter would be mild.

Certainly there was rational, scientific, and modernist elements of Nazism. But to assert that Nazism was a product of the enlightenment and rationalism is absurd.

Certainly there are many connections between the totalitarianism of Nazism and Communism. Both were visceral reactions against liberal capitalist democracy, but it's important to not overstate their ties. Hitler decisively beat the Marxist elements of the party when he removed the Strasser brothers from power. Likewise, Hitler quashed the most revolutionary aspects of the Nazi movement during the Night of the Long Knives. There was a reason the Nazis portrayed themselves as the defenders of Europe from the horrors of Bolshevism.

Peter B:

Reason does not protect man from barbarism. In practice, however, neither does Faith.

The Nazi's didn't need Reason to rationalize their barbarism any more than slave traders needed Darwin.

Dutch-

Slavery is an institution whose history pre-dates human record keeping. It's destruction may have been the result of the universalizing nature of Christianity. History moves slowly. The major difference between the ancient and emerging, modern world was Christianity. The Enlightenment was a later development. Slavery existed since the dawn of recorded history, Darwin is a new as Marx and Freud.

Slavery existed since the dawn of recorded history, Darwin is a new as Marx and Freud.

That's the point. Contempt for life and the human condition is as old as history itself, and certainly not contingent on the appearance of post-Enlightenment rationalism. What sets the 20th century apart is technology, not ideology.

Dutch:

No, killing is as old as history itself. So are war and attendant slaughter and bloodlust. Cooly planned genocide as an artifact of progress is a modern specialty.

We often hear how medieval anti-Semitism was just as bad and that the Holocaust was just a modern, more efficient extention of it. Think about that. Do you really think European Jewry survived all those centuries because their genocidal killers were technically inefficient?

Yes, of course that's how they survived.

You don't seem to know much German history, Peter. The extermination, by the Germans, of the Prussians would be a cogent example of what you say never happened.

Orrin, desperate to unconvict Christianity of its millenium of crimes, tries to blame racism on Darwin, but talk about mudsill races and the manifest destiny of Anglo-Saxon Protestants to overcome the Mexicans was common in the United States before Darwin ever published a word.

There were differences of opinion, among American Christians, about race, and how to treat other races, but Christians didn't need Darwin to invent race murder. They were well into the game already.

Peter B:

Cooly planned genocide as an artifact of progress is a modern specialty.

Lots of cool planning went into the obliteration of Carthage, but it certainly wasn't modern. History is rife with examples of large scale, institutionalized slaughter, from Genghis Khan to the Aztecs to Rwanda to Sarajevo.

Do you really think European Jewry survived all those centuries because their genocidal killers were technically inefficient?

Given that they survived what was undeniably a technically efficient murderer, the point is moot.

Murder is murder. What you guys don't seem to understand is the modern world's new justification for murder: reason/science. How many French would have been murdererd by their government had railroads been operable during their revolution? State sponsored murder of it's own people rationally decided and planned IS new. Emotional killing based on the desire for the property of the victims is armed robbery. "Reason" provided a unique motive for killing and human experimantation unheard of before the enlightenment.

This is weird. For decades after WW11 the big question the secular world faced was how could an enlightened, progressive, scientific, rational country like Germany have done such a thing. Now we know the answer. They weren't enlightened, rational, scientific and progressive enough. Let's blame Thor and everybody but us.