One of the lasting traditions on this blog is that whenever a month has five Wednesdays in it, the commentariat gets to nominate and vote on the subject for the fifth Wednesday’s post. For the last several years now, one of the perennial runners-up has been a straightforward question: why is it that Adolf Hitler has become such an overwhelming presence in popular culture in the United States, and across the modern industrial West more generally? That’s the one that won this month’s competition.
It’s a far more serious question than it might seem at first glance. Consider the image on the left. The moment you saw it, even before I mentioned this post’s subject, you knew exactly who it was. Can you think of any other historical figure whose image and reputation can be evoked so instantly by two abstract blotches of black on white? I can’t. What does it say about our culture that we’ve made Hitler’s face more recognizable than that of any other person—more so than Jesus, or George Washington, or for that matter any of the other mass murderers of history?
No, it’s not that Hitler’s regime killed more people than anybody else’s, because it didn’t. Lengthy and nauseating as the litany of atrocities of Hitler’s National Socialist regime is, it’s second-rate at best compared to the far more ghastly toll heaped up by the twentieth century’s Marxist regimes. The Soviet Union under Josef Stalin slaughtered more people than the Nazis ever did, and presided over a much vaster network of prison camps—the “Gulag archipelago” made famous by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s harrowing novels—including the nightmarish Kolyma mining camps, where the average lifespan of a prisoner after arrival was measured in weeks.
Stalin, in turn, was practically a piker in the mass murder sweepstakes compared to Mao Zedong, whose regime still holds the all-time record for carnage. Nor did Hitler ever envisage anything as breathtakingly horrific as the plan drafted and partly carried out by Pol Pot and his Marxist Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia. Having decided that the great obstacle to a communist utopia was that the people he’d conquered had all been raised in a corrupt capitalist society, Pol Pot launched a plan that would have resulted in the phased extermination of every single person in Cambodia who was older than ten at the time of the Khmer Rouge takeover. Only a timely Vietnamese invasion stopped that plan from being carried out in full.
Furthermore—and this point deserves to be stressed—Hitler’s regime was an abject failure in terms of its declared goals. Hitler wanted to make Germany a great power; his rule put a full stop to Germany’s chances at great power status, and left his adopted nation crushed, humiliated, and divided among its enemies. Hitler believed devoutly that white Europeans ought to rule the world; by crippling the British, French, and Dutch colonial empires just when independence movements in their colonies were beginning to get traction, he did more than any other single person to bring about the end of European global hegemony and the rise of independent nations across the global South. As for his antisemitism, it’s one of the ironies of history that Hitler’s most enduring impact on popular culture is that he made the more blatant forms of antisemitism unfashionable in most Western countries for three quarters of a century.
Nor, finally, was there anything even slightly original in Hitler’s National Socialist regime. Its economic schemes were borrowed almost without alteration from those of Mussolini’s Fascist regime in Italy, which Il Duce’s henchmen had cobbled together by trial and error in an attempt to copy as much of the Soviet system as possible while still retaining private ownership of the means of production. (Fascism generally is best understood as Communism Lite, an attempt to overcome the catastrophic problems of early twentieth century capitalism without going all the way over into Stalinism.) A great deal more came straight from the Soviet Union; the role of the Nazi Party in German society under the Twelve-Year Reich was borrowed from the role of the Communist Party in Russia, the Hitler Youth and League of German Girls were Nazi versions of the much larger and better organized Communist youth movements, and so on.
Then there were Hitler’s racial policies. As Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke pointed out years ago in his brilliant book The Occult Roots of Nazism, those came straight from Ariosophy, a fringe movement of racist occultists in Austria and Germany in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. If you know anything about Nazi ideology you already know all about Ariosophy, because they’re the same thing. It’s a matter of historical record that the German Workers Party, the nucleus of Hitler’s National Socialist German Workers Party (the Nazi Party’s full name), was founded as a political action group by the Thule-Gesellschaft (Thule Society), an Ariosophical secret society. The organizational and ideological links are impossible to miss.
That is to say, Hitler and his regime were hopelessly unoriginal; in terms of their declared goals, they rank right up there with history’s most embarrassing failures; and even as a mass murderer, Hitler was second-rate. Thus it’s reasonable to ask why this malevolent but mediocre figure has been lifted out from among all the other tyrants and torturers of a brutal age and turned into our culture’s favorite icon of absolute evil. It’s a complicated issue, and like most such issues in the genesis of cultural forms, it’s best understood through the lens of history.
By 1933 it was as clear as anything could be that the British Empire—the largest empire in recorded history, and also one of the most cruel and rapacious—was in its death throes, burdened by a massive overhang of unpayable debts and an equally massive and dysfunctional bureaucratic state that had long since stopped doing much of anything besides enriching its inmates. The British pound sterling, the worldwide reserve currency of the day and the foundation of global trade, was lurching from one crisis to another, and the mere fact that no other currency was ready to take its place didn’t give it any particular staying power.
That was the year that the Great Depression hit rock bottom. It was also the year that two of the three nations most likely to succeed Britain as global hegemon got new governments that took power promising a radical break with the policies of the past. In the United States, Franklin Roosevelt took charge of the country after the bitterly contested 1932 election, backed by a mass movement that effectively made him president for life. He proceeded to reinterpret the US constitution in ways no previous politician had ever attempted, centralizing power in the federal executive and giving the national government unprecedented control over economic life.
In Germany, a nearly identical process made Adolf Hitler Chancellor; the great difference was that the German constitution of the time was much more flexible than the US constitution, and allowed the New Germany (as it was called then) to proceed much further than the New Deal ever did. In the Soviet Union, Josef Stalin clawed his way to power a little earlier, cementing his control over the Soviet government by 1930. Later on, all three would round up their political opponents—Hitler leading the way in 1933, Stalin with the great purges that began in 1936, Roosevelt with a flurry of executive orders and new laws that enabled the once-famous sedition trials of 1941-1944 and the internment of Japanese-Americans in prison camps.
What makes these parallels all the more edgy is that all three men took power in the wake of the same global economic crisis and pursued closely related economic policies in response to it. The US stock market crash of 1929 and the implosion of Austria’s Credit Anstalt bank in 1931 were only the most visible events in the process by which the freewheeling lassiez-faire capitalism of the previous century destroyed itself. Mainstream economists and media pundits insisted, just as they did in 2008, that the only thinkable response was to shovel money into the hands of the obscenely rich so they could avoid having to deal with the consequences of their own stupidity, while millions of people thrown out of work by the crisis shivered and starved.
There were plenty of alternatives, but the one that caught the public imagination centered on bringing the power of government to bear on the economic realm. That happened to various degrees in the three nations we’re considering. The Soviet Union went the furthest, as Stalin abandoned Lenin’s more moderate economic policies and nationalized all productive assets and economic activity. Germany underwent a somewhat less drastic process of Gleichschaltung (“coordination”), in which every business of any size was assigned a Nazi Party official to oversee it and make sure that all its activities followed the latest dictates from Berlin.
Here again the United States was the laggard. During Roosevelt’s first term, the National Recovery Administration (NRA) carried out a tolerably good imitation of Gleichschaltung, but that went by the boards with the compromise that followed the 1936 election, replaced by cozier arrangements that bought compliance from big business with favors from the government. It took decades longer, by way of the creeping bureaucratization of American life, to burden the United States with roughly the same degree of government control over the economy that Hitler managed in a few short months by his more forceful methods.
Then, of course, war broke out. It was by no means guaranteed that the United States would end up on Britain’s side. One of the uncomfortable secrets of prewar society that has been buried in retrospect, in America and Britain both, is the immense popularity that Hitler’s “New Germany” had among ordinary people and ruling elites alike. Both countries also had no shortage of fans of the Soviet Union in those days. Roosevelt and the faction of the US elite that supported him were Anglophiles, though, and pushed an alliance with Britain; once the war expanded to include Russia, the pro-Soviet faction in America allied with the pro-British faction, and they squeezed the pro-German faction into submission.
That, more broadly, was what happened in global politics as well. What normally occurs in any political struggle with three players is that two of them gang up on the third, eliminate it, and then start quarreling over the spoils. That’s the history of the twentieth century in a nutshell. What also happens in such situations is that the losing side in that first struggle becomes the rhetorical punching bag for both of the winning parties thereafter—and the more the losing side has in common with the winning sides, the more enthusiastically the punching proceeds.
That can be seen at work in a very different context in American popular culture. Has it ever seemed strange to you, dear reader, that hardcore atheist materialists and devout Christians, who disagree about so much else, both condemn occult teachings such as astrology? That’s because at the end of the Renaissance, there were three great intellectual movements in conflict—newborn scientific materialism, traditional Christianity, and the occult movement of the time. Once again, two players ganged up on the third and have been using it as a rhetorical target ever since, even as they pursue their quarrel with each other with unflagging zeal.
It’s doubtless necessary to stop at this point and remind my readers that none of the points just made excuse the appalling behavior of the National Socialist regime during its twelve years in power. Neither, for that matter, do they excuse the even more horrific behavior of the Soviet Union during its rather longer history, or—let’s say this softly—the atrocities that US governments have committed around the world and within our own borders. Nation-states do horrible things. They’re especially likely to do horrible things when they’re clawing their way up the winding stair that leads to temporary global hegemony.
It’s when those grim realities become too painfully clear, in turn, that people start looking for somebody at whom they can point an accusing finger while shouting, “Look at him! He’s much worse than we are!” That’s especially tempting when, as in the present case, the atrocities carried out at the command of the person we’re discussing were in fact worse than those carried out by our own government. The transition from “A is worse than B” to “A is absolute evil and B is sweet innocence and light itself,” profoundly dishonest as it is, is common enough in the presence of a sufficiently troubled national conscience.
The difficulty here is that this act of fingerpointing has consequences. The psychology of hatred is poorly understood in today’s popular culture; a great many people think that hating something is a good way to get rid of it. Quite the contrary, the more you hate something, especially if you’re hating it as a way to ignore certain things in yourself, the more your own emotional life becomes dependent on it. The more energy you will then half-consciously put into preserving and supporting the thing you hate, so that it will always be available for you to hate.
This shows up even in the most vapid products of popular culture. Look at the way that all the popular hero vs. villain franchises make the villains indestructible and ever-resurgent. It doesn’t matter how often the notionally good guys in the Star Wars franchise whack the Empire, it (or some equivalent under a slightly different name) always pops back up again, strong as ever. That’s anything but an accident. If you build your identity around fighting evil, after all, it’s safe to say that you’ll always make sure not to defeat it, so that it will always be there for you to fight.
It’s for this reason, to cite a timely example, that Donald Trump isn’t a has-been today. If American politics had followed its normal course, his election in 2016 would have been no big deal. Populists from outside the political system seize elective office in this country from time to time. What typically happens is that they have one not very successful term, whatever issues propelled them into office get taken up by professional politicians and absorbed into the system, and business as usual continues unhindered. In this case, by contrast, so many people became so obsessed with hating him that this process could no longer function.
That had several important effects. First of all, the political establishment was so busy shrieking its rage and hatred at Trump that it failed to do anything about the issues that brought him to power. This guaranteed, in turn, that the issues in question would become more pressing and draw even more support away from the political mainstream and toward Trump and those who aligned themselves with him. All that ecstasy of hatred poured out onto Trump also guaranteed that he would gain support; the more shrill it got, the more likely it was that everyone who was dissatisfied with the existing order of things, no matter how little they liked Trump personally, would rally around someone the defenders of the status quo hated so passionately.
There are also subtler factors involved. So many people these days are so subservient to peer pressure, so terrified of the disapproval of the crowd, that I’m not at all sure how many of them realize that hatred can act as an intoxicant and a source of energy to its target. All things considered, hatred is not that far from love; both emotions place the person at whom they’re directed at the center of the lover’s or hater’s world; that much attention, poured out that unstintingly, can be a rush. I have no access to Trump’s private thoughts, of course, but the way that he deliberately encourages his enemies to go into Donald Duck splutterfests of frenzied rage and hatred suggests to me that he’s learned to binge on the emotional energy thus evoked.
All these same points, in turn, can be made of the cult of Hitler in the United States and other contemporary Western societies. No, I don’t think “cult” is too strong a word. In modern popular culture, Hitler started off as little more than a convenient punching bag that both capitalist and Marxist regimes could agree to denounce. He changed over time into a target for what Carl Jung called “projection of the shadow,” the process by which a person or a culture refuses to see their own failure to live up to their ideals and attributes that failure instead to some other person or group of people. Now he’s become something considerably more troubling.
I don’t think it’s accidental, in other words, that a great many of those people who spend their time denouncing Hitler and Nazism most loudly, and fling these labels at their political enemies with reckless abandon, have started insisting that free speech and other constitutional guarantees of civil rights are bad things that should be gotten rid of. The gap between hatred and love, as noted earlier, is not as wide as many people assume, and it’s not at all uncommon for one to change suddenly into the other. The return of the repressed is a potent force. So is the craving, especially powerful among those who spend their lives groveling before the idol of peer pressure, to slam all the way to the opposite extreme and embrace the unthinkable.
Thus one of the things that worries me right now is the possibility that the decades immediately ahead may see a revival of Nazism. By this I don’t mean the emergence of some political viewpoint that gets labeled “Nazi” by its enemies—we’ve had plenty of those already, on both sides of the political spectrum—but a literal attempt to rehabilitate Hitler’s National Socialism, or something very much like it, as a modern political stance. Nor do I expect that to come from the right, or for that matter from the extreme left. To judge by who’s participating most eagerly in the obsession with Hitler these days, I expect it to emerge from the shattered remnants of the corporate liberalism now so obviously slipping toward history’s exit doors.
Does that seem improbable? Nietzsche, who predicted the ideological wars of the twentieth century decades ahead of anyone else, wrote this three years before Hitler was born: “the democratization of Europe is at the same time an involuntary arrangement for the cultivation of tyrants.” History shows that he was quite correct. Again, the return of the repressed is a potent force, and there’s another factor involved. Those who pile unrealistic hopes on democracy—that eternally unsatisfying muddle of compromises whose only advantage is that it’s better than the alternatives—very often end up embracing tyranny once it finally sinks in that they’re not going to get everything they think they want. Combine that with the obsessive fascination with Hitler among today’s corporate liberals and it’s not hard to see a very ugly prospect emerging.
That prospect horrifies me. A political movement doesn’t have to be the worst in human history, after all, to be very, very, very bad. Furthermore, the flaws that led to Hitler’s failure weren’t accidental. They were hardwired into the core structure of Nazism itself, and any nation that adopts something much like Hitler’s ideology can expect to crash and burn in some similar way. Avoiding that outcome will admittedly require more common sense and capacity for reflection than has had much presence recently at any point on the political spectrum. Still, we can hope.
In Europe I’d expect Hitler’s reputation to be rehabilitated by Muslim and African immigrants and their leftist allies who begin to view Hitler as a anti-colonialist who valiantly fought against the evil evil evil British and French and American empires but lost.
Yes, there seems to be almost an unconscious attraction to Trump in the way so many structure their day around hating him. People are looking for a big daddy figure perhaps because we have spent so much time as a culture in building up the virtues of women while belittling men. The opposite has a way of working itself in around the next bend.
Interesting post, thank you.
Could you please expand a bit on your comment below?
the flaws that led to Hitler’s failure weren’t accidental. They were hardwired into the core structure of Nazism itself
What were these hardwired flaws?
Thanks,
Edward
This invoking at the end reminds me of many Venture Capital elites. Peter Thiel coming to mind and his ideas from Zero To One. He eludes often to democracy being a series of compromises and no one getting what they want. He sort of points out that some are better at decision making , planning etc. so they should be doing this and eliminating bureaucratic bloat. I find your last two paragraphs that these ideas might already coagulating in the minds of some in the US.
Well, I think the system of National Socialism already returned after the International Socialism failed.
Look how the China of Mr. Xi structures the society and economy.
Seems like somebody there picked up “My Struggle”.
The state got quite some elements of the 3rd Reich minus the mustache.
Look at Russia now under Mr. Putin, also here you might find a similar mixture of economy and state, after rejecting International Socialism and pure Capitalism.
It is back and it looks to be somehow successful implementations in those countries.
Being a bit too successful, now both countries are made enemies of the crumbling West.
Nothing is ever new on the planet …..
A truly excellent post! I was particularly delighted to see you point out:
“One of the uncomfortable secrets of prewar society that has been buried in retrospect, in America and Britain both, is the immense popularity that Hitler’s “New Germany” had among ordinary people and ruling elites alike.”
When I was still in elementary school in Berkeley in the early 1950s, one of my school friends, now a retired judge in California, was eagerly collecting Nazi regalia. There was a lot of Nazi souveniers in the city at the time, brought back as war souveniers by returning GIs. He liked their image very much.
(In those long-forgotten days Berkeley was a very authoritarian city, where police surveilence was everywhere. Boys in elementary school had military drill every week on the school playground, under the command of uniformed police officers. The chief of police was the famous August Vollmer, a specialist in advanced means of policing and population control.)
“The Democrats are the real racists” is frequently bandied around by Republicans for the past 40 years. It wasn’t really all that accurate back then, but if the Democrats and their corporate liberals do end up becoming neo-Nazis in the next 40 years then the statement could end up being prophetic.
“Hitler believed devoutly that white Europeans ought to rule the world; by crippling the British, French, and Dutch colonial empires just when independence movements in their colonies were beginning to get traction, he did more than any other single person to bring about the end of European global hegemony and the rise of independent nations across the global South.”
He did believe that Germany should have its own empire and believed that Germans, with Scandinavians trailing close behind, should be at the top of the heap. I don’t think he cared that much about the British, French, and Dutch empires. White nationalism is an American thing, not a European thing. Hitler was a German nationalist, maybe even a Nordic nationalist, but nothing further than that.
And yes, Hitler did lose. So, too, did the Japanese. Both of these were underdogs. Hitler was throwing the dice and he knew it. The losers were Germany, Japan, Italy, Britain, and France (the last two of which actually deluded themselves into thinking they were winners). The real winner was the USA. I suppose the USSR could also be considered a winner but they paid a terrible price for winning.
What was original about Hitler was trying to create an empire in the European heartland. The others had created colonial empires in Africa, Asia, and the Americas.
I think that Godwin’s law explains much of Hitler’s continuing presence in Western consciousness…the man is Extremely useful as a rhetorical device:
“attorney Mike Godwin came up with a simple law: Sooner or later in any online argument, someone will bring up Hitler.
Today, the 1990 adage known as Godwin’s Law seems more appropriate than ever, as social media has turned civil discourse into a never-ending series of flame wars.”
Thank you again for another thought-provoking post. I’d like to hear your opinion on another facet of Hitler monomania, which is that it makes it much easier to blame one symbolic figure for all the wrongdoing and let everyone else off. While it’s true there was a token effort to round up and bring to justice the ringleaders, it’s also true the Allies deliberately decided not to chase up the issue with the rest of the administration, once it became clear they were going to need the remaining population on side. Whenever you watch one of the (many, many) ‘Rise of the Nazis’ documentaries, you will note a conspicuous silence on how H really did it, because this would put in full public light how large a proportion of normal people are quite happy to either participate in, or wilfully ignore, mass murder.
Fascinating post. It’s intriguing that the emotional energy of hatred can actually be fuel for it’s target. I believe what you are suggesting goes beyond Dion Fortune’s famous maxim that what you oppose becomes locked in place. It sounds like active hate does more than just locking in place but actually causes the target to grow and expand.
Great post. I am particularly taken by the observation that love and hate are nearly the same thing, or at least different sides of the same coin. If you ask what is the opposite of love, most people will reflexively say hate. They don’t grasp that the real opposite of love is indifference. (A fact I’ve known for a long time, having personally spent my life firmly on the indifference end of the spectrum.) When you grasp that key point about the relationship between love and hate, much of what you argue in this post naturally follows.
Anonymous, that’s not at all impossible. I’m amused to think of the splutterfests that will get from European neofascists, many of whom also admire Hitler but loathe Muslim and African immigrants!
Dennis, that’s a good point. The return of the repressed is a powerful force!
Edward, there were at least two of them. The first was the Führerprinzip, Hitler’s ideology of charismatic leadership, which played an important role in making the Nazi regime inefficient. It’s the usual problem with Romantic politics, which exalt enthusiasm over organization; if Hitler had taken power over a nation less naturally obedient and organized than Germany, his regime would have fallen apart in a matter of months. The more important flaw, though, was the racial delusion that ran all through Nazism. If Hitler hadn’t had his racial bigotries, his regime wouldn’t have chased most of the good nuclear scientists out of Europe, guaranteeing that the US would get the bomb before the Axis did; it also would have treated the Slavic peoples of eastern Europe as potential allies rather than Untermenschen, thus completely transforming the political calculus of the region and allowing Hitler to use his considerable skills at diplomacy to create a central and eastern European alliance and customs union under German leadership. (It might also have kept him from being so contemptuous of Russia, and thus launching the campaign that did more than anything else to destroy him.)
Kyle, yeah, that’s among the things that concern me.
B3rnhard, no argument there. Social democracy and national socialism are the two most widespread political systems in the world today.
Robert, thanks for this. A lot of people these days really have no idea how authoritarian this country was, outside of certain enclaves, before the Sixties tore things wide open.
Peter, once you start deciding that people ought to be judged en masse based on their skin color, gender, or other broad somatic classifications, you’ve already gone down that road — and the Democrats have certainly done so. That’s another of the reasons that I worry about today’s corporate liberals becoming tomorrow’s goose steppers.
AA, I recommend you do more reading in the literature on the long-term plans and global politics of Hitler’s regime. Hitler believed that England was his natural ally, and wanted to see Germany’s land empire and Britain’s maritime empire work together. He envied France its African empire. As for Hitler’s supposed originality in wanting to create an empire in the European heartland, er, I gather you’ve never heard of a guy named Napoleon Bonaparte.
Davie, to my mind Godwin’s law is an effect, not a cause. Why Hitler? Why not Stalin, say, or some other figure?
Zachariah, oh, that’s part of why nobody talks about Hitler’s methods, but I’d argue it isn’t the most important part. The most important reasons nobody talks turkey about the rise of Hitler are threefold. First, it’s still a viable path to power, and the current holders of power aren’t exactly eager to see anyone else try it. Second, some of the methods Hitler used are still very much in use on all sides of politics in the industrial world to get and keep power, and it’s not in the interests of those who use such methods to have the rest of us notice what they’re up to. Third, there’s the role of occultism in all this. Hitler was an occultist; so were many other people in the inner circle of his party, including Heinrich Himmler and Rudolf Hess; his party, as I noted in my post, was launched and funded originally by an occult secret society, and Hitler received a great deal of help and coaching in his early days from Dietrich Eckart and other occultists. That’s something nobody in the modern industrial world wants to touch, because it flies in the face of one of the central dogmas of our culture — the notion that occultism can’t possibly be anything other than meaningless superstitious handwaving.
Samurai_47, good. Fortune’s principle was “what you resist, persists” — it’s resistance, rather than hatred, that she discusses. This is specific to hatred. Energy is energy, and the more energy you pour into hating someone, the more you center your life around that hatred, the more easily that person can take the energy and make good (or bad) use of it. It’s a skill some people figure out by themselves and others can be taught.
Stephen, that was one of the things I picked up from my teacher John Gilbert. He taught that the opposite of love is apathy, and that hate is simply a distortion of love, not its absence or opposite. It really does make sense of a lot of things in life.
Thank you, JMG. I do not have much of substance to contribute, being perhaps myself part of the problem rather than part of the solution. (I obsess over the guy, and over his party, and over all the other stuff that went with it – the 1941-1944 horrors here in Estonia, the gray misery of Anderson shelters and gas masks and nocturnal explosions over in the 1939-1945 UK – I obsess and obsess, and it gets worth with the passing years.) But I WOULD like to contribute a link which might lighten the atmosphere. Here we see Charlie Chaplin’s mastery of practical NSDAP phonemics: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b7oQngQA3rM. His impression of the mitteleuropäisch ÜÜÜÜ, at 00:12 or so, is particularly fine.
For those who like to watch videos, I think this would be a good occasion for once again posting a link to Chris Ray Gun’s 2017 song-parody Punch A Nazi.
Thank you for a most timely and insightful essay. I speculated that you might touch upon Jung in this post, and I wasn’t disappointed. Since your last word is “hope,” may I offer one of my favorite Jung quotes:
“The mystery play is soft like air and thin smoke, and you are raw matter that is disturbingly heavy.
But let your hope, which is your highest good and highest ability, lead the way, and serve you as a guide in the world of darkness, since it is of like substance with the forms of that world. ” ~ Carl Jung, The Red Book. p. 246
”
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“Godwin’s law is an effect, not a cause”
Yes indeed. There are a bunch of things which make Hitler more suitable as a rhetorical device compared to the others though, and as you said, others were more effective than he was. The US fought and won a war against him (not so for Stalin, Mao or Pol Pot), the continuing need to repudiate Nazi ideas (the ideas of the others now fading into irrelevance), the greater ease of oversimplifying that war into mere hatred which we justify projecting on “the other”. I know there are many more reasons which I’m missing. Would be fascinating to try to find them all.
Oh, I now think of a further point I could contribute to the discussion around this excellent essay. We might at this historical juncture focus on people who opposed the Reichsführer, and yet did so without going into an Orwellian hate mode. Although I do not know German post-1933 history all that well, I would like to cite one person who arguably mounted such an opposition, Bishop Clemens August Graf von Galen, in Münster. He was calm, he was firm, he stood for the most traditional of German values, he eventually called out the victorious Allied occupation authorities in their turn, and he survived everything. His story is told by a Toronto author whom I used to know slightly when I lived in Canada, Fr Daniel Utrecht, in a book entitled _The Lion of Münster_ (quite recent, and still in print, and available from Amazon; I have read parts of this book, although not all of it). Well, there is that bishop, and there is Corrie Ten Boom (surely commemorated at Yad Vashem) and there is Uku Masing right here in Tartu County, Estonia (I know he is commemorated at Yad Vashem): and above all, there is my dear grandma’s Main Moral Lesson, that no matter what happens, life tends to go on. (Mum and Grandma approaching a Nazi checkpoint as refugees, while lacking papers: Grandma said “We simply will tell them the truth,” to which Mum shrieked, “The TRUTH , the TRUTH – we will be shot if we tell them the truth.” There was no shooting. Or again Grandma dealing with the so-efficient German refugee authorities, in the autumn-or-winter of 1944-1945, near Rostock: “Haben Sie ALLES verloren,” asked the man in authority. Grandma knew exactly what to do, so on came the municipal waterworks, “Ja, ALLES….”, in the then-requisite flood of tears. Mum was hoping in her anxiety that the official would not notice some warm clothes hanging in the coathook part of their room, and indeed the official did not notice. Like I say, life goes on.)
Learning to make productive use of negative energy sounds like an extremely useful skill. It’s not one that I have, though! Whenever I’ve been the object of hatred it has been very uncomfortable.
Could you explain how that could work? An example from my own life is that I have come to loathe insurance companies. I’m realizing now that I need to tone it down, because it’s just giving energy to the insurance company, it doesn’t change how they do business, and it harms me to get all worked up with animosity.
But what if I was an insurance company executive? I suppose what I would do would be to focus on conducting business in a way that genuinely helped people by spreading risk. So that would be a focus on building up the positive aspect of the insurance business. I can’t work out how I could possibly benefit from hatred directed toward me.
In case you have not seen this comedy sketch yet…..
it is hilarious and on topic (becoming what you say you reject.)
JMG I know you don’t do videos, but you could just listen, it is funny but kind of frightening if you think about the point they are making.
When Wokes and Racists Actually Agree on Everything
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ev373c7wSRg
“He taught that the opposite of love is apathy”
It certainly is. Few people seem to grasp that point. “Go now and die in whatever way seems best to you” is such a good line to illustrate the point.
When the Japanese were rolling through southeast Asia in 1942 they specifically pointed out they were not the British, French, or Dutch colonizers. Then they promptly bungled their public relations.
The ease at which love and hate can switch is the plot point of the movie “War of the Roses.”
Good essay. Or course I’ve been demoted from deplorable to garbage, so take that as you will.
If American politics had followed its normal course, there’s a decent chance Trump would not have won the 2016 election. The Democrats could have looked at the twin insurgencies in the form of Trump and Sanders and crafted a set of policies that would appeal to the populists, and the Trump campaign would have imploded: they had a candidate with nor prior experience in politics, fighting his own party’s institutions, and was widely disliked even by his own voters.
This post gets to one of the very real concerns I have about my country’s future: if there is a shift toward Nazism among the corporate liberals, I think it will happen when corporate liberalism is losing control in the US; but Canada is still governed by it, and the populist movement has not yet been able to shake things up nearly as much as in the US. I’m rather concerned that we might actually come to be governed by the new Nazis, at least until the whole thing implodes quite messily.
I have plans in place to get out in a hurry if need be, even though I really hope I don’t need to implement them.
One important difference between Hitler and Stalin and Mao is that the latter two kept their crimes against humanity mostly within national boundaries. (Except for Stalin’s Holodomor in the Ukraine, the memory of which fuels the present war.) Hitler crossed national boundaries for his victims. This was against the letter and spirit of the Peace of Westphalia.
In retrospect that agreement, forced by centuries of religious slaughter, was the ultimate in cynicism. So what if the king next door is preaching a false religion that will get his subjects damned for all eternity? He isn’t preaching to _me!_
You could argue that Stalin and Mao preached Communism worldwide, and that is a violation of the spirit of Westphalia, if you are willing to call Communism and Capitalism religions.
At this link is the full list of all of the requests for prayer that have recently appeared at ecosophia.net and ecosophia.dreamwidth.org, as well as in the comments of the prayer list posts. Please feel free to add any or all of the requests to your own prayers.
If I missed anybody, or if you would like to add a prayer request for yourself or anyone who has given you consent (or for whom a relevant person holds power of consent) to the list, please feel free to leave a comment below and/or in the comments at the current prayer list post.
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This week I would like to bring special attention to the following prayer requests.
May FJay peacefully birth a healthy baby at home with her loved ones. May her postpartum period be restful and full of love and support. May her older child feel surrounded by her love as he adapts to life as a big brother and may her marriage be strengthened during this time.
May Hal Freeman’s daughter Marina recover from walking pneumonia.
May Leonardo Johann from Bremen in Germany, who was
born prematurely two months early, come home safe and sound.
May all living things who have suffered as a consequence of Hurricanes Helene and Milton be blessed, comforted, and healed.
May Kevin, his sister Cynthia, and their elderly mother Dianne have a positive change in their fortunes which allows them to find affordable housing and a better life.
May Tyler’s partner Monika and newborn baby Isabella both be blessed with good health.
May The Dilettante Polymath’s eye heal and vision return quickly and permanantly, and may both his retinas stay attached.
May Giulia (Julia) in the Eastern suburbs of Cleveland Ohio be healed of recurring seizures and paralysis of her left side and other neurological problems associated with a cyst on the right side of her brain and with surgery to treat it.
May Corey Benton, whose throat tumor has grown around an artery and won’t be treated surgically, be healed of throat cancer.
May Kyle’s friend Amanda, who though in her early thirties is undergoing various difficult treatments for brain cancer, make a full recovery; and may her body and spirit heal with grace.
Lp9’s hometown, East Palestine, Ohio, for the safety and welfare of their people, animals and all living beings in and around East Palestine, and to improve the natural environment there to the benefit of all.
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Guidelines for how long prayer requests stay on the list, how to word requests, how to be added to the weekly email list, how to improve the chances of your prayer being answered, and several other common questions and issues, are to be found at the Ecosophia Prayer List FAQ.
If there are any among you who might wish to join me in a bit of astrological timing, I pray each week for the health of all those with health problems on the list on the astrological hour of the Sun on Sundays, bearing in mind the Sun’s rulerships of heart, brain, and vital energies. If this appeals to you, I invite you to join me.
Thank you JMG for this post and thank you to everyone who voted with me this time. I have been one of those voting for it for a good long time. I have wondered for a long time about our fascination with the corporal. I have a personal fascination with the Second World War but it is more of a straight interested in the war. So thanks very much for this.
I have two questions first what are the best WW2 books you and everyone can recommend, especially but not exclusively occult related ones
Second how does one recognize and deal with that which is repressed inside our own selves (and I recognize that that is a big question)?
JMG, et al
I have been wondering if there isn’t something else moving in addition to this. Over the last few years or so there have been more than a few excellent WWII movies, tv shows and books that have come out. The most recent being Masters of the Air that came out earlier this year. But this has me wondering if this resurgence isn’t an attempt to shore up the underlying founding myth of the Managerial estate. The victory in WWII being the great crusade that required the managerial state to win. Oh and if there is another Hitler you CLEARLY need us to defeat their evilly evilness. So part of the constant refrain of WWII being the good war and Hitler being the bad guy is a useful propaganda tool to shore up the PMCs control.
Other Dave
Before we go on, a brief note. This morning I’ve fielded, along with relevant posts, a fair-sized flurry of attempted posts trying to drag the discussion away from its topic and into the usual pointless yelling about who was most to blame for the Second World War. Then there are the others who are trying to whip up a squabble about who are *really* the worst mass murderers of all time. Those are not what this post is talking about, and nothing along those lines will be put through. ‘Nuf said.
With that, let’s proceed with the discussion.
Toomas and Mister N, thanks for both of these.
Goldenhawk, and thanks for this! Very apposite words.
Davie, I think the reasons I suggested might be worth considering in there somewhere…
Toomas, that strikes me as a very good idea. It’s possible, as your examples show, to face down monsters without becoming a monster yourself.
Samurai_47, it’s not a cognitive thing — not a matter of ideas in your mind. It’s energetic, functioning at the same level as hunger, lust, or the desire for sleep. I don’t propose to go into more detail, as it’s not exactly something I want to encourage!
Dobbs, thanks for this.
Siliconguy, it’s been educational to watch Trump’s supporters jump on that thoughtless comment of Biden’s and make any amount of hay with it. And of course the Babylon Bee was sprinting to try to stay ahead:
Taylor, I admit that concerns me as well. It’ll be interesting to see what Britain and Canada do if the US breaks away from the neoliberal consensus.
Paradoctor, I do indeed consider Communism a religion — a civil religion, as discussed here:
https://thearchdruidreport-archive.200605.xyz/2013/04/the-fate-of-civil-religion.html
Quin, thanks for this as always.
Will, it’s been a long time since I’ve read extensively on the Second World War so I don’t have anything to offer. As for repressed contents, there’s one essential rule — bring it up into consciousness and deal with it. If you don’t, what you repress will control you; once you do, you can control it. There are plenty of ways to bring it up into consciousness — dreamwork, meditation, journaling, creative arts, and the list goes on — but you can’t leave it down there in the darkness. If you do, it will eat you.
Other Dave, that’s quite possible!
The best way to exorcise a demon is to laugh at it.
Hitler
He only had one ball
Goering
Had two but VERY small
Himmler
Had something similar
Poor old Goebbels had no balls at all
It actually took me at least 20 seconds after reading the part about the abstract art being immediately recognizable as Hitler to see the likeness. Not sure what that says about me – maybe that I don’t see Hitler in everything and anything around me.
One of the things that ought not to be forgotten is that the US (with Britain and France) did not win WW2 all by themselves. Indeed, theyt might not have managed to win it at all if Hitler had not foolishly opened up an Eastern Front against Russia at the time. Russia contributed enormously to the defeat of Nazi Germany, and their contribution was arguably the decisive one.
My father always told me that victory was a very close thing, and that had Hitler won, the US would have become a Nazi nation — a thought that gave him the shudders. It was Pearl Harbor, he always said, that finally forced the US into the war. Without that, we might have remained neutral, or even allied with Nazi Germany against Britain and France.
@Robert Clayton,
the youth band I was in used to sing this on the bus on band trips, twenty+ years ago. Hadn’t heard it anywhere else, so it was a surprise to see it here.
@JMG and Toomas Karmo:
“It’s possible, as your examples show, to face down monsters without becoming a monster yourself.” That’s something I’d love to know more about, too.
This is interesting, and not the direction I anticipated. I thought you were going to link Hitler with filling the role of Adversary (Satan) in the civil religion of Progress for atheists and agnostics. Or is that a secondary role?
JMG @ 27: I’m not surprised that it is taking an extra firm hand on the tiller to keep this topic on course! It’s another indication of how “special” the mustache man has become. I don’t think the question of “why” has been answered, unless it’s hidden between the lines somewhere.
Dear JMG and Commentariat:
The point has been made by others, (and I agree) since the US involvement in WW2 has been mythologized as “The Good War”, “The Greatest Generation”, etc., if a group today can convince themselves and others that they are fighting Hitler and Nazis, they are Good, the Greatest, and their enemies are evil psychopaths and cannot be negotiated or compromised with. I think there is also threat inflation going on, in that the government has had more reincarnations of Hitler than anyone else (Gaddafi, Saddam Hussein, and plenty of others). Thus, they are evil psychopaths and cannot be negotiated or compromised with (never mind that the power of Germany in the first half of the 20th Century was far beyond that of Libya, Iraq, etc.). If you can convince people that they face Hitler, rather than a two-bit dictator or an undisciplined, somewhat shady businessman with a talent for getting under his opponent’s skin, then the people may support your proposed course, rather than calling BS on you. Hitler is so dangerous and is crazy, so he must be fought!
I think some of the discounting of the evils of Stalin, Mao, etc. may have a basis in the idea of civilized Europeans (the Germans who brought us Beethoven, etc., etc.) versus “Russian Muzhiks”, the Yellow Peril of China, and “oriental Despots”. Obviously, as others have noted, we fought Nazi Germany and won (while the West happily ignores the fighting and sacrifices of the Soviet Union [aka Mother Russia] – at the Normandy Invasion, 1/3 of the German Army was on the Western Front, the rest was in the East).
The left does seem to have decided that democracy is like that village in Vietnam; We had to destroy it to save it. JMG, reprinting your Archdruid posts on Fascism and the Future seems apt.
And finally, if one wants to lose faith in humanity, read about the Eastern Front in WW2. Two evil dictatorships and total war. Horrible!
Cugel
Seems like Hitler is the actual poster child for the democrat’s brown-shirt army Antifa. I spent many months in the center of Antifa activities in Portland, back before covid ,due to the location of my shop at the time. It always seemed upside down to me that the stated goal of Antifa was to fight fascism by dressing up in black and breaking windows and fighting their political enemies. So somehow mimicking Hitlers brownshirts was supposed to bring peace and equality instead of getting the result the Brownshirts got.
Excellent essay, thanks. I’m assuming that the politicians and consultants who recently decided that Harris should go full Trump-Is-Literally-Hitler for her last mile pitch know full well how susceptible certain people are to this. They are pitching it to PMC supporters of the Dems and I suspect they know that it is much less appealing to the people who are already with Trump. So I understand your concern about where this might go with disappointed liberals. But doesn’t this also suggest that the grown-ups (if you can call them that) don’t take it too seriously, that it’s just something to get the base riled up?
On a related point, you said in one of your recent astrological readings that cooler heads in the establishment might prevail around the time of the election and could serve to cool down the temperature a bit. Are you seeing any signs of that? Perhaps Bezos not endorsing Harris (obviously he has primarily business concerns, but he must be hedging a Trump win). And seeing Trump yukking it up with members of the great and the good at the Al Smith dinner last week suggests quite a few are not actually buying it (I’m imagining actual Hitler in full uniform making a speech at the Al Smith dinner!). So maybe if Trump wins, the power of painting people with the Hitler brush could actually lose steam?
Learned Sir,
Thank you for an excellent article. As is your habit, a careful reading allows me to begin to answer a major question in my life: If the Orange One wins, as seems increasingly likely, what happens to all the hatred and rage built up over time? I expect severe discombobulation in my social group…I’m not looking forward to it 🙁
A minor historical question: Why do you rank the British Empire as one of the most rapacious and cruel? I’m not disagreeing, just pointing at that the competition for cruelest empire is fierce indeed!
cheers,
Lothar von Hakelheber
Replying to B3nhard, #5, and JMG, #13: Back in 1992, John Lukacs wrote an article for The American Scholar in which he argued that national socialism—meaning a socialized economy restricted to one single nation for the benefit of that nation alone—had in fact become the dominant economic model in the West, but nobody was willing to call it that. (For obvious reasons!) I no longer have a copy, but I’m pretty sure the reference is “American History: The Terminological Problem” by John Lukacs, in The American Scholar (Winter 1992)
Regarding Godwin’s Law, I incline to agree with Davie, #17, that people use Hitler as a rhetorical tool because (1) he was our enemy, and (2) he lost. So it’s relatively safe to call him a Bad Person. Whereas with Stalin or Mao or Pol Pot, well, you just don’t know what somebody else might think about them.
Re: #22 Taylor As I’ve never had a decent education I’m struggling to understand the comment ” neoliberal concensus hold in Canuckistan getting worse if you Yankees shed the Woke.” Since I became Unclean during the Covid police state I’m very , um, watchful of our Dear Leader. Ship’s ready for offshore if it goes ” an abundance of caution” diktats. How many movies trigger the evil SS nightmare that our aristos use to frighten us? But nada Mao Red Guard …
The commonality shared by Hitler and Trump is that both are essentially performance artists. Hitler had an additional background in visual art and graphic design. His appreciation of monumental architecture, Wagnerian music, pomp and regalia have never been matched. Like Hitler, Trump has a gift for oratory that, while vulgar and often silly, is nonetheless compelling to his target audience. Trump and Hitler aim for the same goal – the id (or beast within) of the disenchanted among the population. The power of the id, when strongly motivated, is greater by far than anything the puny ego (reason) can conjure up. Facts are of little importance to the artist – the soul of the population is everything; effect is everything. Artists are basically neotensic – that is trapped in an extended childhood. They are creative but not always capable of responsible adult thinking or behavior. Like Nero, Savonarola, Louis XIV and Ludwig II., artists, when elevated to positions of leadership, can cause all manner of mayhem…. like Hitler and Trump, they simply don’t know any better.
Reading this, it struck me that Hitler was so thoroughly incompetent in achieving his aims that I can see now why there was a conspiracy theory saying that he was a covert British agent. I don’t believe it, mind you, but you could see how it would almost be plausible. And Hitler was actually an Anglophile personally, who even wanted to preserve the British Empire if at all possible — he just couldn’t understand why the British didn’t see things his way.
Earlier leaders in Germany did actually see some very good reasons to make friends with the Eastern Europeans. Prior to the start of WWI, they had a lot in common. For a while there was the Three Emperor’s Brotherhood that united Germany, Austria and Russia, but already by that time Russia had interests that had heavily entangled them with France and to a lesser degree England. So they drifted to the Entente. Interests were powerful enough to drive apart the conservative bloc of European powers in WWI. But Hitler did not see how divergent interests would also sunder the other Germanic peoples of Europe and why they would never support his program based on racial animosities.
Perhaps a scarier scenario to contemplate is that, had Hitler not been the vessel of the radical right, it’s possible that they might have, slowly but surely, taken over the entire continent and perhaps imposed a different version of the managerial society over the entire West with time. It’s not as if there weren’t abundant supporters of their vision even in the Anglosphere.
One theory I’ve heard to explain Hitler’s seemingly undue prominence as a target of hate is that, unlike the Communists, the Nazis had enemies based on unchangeable characteristics (i.e. blood). In other words, under Communism, you can theoretically escape enemy status by becoming a Communist, but under Nazism, if you are non-European, then there’s not much you can do to escape enemy status. You were born that way. Hence the fear of Nazis.
That being said, it’s interesting to note that many of the most vocal “anti-fascists” likewise make enemies based on unchangeable characteristics. For example, it is now perfectly acceptable in mainstream society to hate on people who are white, male, unvaccinated, et cetera; all of whom were born that way. There’s not much you can do to change all that (unless you undergo certain medical interventions). I for one find that a disturbing parallel.
…and I just deleted another flurry of off topic posts. Once again, comments on the Second World War are not relevant to this post; neither — ahem — are posts about the behavior of small Middle Eastern nations. I’m just going to keep deleting anything of the sort that gets posted, and it’s by no means impossible that I’ll also start banning people. Again, ‘nuf said.
Now, on to the relevant comments!
Robert, I learned that from my dad in childhood. He was a small boy during the Second World War; among his earliest memories were the times he spent sitting with my grandmother in the plane spotting station atop the tallest building in Aberdeen, in Washington state, watching for Japanese planes. Aberdeen’s right on the Pacific, so it was by no means a useless task…
Pygmycory, I’m delighted to hear this.
Robert, and there’s that!
Kmgunn, a very interesting thesis. I’d like to see you develop it.
Phutatorius, I’m sorry if I wasn’t clear enough. Having become a convenient punching bag for both Marxist and capitalist regimes in the Cold War era, the way the first defeated of three contenders usually does, Hitler then became a target onto which all sides projected their individual and collective Shadows. Do that with enough enthusiasm, especially if there are a lot of things about yourself that you’re trying not to notice, and the return of the repressed becomes an overwhelming force.
Cugel, that may well be part of the reason for discounting the Marxist death toll, though I tend to think that the widespread fondness for Marxism on the part of the US intelligentsia also has something to do with it!
Clay, that was when I realized that the return of the repressed had become a massive political force in today’s America. When the people who claim to be opposing fascism are trying to overturn the results of a relatively fair election by trashing neighborhoods and beating people, all the while demanding that free speech and other basic civil rights be denied to anyone who disagrees with them, we’ve entered deep into irony.
Mark, I see the Trump-is-Hitler business as a desperation move. It makes no sense if Harris is winning, or even close to breaking even; it won’t appeal to anyone not already on the Democratic bandwagon. It makes sense only if the Harris campaign has discovered that it’s losing core Democratic constituencies and has nothing to offer that will get them back. Trying to make the constituencies in question back away from supporting Trump, in the hope that they can be won back in time for 2028, strikes me as a last ditch attempt to keep disaster at bay. As for the cooling of heads, yes; I’d also point to the number of newspapers that are refusing to endorse a candidate this time around.
Lothar, no question, the competition for cruelty and rapaciousness among empires is pretty stiff! I rate the British Empire high on that scale, partly for the way it systematically used famine as an instrument to keep its colonies in check — the Irish potato famine and several brutal Indian famines during the Raj were made much worse than they had to be by deliberate policies on London’s part, just for starters — and partly from the way that it deliberately whipped up ethnic and religious hatreds in its colonies for the same purpose, then walked away from the colonies when its empire folded and left those hatreds to run amok. There are other factors — Britain’s invention of concentration camps during the Boer War comes to mind — but those’ll do for starters.
Hosea, I’m not surprised to hear that Lukacs went there! Thank you; I’ll see if I can find a copy.
Greg, now apply the same logic to the other side. It fits at least as well, you know, though it’s not the political figureheads who are deploying the artistic motifs — they don’t say anything that hasn’t gone through focus groups.
Deneb, one of the things that makes history so fascinating is that while the broad trends are pretty much set by collective forces, how exactly they play out depends on the vagaries of individuals — and some of those individuals are pretty odd ducks!
Ryan, that’s another example of the return of the repressed, because you’re right — the soi-disant “anti-fascists” are as fixated on permanent biological characteristics as the Nazis. Interestingly, Fascism proper — meaning here Mussolini’s regime — was much less stuck on that, and by and large (until they changed their policies under German pressure) considered culture rather than biology to be the factor that mattered.
Hi John,
You wrote: “…one of the things that worries me right now is the possibility that the decades immediately ahead may see a revival of Nazism. By this I don’t mean the emergence of some political viewpoint that gets labeled “Nazi” by its enemies—we’ve had plenty of those already, on both sides of the political spectrum—but a literal attempt to rehabilitate Hitler’s National Socialism, or something very much like it, as a modern political stance.”
I think we may be seeing this, here in Australia. There is a growing (nationalist) movement that has adopted Nazi rhetoric and symbolism and it’s members are demonstrating openly, usually in opposition to unpopular government policies, like mass immigration. Of course, the authorities are cracking down, passing laws banning the “Roman salute” and the display of Nazi symbols, and several members have been jailed for what can only be described as “thought-crimes”. But this is only fuelling these groups.
My own assessment is that these people aren’t real Nazis. Yet. They are, in my opinion, the avant-garde of a genuine alternative to the current ‘uniparty’ that’s ruled us for decades. They’re just using Nazi symbolism and rhetoric because it elicits a reaction from the powers-that-be and thereby, gets them publicity from the media. They are, like Trump, feeding on the energy the PTB is pouring into suppressing them. They do seem to be tapping a vein of popular discontent. There is a palpable level of disgust with (and distrust of) the current government (and the other party) so this movement seems to have the passive support of the ‘silent majority’.
At the moment, this movement is still very much on the fringe. My concern is that, if it gains traction against the disproportinate opposition the PTB is throwing at it, it could turn into real National Socialism and perpetuate all the mistakes of its prototype. If it does, the current PTB will have no one to blame but themselves. Oppositions don’t win elections. Governments lose them.
I remember “experts” assuring us more than 20 years ago that once China got a taste of capitalism and private property they would inevitably embrace democracy and become an overpopulated Canada. Well, fascist Italy, Japan, and Germany all had private property and capitalistic systems. So we got a supersized fascism in China, strong nationalism, coordination between business and government, racism, being a master race, striving for dominance, persecution and suppression of non Han peoples in China. China is merely returning to its age old template – the ideal of a centralized superintending wise bureaucracy headed by an emperor figure with China as the Middle Kingdom with other lands deferring to it as supreme and the best. The recent dominance of Europeans a temporary aberration.
Also -one other reason we overlook Stalin’s, Mao’s, and Pol Pot’s massacres is that they didn’t happen to US or to PEOPLE LIKE US. or PEOPLE WE ADMIRE AND TRY TO IMITATE.. They happened other people of another continent and race, far, far away, and no kin of ours. Same with massacres in Africa, wars in the Balkans, etc. The only reason we care about any of them now is that they infringe on our empire. (Also, that it’s easier to get the privileged to weep over starving children in Nowherestan than the hungry kids on the other side of own home town.)
Just yesterday I had the dubious pleasure to witness a shrieking meltdown of a few co-workers because some guy dared to make an what they find inappropriate comparison to holocaust in a meeting. Granted, the offender did not do very well in his speech, in fact he was very clumsy and it was a bit like watching a train wreck unfolding in slow motion. Today, our well-meaning defenders of virtue could be observed standing together in small groups here and there, discussing the incident with hushed voices, ensuring each other to be the good ones and how well they handled the situation and what kind of consequences should happen. But guess what? How many of our bold defenders of virtue and moral had been the loudest and most eager when it was time to save our values, lives and grandmothers once more by outlawing those bloody unfoxed virus-pests (who are mostly nazis anyway)?
Projecting the shadow, yes that’s a thing. Would we all lean back for a moment and reflect (as yesterdays offender dared to suggest), what would we find in ourselves? Those who were silent and fearful, those who have shown themselves to be staunched perpetrators or those who just followed – I don’t think anyone would have been much different 90 years ago. So how do such tragedies unfold? I don’t have many open questions left. Caught by that blind obsession you describe it becomes impossible to question oneself and the prospects are horrifying, indeed.
Cheers,
Nachtgurke
Hitler and the Nazis had some nice timing with technology, as their use of radio, film and parades was effective. The superficial yet lasting impacts of the distinct uniforms, goosestepping and torchlight parades and rallies is still the gold standard for those easily swayed by emotion. It also perpetuates the myth of strength with many superior weapons invented and deployed by the Germans in combat.
In the book The Meaning of Hitler by Sebastian Haffner, he points out that Hitler is an extreme political example of an early string of failures, followed by a long string of mostly successes, and concluding his life with another string of failures. Had he been assassinated in 1938, he would have gone down in history as a great German/Austrian statesman, and not a villain.
If history does indeed rhyme, humans are usually too foolish to learn from it, and can’t wait to repeat the same mistakes. The last 25 years has been a slide in one direction in terms of growing government power and removal of personal liberties, and I see few signs of reversal. I think I’m beginning to understand what a peasant in Western Poland was feeling in August of 1939.
Sometime in the 1970s, Doctor Demento played “Der Fuhrer’s Face” by Spike Jones, and “Napoleon” from the 1916 musical Have a Heart, consecutively. (Lyrics here and here.) In his commentary he pointed out, relating the two songs, that in his time the latter figure was feared and hated as much as the former, but by a hundred years later a song that romanticized “The Corsican Ogre” instead of mocking or excoriating him was unremarkable, at least in the USA. For some reason that comment stayed with me, and I’ve wondered if I might live long enough to see the man with the mustache himself become just another dusty historical personage of no great present emotional import, like Napoleon or Attila the Hun or Genghis Khan or Tamerlane. “Some Hitler ice cream with your Napoleon brandy?” I probably won’t live quite that long, but such a transition is inevitable eventually, and that prospect on the distant horizon might be what some of the present obsessives are reacting to.
By any chance were William Jennings Bryan supporters calling William McKinley a power-hungry Napoleon wanna-be during the Presidential campaign of 1896?
Paul, that’s exactly what brought fascism to power the last time around — all the acceptable parties agreed on a set of policies that were driving most people into poverty and misery, and so more and more people gave their support to a fringe party because it was the only one that was prepared to abandon those policies.
BeardTree, there’s the myth of progress again — the foam-flecked delusion that we’re poised at the pinnacle of history and everyone else will imitate us the moment they have the chance. Not so much!
Patricia M, there’s that!
Nachtgurke, self-knowledge is never popular. That’s why people who insist that they’re fighting evil are always the first to embrace evil.
Drhooves, I know the feeling. Still, the end of the story hasn’t been written yet.
Walt, even during his lifetime Napoleon had admirers all over Europe, and so he started out with an advantage. I figure Hitler will have to be a century dead before that starts happening to him. As for McKinley et al, I don’t happen to know. Anyone else?
@Pygmycory #29, I didn’t recognize it either, and I still see it more readily as a close-up of a glowering eye. In my case I attribute that to being bad with faces in general.
Thank you, JMG, and forumistas, for a great article and discussion.
Dennis O at #2, re “building up the virtues of women while belittling men”– when I was a very small child, many messages in the culture were “building up the virtues of men while belittling women”. So yes, you are experiencing a pendulum swing in the opposite direction, and swinging too far. Not only that, it’s hugely inaccurate. For example (only one of very many), women have the legal right to vote today because a majority of the men in a majority of the state legislatures (which were all men) voted in favor of the 19th Amendment. There are many men of good will. We should stop “belittling” people, and pay more attention to their virtues.
We should also be on guard for the fact that people who do unpleasant or even malevolent things can come from any and all “categories”, which the woke seem to forget. A blind spot which JMG has pointed out at length in several essays, thank you for that.
As to why Hitler and Nazism still have such a powerful attraction, as opposed to other, comparable, figures and movements: Could the fact that they used occult/magical means for their purposes have anything to do with it? For example, could there be any lingering occult influence causing attraction?
Milkyway
We were also assured by experts decades ago that the industrializing Chinese would only produce ordinary consumer items that were now not worthy of American manufacturing and the high end, high tech stuff would be reserved to America as the Chinese system didn’t possess the innate innovative abilities of the American system. So free trade with China was a plus, plus. Well at this stage of the game the Chinese are looking to dominate the electric car market, have hypersonic missiles and the USA doesn’t and are doing quite well in other tech areas.
Why Hitler in particular? Certainly in the UK there was more of a long term impact I suppose. My mother lost her own mother when she was two years old in an early attack on London and I was brought up to believe that Germany in general and Hitler in particular was the devil incarnate. When I moved to Munich 40 years later it took her several years to screw up the courage to visit. Bless her, she managed it eventually and although I don’t think she was ever really comfortable with Germans she managed a regular Christmas card exchange with the East German wife of one of my mentors.
Since others have mentioned alternative views of the Third Reich landscape I’m going to put in a recommendation for the film JoJo Rabbit for those that can watch films, naturally. I wish Mum could have seen it.
I remember as a child my parents with amusement saying how a few German immigrants they knew when they had a few beers in them to loosen their tongues would mutter that Hitler wasn’t all bad and did a few good things.
I’ve got a bit of horrific synchronicity to report. I’ve come to think that if there is a major shift towards Nazism from Corporate Liberalism, my parents will be among them. They are about as firm believers in Corporate Liberalism as it is humanly possible to be. Well, my mother chose today to freak out about how many black people are planning on voting for Trump, and much to my horror included this line: “Maybe they actually do deserve to be lynched.”
Oh dear gods. Here we go….
Longsword #40,
I’m not sure I fully understand your comment, but I will attempt to answer it. As bad as the Covid madness was, it has ended; and by the time I got the key piece of my plan to get out in a hurry if need be, things were easing up.
I grew up here, my family is here (and as much as my parents have issues, I have siblings, grandparents, cousins), most of my friends are here. I have kept my plans for leaving in a hurry in place since 2021, and will do so if it looks like it’s necessary, but not before. I would rather remain close to home if at all possible, and am only going to leave if I think remaining will put my life in clear danger. I still have some hope the threat remains distant enough I never need to implement these plans, but the threat is clear enough I know I need them.
Mr. Greer:
Thanks for the commentary on our contemporary hate dynamics in the latter part of the post. It happens that I published a substack post earlier today inspired by an @JMGreerWriter comment from last week, and I think there are some parallels. A commenter suggested I send it to you, but it doesn’t appear your site has an email address anymore, so I hope a link will not be out of place here.
https://albrtsblog.substack.com/p/thoughts-on-the-so-called-election
>To judge by who’s participating most eagerly in the obsession with Hitler these days, I expect it to emerge from the shattered remnants of the corporate liberalism now so obviously slipping toward history’s exit doors.
That would sort of make sense. There is one sticky part of this, and you really can’t talk about Nazism without also talking about a certain religion and all the followers of that religion. And also a certain small country in the middle east as well. For the corporate types to flip as you are predicting, they’d need to find a way to square that circle, so to speak.
How do they become anti-semites, is what I’m asking. Not saying it can or can’t happen, just how would they get from point A to point B.
Hello, JMG and kommentariat. I’d like to comment sooner about “the man with the moustache”, but I’ve been busy watching local news about flash floods in my country (worst “natural” disaster” of Spain History).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-qwAZsqTi0M
https://www.euronews.com/2024/10/30/several-missing-in-spain-after-heavy-rain-causes-flooding
People here is shocked with these news.
——————————————————————————————————————————-
Well, I’m going to write about this weeks topic. Some days ago, I went for a walk in my neoghbourhood, when I saw in a wall painted “PP and Vox fascist carcass and scum”(both spanish parties monopolizes the conservative and extreme right wing in my country). Well, I started to think, I don’t like very much these politician, and even I think a lot of their policies are very harmful for street people, but fascist?
Are they trying to impose a dictatorship in the country for tomorrow? Are they eager to use the government to control the economy instead of the usual neo-con mantras about “free market? Are they going to kill in masse the brave woke warriors throwing them in the gutters? Please, stop kidding…
To be fair, the other political side the (faux)conservatives, use demonization against the leftist wokies too. For example, a right politician said during a election campaign that her fight was between freedom and communism (yes, our light, woke, and rosie socialdemocracy in the government was included in the communist bogeyman!).
I think this over simplification only can lead to tedium between the people until the real fascists and stalinists come again in a not very far future…
I dunno. You call a hurricane the epitome of evil and people look at you weird. I mean, it’s destructive, it kills people, it’s definitely a bad bad thing. Yet nobody says “He’s literally a hurricane”.
Remember South Park and how they had Saddam Hussein in bed with Satan? I’m beginning to get convinced most people operate at that level, of a South Park cartoon when it comes to understanding the world. It’s doesn’t allow for much nuance or complexity, does it?
Books on WWII? So many! Given I was in the Navy stationed in the Pacific it’s not surprising that is where my interest centers.
Shattered Sword about Midway, Neptunes Inferno about Guadalcanal, Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors about Leyte Gulf, Rampage: MacArthur and Yamashita and the Battle of Manila, War at the End of the World: Douglas MacArthur and the Forgotten Fight For New Guinea, 1942-1945. (On the last one, Duffy is a little too rah-rah about MacArthur, but who was where and when is well researched. That island hates everyone.)
For something more fictional, Blackout and All Clear, a two parter by Connie Willis are pretty good. Time traveling historians get trapped in the Blitz.
I have War as I Knew It as compiled by Patton’s widow. She edited out enough of the inflammatory stuff to keep the book from self-immolating.
Do you think that people incarnate deliberately to experience being evil? Or do they get broken down, overwhelmed and warped by their own failures and suffering, and lacking the wisdom to deal with this more constructively, turn to evil? Obsessing over the painter is also a great way to avoid confronting one’s and one’s culture’s own evil tendencies, projection being a popular habit and all that.
In any case, I don’t think a new Hitler is anything we have to worry about here in Murica. I don’t think the odds are likely that everyone will unite under some Fearless Leader.
What I do think is more likely is that the whole shebang blows apart into smaller chunks.
Again, I ask this question again – What is it that unites us as Muricans? I have yet to get a good answer out of anyone. And I’ve asked this question multiple times and multiple places.
“self-knowledge is never popular” – Yes, and it’s a slippery slope. Quite easily one relapses to automatic reactions even after brief moments of clarity without noticing. I know the feeling and not too long ago, a much larger share of my interactions were determined by societal autopilot. Waking up from this does not come without pain and embarrassment. Today, I remain mostly silent, having dropped most of my former compelling enthusiasm, and the feeling of eagerness and the wish to “make a difference” have mostly been replaced by withdrawn watchfulness and worry. I fear to slip when moving too fast so I move slowly but then I fear to be too slow when it’s time for running. Well, I guess I’m probably not alone with this.
Cheers,
Nachtgurke
One thing missed is that Hitler was outstanding in the German political scene in the 20s. He was the only one fond of Britain, whereas the conservatives Royalist Prrussians were more fond of traditional Russians., see theraty of Rapallo.
There is one Russian Historian Mr. Starikov, who pointed out that Hitler was built up by Wallstreet starting 1928 exactly when Stalin consoliated power and got somehow out of control of Wallstreet, which financed Lenin et. al..
So all that looks like Hitler was the first color revolution implemented to be pointed against communist and out of control Russia.
Like today’s Ukraine … Food for thought.
Milkyway, that’s certainly a possibility worth exploring. Can you think of other examples of figures whose occult activities catapulted them to a fame equivalent but non-occultist figures didn’t get?
BeardTree, I remember that rhetoric. Even at the time I thought it was stupid.
Taylor, ouch. Seriously, ouch. I was expecting to start hearing that, but not quite so soon.
Albrt, thank you for this. One of my readers sent me a link a few hours before you did! I’ve had to avoid making my email public to keep the spam quotient down, so a comment is always a good way to reach me.
Other Owen, er, haven’t you heard of the very large number of wokesters who have gone whole hog against that particular Middle Eastern country in order to align themselves with the Palestinian cause? From there to goose-stepping antisemitism is a jump, but not an insuperable one.
Chuaquin, I hope none of your family or friends have been caught in the flooding! As for the extreme rhetoric, I’d think that people in Spain would be a little more careful about that, since it hasn’t been that long, all things considered, since actual Communists and fascists were fighting in your country.
Other Owen, nuance and complexity are very frightening to people who can’t stand what they’ve become.
Patrick, it varies from soul to soul, like so much else. Many people who become monstrously evil do it out of unbalanced goodness — they’re so caught up in their concern with some genuine issue (say, the plight of working class people in a capitalist society) that they commit atrocities (say, rounding up “class enemies” en masse and working them to death in prison camps) because they’re convinced they have to do this to fight against evil.
Other Owen, if you’d asked that question in 1860, you’d have had an equally difficult time getting an answer. I’ll give you one, though: America doesn’t exist yet. It’s an idea that hasn’t yet taken meaningful shape, and probably won’t do so for another five hundred years. What holds it together is the longing for something that hasn’t yet come into being. That’s why, as a people, we’re so obsessed with distances and futures, and why the image of the frontier is so overwhelming a part of our national mythology. We’re descended, most of us, from people who flung themselves out of their homes elsewhere in the world to try to make something that had never existed before, and we’re still at it. That, in turn, is why we so often succeed in coming together again after these vast national controversies about which way to go in search of utopia. The quest still beckons, and however clumsily we fail at it, we keep trying.
Nachtgurke, oh, granted — and this is an especially challenging time for such things.
B3rnhard, hmm! An interesting way to think of it.
@Walt,
that might also apply in my case, as I often have trouble attaching names and faces, especially out of context or if I am meeting new people in a group. In the latter case the names often never register in the first place. There’s just too much noise and stuff going on. But since we were already talking about Hitler and I do know his name and face, it should probably have come to mind faster than it did.
@Nachtgurke,
you’re not alone. I’ve gone an awful lot quieter than I used to be about politics, except in complaining on this forum where I feel I can talk honestly. I don’t feel like I can really do that with my family or offline friends anymore on some subjects for fear of being cancelled.
“Can you think of other examples of figures whose occult activities catapulted them to a fame equivalent but non-occultist figures didn’t get?”
That’s a very good question. It’d have to be people who were famous, but not especially outstanding in what they did. I.e. not somebody like Goethe. Hm.
Unfortunately, I don’t know enough about other people’s occult activities to even be sure about who was an occultist and who wasn’t.
Milkyway
@ Robert Clayton
That was a British Army marching song in WWII to the tune of Col. Bogey.
I don’t have much to contribute on why Hitler has such a presence in American (and British) popular imagination. Since he was the worst tyrant in German history (much bloodier than the rather insipid dictators of the GDR), his regime will cast a strong and deserved shadow over German memory as long as there is a Germany, I suppose.
The word Gleichschaltung is curious. As far as I know, it was invented by the Nazi regime. It has always suggested electrical circuitry to me, as if connecting many batteries in parallel, but I don’t know if that was the original connotation.
I was panicking a bit at your potential take on Hitler, but I actually broadly agree. For me, what makes Hitler stand out from the usual mess of totalitarian regimes is the clinical, Germanic, organisation of the atrocities, and the obsessive accounting and recording. The larger death tolls of the other autocrats tended to be more haphazard, for example, famine caused by bad economics. Sure there were horrific deaths in camps, but it was less of a programme of extermination, although that in places, was the end outcome. It’s that mixture of obsession, twisted ideology, and Germany efficiency that really puts the Third Reich on the top of the lists (Pol Pot, and the Rwandan genocide are the others that do it for me).
The Third Reich also lends itself, at least in the west (Soviet sacrifice was far far greater, and always ignored) to the black and white morality, probably because of the occult dimensions of the struggle – although not everywhere (Rommel gets overrated, but War Without Hate in the North African desert was real) – as long as you were western, and white…
Whatever one’s cynicism with history, the muddy morality of humans, Britain standing alone against the Third Reich in 1939 and 1940 does inspire, and will continue to inspire. Maybe that’s because I’m a citizen of the commonwealth, my ancestors fought in that struggle, and even the supposedly (as claimed by right wing newspapers of the time) communist Labour government of New Zealand (it wasn’t) immediately swung into support of the old country. So did the rest of the commonwealth. The Battle of Britain would not have been won without New Zealander Keith Park commanding RAF fighter group 11, but he pissed off too many stuffy British upper class types so sort of got forgotten. Subtle forces were moving WWII, perhaps in a way they weren’t moving in WW1.
We created Hitler. It wasn’t just the depression that enabled it. As early as Versailles in 1918, John Maynard Keynes wrote the “The Economic Consequences of the Peace”, stating that the winners club of the League of Nations, and the war repayments would impoverish and anger Germany, making a second world war inevitable. That would have happened regardless of the Great Depression I think. But no one listened.
And if the left, or whatever you call them now, doesn’t step away from the oppression olympics and pure temple politics, and embrace the old universalism, we will soon create more Hitlers.
I’m curious what JMG and the commentariat think about the swastika, and how it was hijacked by Adolf Hitler. Do you think the swastika will someday lose its taboo status in the west? Do you think we should try to reclaim and de-Nazify the swastika as a legitimate spiritual symbol? Or should we leave it alone for the foreseeable future?
Hi John Michael,
Man, maybe it is just me, but I looked at the first image, and there was no recognition. None. Just to get into character for this week: Nein! 😉 And that observation is absolutely spot on, the guy lead a total failure, what’s good about that?
The day I visited the Killing Fields in Cambodia, I saw true evil done by the left ideology. And this was in the 1990’s when it was very quiet and a country hardly visited by westerners. Extreme ideology of either stripe requires a high body count, that’s why they’re extreme, it takes a lot of persuasion to get people into line.
In one of Wodehouse’s oh so English pre WWII books, there is a character who is a serious fan of the nazi party hanging out in polite society. It happened, oh yeah.
Yesterday I penned an amusing sentence on this very subject: The author Douglas Adams put the matter succinctly in the book ‘The Hitch hikers Guide to the Galaxy’, when Zaphod’s (the so called President of the Galaxy) private brain care specialist Gag Halfrunt suggested that: “Vell look, Zaphod’s just zis guy, you know..? “ There’s a deep lesson in there, which your embedded politicians may have missed completely! They’ll get there, eventually… But the obsession with the president elect only feeds the dude. Of course to do and act otherwise, the alternatives may have to provide a solid reason for voting for them. That’s just basic marketing, it ain’t hard.
Have to laugh, I skewered a sacred cow this week on YouTube, and the haters only give me their energy. It’s basic marketing dudes!
Cheers
Chris
Clay Dennis @ 36, During the time you were having direct and personal experience with Antifa, did you happen to hear or overhear anything about who might be funding them?
Did you make any kind of note of or can you remember names and appearances? Because, someday, one of these firebrands, all grown up now, will be running for City Council. The person, OK hypothetical person, might have eschewed violence, but he or she won’t have abandoned the belief that “I should be in charge”.
Wise, erudite, and skillful Archdruid, I noted with a quiet smile of approval that you noted the bodycount for Hitler’s reign as being 11 million. I’m sure you’re well aware that the standard number bandied about is 6 million, which is the bodycount for a subset, that of a noteworthy and accomplished ethno-religious group originating in the Middle East. The other five-plus million was a mixture of Roma (so-called gypsies), mental and physical “defectives” (autistic, Down’s, low IQ, those with various birth defects), Slavs, homosexuals, Freemasons, and so forth, under the overarching label of Untermenschen.
I’ve never been able to figure out why the social dialog on this ghastly series of events seems to often fixate on the “6 million” number rather than on the 11+ million who died. Have you noticed this fixation, and if so, why do you think it occurs?
Replying to BeardTree, #57. Years ago I worked for an obscure branch of NASA, and there was a woman in the office who was a German immigrant to the US, about a generation older than me. She rarely talked about the Old Days, but I remember her once mumbling quietly that Hitler wanted to do good things (like end the Depression and build the autobahns) but was misled by corrupt advisors. I didn’t think it was the right time or place to argue with her.
Sorry, not all of the commonwealth. An odd and sadly amusing side note to history is the Samoan Nazi Party. Samoa had been ruled by Germany prior to WW1, when it was divvied up amongst the victors (New Zealand, for Britain and the USA). The Germans were kinder rulers of Samoa than NZ was, and the Samoans set up a Samoan Nazi Party, in the hope the Germans would come back and treat them better.
This all seems in built in the Western Progressive mind set to bend towards a sort of Fascism as the socialist tendency always goes that way. When you want to control and organise vastly complex and unpredictable variables like human beings on the massive Faustian scale, even when it seems to be for the highest ideals, you will end up with millions dead. Progressives are oh so tolerant of other people, only until they stop behaving as the former thinks they should. Then all the hidden will to power involved is revealed naked in the open.
I’ve followed some crumbs like B3rnhard and come to similar conclusions. It seems to me that Hitler and his party were first funded by Anglo American interests after WW1 to both oppose the traditional Prussian aristocracy and General staff and to fight against the Soviet Union. Whether or not the whole thing went the way the funders intended is of course unknown.
Spengler pointed out that anytime you see a working class movement in a so called western democracy it’s always funded by someone because our age is an age of money rule, and the whole point of these movements is to take down one aristocracy/capitalist elite in favour of another one. Viewed through this lens, the Nazis very well could have been a weapon wielded against the traditional Prussian aristocracy who had ruled the German Empire, and then to make war with the Soviet Union.
Others interested in the Wall Street angle B3rnhardt mentioned may be intrigued by the work of Antony Sutton:
https://www.voltairenet.org/IMG/pdf/Sutton_Wall_Street_and_the_bolshevik_revolution-5.pdf
https://www.voltairenet.org/IMG/pdf/Sutton_Wall_Street_and_FDR-3.pdf
https://www.voltairenet.org/IMG/pdf/Sutton_Wall_Street_and_Hitler.pdf
It’s pretty standard conspiracy theory rabbit hole stuff, though more in-depth and better-sourced than most. Certainly much of it will be familiar to readers of Robert Anton Wilson.
Great piece! This one is surely bound to ruffle a few feathers, as you’ve hinted at in the replies.
One thing I think another commenter above pointed out, and something you got at in the article, is that the very dumbed-down WW2 narrative that’s beaten into our heads today essentially serves as a moral raison d’être for our managerial elite. I think the narrative originally came about as a quick and convenient way to paper over all of the Allied atrocities (and there were many) that occurred during the war, in addition to distracting from the awkwardness that was being buddies with Stalin.
On the topic of Hitler’s many failures and blunders, one thing that sometimes gets glossed over is the fact that he had a Bohemian temperament and that once his regime shifted fully into war mode he had a really tough time adjusting his theretofore erratic daily schedule to something that was… ahem, more Prussian than Austrian in character. Basically, once the invasion of the East started crumbling and going horribly wrong, he went nuts. I guess this serves as another check in the “Romantics make for bad leaders” column, and a good data point for the hypothesis that artists and intellectuals make for the worst kind of tyrants.
On your final bit, I’m sorry to say that I have a rather hard time seeing today’s crop of corporate liberals becoming literal Nazis; I just don’t see the causal chain that would lead to such an outcome. Yes, many of them certainly have come to act like authoritarian bootlicking fascists (prime examples: Woke cancel mobs, TDS, and Branch Covidianism); yes, that sort of psychological projection I believe has proven itself many times over during the past decade or so. But the main problem with them becoming card-carrying National Socialists is that personality-wise, these corporate leftists tend to be very conformist and status-obsessed; they’ll sheepishly follow whatever ideas they perceive as signaling the highest status at the moment. So for them to start wearing Nazi regalia, the corporate media would suddenly have to start praising Nazism, corporate workplaces would have HR seminars on the evils of “Jewish privilege” and “how to root our your lingering implicit Jewish bias” struggle sessions, and so on, so forth. As it stands right now, self-identifying as a Nazi is probably the most low-status thing one can do anywhere in the Western world. The only thing that might lead to your proposed outcome would be for a bulk of the corporate left to be booted from polite society and made social pariahs and somehow that being seen as the fault of “the Jews” or whatnot. Though I think many of those types would more likely go insane or self-delete before they get to that stage. So yeah, the psychological parallels I do see as being very much correct, and something already happening right now, but of course the window dressing being something very different. Basically, history doesn’t repeat, but it does rhyme.
I can’t picture an image of the man with a mustache without thinking of Hugo Ganz’s portrayal of Hitler in the 2003 German movie ” Down Fall”. This grim movie portrays the last days of the 3rd Reich holed up in the Fuhrerbunker as the red army approachs.
It depicts Hitler as crazed and desperate in his final days. Demanding suicidal acts from his few depleted troops and having underlings killed who don’t show sufficient loyalty. It all bears an astonishing resemblance to the doomed Kamala campaign. I do hope there is someone around to document the Dems last days in the ” HillaryBunker”.
Tangentially related to this, I think fascism generally and Nazism specifically form a creation myth for the modern major powers (excluding India) as exemplified by the five permanent members of the UN security council. But for the managerialist (who called themselves capitalist or liberal) and marxist regimes who defeated the fascist regimes WW2 served as a creation myth. This was also tried after WW1, with slogans like “war to end all wars” and similar twaddle, but it obviously didn’t stick. But after WW2 the UN went from being a military alliance to the alleged “prototype of global governance” it is today, and it and other fixtures of “the Rules based international order” were created whole cloth by the victors. So they needed a myth to justify that rise and Hitler provided one.
That Japan particularly for Americans did not fill that role as a co-equal to Hitler and the Nazism the mythology is an interesting and complicated question. It’s a topic I might write an essay about.
Anyway, thought provoking stuff as usual JMG,
Best,
JZ
Mr. Greer, I gotta say that Orange de Julius IS the first truly big and meme president! I mean just today, he takes a collective Biden insult and … low-and-behold .. literally drives home the democratic insanity back at them !! Hitler in a garbage truck – who knew.. Totally hilarious in my book. Blu heads exploding as I type.
Someone asked about books on World War II. Ron Unz has a pretty good breakdown on books from historians who wrote immediately after war but whose works have since been purged as they don’t support The Narrative. Regardless of what one thinks of their various thesis about the war, its very interesting to consider their works.
https://www.unz.com/runz/american-pravda-understanding-world-war-ii/
Hello JMG,
Thank you for the great post and your sober perspective. It is interesting to think of how attitudes change with time. I myself would throw up before my lips touched Hitler ice cream as my family suffered tremendous losses during the Great Patriotic War. However, I wouldn’t think twice of drinking Napoleon brandy and my Napoleon cake is always a crowd-pleaser at friends and family gatherings. How did my ancestors fare during Napoleon’s conquest of Russia? I have no idea. They were in his way, but I don’t think about it that much… Thank you again for the opportunity to stop and examine some attitudes.
Aldarion, interesting. I wasn’t aware that Gleichschaltung was a Nazi neologism.
Peter, thanks for this. My concern is less that the left will create Hitlers, and more that they will become Hitlers — but we’ll see.
Sam, I know there are already people working at that, especially in India, but it may be a while.
Chris, ah, yes — Roderick Spode, leader of the Black Shorts! He was a fine caricature of Oswald Moseley, head of the British Union of Fascists, the largest of Britain’s several organized pro-fascist movements in the 1930s. Wodehouse did a fine job of making him silly.
Bryan, the other categories of so-called Untermenschen weren’t so quick to seize the public relations high ground, possibly because they weren’t trying to get a country off the ground. I consider it important to remember the 11 million.
Willow, ah, but Spengler also talked at some length about Caesarism — the rise of charismatic populist leaders to challenge the kleptocratic oligarchy. He wasn’t impressed by Hitler, though; after meeting the man, he’s reported to have said, “What Germany needs is a hero (ein Held), not a Heldentenor!”
Corax, well, we’ll see. Please note that I’ve suggested the swing to Nazism will happen after corporate liberalism falls from power, so they’ll have no status to worry about…
Clay, let’s wait until a week from today to make that call.
John, please do write an essay about it!
Polecat, the guy just never stops. I laughed aloud when I saw this:
Inna, I wonder if a hundred years from now your descendants will think about Hitler the way you think about Napoleon. A lot of Russians suffered and died in the fight against the French Empire!
@Hosea Tanatu (#79), who wrote:
“….. a woman in the office who was a German immigrant to the US, about a generation older than me ….. rarely talked about the Old Days, but I remember her once mumbling quietly that Hitler wanted to do good things (like end the Depression and build the autobahns) …..”
Of course Hitler wanted to do, and actually did, some good things. It’s not reasonable to think that any moderately competent head of state would not have had a few good ideas and accomplishments to his credit here and there during his years in office.
It’s definitely a sign of some sort of “Hitler Derangement Syndrome” to see him as a veritable paragon of evil. I dare say that no human in the history of the species has ever been a total paragon of evil, probably not even Pol Pot. None of us are that consistent and focussed to be a total paragon of either good or evil.
(FWIIW, the Autobahn is indeed an example.)
Regarding Gleichschaltung, it first turns up in Grimms Wörterbuch in the 1949 edition with first reference 1933 and specifically Nazi.
On another note, I find it interesting that nobody has mentioned that the electoral support for the NSDAP was actually declining and that Hitler took power partly because the left were hopelessly splintered and unable or unwilling to form a government, and partly because the conservatives gambled they could control him. The nature of the Weimar constitution was part of the problem here with it making it very difficult to create electoral majorities.
The July 1932 election had the NSDAP on 33.1% (down from over 37%), whereas the main parties of the socialists (SPD) and communists (KPD) between them had 37.3% (all this on turnout of about 80%). Hitler was made chancellor after quite a bit of wheeling and dealing and the failure of others to form a workable government, and it was only the Reichstag fire which enabled them to roll in some oppressive laws to crush their opposition for the next election in March 1933. Though then they still only managed 43.9% on turnout of 88.7%. They only managed a small majority through a coalition with a smaller party, which enabled them to eventually pass laws banning other parties.
Obviously you can’t have a narrative around a domineering bogeyman who can’t even win an election, so all that had to be memory-holed.
Mr. Greer .. yesterday, I mentioned to a fellow ‘community’ garderner that it looked like Trump was was going to win, bigger like. Her immediate response was to utter “I HATE Trump!” I responded in turn that that was an emotional, rather than a realistic view of things. I mentioned that I get my information via various internet sources rather than broadcast legacy media. She in turn, stated that one of her main ‘unbiased’ sources was NPR. I was speechless for a moment, before stating that one needs to peruse a number of non-lagacy sites to suss-out what the realities, both social, geo, & political, were .. and to avoid being propagandized/gas-lit as much as possible. When she asked me what ‘non-biased’ sources I would suggest, I stated that well, there really are none .. and that one essentially has to wade through the beach sand to find those few grains of truth. Not sure what effect that had in her case. We parted on genial terms ..
@JMG (#44):
It seems to me that we were both fortunate to be able to learn things about the past from our fathers. Not everyone was so lucky in either of our generations.
I think it’s interesting that, at least in very online circles, Hitler’s great nemesis can bear similar abstractions:
eg.
https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/001/378/319/321.jpg
https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/001/375/175/345.jpg
https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/001/371/504/6f4.jpg
What are your thoughts on the take of the thousands of Heathens and millions of Hindus that take him quite seriously as a manifestation of Odin and Vishnu respectively, moreover where the two perspectives intersected in the views of Savitri Devi?
I think you’re right about corporate liberalism being very close to taking a few 90 degree turns, and also note that Canada seems to have already implemented a faithful copy of the T4 euthanasia program, complete with this very frightening person as a figurehead:
https://thebridgehead.ca/2024/05/24/canadian-euthanasia-doctor-gushes-about-how-much-she-enjoys-killing-people/
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/maid-death-delayed-1.7368473
This is all rather difficult to talk about isn’t it?
@ Dennis and father figures.
I absolutely agree. Something I have noticed over the last few years is a lot of people, mostly men, searching for father figures in all manner of places. Someone to look up to even if they don’t know it. Many friends that have had poor relationships or have a deeper lacking with their father have gravitated heavily towards these folks. It isn’t inherently a bad thing, it is a symptom of a deeper lacking in society. I just worry that it can become para-social and those less scrupulous can run a good grift out of it.
@ Kyle. Peter Thiel and large parts of silicon valley have always been deep into the objectivism of Ayn Rand. Thus they have been for decades desperately trying to build their digital panopticon/Eye of Sauron to bring this about. They seem to forget that they are the most dependent on the systems complexity and scale for their survival.
@Cugel “The point has been made by others, (and I agree) since the US involvement in WW2 has been mythologized as “The Good War” ”
I always find Chapter 31 of Dao De Ching to be the best view on these things.
“Fine weapons are instruments of misfortune; all creatures fear them. In peace we favor creation; at war we favor destruction. Weapons are tools of misfortune, not the tools of the wise. The sage uses them only as the very last, with calm restraint. Victory is no cause for rejoicing; victory comes from killing. If you enjoy killing, you can never be fulfilled. When victorious, celebrate as if at a funeral.” Translated by Ned Ludd
@ Beardtree and Chinese manufacturing.
A bit off topic from the main post. Look at what they are now achieving in home grown computer technology. While they are still behind a little behind the west by small margin, they have covered a lot of ground in a very short amount of time. I suspect in the next 3-5 years they will be pushing computer tech beyond what the best US companies can do. I see many people who get very upset at the prospect of China doing these things for themselves, it shatters the image of the US being the all controlling dominator of the world.
https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/cpus/chinese-chipmakers-new-7nm-cpus-reportedly-outperform-intels-raptor-lake-loongson-adopts-tock-tock-tick-strategy-to-close-the-gap-with-intel
In a recent Wagner post, I was among those who hadn’t been taught about the danger that the Ottoman empire posed to the European subcontinent. However, my European history course in college in the mid 1970s did make very clear the economic ruination forced onto Germany by the victors of WWI and how it was a major contributor to Hitler’s rise to power.
I wonder if part of what is happening has to do with so few people being alive who experienced the events that led up to WWII. In the mid 1970s, the generations above the Boomers remembered WWII well, and they went to some trouble to convey to us the various factors, including the economic factors, that contributed to it, with the hope of preventing a similar war from occurring later on. But from what I gather, this is among many things that aren’t being taught now and perhaps haven’t been taught for some time. Ignorance is definitely not bliss in this case.
I will postulate the reason for Herr Hitler as ‘ultimate evil’ but not Stalin or Mao is proximity.
U.S., British, and French soldiers had the visceral first-hand experience of seeing the death camps, the forced-labour camps, and experienced seeing their own comrades tortured and killed. They knew the Nazis were evil because they lived it, families mourned the loss of their boys across the entire nation.
Stalin’s atrocities, however, were not directly experienced by westerners, but only indirectly known through reports. Reports denied, dismissed, or simply not believed. Discredited by those who believe in Socialist ideology who occupied positions in media and academia.
The only direct experience U.S. soldiers had with Communist atrocities was first in Korea, but there Singman Rhee’s forces committed just as many, so who is right? Who is righteous? Then in Vietnam, people were all too eager to criticize the tragically many U.S. atrocities because they were on TV at 6PM every night. Communist atrocities rarely got a mention.
Socialism, then Communism, has always appealed to the emotion, talking about being ‘fair’ and ‘just’ and that nice, Robin-hood economy of taking that unearned wealth from those undeserving rich people and giving it to the hard-working, underappreciated labour, or whatever particular group you think is being oppressed and ‘marginalized’. So Socialists like Mao, Pol Pot, Ho Chi Minh, and Stalin must be good guys, right?
(Everything I ever needed to know about Socialism I learned from spending some time on a warm, sunny afternoon in 1980 taking a good, hard look at the East German border. Marvelous in theory, nice, warm, fuzzy words… horrific in reality.)
Paul #45,
I actually completely disagree that National Socialism will get a hold in Australia. The compulsory, preferential, Westminster system that we have here means that we’re likely to see Parliament become a dysfunctional dog’s breakfast of minority governments relying on unstable coalitions composed of antagonistic parts. Due to the extreme lack of social cohesion (more below), I don’t think that it’s going to be possible for any new party to emerge that would be able to rule in its own right.
In a society with a super-majority in terms of race, religion or culture, it might be possible for something to ram itself through our compulsory, preferential, Westminster system by claiming for itself the mantle of speaking for the majority and hearkening back to a perceived golden age, a la what the original National Socialists did. However, that in no way describes Australian society now, and especially doesn’t describe where it’s going.
Australia is a place where no one has anything in common with anyone else. The one thing kind of keeping a lid on the multi-cultural, multi-ethnic mess that is this country is a kind of neo-liberal, de-racinated materialist culture cooked up in a boardroom (government or corporate) six months ago. As the property speculation and other assorted BS jobs disappear on the other side of the slope of “progress”, there is going to be virtually nothing holding most people together. People will get tribal pretty quickly. However, no group will be a majority once the Baby Boomers shuffle off this mortal coil. Combined with the fact that none of those groups particularly like each other, any ganging up to scapegoat a particular group (all seem equally likely candidates at this point) won’t solve the underlying lack of cohesion between surviving groups and could only be a temporary solution.
I also wouldn’t rule out the possibility of a large Asian nation (India is the sleeper candidate, in my opinion) intervening in order to protect its overseas “colonies”. Indeed, we might even find ourselves pushed around between multiple such nations.
I think our future more closely resembles Lebanon than it does any dreams (or fears) of Lebensraum.
Thanks for the refreshingly original take on the most notorious wielder of a moustache in modern history. Herr Hitler seems to be a bit of a Rorschach ink blot: not as though I am in any way discounting your essay, but rather ‘this also is true’. Love how you wove in the whole hate issue and put it into the current American political context. That’s one reason why I thought that this might be the right time for such an essay, and therefore voted for it.
A few thoughts came to me while reading through (sorry, it’s rather long):
The cat with the iconic moustache: I’ve seen quite a few good memes starring this critter. Always worth a good laugh.
The term ‘National Socialist’: last week I saw a sign written by Adrien Thomas (the native Canadian guy who is ritually de-Nazifying and reclaiming the swastika across North America – I have mentioned him a few times previously) in which he says “I’m no National Socialist. I’m not any kind of socialist. I’m a National Capitalist”. I thought that was a nice twist: Adrien is a clothing designer by profession. Most people mistakenly consider the Nazis to be ‘far right’ when, as you have rightly pointed out, they are on the left.
“… the litany of atrocities of Hitler’s National Socialist regime is… second-rate at best compared to the far more ghastly toll heaped up by the twentieth century’s Marxist regimes”. No argument from me. But I’d argue that powerful forces within the US media (film, TV and newsprint) have made it a point to keep the Nazi atrocities front-row-centre year after year, decade after decade as part of an industrial-strength victim industry / never-ending horror show – although you do mention it in passing. And because the Zionists have been drinking their own Hitler kool-aid they are now recreating such atrocities in the levant.
“The global South has its own opinions about Hitler.” India, in particular, has a complex relationship with ‘moustache man’. One of the biggest characters in its freedom fight – Subhas Chandra Bose a.k.a. Netaji – courted Hitler during WW2 in the hope that he would support India’s fight against the British. From what I recall, Bose had to wait for a long time (after a long and perilous trip to Germany via Japanese submarine) to meet the Führer, who did not seem particularly interested in the proposal. When Modi was Chief Minister of the state of Gujarat (before he became Prime Minister) the BJP government modified primary school textbooks to include praise of Hitler and Nazi Germany. About a decade ago I had a rather disturbing conversation with an elderly gentleman in India who went on and on about the Nazis really being ‘the good guys’ and that Hitler treated Indians with great respect: it was neither the time nor place for me to have a knock-down-no-holds-barred argument with him. For the record, I equally loathe Hitler, Stalin and Churchill – each for their own unique manifestation of inhuman bloodlust.
“If you build your identity around fighting evil, after all, it’s safe to say that you’ll always make sure not to defeat it, so that it will always be there for you to fight.” This reminds me of a short story by Khalil Gibran in which Satan has a conversation with a much-alarmed priest who has a hard time accepting the truth that without Satan he doesn’t have much of a job and that he therefore eternally needs Satan. I read that during my college days, and I distinctly remember a ‘light going off in my head’ while reading it…
“The gap between hatred and love, as noted earlier, is not as wide as many people assume, and it’s not at all uncommon for one to change suddenly into the other.” One of the things that I find fascinating about Hindu mythology is that in the titanic battles between a god and a demon, inevitably the soul of the demon merges into the victorious god. This is most poignantly in the Ramayana in which Rama – an avatar of Vishnu – slays the demon-king Ravana and Rama’s army dumbfoundedly watch the light of Ravana’s soul enter Rama’s body. And Rama explains to them that due to his extreme hatred of Rama, Ravana’s mind was focused obsessively on Rama to the exclusion of all else. And whoever thinks unflinchingly of god, regardless of the emotion that is propelling those thoughts, merges into god.
“Still, we can hope.” Indeed, we can – and we must, if we are to avoid the downward spiral of despair. In most Western countries we have been cornered into highly unenviable political dead-ends and desperate parties and groups of people will sometimes latch onto even the most loopy and historically disastrous political philosophies given the right baleful conditions. Now that the lunacy of peak social Marxism seems to be coming into the rear view mirror (at least socially; not yet politically) in many Western countries, it does not mean that ‘happy days are here again’. I have been fearing an equally loopy swing that will over-compensate for the decades of gradually ratcheting-up social Marxism. May the gods help our societies to navigate between the toxic Scylla and Charybdis of competing forms of totalitarianism. I am hoping that the standing ovation that Canada’s House of Commons idiotically gave to a surviving member of the 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS (1st Galician) in September last year was not an omen; I know for certain that it was not an accident.
Back in 2021 I read Peter Pomerantsev’s ‘Nothing is True and Everything is Possible’ about Putin’s Russia. He thinks Russia is fascist. Not Adolf fascist, but a modern fascism where one political party controls the federal administration and the party controls the courts and the party controls the media and the spy services and the army and as much as it’s convenient to control. And every big business has party patronage all through it. There’s a comic controlled opposition jailed at the whim of minor party hacks. He’s probably right, and I only say ‘probably’ because I don’t know Russia.
In America, R Hoover’s patronage expansion probably triggered the Great Depression. D-FDR ran as a small government D, and as soon as he took office he fired 200k R Hoover hacks. Then, FDR stopped being small government D. He hired 1.5 million D hacks, provided D party public relations jobs for zillions of journalists, and got control of most of the print press. He got total control of radio and television. D-JFK and D LBJ formalized D patronage control of the federal pork with the Civil Service laws. Affirmative Action laws were enforced by D party patronage to put D patronage in every big business. Now, low-level D party courts jail the comic controlled opposition (see WikiLeaks Pied Piper papers) at will. Not Adolf fascism. It’s the modern version.
Thank you for another insightful essay, JMG.
The obsession with Hitler is something that occasionally pops up in my mind as I witness the comings and goings of society and political affairs. I recall that some years ago a certain post from 4chan was making the rounds, and while I don’t remember its exact words, it briefly illustrates how every civilization has its own foundational myth, which serves as a starting point for its people and can be used to uplift them. The post then explains how WW2 became the foundational myth of the West, with Hitler as its central figure. I remember reading that and thinking it made perfect sense that Hitler was something of a “reverse Jesus”, a “negative messiah”. Now, I don’t know about everyone else, but I do find the notion of a civilization being fueled by fiery hatred of something to be rather, well, concerning, to say the least. Thus, it doesn’t surprise me at all that neoliberalism would evolve into tyranny, for the exact reasons you described, as the return of the repressed. Combine that with post 16th century Faustian spirit, and you have quite the recipe for disaster.
And speaking of liberalism and “Faustianism”, when you mentioned the three potential powers ganging up on Germany, I couldn’t help but notice how each such nation represented one of the three true “political theories” as Alexander Dugin describes them: liberalism, fascism, and communism. I suppose fascism was an easy punching bag because both liberalism and communism vehemently reject the esoteric, even if only outwardly. But the point here is that these three competing ideologies are remarkably similar the more you start thinking about them:
The three of them were born as a consequence of the enlightenment and the industrial revolution; the three of them believe in the notion of progress and that one day man will reach the stars as we become the true rulers of the universe, or that we have some “sacred” duty to fulfill so that we rule the world; the three of them likewise believe in bringing “civilization” to “barbarism”, with differing methods and; the three of them eventually confront the own contradictions and, unable to cope with them due to a deep-seated messianic complex, devolve into totalitarianism and tyranny because, as you so succinctly put it multiple times before, “if only people just shut up and did as we told them”.
Thus all three ideologies are inherently constructed in such a manner as to make self-reflection impossible, or at least needlessly difficult, which eventually causes them to project their hatred for the common folk out against the rest of the world. So, the fact that Hitler is such a product of obsessive hatred while also unconsciously being a model for political action is not at all surprising. I also notice similar sentiments towards communism in general coming from the right, although it isn’t projected into any one individual.
These observations, which have been the product of many years of self-reflection, led me to believe that the only way to get out of this mess we’re in is to eschew the notion of “left” and “right”, “liberal” and “conservative”, notions that have left so many Western (and westernized) countries polarized and that have consistently shown to be incapable of resolving the problems we face. As someone who has flirted with both sides of the post-modern political spectrum in my youth and having become older and more world-weary, it became increasingly clear to me that people project their insecurities and aspirations and fears into such positions, perhaps because they need to make sense of a world that has essentially turned humans into numbers that must “produce” and “hustle” and “vote”; not unlike a cult, really. But neither the left nor the right offer any sort of constructive method towards bettering our lives, or any of healthy manner of dealing with the inherent conditions of life. For this reason, I believe we will have to one day overcome such pretensions, overcome this polarization, so that we can actually start looking inwardly at ourselves and address the issues of our times.
It’s time to put it to rest. Let Hitler and Stalin and some such (but especially Hitler, of course) rest in the annals of history as the eccentric figures they were, instead of parading them around like a bizarro Jesus. Let fascism and communism, and eventually liberalism, take their rightful rest. It could be a bumpy ride until we get there, though, not unlike that of a recovering junkie… It’ll be better than what we have today, hopefully.
Hello, and so sorry for being late to the party. If my comment is cursed because it is made after midnight, away to the abyss it goes, I suppose. Yet I will try nonetheless.
I recall listening to some podcast on youtube, an interview with you, where you mention a book that spoke about strange occult happenings in Germany during Hitler’s rise to power – specifically Germans, even German Jews having dreams about what a nice man Hitler was. I think the book was called Theird Reich of Dreams? Is that correct? And do you know of any other books that deal with the subject?
Finally, as we approach an election day that will have countless wills desperately pushing and praying in various directions, possibly with a bit of occult knowledge – how can one shield oneself and ones dreams against such influences? Is it enough to regularly use a ritual like sphere of protection? Or is there another way to ward my dreams against attempts to shove occult political ads into them?
A few threads in my mind:
1. When I was in school, I personally always found WW2 one of the most boring and overemphasized periods in history class. In Singapore, our WW2 bugaboo was the Japanese, at least in the lower secondary curriculum, but we also covered our share of the European theatre. Out of the thousands of years of human history across space and time, why is this period more interesting than all the others? To my teenage mind, I think it was due mainly to it being more easily politicised, and secondarily, due to the availability of sources; I eagerly read up about the Indus Valley civilization, Graeco-Roman history, the Warring States period in China etc but my brain just kind of tuned out at WW2, so once I could drop history I just dropped it. I think Spengler mentioned two approaches to history: Mommsen’s and Nietzsche’s, the former focusing on potsherds and coins and the latter going for poetry and mythology. I confess to being closer to Nietzsche’s position, but I feel like it’s due in no small part to how they taught history. Anyway, the history curriculum made me realise already that generally, history as studied in schools is more about promoting certain narratives about the past, rather than trying to get a truly objective view about it.
2. I’m curious about some of the comments here about WW2 occupying one’s thoughts. It seems like it’s quite common among the Eastern Europeans especially? I mean not just among the commentators here but I noticed it being quite common elsewhere as well. What is the cause of It?I noticed in Poland for example there are many monuments to that period erected by the Soviets. It seems to me that the narratives both sides of the war in Ukraine tell their citizens are based on the narrative of the “Great Patriotic War”. The Kremlin says it’s fighting Nazis in Ukraine, and vice versa. It’s their own variation of this psychology of hate and the “invincible villain”. It seems like many people here are dubious about the techno-capitalist elite in the US, but I personally find much to respect and admire about them; for one, they at least have an emerging alternate period of history to harken to — the gilded age, art deco aesthetic etc. That has its own pros and cons, but at least it’s an alternative to the cycle of hatred and claiming oneself to be a victim etc.
That seems to best way out of this cycle. Precisely what Trump, Musk and their entrepreneurial supporters are doing — to look to an alternative history, whether in terms of period, or focus.
That’s because at the end of the Renaissance, there were three great intellectual movements in conflict—newborn scientific materialism, traditional Christianity, and the occult movement of the time.
Where does this leave the likes of Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, who was neither a scientific materialist, nor a traditional Christian (getting himself excommunicated and all that), but who wrote a long and savage attack on Renaissance astrology (calling it the mother of superstitions) even while he engrossed himself in occult mysticism?
Here in Germany we have yet another form of the Hitler cult, because in our country the Hitler cult has been institutionalized. If you complete the long school career of 13 years here, which the majority of people now do, you get the feeling that German National Socialism is a school subject in its own right. In history, you spend years learning about National Socialism. In addition, literature on the subject of National Socialism is studied in German. The topic is also addressed in other school subjects such as music, politics, social sciences and education. If you add up this time, you have a separate school subject on this topic.
The curious thing was that the opposite happened to what the liberal elite had hoped for. Just like a cab driver who drives a car every day and therefore loses his fear of traffic (cab drivers are the biggest lunatics on the road), over time we have developed a disrespectful approach to the subject. It was not uncommon for us to start approaching the subject humorously or imitating Hitler.
Nowadays, nobody in Germany wonders why so many people vote for the supposedly wrong parties, but at the same time have been educated so extensively about how terrible these parties can become. This education has never been questioned and that annoys me tremendously. I wonder what would happen if the time spent teaching about National Socialism was spent learning about compassion.
I’m only half-joking here, but I wouldn’t be surprised if at some point the corporate liberals also bring back the toothbrush moustache. The “fashy” haircut worn by Hitler has already seen a resurgence in recent years, being sported by both alt-right men and leftist women alike. It’s only a matter of time before the second black blotch in the first image also makes a comeback. Although, perhaps it will be paired with something else this time around, like a mullet, mohawk, or fro.
It certainly seems spot-on to launch a thread on Hitler right in the midst of the ongoing series on Wagner and the Ring cycle — after all, many who know little of either blame Wagner for Hitler (that includes Wagner’s great grandson) and the two names are, alas, inextricably linked. Not without some reason, it must be said — much of the philosophizing, if you call it that, on which Hitler drew occurred in the circles around Bayreuth; Wagner himself contributed thereto with some of his crazier rants as he neared the end of his life. And of course his daughter-in-law Winifred was very close to Hitler; she actually gave him the paper on which he wrote Mein Kampf; whether they slept together is something we’ll never know for sure — she didn’t do much of such with her husband Siegfried (for whom the unutterably lovely Idyll is named) since he was homosexual; they only got married because Cosima panicked when she realized there might not be an heir to take over the running of Bayreuth after she passed from the scene. Whatever; it is certainly true that Hitler was transfixed by Wagner; one of history’s bitter ironies lies in the actual transfixing that took place when Hitler was a young art student in Vienna and attended a performance of Tristan und Isolde conducted by none other than Gustav Mahler. (With the exception of Furtwaengler and Knapperbutsch, all the great Wagner conductors from Hermann Levi on down seem to have been Jews.)
Yes, as you point out, Hitler was only in the second tier when it comes to mass murdering. I wonder, though, if his contemporary persona as the greatest villain ever doesn’t result partly from his murdering people not on the basis of what they did or that they might be some kind of threat to his plans, but simply because of who they were through no fault of their own. I suppose one could argue that one can’t help one’s class background and that being murdered simply because one was born into the wrong class is not nice, but one can construct a twisted rationale for disposing of Kulaks, capitalist roaders, and school teachers –as respectively Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot did — because they were seen to stand in the way of the dream-fulfillment of these three monsters. But Jews? They were some of the most capable people in Germany; many were ardently philo-Germanic, and to devote crazed energy to hunting down and killing them even when supplies had to be diverted from military needs represents a kind of perversity in the annals of human evil that seems to have sprung from nothing but that: pure evil. But it’s an interesting question, if not one one wishes to spend too much time thinking about — note Nietzsche’s warning about the consequences of excessive abyss- staring.
JMG
Hitler was a long way out from Spengler’s Caesar timeline for Faustian civilisation. He was far more along the lines of a historically equivalent Hannibal, or the generals of the Contending states period of China than a Pompei or Caesar. Money and Kleptocratic power was and still is in charge for now.
They constantly say “X” is Hitler, so I’ve grown to saying “Even Hitler isn’t Hitler.” He’s a made up story. Read the history and you can re-reduce him down to the actual man he was, instead of this enormous myth we’ve created based on him, like Robin Hood or something in our own careless, negatively-oriented, and reality-rejecting fashion.
It’s been said, “How did the Germans, home of Hegel, Wagner, Scientists, Beethoven, and all things good fall into Hitler?” Well, first thing is: “Even Hitler isn’t Hitler.” It’s not a myth, it’s a reality. So cut through the myth, read what ACTUALLY happened, not what we made up, and find out about it. It’s not really that hard to understand EXCEPT for the myth in the way. Except for us inventing a cartoon that isn’t real that has displaced reality. We don’t want reality, though, we love the cartoon Scooby-Doo; it’s more fun. We can shriek like little girls in a fun house and wildly run away from this safe, made-up, not-real danger.
How far off into not-real have we gotten? Well Putin and Russia is Hitler who lost 23 million people and fought 2/3rds of that war. If there is anyone on the planet with the title of Anti-Hitler, and Anti-Nazi, it can only be Russia.
Who is the other? Trump is Hitler, who has a foreign, immigrant, slavic wife, and whose family is Jewish. They wave Jewish, Israeli flags at his “Hitler” convention, that’s how far into not-real we’ve gotten. — And none of this is new. He’s also the first Pro-Gay marriage President, very Hitler of him. His VP is married to an Indian, his closest people are Indian, and the other is an African immigrant. His first cabinet was highlighted by Black rivals in the Presidential race, and is backed by very high-profile black pundits. Yet he is “Literally Hitler”. This is how far from “literally” history we have gotten ourselves.
It may very well be that their people and policies are not admirable nor advisable and should be rejected. However, that’s not today’s discussion: these few facts alone will tell you that, however good or bad they are, they cannot be “Literally Hitler”. So why, in our ethos and discussion, is the bizarre, easily-rejection notion that they are taken at all seriously? Should we not instead believe the people who claim this are seriously, dangerously, mentally ill?
“Hitler” means, “Baddie bad, baddest of bad.” “Bad times bad squared.” So there. I used my baddy-baddest word on you, wither under my gaze. That’s it. That’s the level of discussion and it’s meant to be that way so we don’t have to think. On all sides, or should we bring up the similar use of “Communist” on the other?
What would be a more productive approach? To decide that we can compromise and all agree on getting to “X”. Then we decide the route to X, the resources we have to go there, and the guardrails we won’t cross as the means of achievement. The ends cannot justify the means. This recognizes that all people are capable of “evil” – or let us say, of less good – and therefore as I am also capable of evil, we must all watch, balance, and reign in each other, including our especially ourselves, as we have the most control over our own behavior. That this is a messy, unsatisfying process by which we most often don’t get what we most want, or not enough of it, and we certainly fail to get to Utopia. However, with a moderate level of steady work we can get from a bad system to one that is pretty good. This may let us focus more on our own lives and improving ourselves with all the free time we gain, not in violently harassing and browbeating others to accommodate themselves to us. Which is violence, and exactly what this “Hitler-ism” is to begin with: to make the world in our image, to make it all bend to us, my will, the will of one man. Or said another way: a National, Social, Dictatorship.
Seeing that impulse is in yourself would be the first step, and we haven’t got there yet, right now, in 2024. We seemed to know this in 1954 and 1854, but not now. Would you like to read real history and be actually productive of a sensible future now? I’m afraid the price is you’ll have to forego your hate.
Thank you JMG for this fifth Wednesday. It really does drive home how total the failure of nazism was. And not the excusable state of affairs, where one could claim that Hitler could have done it, if it weren’t for those meddling Allies! But no, his Reich would have imploded under its own Flaws.
For a while now I have started to think of Hitler as more then one thing.
There is the Austrian corporal, who willed himself to use all his resources and talents to try to achieve what he thought was right by the means he thought were alright to use. And at some point he got swept away with the course the nations go. A thought from Dion Fortune’s The Winged Bull really stuck with me; at one point one of her characters (by extension she) said: “It was this thing [group soul] that drove ’em on. And now it’s coughed up Hitler, God help ’em. It’s exactly the same thing over again with different dummies. These chaps don’t lead. They’re shoved.’ ” Shoved along by his own choices, currents he set in motion and the currents that swept him along. Until he saw his goals in abject failure and got a miserable end with all the consequences. I feel sorry for him.
But even in his life there was also the cultivated image of the Führer. Just as every public person cultivates it. And I can imagine it got away from him. But there are ample reports of Germans who worked with him, or under him, who, despite the ultimate failure, found it inspiring.
And you are quite correct, that what the archetype is nowadays is wholly the product of post war and modern propaganda. Whatever motive it may have. But it has nothing to do with the actual person. It has more to do with psychology of the projecting party. I dare say I am not as versed in psychology of hatered that I could predict the resurgence of the repressed, but I hope none of us get to experience it down the road.
I would point out, that there might be another image of Hitler. I know several people who are on the downward slide, who are nostalgic for the old times. This would be children of central and Southern European working-to-middle class parents, who had a downturn in life and know, that the current system isn’t looking out for them. Not woke or liberal at all, we are at time talking housewives and cashiers. They are quick to start blaming the usual groups and every so often you get this thought “You know he was right”. The image of an misunderstood martyr.
Anyway thank you for this fifth Wednesday, I appreciate the “Archdruid Report patent theme-grounding” discussion of the subject that so clearly shows the failure of it all.
A bit offtopic…Hello again, Mr. Greer and kommentariat. Thank you for your concern, but there wasn’t any flood at my town, by luck. Yes, there was a flash flood in my mothers town, but it’s about 40 miles by road from my town. There weren’t human deaths but 2 bridges were destroyed. Worst part of the flooding happened in Valencia, and rest of the Mediterranean Coast. However, me and my family are living far from the sea, so we’re safe.
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About this week topic, I have a short reflection on fascism labelling against political enemies: If everything is fascism, nothing is fascism (because of trivialisation).
I’d like to say, too, that friend/enemy dialectics is nowadays more strong than ever in the U.S. and rest of Western world…It’s worrying. Because some day it may be possible that words shut up, and knifes and guns starts “talking”, the Spanish Civil War was a full historical example of this attitude. Now, Trump magnicide attempts are ominous signs, in my opinion, of this trend.
Why Hitler and not Stalin? I was born in Britain in 1959. For my parents and grandparents Hitler was THE enemy; and he’d been comprehensively beaten after a great deal of sacrifice and privation. Uncle Joe was seen as a plucky ally who’d helped us beat Hitler. The Cold War propaganda took years to kick in and did not displace the embedded experience of Hitler who had actually bombed us and provided a very real threat of invasion. Which Russia never did and never has. I suspect many British people of my generation would feel the same.
Once again, I haven’t yet had time to read all the comments, so feel free to just delete this if it’s totally repetitive of what another commentor said already. The thing about Hitler’s reign of violence and terror that viscerally offended the emerging progressive consciousness of the later twentieth century was that the Holocaust was a genocide, or a campaign to kill every member of a particular racial or ethnic group simply for being a member of that racial or ethnic group. It’s one thing to dislike blacks, Latinos, or Jews because one has had bad experiences with them or one believes they have hurt your society in some particular way. It crosses the line into something truly morally horrendous to believe it’s justified to automatically kill each and every last member of whatever group.
That said, though, if George Orwell’s novel *1984* was even a partially accurate reproduction of what it was like to live in Stalinist Russia (and probably by extension Maoist China and Kim Il Sung’s North Korea), then the level of totalitarian conformity demanded of the citizenry and the corresponding ease of being eliminated by the state security services for failing these demands, was likely vastly more severe than to what the average German was subjected under Adolf Hitler’s regime. And as you said, the way the Khmer Rouge regime soaked Cambodia in the blood of its citizens was a horror that was in a class by itself. Indeed, the invasion of Pol Pot’s totalitarian hellscape by the forces of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam was probably one of the few instances in history where a Marxist regime were actually “the good guys”.
And there is something else I once found, although I do not know where; a definition of love and hate:
Love is a directed emotionally underlined mental state, in which you are willing to sacrifice of yourself for the benefit of someone or something else.
Hate directed emotionally underlined mental state, in which you are willing to sacrifice of yourself for the detriment of someone or something else.
Twas a while, but at the time it served to show the similarity of the two concepts.
80 Peter Wilson, your fact about the Samoan Nazi party is the best nugget I have gleaned all week, just beating the information that Samuel Pepys, running from the Great Fire of London, only paused to bury his most precious possession in the garden …. a large wedge of Parmesan cheese.
Once more I am amazed by the levity and jollity on this site concerning the Trumpster. He isn’t a comedian any more than Hitler was. Still, he seems to have beguiled many people and hold them in thrall. If he is the medicine apparently needed to expunge the Democrats from the system, nemesis is not a sugary syrup, but a vile, bitter concoction, and many will suffer greatly. I can’t understand the glee with which his coming is being greeted. It may be inevitable but that doesn’t mean we have to like it.
“I ask this question again – What is it that unites us as Muricans?”
It’s the outlook of the Enlightenment: that Men are Created equal, and equal under the law. The antithesis to Kings, or that power makes law. This is set up in the Constitution, but as we have no culture – or THAT is our culture – they have been attacking the Law in the U.S. as that is much of what holds us together, not mentally, but practically. America is an IDEA. That’s why all immigrants come come here and immediately be “American” with American culture…even if they don’t speak the language yet. That’s not true of other nations, and in a big way. You might not be “Swedish” even if your family is there for three generations, as many Swedish immigrants have found to their sorrow. In America, well, “America is as America does”, so if you ACT like an American, you are one. That is our values, as stated in Constitution, Declaration, Federalist, etc… You can be right off the boat from Africa and be a top, core American as a certain industrialist is with the Campaign right now. No one blinks, They’re surprised if you even remind them he wasn’t born here, it’s so irrelevant to them.
What more would you need? The “Values” that unite us are the most important part, aren’t they? It’s not language, as in Switzerland, Belgium, China, not whether you eat tacos or spaghetti, not that you rent a house and occupy Marseilles, n’est-ce pas? Your “Values”, our values, are what makes one American, and are pretty easy to take.
“Corax, well, we’ll see. Please note that I’ve suggested the swing to Nazism will happen after corporate liberalism falls from power, so they’ll have no status to worry about…”
And it just clicked. What do Canada, New Zealand, Australia, and Britain have in common that’s driving us to collective madness? We’re all relatively important players in global politics right now despite lacking most of the usual sources of global political power. We have it because we have the quirk of history that sees us sharing the same ethnicity as the dominant American ethnicity. As a result of being nations filled with plenty of WASPs, we have a far greater influence in Washington than we’re likely to get with any of the rising powers.
Our collective nervous breakdowns ever since Trump won in the US are driven by the fact that we know that without the US dominating global politics, which it does by means of enforcing corporate liberalism on the world, our nations will become third rate powers at best. We are clinging to corporate liberalism like our lives depend on it because our life(styles) do: without it, we’re nothing more than third world countries.
>I remember her once mumbling quietly that Hitler wanted to do good things (like end the Depression and build the autobahns) but was misled by corrupt advisors
I’ll just leave this here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rStL7niR7gs
Oh boy, I’m looking forward to this one. No apologies for leaving a comment *before* reading the piece.
I am not a Nazi. HOWEVER. As something of an autist, I have always experienced the peculiar notion that we should be allowed to hear other points of view, whatever they be. As I grew older, I gained a better understanding of how and why humans do what they do, but certainly in high school it was quite a puzzlesome and socially-awkward experience to discuss neo-Nazis in sociology class and wonder what exactly what was NOT being told to us.
Anyway. Whether it’s something in the spiritual aether, it seems a lot of people are interested in various aspects of the Hitler Question just now. I guess it really ramped up ever since the Israel attacks last year? Many people have been observing that what one might call the Hitler Myth has endured because it is essentially the religious foundation, the Creation Myth, of modern western civilization.
If you’ve ever thought to yourself, “Like… I know Hitler wasn’t a great guy, but… why is he ALWAYS the boogeyman, can’t we come up with something else?” This is the answer.
The modern western project is rooted in a worldview that goes something like this: Hitler was the Worst Guy Ever, and in like fashion NATIONALISM is the worst philosophy ever, because advocating for NATIONALISM necessarily leads to genocide. Therefore, we have to have open borders and the whole nine yards of the globalist project.
That’s why the Hitler Boogeyman endures. It’s the foundation Myth of the late 20th century, in a very religious sense.
JMG , hundred percent agree America ain’t even real yet. Had this thought yesterday thinking about old state churches like Virginia’s. So if being a civil religion is bad for Christianity or any alternative group, but people lose their mental gourds without one, where does that leave us?
A friend of mine once told me – with a straight face – that the British Empire was worse than the Third Reich. I was too nonplussed to reply, but actually this is one case where we can compare the brutality-score of the two regimes, for we have the comments of the man with the moustache himself in an interview with Lord Irwin, who had been Viceroy of India. Hitler’s puzzled query was, why didn’t we just shoot Gandhi? Perhaps Irwin was nonplussed too…
Another reason Hitler may have become The Big Bad: Germany was renowned for high culture and intellectual prowess for hundreds of years. Hitler took power by tapping into the irrational drives of the German people and manipulating their emotions. The rise of the Nazi party was a triumph of the occult and irrational, right in the intellectual heart of Europe – blasphemy against the religion of progress.
Greetings all!
“Can you think of any other historical figure whose image and reputation can be evoked so instantly by two abstract blotches of black on white? ”
I think that Napoleon’s hat comes a close second and he did nearly as much damage as Hitler did to more or less the same countries…
As a fun synchronicity, I have right now on my desk a book with a picture one of our long dead local politicians who had worn such a hat during a local festival, (Mauritius was a French colony during the Napoleonic Era).
Intriguing essay by the way. Very unexpected approach.
“The global South has its own opinions about Hitler. This is a brand of ice cream in India.”
and “he did more than any other single person to bring about the end of European global hegemony and the rise of independent nations across the global South”
It is interesting that this unintended spin off of Nazism is rarely mentioned: Without WW2 (and WW1) European colonialism would have lasted much longer. Well let us not forget that Imperial Japan also contributed massively to this unintended consequence.
Whether corporate liberals attempt to rehabilitate Naziism will depend, in my opinion, on the status of women within corporate liberalism at that point. One of the glaring differences between the fash and the commies, in terms of their doctrine, is the way they regard the role of women in society.
There was no Women’s March in response to the election of any previous Republican president, but before Trump was even inaugurated, organizing started for an event that (according to its Wikipedia page) ended up breaking all previous turnout records for a single-day protest.
I did not attend. My knowledge of those who did attend suggests that they were reacting, not to any proposed policy change on Trump’s part (although there was plenty of lip service to leftist causes) but to his personal history. Career politicians of the masculine persuasion understand that they need to at least pretend to be loyal family men. Trump, having come up through real estate and then entertainment, wasn’t quite as motivated to cover his tracks, so his history of aggressive horndoggery was easily found out and spread all over the news.
Women with ambition to enter or stay in the professional upper middle class are, in my experience, motivated as much by the desire for respect as they are by money and power, and they experience Trump’s brand of aggressive hordoggery as disrespectful. They use terms like “rape culture” and “misogyny” when they talk about it. They’ve been targeted by the likes of Trump over and over and over, often starting in high school or even earlier. His ascent to the presidency suggested that the mandatory tradwifery they were struggling against would be replaced, not by real equality, but by something like Hugh Hefner’s Playboy Philosophy, with all social spheres permeated by continual pressure to put out.
(It doesn’t help that Trump, despite being born to wealth and attending only private schools, speaks with an accent that Hollywood would assign to an Irish-American cab driver, cop or factory worker. The way white working class men use sexual aggressiveness to express social class resentment toward women of the bachelor’s-degree-holding classes is a phenomenon that I’ve seen discussed almost nowhere because awareness of it doesn’t promote anybody’s political agenda, but I can tell you from experience that it’s common pretty much anywhere that the two classes encounter each other in an informal, noncommercial setting. The women experience it as disrespectful because it is, on purpose. It is motivated as much by the blue collar guy’s desire to take the high muckety-mucks down a peg as it is by simple lust.)
This traces back around to immigration issues. Movements that oppose immigration are going to be led by people who want to raise the birth rate because, as you have observed, preventing population decrease is in the interest of all rulers, no matter what the rank and file of the movement wants. Raising the birth rate means tying prestige for women exclusively to motherhood, which means, in effect, excluding them from other avenues for advancement. Therefore corporate liberals are only going to go for Naziism if they’ve already fallen so far that the women are choosing tradwifery purely for lack of other options.
If you want to understand why the Nazi regime was “special” it’s important to realise that the way we look at it comparatively today has been heavily influenced by the historicism of the Cold War and the memes and egregors it produced. It was particularly the work of German historians in the 1980s, notably Ernst Nolte, and leading to the “historikerkreit” or “war of the historians.” Nolte argued precisely that there was nothing special about the Nazis or the concentration camps or the Holocaust, and anyway Stalin was much worse, and had in fact been Hitler’s inspiration. The cause was taken up by polemicists (not necessarily historians) who competed with each other to add millions and millions of deaths to Stalin’s account, so as to eventually make him look worse than Hitler (including all the deaths of the Russian Civil War for example.) This all fell apart in the 1990s when the archives of the NKVD were opened (see Moshe Lewin, The Soviet Century, for example) and it became clear that about a million Soviet citizens had been sent to the GULAG (the main Soviet penal system) for political crimes and most never came back. The figures for China are entirely speculative, and based largely on demographic projections about what the population would have been had millions of young men of child-engendering age not been sent off to work in the countryside during the Great Leap Forward.
Which suggests that any attempt to measure evil by numbers is beside the point. The Nazis were special because they actually implemented the popular Social Darwinist idea that life is a struggle (indeed that’s practically all their ideology consisted of) in a brutal and unimaginative way throughout Europe. They quite literally believed that “races” were foredoomed to fight each other until the weakest were exterminated, and that each “race” had to be kept as pure and strong as possible, by weeding out the weakest and killing them or letting them die. The German General Plan East (see Mark Mazower’s book) foresaw the deaths of some 35-40 million Slavs and other inferior races, mostly by just letting them starve, and the reduction of the rest to slave status.
Hitler was not interested in economics: all that mattered was that the country was totally organised for the endless war that Nazi ideology thought life consisted of. Ironically, the Nazi attempt at organisation and centralisation fell victim to its own ideology of ruthless competition, as private companies were encouraged to out-compete each other for contracts, and Party and non-Party organisations engaged in incessant warfare about everything. The war economies of Britain, the US and, especially, the Soviet Union, were far better organised. (Incidentally since you mention Britain, David Edgerton’s Britain’s War Machine is very good on the strength of the British economy (which experienced strong growth and rising living standards after 1932) and the consequent modernisation of industry and the armed forces that followed.)
As someone born in the immediate aftermath of the War, with parents and relatives who took part, it’s not hard for me to appreciate the particular evil of Nazism, nor the sick fascination it has for some unhappy people. But they are thankfully few in number today. That said, I have long argued that the terms “Nazi” and “fascist” should simply be banned from polemical writing, or at least that aspiring authors should have to pass a short test in history first.
Very insightful post and comments. Thank you!
On another note: JMG is referenced and quoted (brilliant) in the latest Hermitix podcast The Palliative Society by Byung -Chul Han with Steve Knepper.
Best to all on this spooky eve😉😂
I need a bit of help here…
So at first Hitler is:
(1) a convenient punching bag
(2) then becomes a target for the projection of the shadow (the failure of democracy, “the democratization of Europe is at the same time an involuntary arrangement for the cultivation of tyrants.” )
(3) The return of the repressed (hate flips over to love???)
(5) A craving to slam all the way to the opposite extreme and embrace the unthinkable
(6) Thus a revival of Nazism (or similar ideologies) from the shattered remnants of the corporate liberalism
(7) Brutal dictatorships arise in current western liberal democracies.
If I have understood correctly this is sheer madness!
With regards to the return of Nazism, there is a very strong and quickly growing National Socialist movement that encourages young men to be chaste, avoid drugs and alcohol, get physically fit and strong and avoid all video games.
Anyone older than 30 can tell you that young men respond positively to calls for discipline. When a young man realizes he’s wasting his life on bad habits, he’s going to find one of the only groups out there to tell him to live a strenuous life.
Clay @ 84: “I can’t picture an image of the man with a mustache without thinking of Hugo Ganz’s portrayal of Hitler in the 2003 German movie ” Down Fall”. This grim movie portrays the last days of the 3rd Reich holed up in the Fuhrerbunker as the red army approachs.”
I don’t know how accurate or otherwise this movie you mention is, but it does demonstrate the danger of visual media: Seeing an event portrayed before your eyes, whether it is portrayed as it really happened or not, makes it real. Perhaps its grim character amplifies its impact. Having said that, I’ll offer the example (just a random example) of “Charlie Wilson’s War” with Tom Hanks. Anything starring Tom Hanks is absolutely reliable, right? What it said to me was that we (the USA) never tire of trying to get under the Russians’ skin.
The article talks about Hitler’s detractors, but it seems his ardent followers are also quite unusual.
In the cults of Lenin, Stalin and Trotsky (the ones I have more experience with) and of the other political leaders of the 19th-20th century I haven’t seen anything like what I saw when reading and interacting with Hitler cultists. I mean things like Miguel Serrano, Savitri Devi, Esoteric Hitlerism, the myths about Hitler asleep in Neuschwabenland, or preparing his second coming with a fleet of flying saucers in the Hollow Earth, and many more.
Is it because the overwhelming anti-Hitler propaganda makes some people disillusioned with materialist industrial society naturally see Hitler as the greatest enemy of the current way of life, and Hitler’s more or less clear ties with occultism give ample room for the imagination?
@ Mr. Zybourne re: #85 —
I suspect that there’s a racial component to why Japan didn’t fill the role as a co-equal in evil to the mustache man. The atrocities of Japan were, for the most part, committed by Asians against other Asians, which for a typical white family of 1945 isn’t going to hit home as hard as atrocities committed by Europeans against Europeans. True, Jews were not at the time considered to be truly “white”, but IIRC they were well above Asians in the racial quasi-caste system of the time.
I was reading an article in “First Things” a magazine that is conservative religious and politics. They were discussing the end of Hitler as a Moral standard. They explained that Christianity profoundly failed in its response to the rise of Hitler, and that it simply was hollowed out by the 1930s. The new morality centered in Hitler, and opposing Hitler as it seemed that everyone was agreed about good and evil through that prism. However, the morals using Hitler as a sign post for good and even is decaying from the horrific of WWII and all that happened to mere name calling. The writers are hoping for a more vigorous Christianity to replace Hitler in the morality department.
I found that to be illuminating as to why everyone flings Hitler about against other people not doing what these folks say they should.
As for Hitler and today’s elections. I have noticed that the Harris people are paranoid that they will be rounded up and placed in concentration camps – at least among the Neo-Pagans, who seem the more irrational in their beliefs that they will be murdered in their beds. (I do not exaggerate.) It seems that since they believe that they are so different that they will not be tolerated to be allowed to live.
What they have resulting in doing to win their cause is emotional blackmail. I have been called names for being on the fence. Also likened to the Germans who went along with Hitler. That is how emotionally overwrought they are.
This is in contrast to the Trump people locally. In the Washington D.C. area, the Trump people are a minority. Because this is a company town, they tend to be quiet in their support of the man. However, they are like Ninjas going out in the middle of the night planting banners and signs along the roads and highways. Stuck in a traffic jam? Read a Trump sign. Some of the Trump people have decided to be very public and have plastered their homes and yards with Trump signs. Meanwhile, the Harris people sort of half-heartedly put out one sign here and there.
I believe between the two groups, the Trump people are the activists who do not want the fascists to win, while the Harris people are the passive group using Hitler to promote guilt.
Remember when Saddam Hussein was the next Hitler? I think invocation of the Austrian corporal long predated the current obsession with the former President.
JMG, you think that proposed Deep Sixing of the Constitution, a document for which neither major party would seem to have much use, is an expression of return of the repressed. I think it is mostly cynical calculation. Get voters fixated on Enemy du Jour, and they won’t notice what you are doing behind the scenes. The Western leadership (you should excuse the expression) learned how to do this during the Cold War. Once that ended, a new villain was needed, and the corporal was familiar from popular culture. I doubt very many voters would have been impressed by: You don’t get the promised Peace Dividend because Pol Pot,
I do agree that hatred is a perfectly normal human emotion, as I heard you say on a podcast, and I would add that there are some things which should be hated. The word has become seriously overused just as has the word ‘love’; one is forever hearing how someone “loves” sitcom A and “just hates” cop show B. The emotion itself can become addictive, just as can its counterpart. I have known people prone to serial promiscuous hatred. Unfortunately, that is a personality disorder which can look like the coveted quality “toughness”.
Akira Kurosawa directed two films about a wandering ronin, brilliantly played by the great Toshiro Mifune, which illustrate how the powerful emotion, hatred, can give a person the strength and force to cope with difficulties which may seem impossible to overcome.
JMG, Good morning this is a very interesting post. I did not know. Can you say what was the purpose in targeting and scapegoating Jews by Hitler and whether that has anything to do with current events? Is it a pattern with American scapegoats – I don’t know who they are – perhaps religious minorities that are scapegoated, whether pagans, occultists etc, by Christians?
Does this also have something to do with Hitler’s purported interest in magic and the occult having parallels with a certain US presidential candidate?
“Many people who become monstrously evil do it out of unbalanced goodness — they’re so caught up in their concern with some genuine issue (say, the plight of working class people in a capitalist society) that they commit atrocities (say, rounding up “class enemies” en masse and working them to death in prison camps) because they’re convinced they have to do this to fight against evil.”
As a person who wants to do good in the world that is probably the most important warning I could receive.
The twisting of good intentions into evil action seems to be the essence of Luciferian evil. The Pride (hubris) to think you can make yourself into god and then acting on it casts you out heaven and sends you to hell.
I think you were the first person i read that said
Fighting Evil is not the same
As doing Good
And that has really stuck with me and given me a lot to meditate on.
( it seems in fiction Luciferian evil makes for a more interesting villain than one who is just greedy or lustful).
“… the litany of atrocities of Hitler’s National Socialist regime is… second-rate at best compared to the far more ghastly toll heaped up by the twentieth century’s Marxist regimes”.
I have long spoken about the atrocities committed by Stalin and Mao as important to remember and consequences of leftism gone much much too far.
That said, if Hitler would’ve lived/ruled as long as Mao and Stalin, he well might’ve matched their terrible body counts.
Edward
Chuaquin : I see that we are country fellows., so that I’ll recomend you to watch the last video of the “Canal del Coronel” , about the Valencia’s flood.
I’d say cynically, he’s too convenient not to be made into a bogeyman.
It probably helps that not only did he lose, but that he’s also dead. And they killed off most of his henchmen too shortly after the war, I think. And that he spoke a language that makes you always sound like you’re shouting, even when you’re saying innocuous things. ES IST ZEIT FUR WEIHNACHTSLIEDER! JETZT! SCHNELL! So you get this picture of a shouty man in some incomprehensible language who is dead and can’t rebut any argument made against him. Perfect villain. Hoomans love their stories. A little too much.
The establishment gets really tetchy when you start examining what the guy had to say. There was an AI driven translation of one of his speeches into English that they really wanted to suppress. I should probably go dig it up and listen to it.
Actually, there are several. Here’s one – https://www.bitchute.com/video/mgfjUnmNaBQC
I saw Norman Mailer being interviewed just after 9/11 and he was saying that if you’re half evil there’s nothing so reassuring as believing your enemy is totally evil. If your enemy is half evil too, as he was sure the jihadis were, well then you just have the usual human mess.
Hitler has become the archetype of Absolute Evil because it suits us to believe that we fought Absolute Evil and defeated it which makes us the Good Guys. It all feeds the narrative that good will always triumph over evil but only after heroic action by the good guys. There’s the added bonus that our latest enemy du jour invariably stands in as a Hitler substitute which of course elevates people like Saddam Hussein and trivialises Hitler.
Just a side note, Stalin killed nowhere near as much as Hitler, and in no way “56 million people”. Some other numbers tossed around like “10 million people”, “20 million people” are from Cold War era sources with “Voice of America” bends (including the “Black Book”).
Instead of actual executions, or prisoners who died purposefully under inhumance conditions, they add in famine victims, people who died during the civil war earlier, people who were killed in WWII, and so on.
Historians go for a actual Stalin regime victim toll number around a couple million at worst, rookie numbers compared to Hitlter.
Of course the famines themselves could be attributed to the incompetence rather than the malevolence of the Party’s decisions (also, for political purposes, famines that covered all of USSR, are depicted as genocide of particular regions, by anti-communist foreign governments and diasporas), so could still count as Stalin’s toll. Those go to around 5-7 million (to put in perspective, 2 up to 10-12 million died in 20th centure famine cases several times, having nothing to do with Communism. The famous 19 century Irish famine had a 4 million toll). In Hitler’s case it was pure murder (and war victims, like the 10s of millions dead in USSR due to the WWII).
Same goes for the Chinese case, where famine victims are counted as Mao’s deaths, forgetting that China had equivalent sized famines 3-4 times from late 19century until before communism arrived, each with 10 million toll and above.
It’s like the creative over-accounting of Covid deaths, where if you died by old age or whatever, but also had covid, it was a “covid death”.
Of course that’s no consolation for the dead, whether by execution or incompetence of Stalin or Mao’s regimes. But it helps put things in perspective better than “those were worse than Hitler” and the common Cold War old-wives right wing tales.
JMG:
Okay, Communism was a civil religion. What of Capitalism? Or its handmaidens Libertarianism and (gag) Objectivism?
Also, here’s a note of clarification:
Despite many similarities, Trump is not Hitler. Nor is he Mussolini. Nor Franco. Nor Pinochet. Nor Putin. Nor Stalin. Nor Mao. That’s the _good_ news. The _bad_ news is, he’s Trump.
Adolf Hitler was just as much a product of the democratic process as he was an abuser of it. His rise to power was neither abrupt nor, at the time, unwelcome. The policies of his political party – and their means of implementation – were voted into law by, and on behalf of, the German people. When he began to become a problem in the late 1930’s the German people could easily have removed him and his entire entourage from power just by checking a different box on their ballot forms – but they didn’t. Why not? Because they loved him and they loved his policies. Antisemitism was a popular sentiment at the time, and Hitler just capitalized on it, winning the hearts of German voters as they cheered on and celebrated his atrocities. So yes, Adolf Hitler was a greasy little man who did some really horrible things, but the German people have only themselves to thank for making him into what he was and letting him do what he did.
So now western intellectuals somehow believe they can rid the world of tyrants and oppression by forcibly ousting them for replacement by a democratic government process. As we can see from what happened in Germany some ninety years back, all that will guarantee is that the tyrant who comes to power will be a popular one.
Thanks JMG, for this great essay.
I think the reason is Hitler lost. Stalin and Mao “won”. Mao played the long game and easily defeated the Nationalist army after WW2.
On the comment that Chinese technology is catching up with the West. In many ways the trade war (started by Trump during his first term)! precipitated this. China was forced to develop indigenous technology. Now BYD is poised to overtake Tesla as the largest EV manufacturer. Maybe this way Elon is supporting Trump. Sadly, the only way the US can stop the march of China is to go to war.
Another reason why people don’t pay attention to the crimes of the Khmer Rouge is because after 1975, the Khmer Rouge was allied with the United States and the United Kingdom on the geopolitical side against the Vietnamese, who were backed by the Soviets and the Warsaw Pact and had just kicked out the Americans a few years prior. Pointing out that the Khmer Rouge murdered millions of Cambodians would raise very uncomfortable questions about why the United States and United Kingdom were willing to back a genocidal communist regime in their later war against the Vietnamese.
Amused at the overlap of “Wednesay”, Wodensdaeg, Jung, Odin and HItler.
Maybe this also relates to Von Stuck painting? Very much resonates with the simple Hitler graphic idea you presented.
@Davie
There’s another reason it was Hitler, not e.g. Stalin or Mao. Americans might not know this, but both pre- and post- WWII, a good 20-30% chunk of the population in most European countries, including western and “eastern-bloc” ones, were in favor of communism, which even led to conflict or civil war or dictatorships established to stop the “red danger”, from Spain and Portugal, all the way to Italy and Germany. And it was an even greater percentage among the intellectuals and artists.
So it’s natural that a good target as the “evil figure” would be Hitler, on which both the right and left would agree post-war, rather than Stalin (which those on the left would sympathize with) or Mao (who nobody really cared for in Europe and the US, and wasn’t much of a factor here, unlike the big dramatic events Hitler’s rise and WWII played).
The new Donald Trump theme song!
https://youtu.be/TpgVwQRbl8I?si=HgqrkRkg1E1ztsS7
My now deceased uncle-by-marriage (RIP) was born in the late 1920s in Czechoslovakia. He was hounded out of the house in his early teens by his evil stepmother, his father being too weak to stop her.
So he was out and about in Europe during the war years as a young feller, much too young to be on his own, spending some time in the clink in eastern Germany I suppose because the cops there didn’t quite know what to do with him.
He told me that there were more Nazis outside of Germany than inside it, which I can believe, and which I suppose is supported by the numbers recruited into Nazi SS units from all over the continent. The point is that the man with the moustache and his movement had admirers and widespread support.
The place where my parents were born and raised was a fascist country but with a large communist contingent. After the war the fascists said geez, good thing for fascism or no progress would have been made for ordinary people. The communists insisted that it was pressure from their own movement that motivated the fascists to enact reforms.
I read that Roosevelt told his rich buddies during the Depression that there were competing political systems out there in the wider world (referring to both the communists and the fascists) that were getting support in the US because domestic conditions were so dire. He said that the rich could either give up some of what they had so that ordinary people could live better. Or they could risk losing everything especially if the communists took power. I seem to remember reading that the Nazis told rich Germans more or less the same thing.
I knew from work an engineer from Chile. I asked him what people there thought of Pinochet. He said that old people lamented the loss of Allende and hated Pinochet. The younger folk said that without Pinochet Chile would be like Cuba.
And what about nowadays? We have Eurocratic senility, Blobalist imbecility, Wokist cretinism, and other stuff plus MAGA semi-coherence spouting geyser-like from Trump’s blowhole. I suppose that like any new political movement it needs time to get its act together. Maybe Vance can help put some order in the disorder.
And I got a kick out of that garbage truck stunt. Whose idea was it anyway? And kudos to whoever did the paint-job on the truck on such short notice.
As for my dearly departed uncle, he continued his education on this side of the waters, went to university, became an engineer, settled in the US of A, married my dad’s sister, and raised two estimable sons. Sometimes crummy situations have happy endings.
KN, well, of course; all that — the percentage of votes Hitler’s party got, etc. — is in the realm of mere fact. Hitler’s posthumous reputation is a matter of mythology, in the full sense of the word.
Polecat, it’s interesting that her response to a statement like that was to vent her emotions — as though how she feels about a man she’s never met matters to the cosmos, or to anybody but her.
Robert M, true enough!
Synthase, er, I wasn’t able to extract a face from any of those images. As for Hitler as avatar, last I heard, divine avatars don’t usually flop the way Hitler did — that’s one of the reasons I like to stress that he was so complete a failure.
SLClaire, that’s very probably involved.
Renaissance, that’s doubtless an important factor, yes.
Ron, thanks for this. It would be interesting to see national capitalism get a foothold! More generally, I’m hoping that sooner or later the deathgrip of social democracy vs. national socialism-in-drag will be broken, and a wider range of options will come back into discussion.
Bruce, Pomerantsev isn’t entirely wrong, but I’d compare Putin’s government instead to those of some of the charismatic leaders in Latin America in the mid-20th century, who picked up some aspects of fascism and used them in the service of personal and national power. In a very real sense, Putin might be called a Peronist — his regime, like that of Juan Peron in Argentina, has political and economic independence as its core theme. It’s a common and successful approach for a resource-rich nation in a world dominated by a hegemon used to exploiting other nations.
Thomas, here’s hoping!
Paedrig, you’re not late to this party — these posts are open for a week, not for the 24-hour window of my Magic Monday open posts. You showed up just as people started dancing to the music and a new round of bottles got set out on the open bar. Yes, the book is titled Third Reich of Dreams and it’s by Charlotte Beradt. The only other thing I can think of that’s worth reading along the same lines is Carl Jung’s famous 1936 essay “Wotan,” which predicted much of what happened in advance. Nearly everything that’s been written about the spooky side of the National Socialist phenomenon counts as crackpot literature even by the admittedly freewheeling standards of occult writing, I’m sorry to say. As for protecting yourself, a daily banishing ritual and daily meditation are your key methods — the first keeps noxious influences from reaching you, the second teaches you the self-knowledge and reflective awareness you need to uproot the automatisms that give those influence their power.
Alvin, I agree that the Second World War is no more interesting than, say, the War of the Spanish Succession or the Gempei Wars — I think it’s purely its role as a foundational myth for the modern world that makes it so overemphasized these days. Alternative history really does have possibilities.
Strda221, were you under the mistaken notion that every person fits neatly into one and only one abstract cultural movement, without the least admixture of others and without the least tendency to change orientation over time? If so, to quote an old ritual, be at once undeceived.
Executed, if I wanted to set up a system to guarantee that National Socialism would become the default option in German politics by 2045 or so, I don’t think I could have done a better job.
Ryan, I’m surprised it hasn’t happened yet. The first time I heard somebody young talking about the “fashy” look, my response was “Hoo boy, here we go…”
Tag, I’m pretty sure, from doing a few deep dives into Hitler’s biography — mostly focusing on his occult training — that what drove his antisemitism was something bitter and very personal. He had odd encounters with famous Jews all through his life. Did you know that he and Ludwig Wittgenstein went to school together?
Willow, I’m far from sure you’re right that it’s till in power, as our very own Orange Julius seems to be demonstrating. Remember that Julius Caesar himself came straight out of the richest and most decadent end of the senatorial class.
dZanni, I like that: “Even Hitler isn’t Hitler.” You’re dead on target, also, about foregoing hate. What you hate, you imitate; it’s the great failure of all sides in recent politics that so many people think it’s enough to be against this or that or the other thing, where what matters is what you’re for.
Marko, Fortune knew what she was talking about. Jung made similar comments in his essay “Wotan.” As for the people who are redefining Hitler as a martyr, that’s the inevitable blowback from the decision of the current elite to turn him into their favorite punching bag. Just as people are flocking to Trump because the corporate media and the managerial state hate him, the more enthusiastically European elites identify everything they hate with Hitler, the more people will turn toward him.
Chuaquin, I hope that however the election ends up, it’s not close. That could indeed lead to the unraveling of US society in a civil war not unlike the one Spain went through. If one side decisively defeats the other, though, things are likely to calm down.
Phil, thanks for this. That makes sense.
Mister N, exactly. One of the bad consequences of turning one tyrannical regime into the archetype of evil is that other regimes too often get a free pass.
Marko, interesting. Yes, I could see that.
Larkrise, maybe you should reflect on your amazement and start asking yourself why your view of Trump is as singlemindedly negative as it is. Is the vileness and bitterness his — or is it something you’re projecting on him? Just asking…
Taylor, that makes enormous sense.
Bofur, I think you’ve identified something very important there. The next step, of course, is to identify the economic and political interests that profit from a lack of national borders, and see how they connect to the construction of the moustached bogeyman.
Celadon, a civil religion isn’t necessary, so long as there are theological religions available. Think of India or China, which thrived for millennia with a vast amount of religious diversity.
Robert G, that’s certainly a point.
Kfish, and there’s that!
Karim, fair enough! You’re right about Imperial Japan, of course; I’ve read that the Japanese victory in the Russo-Japanese war inspired independence movements all through the global South, since the Japanese showed that a European military could in fact be crushed in battle. And then, of course, the Japanese snapped up British, Dutch, French, and American colonies all over Asia.
Joan, and of course these are important points. Trump’s accent and his behavior, of course, are welcomed by the working classes, and not just working class men — this is one of the places where class issues often outweigh gender and race — and I suspect that he’s deliberately cultivated these habits to distance himself from the managerial class. Much of what’s going on right now, of course, is a conflict between the 20% of Americans who belong or aspire to the managerial class, and who have had disproportional influence over American life, and the 60% or so who belong to the working and lower middle classes, who don’t share your values and, more importantly, have gotten the short end of the stick for the last fifty years and know they can count on a steady diet of further impoverishment and immiseration under managerial class rule. Women of the middle and upper middle classes are among the chief beneficiaries of the ascendancy of the managerial class, so it’s not surprising that they rally around anyone who promises to preserve and enhance their status. We’ll see whether that’s enough to counter the populist upsurge from the neglected classes.
Aurelien, thanks for the references. I’ll certainly have a look at them. I grant that the words “Nazi” and “fascist” should be banned from polemic use — but since they’re not, addressing them seems reasonable!
Jill, glad to hear it.
Karim, you’re knowledgeable about history. Haven’t you noticed yet that humanity in the mass is rarely sane?
Jon, and of course that was one of the things that made Hitler’s party successful in the 1920s and 1930s. I’m glad to say that conservative Christian churches are also seeing a large influx of young men, for similar reasons; I’m not a great fan of conservative Christianity, mind you, but it’s better than Nazism.
Gûatá-sara, both of those factors — the propaganda and the occult connections — are powerful factors. Both those things tend to raise Hitler to mythic status, and that inevitably results in other mythic archetypes clustering around him. I’d heard of the flying saucers, btw, but not about Hitler imitating Friedrich Barbarossa and Arthur and sleeping in some magical place! No surprises, though, that he’d be turned by some into the Once and Future Führer.
Neptunesdolphins, hmm! That’s very promising. If Christian thinkers are grappling with the problems inherent in a “not that” morality, that could lead in very good directions. That’s fascinating, about the Trump vs. Harris followers; a passive approach rarely wins elections…
Mary, to my mind the rage against the Constitution is the screeching of a spoiled child against anything that gets in the way of whatever it thinks it wants. As for the people who’ve been talking trash about the Constitution, if they’re private citizens, why, they have the freedom to speak their opinions. If they’re government officials, they should be fired with no possibility of reinstatement, and if they’ve taken an oath to uphold the Constitution, they should be imprisoned for perjury. The Constitution is the foundation of our country; if people want to amend it, that’s fine, but if government officials think they can disregard or discard it, that needs to be punished in exemplary fashion.
Academic, antisemitism was pervasive all through the western world in the early 20th century, for reasons largely rooted in Christian religion. It was especially common in Germany, which was still trying to build a national identity and suffered from a bad inferiority complex — what was Hitler’s ranting about the Aryan Herrenvolk but an attempt to say, “No, we’re the Chosen People!!!” Aside from African-Americans, whose role as American scapegoat is rooted in the history of slavery, American scapegoats are usually immigrant groups — the Irish, the Italians, the Chinese, the Japanese, and any number of others came in for that treatment. Even American antisemitism focused more often than not on those Jews who were fresh off the boat and still had European mannerisms that could be mocked. So, no, it’s not especially connected to occultism — America’s been full of occultists since colonial times, you know, and we’ve generally gotten by without the least hassle.
Dobbs, I’m delighted to hear this. As for your comments about fiction, I don’t think recent writers have really done justice to Ahrimanic evil, the kind that’s purely fixated on greedy cravings rather than Luciferic pride and arrogance. An Ahrimanic villain, who cares about nothing but his own desires and is ruthless and meticulous about getting what he wants, can be both terrifying and (as a fictional character) interesting.
Edward, true, but the flaws in the National Socialist system and in Hitler’s own management of his regime were such that it couldn’t have lasted long.
Other Owen, true enough! I appreciate this meme:
Robert O, I’m not a Mailer fan by any means, but that struck me from the first time I heard it as a very important insight.
European, perhaps you can point me to some sources for these claims.
Paradoctor, capitalism has sometimes been turned into a weak sort of civil religion, mostly in an attempt to counter the influence of Marxism. Libertarianism, ditto, when it’s not simply an excuse to smoke weed. Objectivism? It is to Marxism exactly what Satanism is to Christianity — it accepts all the presuppositions of the system it claims to reject, but inverts the value judgments.
Old Steve, bingo — it’s important to remember that democracy isn’t a panacea. Its one virtue is that it’s not quite as bad as any of the alternatives.
Felix, and we no longer have what it takes to go to war — we don’t have the industry, the military technology, or the young men eager to fight and die for their country. I’m pretty sure that’s why Trump is proposing a tariff system — instead of trying to compete with the Chinese, the goal will be to reserve the American market for American manufacturers.
Anonymous, well, there’s that!
Brady, I’ve read claims that Hitler used to go stand in front of that painting by the hour. He knew exactly what he was trying to invoke.
Nex, funny. One of the things that really sets Trump apart from the other politicians of our era is how nimbly he takes the mistakes of his opponents and has fun with them.
Smith, that all makes a great deal of sense to me. Thank you for the data points.
I never knew until today that Hitler was visited by a psychologist. This was in the early days after the failure of the beer hall putsch, when he was incarcerated in Landsberg jail.
The psychologist, Alois Maria Ott, waited until the age of 98 before revealing that he had interviewed Hitler, who at the time was in a bad way mentally. He was suicidal and on hunger strike. Ott connected with Hitler through their common interest in history and managed to calm him down and talk him out of his suicidal ideation and hunger strike.
The writer of the article, a professor at a medical school, concludes, “Ott did the right thing for his patient; what it meant for the world is another thing. We can look back and wonder whether if there had been someone like Ott at other critical points in Hitler’s life history would have been different. If only . . . .”
https://www.psychiatrictimes.com/view/alois-maria-ott-i-was-hitler-s-psychologist
It’s wan consolation that, using your three examples as a kind of template, the shrieking ninnies are likely premature. Trump isn’t the next version of Hitler/Stalin/Roosevelt (though of course they only compare him to the first two, while the latter is lionized). The reason? We’ve not experienced the full brunt of economic decline – it hasn’t hit the coasts or the majority population in urban centers that badly even if the interior of the interior is cratered due to neoliberal/globalist decisions – and so, nationally, the majority of the population is not casting about desperately for a strong man to “take charge” and use government power to reset the economy. I’d argue that most of the Trumpward voters are actually not blinded by desperation enough to willingly apply a heavier government yoke, but are optimistic that government overreach can be tempered or toned down.
Of course this doesn’t imply that the gov is NOT manipulating the economy, but it does suggest that we’re nowhere near the phase of desperation that hoists a charismatic leader into a position of great power that overrides embedded safety measures.
The fun times are just beginning because no matter who gets into the White House this time around, the economy will continue its staggers and lurches downward until we do reach that phase.
In my experience, people would rather point fingers and shout names at anyone not doing the right-think lock-step than prepare themselves for economic decline – when resetting expectations of lifestyle “requirements” would actually go a long way toward staving off that blinded-by-desperation grasping that results in mass-swaying by charismatic authoritarian-types.
About galactic empires that never seem to go away: I’d like to give a shoutout to Luke Skywalker who realized exactly this lesson, so he made a decision to throw away his lightsaber and love Darth Vader.
By doing this, he no longer tried to win in a fight against the villain, so he was able to transmute the fear and anger Palpatine tried to throw his way, and made the empire go away once and for all…
Until a certain mouse got involved, but we don’t talk about that much.
Hey John, have you read *Modernity and the Holocaust* by Zygmunt Bauman? He makes the argument that the Holocaust was the direct consequence of modernity, progress, and the enlightenment, not a regression into barbarism. I think a lot of that book dovetails with what you’ve said here.
I found my copy of the book at a yard sale when I was a teenager. Back then I didn’t understand it but I re-read it a while ago and it makes a lot of sense to me.
#22 Taylor & JMG
Canada is roughly 20 years behind the U.S. in almost everything… broadly adopting attitudes, beliefs, policies. It took us until the 80s to adopt the general attitudes that are associated with “The 60s”.
We were almost 20 years behind in getting rid of the death penalty, permitting abortion, giving over our manufacturing to south east Asia, &c. &c.
We are slow to change, but the changes we make *tend* to work because they are tempered by the time we adopt them.
I don’t fear anyone trying to implement such economic policies here, because long before such attempted regimentation of an industrial economy we will be feeling the crushing bite of energy depletion.
What I do fear is that multiculturalism will cause intensified cultural ghettos (examine the concentrations of and subsequent behaviour of various ethnic cultures around the Greater Toronto Area) and that, as the economy dissolves, will likely produce balkanization and attendant violence, which we are already seeing with the Gaza nonsense. People shooting at Jewish girls schools, enthusiastically defacing property and intimidating schools into supporting antisemitism, overt threats against anyone who tries to push back. The current India diplomatic spat and the sudden concern about foreign (cough China cough) interference in our elections.
Anyone attempting to implement the kind of regimentation necessary to produce a war economy or a centralized economy will have to contend with the fragmentation of society we are currently starting to see.
“Gee, Brain, what do you want to do tonight?”
“The same thing we do every night, Pinky. Try to take over the world!”
(Intro to every episode of Warner Bros. cartoon “Pinky and the Brain.)
In the popular Western imagination, there’s only one real historical figure who “tried to take over the world.” Sure there are uncountable fictional villains constantly trying that, from James Bond and Marvel Universe mastermind villains to alien invaders to the above-quoted genetically modified cartoon laboratory mice; and there were actual ancient conquerers who tried and sometimes succeeded in taking over at least most of the parts of the world they knew about (but which we know today were far less than the whole); and there are real but depersonalized forces frequently characterized as trying to take over the world (like International Communism or American Hegemony or any of the many One True Faiths); and according to at least one popular song everybody wants to rule the world. But there’s only one guy with a name and a face who ever made a real go of it.
Never mind whether that’s really what Hitler wanted or expected, or whether any such wants or expectations were ever any more plausible than e.g. Alexander’s. I’m talking about “in the popular Western imagination.” When casting about for the ultimate political villain, that’s a pretty big flashing arrow pointing toward one specific candidate.
Yes, it’s been such a weird time these last several years … since at least 2015 or so, with the foul rhetoric force(s) having especially gone into hyper-drive during/after introduction of the genetically janky jab. Feeling as though walking on eggshells whenever bring up issues with blu-pilled people eaters! .. who in turn, are too harried and/or lazy to question their notions of political affiliations. I watch a long interview Tucker Carlson had with Jimmy Dore yesterday morning .. whereby Jimmy, in his rather frenetic way, laid out the real reasons for the flack soooo many are hurling at Orange Man ‘Moustache’ – namely, that many FORMERLY oppositional parties/personalities are coalescing because their combined strengths are outweighing their weakness, thus freaking out the Globullist Blobbites, and those useful intellectual-yet-sycophantic-idiots within the tiers below them, being used as a shield force.
I remember being astonished as a young man that there was an English band called Joy Division, that later changed its name to New Order. There was also a record album by some other group with a symbol on the sleeve art that resembled the logo of the official Nazi trade union organisation, the German Labour Front – something with a gear wheel around it. Who knows the name of that group / album?
Then there was Roxy Music’s album of 1980 entitled (rather fascistically) “Flesh and Blood”, with a picture of pretty blonde female athletes throwing javelins – surely deliberately reminiscent of photos of Nazi women competing in the Berlin Olympics of 1936.
https://i.discogs.com/cpC4J0663YLKQYjlc_KzXIE6bsqYhh77hVQkvyHW464/rs:fit/g:sm/q:90/h:598/w:600/czM6Ly9kaXNjb2dz/LWRhdGFiYXNlLWlt/YWdlcy9SLTIzNzQ5/MjAyLTE2NTY3NzEy/NjUtMzk2NS5qcGVn.jpeg
https://render.fineartamerica.com/images/rendered/default/greeting-card/images/artworkimages/medium/1/female-javelin-thrower-olympia-berlin-1936-david-lee-guss.jpg
But in 1981 British synth-pop band Heaven 17 released a song called “(We Don’t Need This) Fascist Groove Thang” – an awfully monotonous thing, though.
Something about the Nazis and their style seems to attract certain people because of what one journalist called their “sinister glamour”. But if people are attracted to a bunch of neo-tribalist necrophiliacs whatever their style, on their own heads be it.
Very good essay!
I highly recommend watching Academic Agents as he has looked into this in much detail and made a mini series called the Boomer Truth Regime; https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=KsNg9rpEHtw
His books called “The Populist Delusion” and “Prophets of Doom” should also be of interest to this crowd. Especially the last title which touches on the theme of decline and the Archdruidreport blog.
Happy watching/reading!
@JMG
In re: “I hope that however the election ends up, it’s not close. That could indeed lead to the unravelling of US society in a civil war not unlike the one Spain went through. If one side decisively defeats the other, though, things are likely to calm down.”
I wish I could share your confidence.
However, I do not believe that the Deep State “Blob” will ever relinquish power peacefully. Their attitude seems to be “If we can’t rule the world, we will destroy it instead.”
Many Democrat operatives have made clear that, even if Trump makes a clean sweep of the Electoral College, they will declare martial law, start a nuclear war, or do whatever they must, to ensure that Trump does not take office.
Martin Armstrong has recently stated that 2024 will be America’s last election, full stop. He expects the country to break up into 3 or 4 pieces, and that is if we are lucky.
@Ryan and “fashy” looks.
Like pygmycory and not having Hitler on the brain, I hadn’t made the connect to the style until you meantioned it. I am seeing that a little of that authoritarian look coming back particularly in some younger folk.
Unrelated story. About 7-8 years back I got a 4 year ban on a sub reddit for saying “People are better off saying what they feel needs to change in public rather than forcing them underground to build their power in secret.”. This labelled me a “Nazis sympathizer” and thus the ban. Apparently we arent allowed to talk about free speech, irony in its finest.
I’ve noticed that most self-proclaimed “National Socialists” don’t want to relive the Third Reich, they want to relive the Third Reich as seen in Western movies. The original NSDAP weren’t spooky bad guys, they were clean-cut youths who helped little old ladies across the street and fed hungry Germany workers. Operation Reinhard, the extermination process, was top secret because the NSDAP leaders knew that the German public would object to their Jewish friends and neighbors being killed en masse. By contrast, today’s “Nazis” think “gas the *****” is a winning political slogan.
Another thing to consider is that by now almost all the Holocaust eyewitnesses are dead. If you were liberated from a concentration camp in 1945 at age 10, you’re almost 90 today. My expectation is that within a few years Hitler will be remembered as one of many bloody tyrants in a century that was chock-full of tyranny and the Holocaust will be seen as one of several nasty 20th Century genocides. Once you lose the living witnesses, an event becomes history and most people find history boring.
Karim, you’re knowledgeable about history. Haven’t you noticed yet that humanity in the mass is rarely sane?
Alas, triple alas, I had noticed but the madness of humanity always seems to have no limits…
Sometimes I wonder if that madness is not related to humanity’s misdirected use of freewill.
Actually, humanity’s madness could well be good evidence that humans have some form of free will after all.
Regards
JMG,
I think a “lack of faith in human potential” is what you find on the outer reaches of U.S. politics. (Both on the left and right.)
Once you no longer have that faith we’ll you might as well make the labels then make the rules because in your mind people can only be managed and be made manageable.
Hi JMG,
Nice essay. It took awhile to see the black-and-white arch and square. To my knowledge, I never saw the configuration before.
The essay will take time to mull over.
——-
bruce 100
>…where one political party controls the federal administration and the party controls the courts and the party controls the media and the spy services and the army and as much as it’s convenient to control.
Golly gee darn, sounds awfully like the Biden/KomodoHarris administration,—
right now, at this time, in present tense, as I write this, the time we are in now, these days, the present juncture, current time, nowadays,—
present perfect.
💨Northwind Grandma💨🇺🇸🌇
Dane County, Wisconsin, USA
OK, Anselmo. I’ll visit “Canal del Coronel” soon.
@Joan #125
As a woman in my 60s who has had a full time job in a male dominated profession since the late 1970s, I have to disagree with you about Trump’s “horndoggery.” I have dealt with a lot of sexual harassment in my career. Trump strikes me as the guy who dates very beautiful models and the occasional porn star, and is completely up front about what he wants. If you are not beautiful or built, he is not interested. And those “rape” allegations from 30 years ago with no credible evidence… please… And hey, for those models and porn stars, I feel for them — beauty and porn as a profession have their downsides — but Trump’s taste in women ensures that 99.9 percent of the female population, including me, are not in his sights. Contrast that with Bill Clinton (credible rape allegations by multiple everyday women that Hillary fixed with her nuts and sluts protection operation), Joe Biden (pedophile predator), all of the Bush’s, who basically were the rich guys who preyed on whoever they wanted, the more vulnerable (or drunk) the better, and don’t even get me started on the Kennedy’s. They are ALL creeps. It seems to come with the territory. I think Jimmy Carter, who I voted for, was the last President of the USA that was not a sexual predator. Not sure about Reagan, and anyway, I didn’t vote for him. In my view, Trump is not the worst of the men who have been President in the country from a sexual predator perspective. And Melania, unlike Hillary, will no way “fix” any of his problems by destroying the women accusing him. What happened to Monica Lewinsky should make every single Mom in America stand up and denounce Bill and Hillary Clinton. She was 22!
And I have to say, is this a class thing? He doesn’t talk like a rich person. That makes him a worse guy than any of the Bush’s, Clinton’s, or Biden’s? Not in my book. With Trump, you know exactly what you are getting. The rest of them pretended to be “family men” (excuse me while I gag) while being absolute sexual predators. Just my opinion.
Paedrig 102
> do you know of any other books that deal with the subject?
The Lightning and the Sun
by Savitri Devi (1905-1982)
I bought a copy from Thrift books dot com.
If it is one thing I feel is relevant, it is Kali Yuga.
💨Northwind Grandma💨📖⚡️☀️
Dane County, Wisconsin, USA
Thank you for another fine essay, and I’ve been curious to see your take on this subject for a while. Since others have already mentioned most of the things I might have added I’ll just indulge in a few side notes. Speaking of the commentariat, I think it’s been an especially strong comments section this week. I enjoyed all the different takes and mutually compatible explanations for why the mythology around the Moustachioned One persists.
“What also happens in such situations is that the losing side in that first struggle becomes the rhetorical punching bag for both of the winning parties thereafter—and the more the losing side has in common with the winning sides, the more enthusiastically the punching proceeds.”
This made me ponder what will be said about the US (and the wider West?) in the ascendant Russia and China over the next sixty years or so. Presumably nothing good, but I’m curious what kind of mythology they’ll build around the fallen American Empire. I suspect they might latch onto things like freedom of speech and tolerance for LGBT, since those seem to be genuinely distinct and prominent aspects of Euro-American civilization in contrast to most of the others. And to be clear, that’s a shame in my opinion, since I happen to value both even if I’m no fan of the woke extremists who push the envelope too far the other way.
Re. Hitler as occultist: this might be a silly question, but I’m tempted to ask anyway: was he actually any good as an occultist? Did he have serious training, or did he just dabble? Then again, you’ve often said that occultists should be judged by the quality of their lives and their works, so that might be the answer right there.
Re. “Can you think of other examples of figures whose occult activities catapulted them to a fame equivalent but non-occultist figures didn’t get?” Note that this is at least half tongue-in-cheek, but I kind of want to say Iolo Morganwg. Would anyone but a handful of academic historians know or care about him today if he’d only been a regular eighteenth-century poet and antiquarian, without his mystical pursuits? I don’t know whether and to what extent he actively used occult methods to build his fame and following, though, so maybe he doesn’t qualify. (Or indeed whether he was an “occultist” in the modern sense or more of a mystic.)
>Their attitude seems to be “If we can’t rule the world, we will destroy it instead.”
Your thinking is much too sane. You need to think psychopathic. You need to think sadistic. They get off on causing chaos and misery. Everything else is window dressing around this.
I’m not German and don’t understand the culture there but I noticed that they seem especially obsessed with Trump. There is no pride that Trump is half German and originally was a Drumpf. Given that NATO is losing in Ukraine and energy prices are much higher since the US blew up Nordstream that was giving Germans cheap natural gas from Russia, I wonder how the powerhouse of Europe, economically speaking, will take their declining fortunes. The Weimar Republic paved the way for Hitler as people crave the strong leader when it all seems to be falling apart. It makes me worry that the could end up going fascist again if things get sufficiently bad. Here is some evidence of their obsession with the Orange One and to say they are triggered is an understatement.
https://www.spiegel.de/international/world/photo-gallery-der-spiegel-s-trump-covers-a-95076ff3-d67c-4373-ae39-c03b79435ed2
Martin, hmm! I didn’t know that either. Interesting.
TemporaryReality, the crisis of the 1930s was arguably caused by too little government regulation, but the current crisis is arguably caused by too much. Different times call for different remedies.
Circle, an excellent point.
Enjoyer, no, I haven’t — I’ll see if I can find a copy. Along the same lines, you might like Lawrence Birken’s Hitler as Philosophe, which explores Nazism as an Enlightenment project.
Renaissance, fair enough — thanks for the data points.
Walt, and that’s also a valid point.
Polecat, my guess is that it’s going to get much weirder as things proceed.
Batstrel, when I was living in Seattle in the early 1990s there was a California straightedge band that played venues near where I lived pretty often. Their name was Vegan Reich; as I remember, their songs had lyrics about rounding up and gassing all the meat eaters. So, yes, the attraction is clearly there in some circles.
Decline, thanks for this.
Michael, nobody thought the capitalist class would relinquish power in the 1930s, either. A series of compromises, here and in most other countries, averted open conflict and the transfer of power to the managerial class proceeded smoothly. I expect the same thing, not least because with the dollar losing ground, there’s no way to keep running the deficits needed to keep the Blob intact — spinning the presses and hyperinflating the dollar won’t help, because that’ll crash the value of Blob pensions and investments. Still, you’ve made your prediction, I’ve made mine. Now we’ll see what happens!
Kenaz, there’s that! I’ve long argued that an exact equivalent of the Nazi phenomenon could happen here and nobody would recognize it, because it doesn’t fit the distorted media stereotypes:
https://thearchdruidreport-archive.200605.xyz/2014/02/fascism-and-future-part-three-weimar.html
Karim, I believe that human beings have some free will — not an unlimited amount, admittedly — and yes, that’s what lands us in so much craziness. Nobody said free will has to be used intelligently!
GlassHammer, I see as much of that in the center — more precisely, the center tends to believe in the human potential of the upper 20% while behaving as though everyone outside that minority is an automaton. Meanwhile the far right and far left are both divided sharply between those who affirm human possibility and those who reject it.
Northwind, good. I prefer to encourage people to think.
Kim A., it’s quite possible that the US will be a global punching bag for a while. It depends on whether we crash and burn, or whether the US is still a significant presence in the world in our post-empire era. Hitler was very competent technically — he had a good grasp of certain kinds of practical magic, and used them to good effect — but his grasp of the deeper dimensions of magic, the philosophical and spiritual side, was fatally flawed and so his efforts ended up blowing up in his face. As for Iolo, hmm! That’s an intriguing thought.
Other Owen, I’m reminded here of Larkrise’s comments about Trump. Are you sure that this is true of them, or are you projecting it onto them?
Bridge, that’s a real concern; thank you for the data point.
It may have been Aristotle who first wrote you have a cycle:
1. conquerors establish a tyranny
2. The well connected form an aristocracy
3. The stability leads to a middle class who get rich and form an oligarchy
4. The poor eventually revolt and establish a democracy…
And then the chaos of democracy eventually leads to a tyrant taking over.
It seems the current MSNBC liberals who are afraid Trump is a dictator, are like you said simply projecting their greatest desire in the shape of a fear.
But the weird thing to me is that we seem to have an oligarchy of billionaires, a democracy of voters, and an aristocracy of liberal globalists all at the same time.
That simple graphic hit me like a punch to the belly. I immediately recognized it, and that and the discussion have led me to a number of realizations. I think if a person is sensitive to cues from society around them it is hard to avoid a visceral response to visual representations on what has been judged by our society as “ultimate evil.” I recall the boys making a funny song about the Nazis and 4th grad teacher getting angry and shouting “The Nazis were not a joke!” My father had a similar response when I tried it out at home. That leads children in particular to curiosity about what could have provoked such an outburst, followed by internalization of certain feelings.
I could never bring myself to look at a picture of Adolph Hitler. I feel similarly about Stalin, but surprisingly not about Mao Zedong, and I don’t even know what Pol Pot looked like. I guess the Asians are just a horde to most people living in Western countries.
In a sense, it was brilliant of the Democrats, at least for the short term, to invoke Hitler. My mother is horrified at the prospect of Trump winning. She tells me all sorts of terrible things Trump is reported to have said. I asked her once if she had actually listened to Trump himself. She burst out with, “Why would I want to listen to Hitler?”
Last week I told her, well, if Trump wins, just turn off the TV. You don’t have to watch the gorey details. But she said, “No, I have to watch the TV, because the news is crucial to know.”
Now I’m getting an inkling of how it is that this manipulation works so well.
@Bridge, JMG: “Here is some evidence of their obsession with the Orange One and to say they are triggered is an understatement.”
First of all, who is triggered? El Gato Malo has penned something nice: https://boriquagato.substack.com/p/genghis-trump – and trust me there are many in Germany who wish some agent of nemesis called down to tear things apart, too. I guess those who are obsessed with Trump in Germany are basically just like those who are obsessed with Trump in the United States. They are also obsessed with Höcke and Wagenknecht and Chrupalla and Putin and basically anyone who could possibly be the one manifestation of nemesis. It’s like playing whack-a-hydra. If you want to have some overview on the obsessions of German intelligentsia, spiced with a decent amount of snark of the finest quality, I’d highly recommend reading eugyppius’ substack.
There are two things, that might be different compared to past crises: Many Germans have become very soft, unskilled and uninterested and then society has become culturally very heterogeneous, especially in the big metropolitan centers. Ah, three things, we don’t have any meaningful resources left in our reach. Problems are mounting with an increasing pace and it’s quite possible that the closure of up to three Volkswagen factories and the laying off of tens of thousands of workers is just the tip of the iceberg and will trigger a very ugly cascade of events. I suspect It will take a long time, before some entity which today is called “Germany” has sorted out it’s internal turmoil and is able to direct it’s wrath somewhere else. And this entity will culturally most likely be very different from the Germany we know today, let alone the Germany of past times.
Cheers,
Nachtgurke
The Other Owen 65
> What is it that unites us as Muricans?
My immediate response was: the Eye R Uss (IRS) (the “Revenuers”).
They take a chuck out of every resident of the USA regularly, and even non-residents. They are greedy sons-of-bitches, relentless — they feel “entitled.” Don’t ask what I REALLY feel about that govmint agency — it is unprintable.
💨Northwind Grandma💨🧾👊🏼
Dane County, Wisconsin, USA
Taylor, that sounds about right. All the Glorious Anglosphere Empire really has going for it anymore is Narrative and Messaging, i..e media sorcery that props up a make-believe world. Once enough people around the world stop believing the Narrative that the empire is the only game in town, then all that is left is brute force. Which in this case consists of piles of overpriced, aging military hardware and increasing levels of strategic and logistical incompetence.
Kfish 122
> Germany was renowned for high culture and intellectual prowess for hundreds of years.
Nuh uh (aka “no”). No high culture in my book. My German Palatine (Protestant) ancestors (not to mention French Huguenots, Walloons, etc.) had to leave the region in/around what we now call Germany around 1705 (ending up in the Hudson River valley, New York State, USA) because of all the despicable warring going on for hundreds of years, where members of common families got shot dead and maimed for no reason. Common folk were cannon-fodder. Every ‘German‘ ‘county’ had its own religion and militia, and if one’s lowly family didn’t switch persuasions, they were dead. The aristocracy and landed gentry butchers treated common folk,—my folks, farmers and crafts(wo)en, like sh_t.
💨Northwind Grandma💨🇩🇪
Dane County, Wisconsin, USA
JMG: Those three images from a previous poster are versions of the famous Nazi caricature of a Jewish moneylender – the one with the man facing right and rubbing his hands together. They’re very abstract.
Thanks for this essay. I dudn’t vote for it, as I generally find the Hitler obsession pretty dull but this was a novel take for me.
A thought that occurred to me after reading it was: If love is the “flipside of the coin” to hate, and indifference is the opposite, what is the flipside of indifference?
I thought perhaps a sort of equanimous regard or compassion, the kind of universal love many religions try to get at. Would you agree theres a flip side at all? I just feel indifference is so uncaring, there must be a way to care about things without getting all passionate and emotional about it!
And as an aside, I think one of the greatest failures of english is that there aren’t separate words for different types of love! They really aren’t nearly the same thing at all!
The original essay made the fair point that Hitler is sometimes used to tar nationalists and conservatives, when in fact his government took some elements from the Soviet dictatorship and implemented some policies that benefitted manual workers.
Several commenters have gone, in my opinion, to the other extreme. They try to clean conservatives by tarring socialists and/or international capitalists through association with Hitler, going so far as to say that “the Nazis are on the left” or that Wall Street installed Hitler.
Such theories work by omission.
It is glaringly obvious that Hitler associated with far-right militaries and politicians right from the beginning. He received money and instruction from members of the Munich higher society since the early 1920s, and he made a coup attempt together with the quintessential Prussian militarist, General Ludendorff, in 1923. He was let out of jail by a conservative judge. At no point did Hitler or his associates rub elbows with any kind of social democrat, socialist or communist, even if they took some ideas from them. And if somebody in Wall Street should have given him money in 1928 – well, he already had a name and a following by then.
He was put in power by a cabal involving the conservative Catholic nobleman Franz von Papen, ex-chancellor, and the son of the conservative Prussian nobleman and president, Oskar von Hindenburg. All parties except the social democrats (not socialists!) of the SPD voted to give him extraordinary powers.
A few weeks after becoming chancellor in 1933, Hitler met the highest-ranking generals and gave them clear instructions to prepare for war. This meeting may not have been known in the 1950s, but it is incontrovertible evidence that he was not a well-meaning politician who somehow drifted into war in 1939. In the same vein, we now know that he was furious at Chamberlain’s taking his war away from him after the Sudeten crisis. Anybody who suggests that he was only striving to gather ethnic Germans in one state ignores the annexation of the rest of Czechia in March 1939.
A great majority of leading conservatives went along with the Nazi regime, either passively or actively. Only a few actively spoke against him from the beginning, such as Bonhoeffer or Adenauer. Some, like Goerdeler and Stauffenburg, later changed their minds. Some thought about resisting, but in the end didn’t, like General Beck. We don’t know how leading social democrats or communists would have adjusted to the regime if they had the chance because they were all jailed, exiled or killed.
To reiterate, associating somebody with Hitler is usually a bad argument, no matter who is speaking.
Dear JMG, honestly, I don’t feel that I am projecting onto Trump. If you could explain to me what he has got going for him, I would love to hear it. Ever since I heard him speak about how he loved to grab women by the pussy, I have been frankly amazed by his progress. Does it really not bother you that he makes racist and sexist comments? And that he thinks climate change is a hoax?
Please, I do understand that y’all want the Democrats out. But just because Trump is the vehicle for doing this, doesn’t obviate his very real flaws as a man. I thought we expected more from people in public life, not very much less. Is this terrifically old-fashioned of me; should our expectations be zero? I won’t trust Trump in office because I find him amoral and narcissistic, and therefore without compass. Also, I expect Musk will have a huge say in what goes on. I saw his ugly star-link crossing the sky this evening as we were in ceremony for Samhain. Ugly, intrusive, and highly symbolic.
JMG,
Understood,
You know I didn’t think the center used the “automaton” framing anymore I though “human assets” or “human capital” was the go to framing since finance rewrote the political centers vocabulary. An automaton would actually be a step up from “just a number on the balance sheet” view of humans, at least machines are tangible.
I’ve read most of the comments, but not all, so sordy if this has already been mentioned.
The US, Europe, and Russia all had racist pasts. The Nazis took some of their racial categorization schemes from the US. The British, including Churchill, said some disparaging things about other races at the time and had done horrible things all over the world, with a smug sense of superiority, to build and maintain their empire. And the Russians, and eastern Europe, had the pogroms.
Hating on Mr. Mustache absolves them from it, distances them from it, and projects the shadow to the extent that they haven’t really renounced their ways.
JMG,
The most frightening thing about Ahrimanic evil is how it treats people as things and how it elevates things to people. As a person who works in AI and sees how some of the most powerful people in the country are using it (as a trusted advisor that agrees with them that they go to when their human advisors disagree), I think I’m beginning to understand what Steiner meant when he said Ahriman would reincarnate in a way that will be difficult for human beings to recognize. That would make a great premise for a book!
As one of the voters who requested this essay, thank you. I have tried to steer clear of any emotion where either side of the current US political debacle is concerned because I don’t want to lend my precious, finite energy to any of their astral pyramids. Long before Dion Fortune gave us the magical formula to defeat “evil”, there was Giordano Bruno who named hatred as a bond that reduces to Eros. Hatred reduces to love because love is the base element that creates it. My own most recent essay, Why I Love America was a deliberate departure from the usual tearing down of political parties and hand-wringing about the future. The essay is also the most recent one at my http://kimberlysteele.dreamwidth blog and it doesn’t have all the “Please subscribe!” messaging.
I also dissected the Left’s hysterical passion for Trump right after the big assassination attempt: https://substack.com/@kimberlysteele/p-146639973
If my study of magic has taught me anything, it is to appreciate the now and to use it in order to make myself into a better person than I was yesterday, if only by the slightest bit.
Jason, Aristotle may have discussed that — it’s been a long time since I’ve read his political essays — but the version I know is from Polybius, a slightly later Greek author. It’s still a relevant scheme — but you’re right, of course. Those three things always exist; the question is which one has the most power at any given time.
Patricia O, many years ago, when I worked in nursing homes, one of my coworkers was a Cambodian refugee. He and his sister were the only survivors from a very large family. Remembering him, I’ve made it a minor personal goal to make sure that Pol Pot is remembered. Here he is:
Nachtgurke, thanks for the data points.
Kfish, so noted and thank you.
Free Rain, nope. The flipside of indifference is obsession. As usual, the opposite of one bad idea is another bad idea; the point in the middle — interest — is healthier.
Aldarion, good. The thing that made the Nazis so appealing to so many people is that they weren’t on the left or on the right — they filled the abandoned center of Weimar Germany’s political spectrum. Of course they used the right when they could, but it’s not accidental that the conspiracies that came closest to blowing Hitler to smithereens came from the old aristocratic right wing of German society.
Larkrise, Jung commented in more than one place that to those who are projecting, it’s unthinkable that the monstrous evil they see in the target of their projection isn’t a bona fide quality of that target. You’ll never understand why tens of millions of Americans are flocking to Trump until you grasp two things. The first is that your view of the man is less objective than you think; the second is that for many of those tens of millions, the prospect of a second Trump presidency is much less troubling than the prospect of another four years of having their faces ground into the pavement by the Democrats — and that they have good reason to think this. If you don’t choose to deal with these things, hey, that’s your right, but you’re going to be blindsided by events over and over again until you do so.
GlassHammer, the phrase “human resources” is to my mind the giveaway. Resources are passive until and unless you exploit them…
Team10tim, and of course that’s also an important factor.
Dennis, what you’re saying is that AI is a technology for generating catastrophic failure. That’s the normal result of listening only to yes-men, after all. It’ll be interesting to see how this plays out!
Kimberly, thanks for this. If you’ve learned that much from occultism, you’re doing very well.
I’ve learned the hard way that certain discussions are strictly off limits. I’ve been told keep my trap shut because facts can be irrelevant, or unhelpful, or harmful, or disturbing, or insulting and I suppose all that is true. And nowadays heaven forfend that you unsettle the younger set.
But still, in my pea brain, facts are still facts and while I don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings, facts are stubborn things. While you may not like that a pebble disturbed the surface of a pond, the resulting ripples are indifferent to your displeasure.
I guess it would greatly disturb people of a certain ideological bent by pointing out that Mr Hitler had an exemplary record as a young soldier in the Great War. He was a volunteer in a Bavarian infantry regiment, of low rank and no, he was no coward and no shirker.
Hitler served from August 1914, on the front lines, first as a rifleman, appointed later to a squad of dispatch runners. He was wounded twice, once by an artillery shell, later in a poison gas attack, both times requiring hospitalization.
He was decorated twice for bravery, the first time with an Iron Cross Second Class, and then in 1918 with an Iron Cross First Class, a high award seldom given to soldiers of Hitler’s lowly position. He declined promotion and ironically was deemed by his superiors to be no leader of men.
People would probably prefer to minimize or suppress such things. My own family like a multitude of others suffered grievous losses in the period 1914-1939 so I can understand the bitterness and not wanting to allot any kind of credit to one such as Hitler. But it’s like a rocking chair, giving you something to do and getting you nowhere. I always figure it’s better to know than not know.
@Larkrise #183 I hope you don’t mind me chiming in.
All the personal defects you (probably accurately) attribute to Trump could also be attributed to Bill Clinton. But Bill was so smooth, charming and well spoken. Even today he is lionised by the very people who say they detest Trump for sexist, crude behaviour.
As someone outside America I don’t see Trump as all that different from your other leaders, except that he doesn’t try and cover up the ugliness. In fact, I think he is a pretty accurate personification of 2024 America – self obsessed, superficial, vainglorious and not particularly competent but somehow successful despite it all. He is America without the mask and that makes a lot Americans deeply uncomfortable.
– Darren
“the prospect of a second Trump presidency is much less troubling than the prospect of another four years of having their faces ground into the pavement by the Democrats — and that they have good reason to think this. ”
Ding-ding-ding! We have a winner, and in one sentence.
Dear Northwind, have some mercy for the poor IRS workers. Congress writes the laws and the IRS has to decode Committee written bureaucratic nonsense and transcribe it into a form and instructions. And I say this as someone that does taxes five times a year now, quarterly and the year end reconciliation. The retirement planning sites didn’t warn me about that.
I was going to point out the opposite of indifference is obsession which requires neither love nor hate, but JMG beat me to it. Which is actually interesting since indifference is apathy, or is at least close to it, and apathy can be a manifestation of hate. It’s a bit of a slippery definition.
One thing that occurs to me about Hitler as ultimate evil is that we Boomers were exposed to the concentration camp photos at a relatively early and impressionable age. And re-exposed in high school history courses. I was under twelve years old when _Life_ or _Look_ magazine (forget which) published photos of the death camps. I recall one that I had difficulty deciphering–a huge pile of twisted, naked human bodies–it took a few minutes to realize that something so unthinkable was an actual photograph.
I propose a thought experiment–maybe try it on friends or family. Posit a working time machine able to be aimed for specific times and places. The question is under the following conditions, who would you choose? You can travel to any time and place in the past. The choice must be a political/military leader, not a religious figure, inventor or artist. Person must have direct power: Lenin, for example, not Marx. Under those conditions, what one person would you be willing to kill before they take power?–no consequences–your time machine is preset to whisk you home.
I would guess that Hitler would be high on the list if Americans are given the question. Not sure about other nations–probably also true in Russia, France, England and other nations that suffered in WWII. Probably less likely in Asia, South America or Africa.
Given the above, my belief that many, maybe most, Americans think that killing Hitler before he gained power would be a meritorious act, I feel that repeatedly labeling Trump as “the next Hitler” is tantamount to calling for his assassination. After the first assassination attempt, I tried to point this out to liberal friends. Not a one was willing to admit to the premise. Yet, if Hitler was the ultimately evil political figure, who given a weapon and a working time machine, would not kill him before he took power? How could you not unless you were a committed pacifist?
In a nation like the U. S., full of disaffected young men with access to weapons and a desire to “be somebody” successfully labeling a politician as “the next Hitler” is a virtual casting call for First Murderer. However, even people whom I respect for their political knowledge refused to accept that their statements were so potentially damaging.
AA–in addition to Napolean’s attempt at empire anyone in Hitler’s lifetime would remember the Austro-Hungarian Empire which had been dismantled at the end of WW I. Certainly Hitler would, since he was Austrian. The Turkish Empire also held large parts of eastern Europe and was only ended by WW I.
Jon G.–you mention the attraction to young men of the strenuous life. I was a teen in the 60s when the Black Muslims (Nation of Islam) were beginning to make a mark in Black communities–calling for dietary restrictions quite foreign to Southern culture (no pork) and self-discipline for both men and women. My father was a correctional officer (prison guard) in Calif. system and I recall being puzzled by the hostility of the mostly white officers to the movement. Why weren’t they glad that the prisoners were being taught to get their lives together and forsake crime? Now I realize that the establishment is always threatened when the people cast as criminal, stupid, careless and immoral attempt to escape the stereotypes.
JMG–I share your hope that the election is not a close one. I live in a small N. Calif. town. Calif. may be blue, but this county is not–except in the cities. Out along the country roads there are many Trump signs and a fellow has been selling Trump flags near the freeway onramp for several months now. One of the flags I noticed was a reproduction of the bloody ear, fist in air, US flag in background photo. I have observed remarkably few bumper stickers on either side–I think people are afraid to make themselves targets.
Rita
Well, I looked at the diagram this morning and just looked at it now. I do not recognize it at all as anything but a couple of blobs. I never was a visual learner.
On the topic of cults: Aren’t we an inverted cult? One whose days actually are numbered, yet that disciplines its disciples into not caring one bit?
Funny how two black shapes on a white background can flip a switch in the mind. Anyone recall the Michael Graves teapot from years ago?
http://s0.jrnl.ie/media/2013/05/hitler-teapot.jpg
I see a few people offering revisionist takes on communist kill counts. I would love to offer the same for the moustache man’s administration, but that would land me in jail here.
I think that’s an important facet to the mythos. Some places it is protected by law, others by custom– but everywhere in the modern west, to question this myth is to put yourself outside of society, polite or otherwise.
That may be breaking down– apparently AI narrated and translated Hitler speeches were getting popular on TikTok. David Irving and his ilk may be next. Now that the straightjacket might be fraying, can you comment why we put it on in the first place?
Honestly it seems criminally stupid to me. Literally criminal — it’s illegal to spread doubt about the Holocaust and I had no reason to doubt history until they told me it wasn’t legal to do so. That kind of thing makes it almost impossible to believe the official story no matter how credible the evidence is. It just makes no sense.
(For the record, I only wanted to offer revisionist figures to show that you can give Hitler the same treatment, not to make any comment on their truth value. RCMP can please stay away from me.)
JMG: “Taylor, ouch. Seriously, ouch. I was expecting to start hearing that, but not quite so soon.”
An article from August 1941 by Dorothy Thompson:- Who Goes Nazi?
“It is an interesting and somewhat macabre parlor game to play at a large gathering of one’s acquaintances: to speculate who in a showdown would go Nazi.”
https://harpers.org/archive/1941/08/who-goes-nazi/
Hi John Michael,
It’s a bit weird, but thought I should mention that the mustached bloke had an INFJ personality type (based on the Myer-Briggs personality type indicator), or that is the generally held consensus view on the subject.
Anywhoo, I won’t out myself here 🙂 but, unlike the way you see the world and the flow of social currents (with your own unique gifts which we’ve spoken of in the past, like err, ease with languages just for one example), the mustached bloke being spoken about this week, probably had an opposite experience to you and would have directly felt the vibe of a crowd, and been able to modify his oration so as to work that vibe. Hmm. It’s not a common trait that group of abilities.
Dude, living a quiet life up in the bush has been a very pleasant reprieve from the swampy emotional mass of the city. Hmm. 😉
Cheers
Chris
As I woke on the day after Samhain, it came to me: how fitting it is to be discussing the Western world’s biggest self-made bogeyman on Samhain week, when spirits are loose and the dead are remembered, and the descent into the cold and dark days of winter (further north than the Florida rainforest) begins. And this year, tomorrow night is when we adjust our clocks so that the sun rises at 6:40 am rather than 7:40, to put the seal on the change.
When the votes for this post’s topics were gathered, I was quite amused by the telling fact that a number of commenters literally voted for ‘anything but Hitler’!
I don’t have anything to contribute to the *American* myth about Hitler. But as some have already pointed out there is also a *German* myth about Hitler, and of course the crucial difference is that Americans think of Hitler as ‘one of them’, while for us Germans he is ‘one of us’.
When I was younger I thought that this image of absolute evil as ‘one of us’ brought our country a big advantage. After all, we had (speaking in Jungian terms) a vivid illustration of our own collective shadow! But now, having learned a bit more about the world, I am much more pessimistic.
First, to know something about your nation’s collective shadow is good, but knowing about your personal shadow is much more important. Jung’s pupil Marie-Louise von Franz once said that most Germans who fell into Nazism did so through their personal shadow. The careerists went along with it because they didn’t want to lose their jobs, the insecure young men did so because it offered them a sense of purpose, and so on.
Second, the work of getting to know your own shadow is difficult, and only a minority will ever seriously undertake it. Many people are happy with just projecting, and this is what has been happening in Germany ever since Hitler was defeated. They don’t say, ‘there is something of Hitler in me’; they say, ‘there is something of Hitler in the German people, but it’s not in me and my friends, it’s in *those* people over there’. Where it gets really nasty is in the further implication taken by many PMC types, that being German ineradicably means being a potential Nazi, and to purify yourself you have to de-Germanize yourself. You can purify yourself by identifying with a foreign nation, by pretending to be, deep down, much more French or Spanish or whatever than German, or by seeing yourself as a cosmopolitan who is far too advanced to be defined by anything so quaint as a nationality; in either case you are redeemed from being one of those ugly Krauts. There is a bizarre political movement called ‘Antideutsche’ which makes this ideology explicit, but it’s the unspoken and unreflected view of many in the German PMC. Of course to maintain these ideas requires a lot of cognitive dissonance (after all, those same people continue to live in Germany, speak German, and so on), but the point is that this kind of charade is open to the PMC but not to those people the PMC hates.
Third, the public image of Hitler and the Nazis is itself quite distorted by the very class interests I just described. For instance it gets rarely mentioned how much Nazism was carried by youthful idealism, how university students were among its early adopters, or how enthusiastic it was about the then-latest technology.
Fourth, the collective shadow itself changes over time. Once things come into consciousness, other things recede into the unconscious. The Germany of 2024 represses other things than the Germany of 1924, and just because you know the latter doesn’t mean you are well prepared to deal with the former.
One more comment about the German fascination with Trump. I think the ideas of certain Germans that Trump is Hitler, and that Putin is Hitler, idiotic as both are, mainly serve an emotional need. The idea of being collectively responsible for evil incarnate puts a lot of stress on the national soul, so if you rediscover Hitler in other nation’s politicians you can release a lot of that tension.
For what it’s worth, I consider Trump to be a thoroughly American response to the specific problems of America. We have our own problems, some of which are similar to America’s, some not, and we have our own populist movements. But there the similarity ends. Trump would have little appeal in Germany, and I suppose that Sahra Wagenknecht and the AfD would have little appeal in the US.
Joan,
I wonder if there’s also a cultural clash here. I’m downward mobile, and a lot of behavior that is considered unacceptable in the managerial class I grew up in is not just acceptable, but normative among the working class: one of the more challenging for me to get used to is that a lot of women in the working classes will rebuff male attention in order to see if he’s interested enough to pursue her.
There are ways that working class women signal they have zero interest in someone, and he needs to back off, but I doubt most women who grew up in the managerial classes know about them, and I’ve also heard working class men frustrated that some woman from the managerial class is “playing hard to get”, and then freaking out when he follows the rules of this particular game.
There are, of course, other factors at work, but most of the “these men are horrible sexists” stories I’m aware of, now that I’ve gotten more used to the norms of the working class, seem to be the result of the fact that there is a huge, and often ignored, cultural divide here, and working class men are acting according to the standard script they have, one which is far more open with male sexuality than the one the managerial class has.
My experiences have also long led me to think that the actual rapists and predators tend to be higher in the social ladder rather than lower; men drawn to wealth and power seem to very often be interested in it as a means for getting more sex; and people with higher status are very often used to the idea that they can do whatever they want to people with lower status.
Thank you for keeping the memory of Pol Pot alive. I stopped being a leftist in 2006 once I went to Cambodia on a month long vacation and realized that much of my ideology was identical to the Khmer Rouge and that we both had a similar college experience reading and being fans of the same post colonialist authors, most notably Frantz Fanon.
Mr. Hitler was indeed a disaster in terms of achieving his stated goals. That said, to the extent that the youth of today find him appealing (as judging by the perennial popularity of memes such as the Er Ist Weider “Viva La Vida” video and AI translation speeches on Tiktok), it’s the sincerity. With the exception of Mr. Trump, it’s been a long long time since anyone has seen a politician who actually believed what he was saying (however crazy). Sincerity, in this day and age, is as shocking as a plunge into cold water. Meanwhile, there is also a creeping realization in Europe that Hitler’s main argument – Germany should be for the Germans, France for the French, etc. – was correct, and that being absorbed into the Western blob meant the end of that.
In terms of a rise of literal NAZI-ism here in the U.S., there are several other tangible signs that this may in the cards, particularly in the “Imperial Core” (D.C – New York, possibly up into New England but I suspect it won’t have as much pull there). The biggest is the ongoing attempts by various three letter agencies to make groups like “the Patriot Front’ appear legit. As inorganic, corny, and unconnected to the MAGA movement as these groups are, the federal employees who constitute their ranks will almost certainly “go native” and become the real thing in the event that the federal gov has a serious legitimacy crisis, which it will if the D.C. rank and file spend as much time and energy trying to sabotage the next Trump administration as the first. The other, of course, was Covid. The willingness to turn on your neighbor if they didn’t get the shot, the legislative grant of power to Governors to create quarantine camps, and the all out hysteria was not a good omen.
Interesting times.
Regarding German antisemitism, I have often wondered if there some connection to the old Rome vs. German Barbarian rivalry. Not to get too creepy on the racial stuff, but if you look at guys like Mark Zuckerberg or Larry David, they quite literally look like busts of the late Roman elite (and there is a fair amount of DNA evidence to suggest that this isn’t too far off the mark). Given the German fascination with blood memories, it’s not hard to see how an ascendant Germany wanted to shake off the remnants of the last time they were on the losing end of a colonial enterprise.
JMG, The interesting thing about the way many Kamala voters have been trained to project their fears upon the Man in Orange is that its purposes seems to be more than just winning the election for the democrats. The shrieks of Fascism and Hilter and not as much effective calls to elect the Cackler as they are inoculations against future judicial actions against the Democrat Elite.
Trump has already been president for 4 years and no street level progressives ever got put in gulags so fear of that seems unfounded. Nor did Trumps imagined bad behavior towards women or minorities every manifest itself.
What the bad apples in Imperial Washington seem to be doing is preparing for the day when honest fair judicial action commences against them. What scares them the most is Trump has surrounded himself, this time, with dedicated public servants who will not be corrupted against him ,like last time. They want to have legions ready to cry ” Hitler” from every mountaintop as the corrupt and traitorous are dragged to the courtrooms for a taste of their own medicine.
It is not the 4th Reich they fear, it is the Nuremberg trials at its end that gives them nightmares.
Dear JMG and Commentariat:
For a book on World War 2, I recommend A World at Arms, Gerard Weinberg. I have read a ton of WW2 books, and I learned a lot I did not know. Well written, and not a polemic! Also, for an interesting history of the Battle of Britain: On Wings of Eagles, Michael Korda. Again, well written, and goes into the British development of their fighter control and air defense systems (starting in the early 1930s), which were revolutionary at the time. BTW, I in that book I learned that the head of Fighter Command, Air Chief Marshal Hugh Dowding, was a noted Spiritualist, at least in later life (at least by 1943; he retired in 1942 after having been pushed out). A man who had a fair amount to do with Hitler’s plans not succeeding, and done a disservice by the British government and RAF! Anything on the Eastern Front by Earl Ziemke, and John Toland, Empire of the Sun. There are more books on WW2 than one can keep track of (I do want a good book on the War of Spanish Succession, though).
With respect to the victory of the managerial class in WW2; yes, but there are two things the current managerial class forgets: first, competence. Most knew and understood what they were managing, having often come up in the organization, that the point was to build a lot of weapons that worked well (didn’t have to be the best and have every bell and whistle), build the right sort of weapons, and organize based on what worked, rather than pet theories. Second, absolutely massive production capacity. 50,000 Sherman and 40,000 – 50,000 T-34s! Doesn’t really matter if an individual German tank was better, at those odds. US shipbuilding capacity was even more outrageous. Plenty of manufacturing firms retooled to build war equipment. Also can’t forget resources: JMG cites 6/7 of the oil used in the war was from US oil fields. The West has lost all of that.
By contrast, as noted by others, the Nazis were disorganized, infighting, and hobbled by their ideology. As a great illustration of wishful thinking, there was a partial demobilization of the German Army after the victories in the West, which was obviously reversed in the run up to Barbarossa.
And finally, folks should “take a powder” regarding the upcoming election. Trump isn’t coming for you if he wins, nor is Harris if she wins. I do agree with JMG, hopefully whoever wins will do it by a large enough margin that it can’t be argued. Society seems to be on the point of losing its collective marbles.
Cugel
In a lighter note since we all need one,
“There would be a 5% chance that a single chimp would successfully type the word “bananas” in its own lifetime. And the probability of one chimp constructing a random sentence – such as “I chimp, therefore I am” – comes in at one in 10 million billion billion, the research indicates.”
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c748kmvwyv9o
The heat death of the universe will occur before all the planet’s chimps together duplicate Shakespeare.
Oh, and Kimberly #187:
Thank you; a great corrective to much of the current heat and noise.
Cugel
I propose this as the theme music to this week’s post: https://youtu.be/1zY1orxW8Aw?si=kQqfxBBeFt_o0_bz
This is from the Washington Examiner. It was written 24 October 2024, but is very telling. Written by Byron York.
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/3202725/why-have-democrats-played-the-hitler-card/
WHY HAVE DEMOCRATS PLAYED THE HITLER CARD?
” In the last few weeks, Vice President Kamala Harris’s national polling lead over former President Donald Trump has been shrinking. ”
“At the same time, Harris has unleashed a new barrage of attacks on Trump. Those attacks have reached a bizarre conclusion with Harris declaring Trump a “fascist” and Democrats describing Trump as a Hitler-loving autocrat. For many on the Right, used to many years of Democrats describing Republicans as Nazis, it was both an outrageous and an entirely expected conclusion to the campaign.”
…..
“The shift to a Trump-is-Hitler campaign theme is a direct result of Harris’s failure to prove to voters that she is a substantive candidate for president. All presidential candidates have to prove that they are up to the job. Harris spent her first weeks as a candidate enjoying a sugar high of wildly positive media coverage. ”
……
It concludes with:
“So now the campaign has moved on to bashing Trump. It appears that will be the theme of Harris’s “closing statement” planned for Washington, D.C., next week. It was always clear that Democratic voters were more motivated by animus toward Trump than affection toward either President Joe Biden or Kamala Harris. That will be how the campaign ends.”
—
It would seem that Harris in her campaign has cheapened the sacrifices and agony of the people of WWII. Hitler is now a mere campaign ploy.
Excellent history and philosophy lesson, thanks. In Great Britain the obsession with Hitler never really went away – “we” beat the Germans in 1918, 1945 and 1966 (Football World Cup) is a ubiquitous sentiment in Great Britain. “The List”, a Scottish arts and culture magazine (like Time Out) used to have these yearly polls, best musician, favourite event, etc. One question concerned “most hated person”. The top four were always: Hitler; the current bogeyman (Gaddafi, Saddam etc); the current leader of the Conservative Party; and Margaret Thatcher – even decades after she left office. And in the recent Brexit debacle, politicians routinely referred to European politicians as Hitler, not really a very sensible tactic when one is negotiating with an entity almost 10 times larger!
The obsession has mellowed slightly in recent years (outside the extreme right) I feel – although the issues related to his political project are well evident in politics and society, currently, in the UK. That sentiment also seems less strong in Scotland (about Hitler, not Thatcher), now that all the adults that experienced WW2 are dead. And yes, I’m aware that while the British Empire was essentially an English project, vast parts of it were run by an unbelievably huge proportion of Scots (a tenth of the population of England), possibly because the ambitious and wealth driven Scots couldn’t get the plum opportunities in English dominated Great Britain.
And there’s, of course, Churchill’s appalling racism and antisemitism, the very thing reasons we were supposedly fighting Hitler (and I’m not talking about modern day lefties “rewriting history”, his Conservative colleagues, at the time, were horrified by him) has been wiped from collective memory, as has our ex-King Edward VII’s open support for Hitler.
Even Hitler’s concentration camps were not original, Great Britain had used them in South Africa (and weren’t the first to use them), and were using them up to 1960 in Kenya.
While agreeing with your assessment, I think there is another more mundane reason his importance is so overblown – Hitler “threatened white people like us, and he was not that far away”. Sadly I doubt most people in the UK would even know the name Pol Pot, let alone anything he did.
I’ve used “Great Britain” on purpose because I’m not clear on the history or sentiments of Northern Ireland, and it’s still basically a colony anyway.
Toomas, I feel for you, I’m still traumatised (as is probably obvious 🙂 ) by Thatcher’s reign of terror in the UK in the 80s (the hatred and obsession, of course, only damaging me!), the damage of which still ripples round the globe, thanks to her alliance with Reagan. Thatcher, of course, being seen as a Hitler figure at the time.
Re the US and the UK if the US ditches neoliberalism, there have apparently been two diplomatic/administrative type negotiations between the US and UK (again, a big entity and a delusional entity, that used to be a big entity). The US, unsurprisingly, said “we want this (huge list of things) and we’re giving you nothing”. The civil servants apparently left dumbfounded!
Smith, that’s quite true. He was also quite a capable artist, for what it’s worth. Consider this:
Siliconguy, and the sad thing about all this is that all the people who are shrieking about Trump could have rendered him completely powerless by the simple act of putting pressure on their representatives to do something significant about the plight of the working class in the US. It would have been the simplest thing in the world: once the Democrats realized they had to change course to keep on appealing to their own base, they’d have done it. Nor was it ever any kind of secret what the real issues were — I was far from the only person talking about those, and many of the others were nothing like so far out on the fringes as I am. But the class bigotry of the Trump-haters was so deeply ingrained that they couldn’t even let themselves think of that.
Rita, interesting. Thank you for the data points!
Jill, hmm! I’m not very visual, either, but apparently my pattern recognition skills set in.
Michael, er, perhaps you can explain what you’re talking about, because I’m not following you.
Doug, I do indeed. That was one of the things that clued me in to just how memorable our culture has made Hitler’s image.
Earthworm, of course these days, post-Covid, it’s a much easier game to play.
Chris, he was apparently extremely good at it. He also had the kind of occult training that allowed him to use the energies of the crowd; I discuss that in my soon-to-be-released book on polarity magic.
Patricia M, here in Rhode Island, I’m starting to wonder where fall went. It’s supposed to hit 77°F today. In November, in New England…
Robert, interesting. I think you’re right to be concerned about your country, for what it’s worth. The US elite has a fair case of the same kind of not-from-here craving as yours, by the way; American elites from colonial times onward have spent their lives wishing they were Europeans, trying to act like Europeans, and failing miserably at it. Trump offends our elites most because he doesn’t make the pretense. He acts like an American, and so the privileged classes and those who ape their manners can’t stand him, because he reminds them of what they actually are.
Dennis, meeting the person I mentioned earlier, and talking with him about his experiences, played a large role in popping me out of my youthful flirtation with leftism. It also helped that I was one of the very few white men working as a nurses’ aide in the nursing homes where I worked, and so I got to spend a lot of time listening to what women and people of color were saying, instead of the words that privileged leftists were trying to put in their mouths!
Christopher R., there’s that — and of course you’re right about Covid. One of the most frequent comments I heard among those of us who refused the vaccine was, “I used to wonder how the people I know would have behaved under Nazism — whether they’d rat out their friends, support the end of civil rights, and believe government propaganda no matter how stupid it was. Now I don’t have to wonder any more.”
Clay, I suspect that’s why Trump has refused government funding for his transition team and has them working away already in offices far from DC. He’ll have to move very quickly once he’s inaugurated.
Cugel, if I ever find a really good book on the War of the Spanish Succession, I’ll let you know! As for production, exactly. One story I heard from a vet many years ago makes that point. He joined up in 1945 and ended up guarding a lot of German officers after the war, when the latter spent time in prison. One of the officers had been on the western front during the Battle of the Bulge, and discovered after overrunning an American encampment that the US had sent every single soldier an individually wrapped fruitcake for Christmas. “At that moment,” said the officer, “I knew that we were doomed. A nation that could afford to do that could flood the battlefield with so many tanks and soldiers that nothing could stop them.”
Siliconguy, I hope the people who did that study get this year’s Ig Nobel award!
Synthase, funny. That, or “In the Fuehrer’s Face” by Spike Jones!
Neptunesdolphins, yep. It does not bode well for Democratic chances that they’ve turned to so sleazy a ploy, either.
Michael, thanks for this. Of course the extent to which the Highland clearances drove Scots out of Scotland, and more or less forced them to go elsewhere in the Empire or starve, was also a factor!
If you had the chance to go back in time and kill Hitler, it’s interesting to speculate on what point in his life would be the optimum time to do so. Because he did do quite a lot of good in the early years. It is surely a good thing that he rescued Germany from the depression and hyperinflation of the Weimar years. He put Germans back to work, which improved a lot of people’s lives. Germans made advances in physics, chemistry and medicine which benefited the world. Etc. Give the man credit for that.
Alternatively, you could neutralise him. Not by removing his one remaining testicle, but by recognising that he was a man of his time. Change the times, and someone different would have risen to the top. The source of Germany’s discomfiture was the harsh treaty Germany was forced to sign at Versailles at the end of WW1. Eliminate one of the victors, President Wilson perhaps, and things could have turned out differently.
What unites us as Americans? I would say it is the Constitution. Prior to the Constitutional Convention, there had been republics in history. Venice called itself the Serene Republic, La Serenissima. AFAIK, these were city states such as Athens, Rome AND Carthage, Genoa and so on. Again, AFAIK, no large, multicultural, and the USA has been multicultural since before the Revolution, state had ever been governed by republican institutions. Both Rome and Carthage had tried, and we know how that turned out. Some, like Venice, and the late Roman Republic had had colonies, which had no share in governance of the mother city. Multicultural empires, Persia, for example, were governed by monarchs and the governing caste was mostly members of a nobility drawn from the same ethnic group as the Royal Family. This is how it had been since time immemorial. What Madison and the rest were attempting was nothing less than to defy history. They were going to set up a way effectively to govern a large territory and diverse population WITHOUT needing a monarch. I believe they also feared, with good reason, the arrival of younger sons of European nobility anxious to carve out appanages for themselves. The mechanism they came up with was representative government, in which all states send their own chosen senators and congresspersons to the national legislature
The other thing which I think unites us, besides the English language, is the English common law, with its principle, often alas honored in the breach, of every person equal before the law.
JMG, re: your comment #173. Even if the remedies differ, which makes sense of course, do you see merit to the pattern I suggest – that it takes more widespread economic pain to rile voters up enough to vote in a demagogue who then institutes government-justified campaigns of violence? In other words, do you really think we’re there already?
JMG, No, no. The ignobel award goes to the scientists who have suddenly discovered that there only six, not seven as had previously been supposed, continents. Did the study involve looking at a map? Oh, no. Nothing so simpleminded as that. Something about studies of the epochs ago continent of Gondwanda convinced them.
Siliconguy and JMG, don’t forget that well heeled organizations and interests have deployed their sheckels to keep out of office candidates who might have paid attention to doing something significant about the plight of the American working class. It saddens me to see what has become of the party of Jefferson, but it needs to be abandoned by persons of good will and character. Which brings me to
Larkrise, we need a new party. One which would be a party, not of the “center”, but of the ordinary, non-charismatic working and law abiding people who do keep civilized life functioning. It should be funded by membership dues because that would keep out the woke grifters, no “low-income” exceptions, with a cap on amount of contributions accepted. From anyone or any entity, which would limit the influence of the Zionist ideologues. You may have noticed that there exists a whole raft of decent, capable people, of ability and accomplishment, who have been seriously disrespected by the Democratic establishment. I do believe that a program of some of the issues Kennedy was running on, such as clean air, water and soil, combined with a robust peace policy could win some elections.
I think the opposite of indifference is Yeat’s passionate intensity.
>Other Owen, I’m reminded here of Larkrise’s comments about Trump. Are you sure that this is true of them, or are you projecting it onto them?
Sigh. I’ll use a recent example, the first time the deep state endorsed Trump in Butler, PA. Granted you have to look at the details, but if you do, it gives away their thinking. Not only did they make an effort to live stream the rally (when they pretty much ignored them all) but they employed a photographer who was set up to take high speed pictures. He managed to catch the bullet in flight, as I recall. I also recall that photographers on the internet were questioning why you would use high speed film like that, unless you knew ahead of time that you might catch his head exploding from a bullet. And like Vance said a few nights ago, they should’ve made that shot, by all rights, he should be dead.
They didn’t just want to kill him, they wanted to create misery from the act of chaos as well. They were being sadistic, as well as psychopathic. I suppose it is completely a stretch to claim they enjoy it, it’s one of those “know but can’t prove” things.
This is just one example, but I would claim it is the rule, not the exception.
I would also add that they really haven’t changed, what has changed is who they consider targets. Which, is all of us now. Back in the good old days, it was the Soviets and that was distracting enough to them to leave the rest of us alone. Well, the Soviets are gone now. There was an apocryphal story about a Soviet general during the collapse, saying something to the effect of “We are going to do one last terrible thing to you. We are going to deprive you of an enemy.”
@Mary Bennett (#215):
About a quarter of a century ago, one of the most intelligent students I ever had, a young Cajun woman who was born, raised and educated in Louisiana, pointed out to me that English Common Law does not apply in Louisiana, which still is governed under the Code Napoléon. I saw no reason to doubt her at the time. She knew her home state well, and I did not.
@Tyler #196: I agree with your argument that criminalizing opinions about the holocaust is counterproductive. However, I do think you use “revisionist” as an emotional snarl word here.
German archives have been available since 1945, have been extensively researched, and today there is no point in going over the estimates again. Soviet archives were opened in 1991, so revising the numbers of Stalin’s victims based on those newly available better data made sense. The Wikipedia page wades deep into the discussion.
All the best for Monika and Isabella! My daughter spent a week in the ICU a week after birth, but everything turned out all right in the end.
Dearest Larkrise @183: You reference DJT by quoting him “…how he loved to grab women by the 🐈⬛“ but that leads me to believe you’ve never actually listened to, watched, and pondered the entire Access Hollywood clip from 2005. Here it is:
https://youtu.be/EHuo2Kj6y_g?t=17&si=yggM8eqQXsOW18D8
Yes, The Donald comes across as crude and crass. But hold on: his comments about trying and failing to have sex with a married woman are NOT what the press focused on, even though they are more damning of his morals. The 🐈 grab comment is actually about the power dynamics in Hollywood: “And when you’re a star they let you do it. You can do anything.”
Both my wife and I have experience in Hollywood; she was formerly married to a second-tier actor who worked there, and I’ve done a variety of things including some stunt flying for TV. Both of us, when we watched the clip, recognized what DJT was really talking about when he made his famous “grab” statement: Hollywood morality. The decades of selecting female actresses for roles based on how well they did on the “casting couch” are quite well documented. The massive amount of Hollywood drug use, casual sex, sex for favors or roles (not just by women, BTW), and the fact that the pornography industry in the San Fernando Valley is the “feeder” for much of Hollywood’s personnel (in front of and behind the cameras) is inescapable to notice if you’ve worked there. Hollywood is sleazy!
Trump had a major TV show for many seasons. The purest of folks who work in Hollywood quite rapidly become hardened and cynical about the business. On one shoot I was on, I commented to the stunt-team lead on the lack of capability and downright ineptness of the second-unit director we were flying for, and wondered how someone so incapable could be in such a position; the stunt-team lead shrugged and said “He’s the cocaine supplier for the first-unit director.” Ahh. For those not in the industry: first-unit does the directing & filming with lead actors; second-unit does accompanying footage (think scenery) where, among other things, body doubles do dangerous things. I got to be the body double for a famous actress in one episode! She said on meeting me: “He’s skinny; I like that.” Clothes make the man, or woman in this case, plus some other accessories (blush.)
So Trump talking to an insider, using the lingo that Hollywood insiders use, shows how he’s capable of understanding, identifying with, and integrating into various groups. Shrug. Trump is nowhere as profane as LBJ was. Trump’s promiscuity pales in comparison with other Presidents. The moral purity of his current opponent isn’t exactly stellar; note the various unflattering nicknames for her.
The key question: does Trump have executive skills that would make him a good President? He does have a track record in the Presidential role… as does his opponent. Trump has qualities that have caused RFK Jr., Elon Musk, Tulsi Gabbard, and Vivek Ramaswamy to join his team, and people like Russell Brand and Jordan Peterson to strongly endorse him. KH has who on her team? A smattering of Hollywood stars and performance celebrities (see my discussion above, yikes) and, for gosh sakes, Dick Cheney. Something to meditate on. 😊
Larkrise, I don’t like Trump, but I being rather far away from the US have that luxury. I agree that there is a degree of levity and jollity in respect of Trump the Symbol amongst the readership here. There’s also I think less support for Trump the Man than say in the height of the kek wars in 2016.
What I suspect a lot of it is is that the incredibly intelligent and increasingly wise bunch here are just not tying their energy or karma to either the Trump thing or the Kamala thing, and what they like about Trump is that there may be less centralised control.
But we will see.
Hey hey JMG, I am a long-time student of Jungian matters, and I understand projection etc. I don’t think DT is “monstrously evil”; I listen to his words and I take them seriously, and react on that score. I don’t know why you think that is “less objective than I think” — shouldn’t we judge a man by what he says and does? — words and actions that I often find unsavoury and sometimes frightening; I am not sure what you think I am projecting onto him. Meanwhile, I don’t hate him, I do my best to ignore him, just as I do Kamala Harris and Joe Biden. I also have no truck with the hysterical anti-Trump brigade. He is not the anti-Christ. But he may turn into some kind of Fascist, or enable others to do so. However, as you point out, so may the Democrats.
My perplexity has been that I find many on this forum to be wilfully blind to Trump’s faults. You find me wilfully blind to Trump’s virtues. Perhaps I am, but I haven’t seen any qualities that I would call virtues (could you enlighten me — and I don’t mean the qualities that people truly are projecting on him, ie that he is God’s chosen one, etc), yet I understand why Americans are flocking to him — he has undeniable charisma, showmanship, shrewdness, and an ability to make (some) people feel seen and heard.. Vote-winner, sure. Leadership, not so much.
Anyway, America is stuck between a rock and a hard place, I agree with @Mary Bennett (217) that a new party for “decent, capable people, of ability and accomplishment”, would be such a blessing, a gift. Who knows? Stranger things have happened. I can’t see anything good coming out of either the Democrats or the Republicans at this point.
@Darren (190) I heard Bill Clinton speak at an event once. It was actually quite terrifying. He seduced everybody in the room by the incredible quality of his speech, which was about history and his part in it. He spoke brilliantly and fluently and fascinatingly, without notes. Everyone was riveted to their chairs. We were eating out of his hand; it was disturbing, as though he had put us under a spell. I had never before been in a room with somebody who had that kind of charisma. It’s a gift, and unfortunately, as you point out, it can be wildly abused. During that evening, several female friends of mine said that he looked at them in a way which left them in no doubt that he was a sexual predator. Is this, as someone has mentioned on this forum, normal for presidents, for people with so much power? If so, isn’t there something really horribly wrong with the system? (Um, durr!)
I agree that people may make excuses for him because they prefer his politics to Trump’s. I agree that that’s entirely hypocritical. We all need to take the planks out of our own eyes before criticising the speck in that of others’, that’s for sure.
*However, while I agree that Trump is indeed a personification of America (which I think, au contraire, makes many Americans in fact extremely comfortable with him), my main worry about a Trump presidency, apart from it being the death knell to the last hope of putting any brakes on climate change (possibly futile anyway), is him being used by others who have quite serious shenanigans in mind. I don’t think he personally cares much which way the wind blows. He’ll ride where it suits him, and not necessarily where it suits America, or, for that matter, the rest of the world. But you’re right, I suppose you could say the same of any president (not Carter though).
Come back Jimmy all is forgiven!
Rita Elizabeth Rippetoe (#182)
My first instinctual answer would be Karl Kautsky. Because his failure, I think, was most pivotal. But if actually given the time travel opportunity you describe, I would have to chose someone else. But if there were someone to take Karl Kautsky’s place and do what he could have (at great peril to himself) and should have, namely proclaim opposition to WW1 right at its outset and thereby earn the moral capital necessary to make a difference later in the war when ordinary folks in Germany and France and to some extent Britain were wear of the war.
Leaving Kautsky aside, I would chose Stalin before Hitler because there is more chance that his replacement would have been less evil. And Hitler’s replacement might have had more sense and avoided Hitler’s fatal mistakes.
Hi John Michael,
A little eerie chunk of intuition tells me that the bloke with the moustache gave the crowd exactly what they wanted, for he would have known and felt it. I now forget which Ancient Greek made the possibly derogatory observation upon the ‘rule of the mob’ but Germany in WWII was a good example of where things could go. Mind you, the elites (or any group of leaders really) can just as easily stuff things up.
Cheers
Chris
A reply to Martin Back, comment #214 …
Just wanted to put this out there, in case you or anyone else is interested. Stephen Fry wrote a novel in 1996 called “Making History,” dealing with an alternate timeline in which AH never existed.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Making_History_(novel)
-Eugene
TemporaryReality, that’s one of the things that can certainly do it. The crucial point is that people need to be convinced that no other party is listening to their concerns.
Mary, oh, they’ll probably get a prize too, but I’m hoping the chimp researchers will get one.
Other Owen, that is to say, you and Larkrise are doing exactly the same thing. You’re both pulling a few specific events out of context, treating them as typical of the target of your hatred, and going from there. That’s your right, of course, but it’s not convincing to those who don’t share your hatred.
Larkrise, in that case, you’ll doubtless recall Jung’s discussions of the way that people who are projecting the shadow onto somebody will defend that projection with all the resources at their disposal. (See my comment to Other Owen immediately above.) Once again, you will continue to be astonished, amazed, baffled, blindsided, and so on by the fact that other people don’t share your assessment until you consider the possibility that it’s your assessment, and not an objective statement about the object of your hate.
Chris, I think you’re probably right.
“Of course the extent to which the Highland clearances drove Scots out of Scotland, and more or less forced them to go elsewhere in the Empire or starve, was also a factor!” JMG
Quite! And that was, of course, implemented by Scottish landowners. If I remember rightly (Scotland’s Empire, TM Devine) it was a bit of carrot and stick, the “middle classes”, Doctors etc often had positions arranged, and workers were bribed with travel costs (which is not in any way to imply any kind of altruism!).
Interestingly, I’ve read (US Historian) that the US culture around the right to bear arms (not something I’m a fan of 🙂 ) in part comes from the immigration of Highland Scots, whose social structures were arranged around clans, and were hostile to the ideas strengthening the power of the nation state by the Edinburgh and London ruling classes, thereby reducing the power of the clans, leading them to be quite keen to hang onto their guns.
(I really must use a more complex name – from a previous comment I thought you had no idea what I was on about – which is not a reaction I’m unfamiliar with 🙂 )
@JMG,
I’m curious if you or anyone else here is familiar with the phrase “The Second Career of Adolf Hitler.” It’s apparently the title of an essay by the Frenchman Reynaud Camus, who once summarized it saying:
“In ”La Deuxième Carrière d’Adolph Hitler” (The second career of Adolf Hitler) I argued that Europe never recovered from the Hitler trauma, that it was like a patient afflicted with a form of cancer, Nazism, and that overly zealous surgeons continued operating endlessly until, at the slightest indication of the disease, all vital organs were removed: no more heart, brain, lungs, nerves, virility, limbs. Hitler comes up in all our sentences, as an inverted reference, as the absolute figure of the negative; and his career as a ghost, his second career, reversed, though less criminal than the first one, has had even more severe consequences, since it means the death of Europe. That which racism had failed to accomplish in 1945 – the destruction of European civilization – antiracism is today a step away from achieving.”
Essentially, European progressives (apparently in Camus’ time this wasn’t as big of a problem in America as in Europe) had so successfully built up the Hitler-as-ultimate-evil archetype that they could discredit and ultimately exorcise many necessary qualities of a healthy society – from basic respect for police, the decent art and architecture, to a government that prioritizes the interests of its own citizens over foreigners – merely by association with Hitler.
It seems like our host here is making a remarkably similar point. Hitler isn’t the biggest evil in history by any objective standard, and he’s far from the most successful evil, what with his regime having been thoroughly dead for the last 79 years even as many forms of communism live on. But keeping up the Hitler obsession is a source of power for the current ruling elite that defines itself, rightly or wrongly, in opposition to him.
Here’s another interesting essay – Killing the Ghosts by Curtis Yarvin aka Mencius Moldbug: https://graymirror.substack.com/p/killing-the-ghosts
Yarvin also tackles the issue of what Hitler is a much bigger pop culture presence than Stalin, Mao, etc. Though if you want to read it you will have to put up with a lot of hyperbole and surrealism and long historical tangents (of course for some of us that is what makes Moldbug fun.) His basic idea is that the current regime under which Americans and Europeans live is an oligarchy that calls itself a democracy. The biggest threat to a decadent oligarchy is a resurgence of real democracy, allied with monarchy in the form of a charismatic populist leader (i.e. Caesarism, or in America right now, Trumpistry). Since Naziism is the single worst example of charismatic populism gone wrong, the defenders of the oligarchic status quo like to obsess over Hitler and the Nazis while ignoring the bigger crimes of the (oligarchic and technocratic) communist regimes.
There was a propaganda poster from WWII that encouraged wartime citizens to save gas and tires for the war effort by carpooling. The poster said , ” When you ride alone, you ride with Hitler.” The interesting thing is the artwork. It shows an average American Citizen in an open car with an transparent outline drawing of Hitler in the passengers seat. The thing that is interesting to me is that Hitler is fairly bland and innocuous looking compared to the much more rabid depictions of him in recent years.
Martin Back, re: if Hitler had been killed….
There was an Englishman, Henry Tandey, orphan and war hero, who was awarded the VC, DCM and MM for valor in the Great War, who according to both himself and Hitler, passed up a clear shot at Hitler on the battlefield in Sep 1918.
Tandey said that he had the drop on Hitler but he couldn’t bring himself to pull the trigger. Hitler recounted that he was certain he’d never see Germany again. When Tandey lowered his rifle, Hitler thanked him and took off.
Hitler supposedly brought up the incident during a visit from Neville Chamberlain.
Historians dispute the account, saying that military records put Hitler and Tandey out of proximity from one another when the event allegedly took place. Tandey and Hitler both said otherwise. Who do you believe?
Could it be that there were TWO acts of mercy, one with Tandey declining to kill a German soldier other than Hitler, and yet another event with another Brit serviceman declining to shoot Hitler himself. IOW, both Hitler and Tandey are recounting events that actually took place, but perhaps not quite as they recall them.
Some say that if Hitler had died the day before Kristallnacht he’d now be regarded as Germany’s greatest leader. I don’t know really, but I’d say that some of Germany’s recent leaders would surely be out of the running.
Robert Mathiesen, right you are. I forgot about Louisiana. I do believe, however, that that American individualism, which folks from other countries find so confusing, is grounded in the principle of equal before the law. In theory, judge and jury are not supposed to consider what clan you come from, who is your patron, or how rich you are.
Michael X, I read somewhere that after WWII, an interviewer asked a top Japanese admiral why had Japan not invaded the US west coast. He answered that if we had, there would have been a gun pointing at us from behind every tree. That was when I realized that the “well regulated militia” is a good thing. What is not being investigated or at least reported about mass shooters in the US is what kinds of meds are they using. Pharmaceutical companies have a lot more influence that they should.
Mr. Nobody – It is my understanding that the Nazi’s didn’t originally set out to exterminate the Jews, but simply to expel them from Germany. It was only when no other country would accept them (see, for example, the Merchant Ship St. Louis’s Voyage of the Damned) that they decided that the expedient thing to do was round them up and murder them. Once the decision was taken, it was carried out with ruthless German efficiency.
I read that two Jewish men were prominent in Hitler’s life. One was Dr Eduard Bloch, who attended Hitler’s mother when she was sick with cancer and who Hitler later praised as a noble Jew. During the Nazi era, Hitler protected Bloch and got him out of harm’s way. According to one account, when he emigrated, Bloch managed to sell his house for a good price, unlike other Jews who had to let their dwellings go for a song.
The other was Hugo Guttmann, a German-Jewish army officer and Hitler’s boss during WW1, who recommended Hitler for the Iron Cross 1st Class. Guttmann was also given special protection and managed to get out of Germany.
Emil Maurice was a close associate of Hitler, a real head buster, who served as Hitler’s chauffeur and bodyguard, who was a member of the SA and SS where he was member number 2 (Hitler was member number 1). He was also Jewish through his great grandfather which caused a lot of grief with Himmler who wanted Maurice out of the SS.
Hitler protected Maurice much to Himmler’s consternation, declaring Maurice and his brothers honorary Aryans. According to one account I read, Hitler also protected other Jews that served in Hitler’s WW1 regiment.
It was a rare thing to be even a small part Jewish in the SS. Word has it that Reinhard Heydrich, by all accounts an embodiment of evil, violinist, first head of the SD, blond beast of the Gestapo, the man with the iron heart, had Jewish ancestry. Others say it wasn’t so. But I could see it because this was something that Hitler could hold over his head. Himmler too for that matter. History is full of perversities.
The very first research paper I wrote in university was on the Weimar Republic and over 60 years later, I have not forgotten what I learned from my research. The economic pressures that the average German had to deal with were horrible, so it was no wonder they would choose to follow Hitler since he promised them a better future. Not that they ended up with that, and there were other factions (the communists and socialists) who were promising the same better future. Hitler just out maneuvered them. But his success was basically because of the economy.
And how are the economies in the west doing? We’ve seen populist movements winning elections in Europe. In the US, it looks like a Trump win next Tuesday. Here in Canada we have to wait for another year to get rid of our idiot PM.
The next few years are going to be very interesting. We are in for some very big changes.
> Thus one of the things that worries me right now is the possibility that the decades immediately ahead may see a revival of Nazism. By this I don’t mean the emergence of some political viewpoint that gets labeled “Nazi” by its enemies—we’ve had plenty of those already, on both sides of the political spectrum—but a literal attempt to rehabilitate Hitler’s National Socialism, or something very much like it, as a modern political stance.
I think that fear is misguided, as history rhymes but doesn’t repeat – it doesn’t repeat the exact same way I mean.
So, in Europe for example there’s the “rise of far right” threat being peddled by the elites as a means to stomp upon their opponents, but even though some of the parties they talk about have historical ties with the post war far right, their rise is due to different agendas and mechanics than Nazism. Of course today having a disagreement upon rampant illegal immigration, globalism, or the cult of progress and all its shibboleths is considered “fascist” (even when the modern “fascist” positions are the same, or even to the left of what demoracts that fought actual Nazism in WWII believed in, and even when a lot of the modern progressive shibboleths are things that even a hardcore WWII era leftist commie would consider insanity or depravity).
But the real heir to Nazis is today’s managerial techno-corporate elites, the WWII winner who took the Nazi lessons, kept what worked, and what could benefit it, and enriched it, while giving it the name of progress, democracy, etc. And they have found new ways and new social structrures (like government funded NGOs) and new tech toys to help them rule. In the area of mass propaganda and mass surveillance for example, the Nazis can’t hold a candle to them. And while they haven’t exterminated people internally (yet, except the slavery, Jim Crow, McCarthyism, and such), they have a huge history of exterminating and enslaving peoples and whole nations externally. If push comes to shove, they wont hesitate to target their internal “deplorables” (see Macron, Trudeau, Starmer and others for example, and if you’re a fan of free speech, you’ll despair to see how it’s treated in today’s Germany).
And that’s before they also fully add AI, and other such tools to their arsenal…
Larkrise,
The pragmatic definition of a leader is someone who has followers. Trump has followers. Like him or not, he is a leader.
Sure, he has faults. But in the scheme of things, I consider many of his faults to be inconsequential. At one point (in a post weeks or months ago), JMG made a comment about people using Trump’s ego as a battering ram to fight the establishment. For those of us who want a change, we need someone like Trump, warts and all.
And, really, you haven’t seen *any* virtue? Courage is considered a virtue, you know. They’ve gone after him and his family with investigations and lawsuits and bullets, and he is still willing to fight them.
And, no, I don’t want Carter back: https://inflationdata.com/articles/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/Misery-Index2-July-2021.png
When I was growing up in the 80s, we learned history as black and white. I recall as a child wondering why George Washington was so purely good, and why there weren’t any leaders around as good as him! In the same way I learned that there was something uniquely evil about Hitler.
My observation recently is that younger people are starting to realize that Hitler was just another world leader, more or less just as bad as FDR and Stalin. (In fact, based on your post it would seem you’d place him somewhere in between the two, in terms of “net badness.” That agrees with what I’ve read elsewhere.) Maybe with the passage of time younger people are able to look at Hitler more dispassionately. I’m not noticing this among those Boomer-age and older.
I think another factor with regard to Hitler, in the US at least, is that since Jews make up such a large portion of the professional managerial class, and they are the only European ethnicity who has intentionally not simply melted into the mass of “White people” (as every other European nationality has done), there is naturally greater attention paid to their historical experience, at the expense of other ethnic groups’ experiences. (This may also explain why there seems to be a perception that the Jewish Holocaust is the only Holocaust in recent history.)
More generally, it’s fascinating to me how leaders get classified as “good” or “bad” with seemingly no relation to any objective measures. From what I’ve read, Obama personally authorized drone strikes of over 5,000 people, which in my understanding of the act is tantamount to murder. And similarly, from everything I’ve read, Trump has tried to avoid war throughout his political career. Yet unless you live under a rock, you know exactly which former president to call good and which to call evil if you get in the position of talking to a random stranger about the subject.
Not very scientific for a society that prides itself on science. Peer pressure indeed.
Michael X, our frontier culture here in the US had its first draft among the Scots communities of the Appalachians — the usual phrase here is “Scotch-Irish,” because most of them (as my ancestors did) lived in northern Ireland for a while before emigrating to the American colonies. That was one major factor in the tradition of gun ownership in the US. The other, of course, was our experience of the best way to deal with British colonial governments…
Sandwiches, I’m not, and I clearly need to change that — from your description, it sounds well worth a close read.
Dennis, you’re quite correct:
That’s fascinating.
Smith, that’s remarkably common among people with abstract bigotries toward groups of people. “All X are bad, but not my neighbor, who’s actually a great guy.” I just wish they could generalize…
Annette, I’m glad to hear this. I wish more people would study the Weimar Republic!
European, I’m well aware of all this. I still stand by my prediction. The path to power taken by Hitler, Mussolini, et al. is still wide open — especially since the elite groups you mention have proved so stunningly inept at economic management.
Blue Sun, I hope that’s true of younger people. My generation has a lot to atone for.
Hi JMG,
Mid-fifties in Rhode Island? Egads — heatwave. At the moment, roughly 11:30 pm Central Time, it is a respectable 39º F. here in southern Wisconsin, vs a scandalously balmy 54º F. in Rhode Island. I am reveling in the brrr Nordic chill brrr (🥶). (I step outside and my underwear freezes.)
One must be “healthy” (🏂) to immigrate to (🥾) Wisconsin (😉). Those with poor blood🩸circulation stay away or risk being swept far, far away (🧹) by wind (💨) and witches (🧙🏼♀️), and whatever.
I will never tell (🤫) (🗣️📢🎇).
💨Northwind Grandma💨⏳
Dane County, Wisconsin, USA
Robert Mathieson 219
> She knew her home state [Louisiana] well, and I did not.
States’ Rights — it is a thing.
💨Northwind Grandma💨📯
Dane County, Wisconsin, USA
Larkwise 223
> My perplexity has been that I find many on this forum to be wilfully blind to Trump’s faults.
I see Trump’s faults. I have followed along his antics for years. For the first couple years, I just DID NOT UNDERSTAND HIM at all. I was totally befuddled. I stumbled around as if drunk in my bewilderment. Then I stopped listening-to-mainstream-media (MSM). My brain calmed down and I started thinking for myself.
I repeat, I started thinking for myself.
For the next year, I simply took “information in” about Trump, reserving judgment, from any source that came my way, passive and active. I had to “take in” a helluva lot of information about him, and had to wait a helluva long time not making judgments about him. Then, in one moment, WHAM, spontaneously, my mind gelstalt-ed, when I wasn’t looking, not that I expected a gestalt — I didn’t — it just slapped me upside the head: I understood Trump. One might say, it was magic. I don’t know HOW I understood Trump in an instant. By what means I understand is a mystery, and may remain forever a mystery. I cannot explain it.
My personal Trump-gestalt was hard won. No-one could do the work for me. No-one told me. Hence, no-one can sway me. I am rock-solid, because the development of this belief was entirely my own, within myself, by my own inner doings. Anyone who tries to undo my conviction will see how violent I can get real fast. MSM tried to manipulate me (along with everyone else) but, by having a couple years of experience of immoral ones attempting hundreds of manipulations on my mind, I had developed a MSM-immunity. And man, do politicians not like that attribute in a person.
I understand Trump. I am not a follower of Trump. I don’t try to convince anyone about Trump because each person must go through their own particular process which no-one else can duplicate. My process is not your process, or anyone else’s. I had tons of trust issues I had to internally resolve while coming to my conviction. I “get” Trump. I encourage each person to reserve judgment until (s)he gestalts. One can set up one’s mind to leave open the possibility of gestalt, but that is the extent of it.
I see ALL of the faults, as far as I know, that have been publicized about Trump. I am not blind. Trump-supporters are neither blind nor stupid, nor will we be discounted.
Trump-supporters see AND accept. I have noticed that people, let’s say, “who have not gestalt-ed” (non-Trumpers) think have Trump-people are somehow deficient. We aren’t. We have each found our own way, each individual, happening to come to the same conclusion, that “we understand Trump but cannot transmit it.” Why should we try to transmit it, when it is so personal?
My gestalt is that “‘there is Trump’ in the foreground,” and then I look beyond him, focusing on the background/landscape. I am looking at the same scene, but my eyes focus back and forth, ad infinitum, between foreground and background/landscape — in other words, I believe what I am saying is that I see the bigger picture, and even the big picture. Gestalt furnishes the big picture. I can safely say that when one does not see the big picture in viewing Trump, one has not worked hard enough at the possibility of “seeing” beyond the obvious (in the sense of ‘a seer’).
One will see if one wills to see it, sort of. One will see Trump if one wills to see Trump, sort of.
If the process sounds spiritual, that is because the process *IS* spiritual. It is all very individual.
Just listen.
Listen, listen, and listen more.
💨Northwind Grandma💨👁️
Dane County, Wisconsin, USA
@ JMG 151. I had read somewhere that Wittgenstein and Hitler had attended the same school — did they know each other?
Apologies if someone else has mentioned it, but I couldn’t help but think of Mel Brooks’ the Producers on reading this thread. It is perhaps the greatest example ever of American Jewish humor (particularly the original film with Gene Wilder and the incomparable Zero Mostel) — and — perhaps — the ultimate revenge on Hitler. One simply can’t imagine such a film being made about Stalin, Mao, or Pol Pot — and one does wonder why; same reason, I suppose that Hitler ended up the Number One villain of all time for Americans.
“It’s spring time for Hitler and Germany; winter for Poland and France…. We’re marching to a faster pace; look out! Here comes the Master Race!” … Something like that just doesn’t work for Stalin.
Dear JMG.
I am not, as I have said before, in the least bit amazed that people are voting for Trump. They want rid of the Democrats, at the very least.
I don’t, as I have said before, *hate Trump.
What is at issue here is the notion of projection. When Trump says something derogatory about women or minorities, it saddens and disturbs me. You seem to imply that I should override these responses — they are projecting my shadow onto Trump. I will not override these responses — they are legitimate. They are not my shadow, they are my light, if anything.
My original question was wondering, not how it is that people are voting for Trump, nor why, but —yes— surprise that folk on this platform seem to be able to overlook and normalise the racist, sexist, violent statements that he makes, as though they are completely inconsequential.
One post mocked Kamala Harris for making word salads. Of the two candidates, she isn’t the one I would mark out for this particular foible.
I am doing my best not to be biased against Trump, and I have this forum to thank for that. But I find that there is a bias *for him here that excuses him where he should be challenged. Personally, I don’t wish to make excuses for either candidate. Kamala Harris talking about grocery prices in the same breath as Gaza was sickening. Is *this projection too?
Last century was the Age of Ideology. All those -isms; national socialism, communism, fascism, democratic liberalism, blah-de-blah. This century is shaping up to be the Age of Oligarchy. There are too many people with too much money who have discovered they can influence, direct, or pervert any form of government.
I’m coming round more and more to economist Michael Hudson’s view that the natural tendency of any economic system is to drift towards oligarchy. He puts it down to money greed: the more money you get, the more money you want. I think also differential risk comes into it. The creditors get their interest irrespective of circumstances; the debtors have to cope with good and bad harvests, boom times and bust sales. Slowly the creditors ratchet up the obligations.
The way rulers of ancient times solved the problem of their productive people like farmers falling into the clutches of the creditors and becoming indentured servants, unavailable to the ruler for service in the army or for public works etc, was to declare a jubilee and wipe out all debts. Whether that is practicable these days I don’t know, but do we have the same problem? Yup.
@Random acts of karma
Thank you for your comments, they are helpful.
You are right, he is a leader. Because I don’t consider him to be leading anyone anywhere except in the direction of his own advantage, like Boris Johnson in the UK, I didn’t consider that to be true leadership, but I am wrong. Even a lemming who leads others off a cliff is a leader. Pragmatic indeed.
In the scheme of things, you consider many of his faults to be inconsequential. Thank you for those words, they are helpful. I can understand and respect your position, while not holding it myself.
You may be right about Trump being the only tool for the job, but as I have said before, I believe the cure will be even worse than the disease. This is a subjective view and not shared widely on this site.
That is a very good point about courage. Yes, he does have it. It was amazing to see him straight after he was shot. Thank you for reminding me of that. He did indeed look like a true leader (my version of) at that moment, and I stand corrected.
The misery index doesn’t correlate with actual misery, but that is a fair point I suppose. One thing I loved about Carter was that he had the nous to install solar panels on the White House to provide 75% of the energy needed, while setting stringent goals for renewable energy in the country at large. Reagan took the panels off the roof. Trump thinks there is no issue with fossil fuels except where to find them and dig them out. This is an issue that I cannot consider inconsequential.
Something I think I am gnawing at here is the uncomfortable truth that good leaders are often bad men, and the obverse is true also. It was said of Charles II that he was a good man but a bad king and we know where that got him. I suppose I am hopelessly naive in wanting my leaders to be both relatively good at leading and relatively good as people …
Are you remotely bothered about the unbridled power that Musk is going to have under Trump? I am.
Re ‘on the topic of cults’:
I was trying (and failing) to articulate that usually, a cult has a clear vision of the coming end times and how to work towards being among the chosen ones. Then those prophecies fail, and irritation ensues.
We on the other hand are that one cult whose days really are numbered, yet who seem willing to not preparing, even recognizing one bit of what awaits us.
@Mary Bennet Interesting point, I’d never thought of that. I live in France, and was surprised to learn that gun ownership is very high here (hunters), and every year several people get killed “accidentally” in hunting areas (which is basically the whole countryside). But apart from gang activity (where the’re killing each other, and the numbers of murders are fairly low) there is precious little of the “senseless” mass shootings, in schools or elsewhere, compared to the USA (although there have a couple of such incidents very recently). I don’t feel any less safe here, or read more about gun crime than in the UK (where I’m from), where there is precious little gun ownership (a few farmers, hunters) since a mass School shooting in Dunblane, Scotland. The law was changed rapidly after that.
Two things you have said JMG which I heartily agree with, that all the people who are shrieking about Trump could have rendered him completely powerless by the simple act of putting pressure on their representatives to do something significant about the plight of the working class in the US. It would have been the simplest thing in the world.
Hard agree. The Democrats heartily deserve to lose.
The second thing is your wish that whoever wins, it’s decisive,
I think it unlikely. But a clear win from either side would really be the best outcome of all.
JMG, Larktise, et al, whomever might be interested: I did already vote, for the Democratic ticket. I do not “hate” The Donald, I merely do not respect him. The only politician I have ever come close to “hating” was Mme. Clinton, AKA Killary, AKA Shillary, because I thought she made all of us white women look bad and I thought her simply not qualified for the presidency. Harris, on paper at least, is qualified; the women has paid her dues, and I do not find her objectionable in point of character. What else I think about her I believe I have already stated on this forum.
My main objection to the Republican ticket is not Trump, but the collection of cultists and pro-rapacious capitalism grifters around him. Cultists: folks emerging from Church, earnestly assuring an interviewer that their thrice married, philandering leader is “Doing God’s work.” I doubt they would be similarly forbearing about a neighbor whose personal morals resembled that of their Dear Leader.
If the Democrats lose this, they will have no one but themselves to blame. Our host himself said on a podcast some time ago that if we had had a fair election in 2016, Bernie Sanders would have become the president. Notice how no interviewer has ever asked Bernie what he might have done as president? It ain’t just Bernie, either. The unholy alliance of DNC and AIPAC has united to keep what I at least consider good people out of Democratic primaries.
Hi John,
Fascinating post.
What I find interesting about the Hitler mythical narrative is how it has shifted over the decades.
For about two decades after the war, and really into the 1980s, the Holocaust wasn’t the singular event it now is remembered as part of the Nazi history. It was the 80s and 90s that it such a powerful thing in the collective memory of Europe.
With the rising anti-Semitism across Europe, and the rising numbers of non-European demographics who tend to be more hostile to Israel (and to a lesser extent Jews in general) I wonder if there will be a downgrading of the Holocaust in the decades ahead.
Fewer school trips to Auschwitz in Poland prior to the potential attempt to revive Nazism and the Hitler cult among some elements within our society and politics by the 2040s/2050s.
On a different matter, have you ever looked into the claims that Hitler and his wife fled to Argentina after the war and lived for years onwards. I’ve read a book about it and it is certainly interesting. Some powerful anecdotal stories from quite simple people who swear they met Hitler in the 1940s/1950s (cleaners etc).
Blue Sun, Obama thought it his duty, as president, to oversee what our military was doing in our name. No plausible deniability for him. I doubt it could be recovered now, but the War Nerd had an interesting take on the drone strikes. War Nerd thought Obama was a good CinC but “couldn’t get a good gloat on”. War Nerd took the position that Militant Islam had, in effect, declared war on us, so we had every right to go after them. I have to say, I can’t disagree. If anyone on The Right feels like doing some actual reporting, they might want to tease out the true story about how Congresswoman Omar and family arrived in the USA, because the official story makes no sense.
Northwind, I see you’re having fun with emojis. Actually, it’s much closer to a normal autumn day here in Rhode Island today — 56°F, rumpled gray clouds, and an overnight low of 33° expected.
Tag, there doesn’t seem to be any specific evidence one way or another, but they were classmates…
…so it’s very probable that they did.
Larkrise, these questions of yours have already been answered in detail by other commenters. Nobody’s saying that Trump’s a paragon; nobody’s saying he doesn’t have serious flaws. All that anyone here is saying is that (a) he’s preferable to Harris, and (b) the policies he tried to put in place during his time in the White House, and to some extent succeeded, are preferable to those that the current incumbent has pursued. If your only response to all this is “Yeah, but he said mean things!” you’re not going to get any reply different from those you’ve already gotten.
Martin, that’s very much what Spengler suggested, though his formulation was different. He argued that an age of ideologies gives way to an age of personalities. That’s one of the ways that problems of the sort you’ve outlined get solved: personalities in power can take decisive action that a more ideological approach prevents.
Michaelz, many thanks for the explanation. Hmm! Yeah, that’s an interesting analysis.
Larkrise, thanks for this.
Mary, so noted. Thanks for a clear, thoughtful discussion of your choices. Mine are different, but hey, we still have at least the shreds of democracy left in this country.
Forecasting, I think it’s quite possible that the marketing of the Nazi extermination of Jews as the Worst Genocide Ever™ will turn out to be a temporary thing. It’s rooted in the domestic politics of the Western nations, and will change as political trends change. As for Hitler-survival claims, I’ve seen a number of them, and much prefer the version — I think it was Miguel Serrano’s — that has him fleeing to Antartica and descending from there to the inside of the Hollow Earth, whence he boarded a starship for the distant galaxy of the Green Ray. Since there’s nothing more than hearsay evidence for any of these theories, why not go for one that’s really colorful? 😉
Larkwise
This would be my motto: “My Trump, Myself.”
Or as a group: “Our Trump, Ourselves. §
§ Take-off on 1970s book “Our Bodies, Ourselves.”
ISBN 1439190666.
💨Northwind Grandma💨🦵💪
Dane County, Wisconsin, USA
JMG, most assassination attempts depended on armed men coming close to Hitler, which obviously was easier for officers to do. One of the two that actually exploded anything was Georg Elser’s attempt. He was a worker with both socialist and Christian leanings.
In general, I have thought about your expression that the Nazis “used the right when they could”. I am not sure (and I say this will all sincerity) how much ideological difference there was between old-school conservatives (e.g. former DNVP voters and/or monarchists) and Nazis after about 1934, when the NSDAP had renounced all aspirations to a social revolution. There was very little appetite for a “lean state” or decentralization at that time in Germany, whether on the right or on the left.
A minority of devout Christians (both Catholic and Protestant) distanced themselves from Hitler and the Party. None of my four grandparents did, though a grand-uncle apparently, according to his autobiography. Otherwise, among religious and less religious conservatives, I see class-based snobbery, and I see people afraid of Hitler losing the war, but not much else.
So again, I am not sure how to distinguish between Nazis “using the right when they could” and Nazis blending more and more into the right, especially after 1934. I do agree that there can be a right, including a populist right, that is not Nazi at all, in Germany and a fortiori in the USA.
Having mentioned Marie-Louise von Franz above, I remembered her book ‘The Problem of the Puer Aeternus’ which has surprisingly much to say about the historical Nazis and the German soul.
That book is actually a series of lectures delivered in 1959/1960. Its topic is the archetype of the puer aeternus (eternal youth, with ‘youth’ as in ‘young man’) and its sway over modern Western societies, in particular how so many young men seem not to want to grow up. I read this when I was quite young, and von Franz’s impish grandma persona was just the right one to make me swallow the bitter pill. So when Jordan Peterson came up later, I immediately understood his attractivity to lost young men, even though his persona does not appeal to me at all and I find his way of rattling on frustrating.
Now, von Franz’s book has a very interesting approach to the topic: she comments, chapter by chapter, on two works of fiction that embody the ‘puer aeternus’ archetype. The first is Saint-Exupéry’s ‘Little Prince’; more surprising is the second, an occult novel called ‘Das Reich ohne Raum’ (‘The kingdom without space’ – note how Nazi the German title sounds to us now!) by one Bruno Goetz, originally published in 1919. The novel, which I have also read, follows a young man born into a sleepy northern German university town as he is torn between a beckoning Pan-like trickster spirit followed by a horde of boys, and a conservative magician. Towards the end there are some apocalyptic visions, which can be interpreted as a premonition of WWII and all its horrors, but the conflict does not get resolved, at least not in this life. (Note that the same happens with Faust!)
Von Franz’s diagnosis of the German soul is complex, but these are the main points:
(1) Especially in the northern, Protestant parts, there is a huge ‘hole in the staircase’ between the Christian and the older, Pagan layer. (Think of these not as religions, but as religious sensibilities, ways of relating to the world.) In the Catholic parts of Germany, and even more so in Southern Europe, Christianity flowed more naturally out of Paganism, so it’s easier to link the two. Of course, Jung himself said something quite similar in ‘Wotan’.
(2) Germany, and especially Protestant Germany, has always been weak on the feeling side. All the anima figures in Goetz’s novel are quite colourless and leave little impression on the protagonist. That is a problem because a strong anima would help one to bridge the ‘Christian’ and the ‘Pagan’ aspects mentioned in (1).
(3) From her practice as an analyst and her observations of German culture, she circumspectly suggests that an encounter with Chinese religion and philosophy can help some Germans with this split.
Tag #244:
Oh my heavens; The Producers! In my opinion, one of the funniest movies of all time! I laugh until I cry when I watch it.
That is a great point; a movie like that wouldn’t have been written about Stalin, Mao, or Pol Pot. Although I wonder if anyone could write a movie like that now?
Cugel
Bryan Allen–it is interesting that most people, especially outraged middle-class women–abbreviate the “pussy” comment. I think that the unforgiveable thing about the exchange was that it is true. There always have been, and always will be, women who will use their sexuality to get ahead, either in life in general or in a specific career. True of some men as well if the circumstances allow. But for the women of the managerial class this fact is abhorrent. Their worldview depends on the idea that women are just as competent as men in any field and fully able to advance on their own merits. Any woman who has sex with a powerful man must be seen as oppressed, coerced, possibly raped. Working class women are more realistic. My mother (1931-2020) could not see what the fuss was all about in sexual harassment complaints. She regarded predatory bosses as just part of life that you just learned to work around.
Larkrise–why do men in power act that way? Because humans are primates and the main reason to become an Alpha male is access to the females in the troop. Of course, we are more than apes, but the ape is buried, not gone.
Annette2–I find it interesting that the comments about the Weimar Republic focus largely on the financial issues. However, then, just as now, there were moral issues as well. Berlin, in particular, was seen by conservative people as a cesspool of sin and decadence. Homosexuality was illegal, as was prostitution, but the police were more concerned with seeing that the well-off foreign tourists who came for the decadence (as in the musical Cabaret) were not robbed by sex workers or their pimps than with enforcing the laws. Germany was also a center for research on human sexuality. Few people are aware that at least one of the famous photos of Nazi book burnings was from the attack on the Institue for Sexual Research, the leader of which advocated for homosexual rights and other liberalizations of the laws. It is fairly standard politics to suggest that a decline in the power of one’s nation may be a punishment for sexual immorality, especially among the ruling classes and the Nazi Party took advantage of this.
Rita
I still remember a conversation I had with a Jewish neighbor, here in France, in the 1980s. He was a socialist, very liberal and very open border, but it was always pleasant to have a chat with him. Once I told him that in my opinion the Palestinians should acknowledge their defeat and ask for Israeli citizenship. Thus, they could have normal, peaceful lives. He jolted as if I had bitten him: “No! Israel must stay Jewish!”
I was startled, because he sure didn’t care about France staying French. He also seemingly didn’t realize that the immigrants he was glad to see coming in large numbers had good reasons to sympathize with the Palestinians rather than with the Jewish settlers, and that eventually they would become a political force in France, because their children would be French citizens.
I suppose he thought that the immigrants would sympathize with the Jews as another oppressed minority. That’s not exactly how it went.
In my opinion, that’s the tragedy of the Middle East in a nutshell. Israel won’t assimilate non-Jews, especially Arabs. My neighbor was, himself, a Sephardic Jew, a descendant of Berbers, the native white people of North Africa. Most Berbers converted to Islam rather than Judaism in the Middle Ages and many became Arabic speakers. Genetically, my neighbor was certainly closer to the Palestinians than to a European guy like me. He was also a French monolingual, probably never went to the synagogue and had married a Catholic woman (they were childless). But somehow the Jewishness of Israel was more important to him than anything else. I guess that it gave meaning to his life.
My wife is an immigrant of Chinese origin. In her family, Hitler and the Holocaust were disputes among white folks, things that happened long before they immigrated to Europe and therefore don’t interest them. As the French become rapidly and increasingly multiracial, I think that the public will care less and less about Hitler.
Hi John Michael,
My gut feeling is that that is the dirty little secret. A kind of societal lashing out. It’s worthwhile recalling that the kooky jackboots and arm bands made working life somewhat more tolerable for the average person, with serious consequences for exploitative employers – thus the general appeal. When such conditions arise, pressure builds, and sooner or later there is a reaction and consequences. History suggests as much. So in a time of decline, cough, cough, err, now, one persons gain is another’s loss. People accustomed to only more and more, will always stuff up such a change over.
Incidentally, I’ll be very glad when your election is over. Our news media is full of the goings on, and it ain’t our circus. Whatever else happens, the event is a beginning, and not an end point. Hmm.
Glad to hear that you’re having more normal autumnal weather. Over the past decade or so, it’s been my casual observation that autumn (whatever that means) is the season which is disappearing.
Cheers
Chris
I haven’t read all the comments yet, so perhaps someone else has mentioned this, but Kunstler’s last blog entry was “Actually, the Democratic Party is Hitler.”
I wonder if he read your article before he wrote his.
“the class bigotry of the Trump-haters was so deeply ingrained that they couldn’t even let themselves think of that.”
I’m going to suggest that what’s going on here is more deliberate and sinister.
We’re in an age of elite overproduction. The number of young people who have prepared themselves, often at great expense, for PMC jobs far outstrips the number of such jobs that are available to them. I’m sure you’ve heard the saying (often attributed to Machiavelli) that revolutionary leaders come from the middle class, not the poor. Bright, well-educated young people with unwanted time on their hands pose a lot of potential danger to the status quo. Therefore those who benefit most from the status quo are making a considerable effort to teach those young people that the correct term for a white adult without a bachelor’s degree is “bigot”, to disguise snobbery as concern for social justice, with the underlying purpose of preventing the formation of effective mass movements.
Am I saying that the Democrats don’t want to win? Let’s just say that the DNC’s top echelons, well insulated from the rank and file, don’t have winning as their top priority. What they care about most is the maintenance of their cushy situation, which is less a matter of success in any particular election than of keeping the electorate divided and thus ineffectual, to prevent solidarity. Thus we get one calculated insult from prominent Dems to the working class every election year – “garbage”, “deplorables”, the bitter clinger thing — and a few equally offensive instances of political incorrectness from prominent Republicans to the college kids – this year it’s the childless cat ladies thing but examples go back at least to Sarah Palin’s “Drill, baby, drill!”.
But then, I’m an old cynic who suspects that the Defund the Police movement was concocted to divide law enforcement from the rest of the blue collar class, increasing the likelihood that, when unrest gets severe, they will not hesitate to get brutal and will not even consider throwing away their badges and joining the rebel side.
@Clay Dennis #230 The target audience for that poster were probably used to seeing Hitler in newsreels. They were much more familiar with his real appearance than today’s audiences.
Aldarion, interesting. It’s been quite a few years since I last read up on Weimar politics; I seem to recall some major differences between NSDAP policies and those of the monarchist and traditionalist-right parties, but I’ll have to review some sources before I can offer anything more specific than that.
Robert K, thanks for the recommendation. I’ve been considering a deep dive into von Franz’s work for a while now.
Horzabky, thanks for this. Yeah, that makes an uncomfortable amount of sense.
Chris, I think you’re probably right. For what it’s worth, I’ll be just as happy when our quadrennial circus is over. It got dull months ago.
Annette2, Jim and I go way back. I read his posts, and yeah, he pretty reliably reads mine.
Joan, that’s a plausible thesis. I’ll certainly consider it as a possibility.
Yes there is a small ‘Nazi’ group of fifty or so that has been goose stepping around left wing Melbourne Victoria since just before the pandemic. These clowns lik dress all in black and flip Hitler salutes. Led by an ex army officer, they appear at legitimate protests such as anti lockdown rallies, pro woman anti trans rallies etc. Their existence has been used to drive various laws, such as the outlawing of Nazi salutes etc. They seem to have received favourable treatment from law enforcement and the judiciary, My educated guess is they are an astro turfed stalking horse that serve the interests of corporate power. They are used to justify new surveillance and free speech laws of various kinds, and their existence is an omni present boogie man in the region. They have been strongly and erroneously linked to anti vaccine mandate and lockdown campaigners. A very convenient boogie man indeed, also used to demonise nationalist and mass immigration dissent. If Nazis didnt exist in Victoria, Australia, we would have had to invent them, and we have. Its not a genuine political impulse at tis stage. The real fascists are legion, and are are sitting in board rooms and C-suites all over the country.
Hey JMG
On the subject of people worse than Hitler, the late Simone Leys was famous for predicting the atrocities and dictatorial behaviour of the Chinese Communist Party back when most European liberals were expecting it to fulfil their communist dreams. He wrote much on the CCP and its behaviour, which may be of interest to a few people in the Commentariat. I re-read some of his essays, and he said that the odd thing about the liberal’s completely delusional attitude towards Mao and the CCP was that it was so easy to have seen the truth by simply having enough ability to understand Chinese to read a newspaper or by talking with any Chinese civilian.
He also wrote an essay about the Khmer Rouge, which he ends by recounting an anecdote about how blind obedience allows such atrocities to be committed unimpeded.
Essentially, at the beginning of the genocide some Cambodians took refuge in a French Embassy. Inevitably the Khmer Rouge gave the embassy 24 hours to surrender them, unless they had French passports. In order to protect the many French and other nationals the Embassy had to obey. But a journalist tried to save one Cambodian by offering to marry her so she would be entitled to a French Passport. The embassy refused on account of him already being married, which would violate the Law against bigamy. To quote Leys:
“The Khmer Rouge perpetrated some two million murders. However, one of these at least should be put on the account of a western diplomat, a man unable to perceive that, under a criminal authority, respect for the rules also becomes a crime. This conscientious bureaucrat was truly one of us.”
I remember a book I began reading on Rommel, I had to put it down because literally almost every 3rd sentence was analogous with ‘F@#% Hitler’. That gets old quickly, and I was actually curious about Rommel, not the führer of memes.
History shall be remembered and repeated, but who said those writing it had to be smart or honest?
I think JMG is right about a return to ‘real’ Nazism, because people are too desperate for change, even for worse changes, as long as they feel the ‘benefit’ under the illusion of government a little while longer. I think we have run out of myths to keep people working together in a functioning society, so a default to brute force as a means of politics, seems very likely, as long as their is no resistance for it (perhaps by the means of warfare itself.)
My biggest concern is that ‘Death’ is completely off our society’s awareness. Too many young men think warfare is Call of duty, just with more adrenaline and pain. They could easily get sucked into horrible conflicts which have very dire consequences. For them I have recommended the 1979 movie ‘all quiet on the western front’ a great anti-war movie, which should (rightfully) scare the $%&# out of them.
I am not a ‘Nazi’ and do not promote Nazism anymore. I do enjoy good war stories, and I tend to sympathize with the German people (not government) more than any other group involved in WW2. I have read the book ‘In deadly combat, a German soldier’s memoirs of the eastern front’ by Gottlob Bidermann. His experiences are horrific (check out the saint painting, life saver episode), and a great read for the reason of why to not try the eastern front (Ukraine could have read history, or the CIA planners/modern Nazis).
Anyway, I am sure I would qualify as a Nazi by our own modern leftist, but I would certainly disagree. I never cared one way or another about Hitler, just saw him as the scapegoat that he probably was, straight from the beginning of my own historical perspective. I agree with national unity, defensive militarism, and promoting people to be productive instead of systems, but I think the similarities end there.
I find myself farther and farther to the right end of the spectrum (closer to anarchism) than the left spectrum (which includes national socialism). I don’t see the point in government for further human development. Once something becomes restrictive, it will surely end itself, Gov is no different.
To stop a ‘Nazism’ movement you need to provide a better alternative. Unlike our host I am optimistic that there are many opportunities for better alternatives in the coming collapse. Those won’t come from our current political charade, but from the ground up. It is the idiotic, misled young men whom I worry about in terms of violence and a organized military. Which is why I think such a movement will happen, but not sustainably, and not for long. I could imagine the strong man scenario, happening before the centralized Gov falls to pieces once and for all, as an example. I would think it could happen from within our own Woke military instead of outside actors/militias. People want to choose sides on the chessboard, and there is too much money to be made from the pawns being at war with each other. Make your own conclusions.
Joan, I share your cynicism. I see a different motive for “Defund the Police”, a slogan which was doubtless suggested if not mandated by doners to Black Lives Matter. I think it was permission for fraud and all kinds of predatory crime at the local level. Police would naturally use such resources as they had against violent crime, leaving scant or even no resources to deal with white collar offenses.
@JMG
The Wittgenstein Hitler image is a remarkable one, I’ve certainly never seen it before. Is it really them? I see there’s a book by Kimberly Cornish on the subject called _The Jew of Linz_ if you’ve read it, did you find it plausible?
Cugel # 258.: It would be hard to choose the best of Mel Brooks’ three great masterpieces — the Producers, Young Frankenstein, and Blazing Saddles — but if I had to vote, I ‘d go for the Producers. The way it simply explodes all the Nazi folderol and pretension makes it among the finest satires of all time. I agree with you, alas, that in the era of Judith Butler, Robin DiAngelo, and Ibram X Kendi, such a film is almost inconceivable.
I really don’t have much to add to this excellent essay.
However there is a little snippet, a wee playground rhyme remembered by my mother, who was born in 1936, and started school during the war. Possibly it might function as a bit of archaeology, since I reckon it dates to the period just after Pearl Harbour, and indicates that at that time, Hitler had not yet become (as the commenter above suggests) – drumroll, clash, thunder – ***HITLER***
It went like this:
“Whistle while you work, Hitler is a jerk,
Mussolini is a meany, Tojo is the worst!”
@Taylor Burgess
That is something I never heard about before. It makes sense, though. According to the kind of feminism that PMC women typically subscribe to, a woman ought to be so self-sufficient that practical considerations never enter into romantic/sexual decisions, which is a luxury working class women can’t really afford.
You know, if a primer existed on cultural differences between the lower and upper middle classes, I’d buy it and read it. In fact, I’d buy it for my nephews, too.
Mary Bennett, I have a feeling if Trump loses, it will be because his campaign is off-putting to women like yourself. I’ve been reading the anti-Trump media, I think past all the rhetoric, that’s what it really comes down to — his campaign has been influenced by a lot by “terminally online” young men; he goes on podcasts mostly listened to by men, Vance himself is kinda aligned with this demographic. The comedian that made the unhelpful joke was apparently suggested by one of the campaign staffers in this demographic. I myself would fit this demographic — I enjoyed the Rogan podcasts, I am on Twitter a lot, I like Elon Musk. If he wins, it will be largely due to this demographic turning out (including non-white men in this demographic).
By contrast, Kamala seems to me like one of the dozens of corporate drones I’ve encountered. Is she competent? Well, she graduated law school, and has some years of experience in the field. I frankly find that less impressive than risking one’s own capital in business. Looking outside of her CV, she has shown that she gets very distressed when going off-script or when her teleprompter has a pause.
Anyway, I don’t have a vote, but I will pray for prosperity in the USA.
Yes JMG that is indeed the long and the short of it. I do take the things Trump says seriously. My conclusion is that while you expect fascism to come from the left/corporatism, I agree that is possible but also, unlike you, think it is possible from the right/oligarchy. Nuff said.
Mary Bennet, 251, I am of the same mind as you in all you say, except when it comes to action, I am less pragmatic than I thought; I find I couldn’t vote for the Dems merely to keep the Reps out. I find the browbeating and fearmongering completely unacceptable. A plague on both their houses. I shall do otherwise.
Northwind Grandma, thank you for your remarkable response. I am lost for words, to be honest.
We had a big and wonderful Day of the Dead celebration last night, so I have been up until dawn enjoying the company of those who have gone before. It is good to be reminded of how brief our tenure is here and I was musing on how special this Ecosophia forum is, where I with my minority views am not just tolerated but encouraged. I have learnt a lot — thanks all. I would like to share here the Jane Kenyon poem I always read at the beginning of our gathering — a reminder that whatever happens this week, we are all in this strange spacetime mystery together.
Let Evening Come
BY JANE KENYON
Let the light of late afternoon
shine through chinks in the barn, moving
up the bales as the sun moves down.
Let the cricket take up chafing
as a woman takes up her needles
and her yarn. Let evening come.
Let dew collect on the hoe abandoned
in long grass. Let the stars appear
and the moon disclose her silver horn.
Let the fox go back to its sandy den.
Let the wind die down. Let the shed
go black inside. Let evening come.
To the bottle in the ditch, to the scoop
in the oats, to air in the lung
let evening come.
Let it come, as it will, and don’t
be afraid. God does not leave us
comfortless, so let evening come.
J.L.Mc12, thanks for this. I haven’t read Simone Leys yet and will want to remedy that as time permits.
False Eruption, I hope you’re right about alternatives. I’m waiting to see one that isn’t stuck repeating the failed strategies of the recent past.
Andy, I have indeed read it — that’s how I first learned about the Hitler-Wittgenstein connection. It’s amusing in a way, because Cornish tiptoes around an astounding possibility, never quite mentioning it. The short form is that Wittgenstein, who grew up in Vienna, was suddenly bundled off to Linz by his wealthy family without public explanation, the sort of thing that normally happened when the alternative was scandal. He and Hitler were both bookish, geeky kids who loved opera, thus likely to make contact once they were in the same school. Wittgenstein, of course, was gay, and Hitler was at least bi — there’s some evidence that he supported himself at some points in his Vienna years as a male prostitute. Wittgenstein also had a lifelong habit of blurting out intensely personal details about himself and others, without any concern with who might be affected by it. And of course Hitler left the school abruptly at the end of the one year they shared together, and found any number of doors closed to him thereafter. To anyone familiar with the social history of Europe at that time, and especially the treatment of gay men, that suggests a hushed-up scandal that might just have left Hitler with an enduring grudge, first against the only Jewish boy in his class, and thereafter against Jews in general…
Scotlyn, boys in my school days used to sing the same thing with different verses:
“Whistle while you work, Hitler is a jerk,
Mussolini bit his weenie, now it doesn’t work!”
Larkrise, to my mind that’s an intriguing study in class differences, that saying mean things is so important to you and so unimportant to so many others. For what it’s worth, I also attended a Day of the Dead celebration last night, and when politics came up, the general consensus was, “There are a hundred million adult Americans legally qualified to be president, and this is the best we can do?”
@pygmycory #70: Thanks! At least it’s ok with the family. Friends – we had three occasions in short time where we met said to us that it would solve a lot of problems if DT or Putin just had an accident or something. Just yesterday, our friends 11 years old daughter said this to us, which is telling me a lot. Where to even start? I sometimes wonder if there’s even a point in trying. But maybe that’s wrong, too.
Cheers,
Nachtgurke
Hi JMG,
Thanks for doing this. I know you have gone over this general principle repeatedly for some time, but I think it finally clicked for me how this all connects together, and that in turn reminds me of a realization I made a while back about art. I had asked a bunch of people if they thought that we were more or less likely to clone dinosaurs thanks to Jurassic Park existing, and everyone I spoke to always said it was more likely. I got to wondering if the nature of art itself was quite different to what I had held onto prior. Perhaps all the cave paintings etc were an attempt to bring about a desire, they were a fantasy about the results of a future hunt, rather than a record of a past one, and all art followed from that had the same structure in our thinking – it helps us to imagine something possible in order to get it.
Anything you give great consideration to, particularly passionate consideration, becomes a goal like this that imprints deeply in your mind, and pulls your actions towards it eventually. Despite what you might think about this, a character like Hitler can become a path inside you that likely your drives will find a reason to push you towards. Since likely we all would like to avoid the fate of Hitler, a failure at all his goals and hated by most of the world, it’s better to imprint targets we’d like to hit through controlled attention, prayer, etc.
To return to the Cosmic Doctrine for a second, a shared symbol or goal like this can become a powerful too as it can cause much movement to turn in the same direction.
Thanks,
Johnny
JMG, about Americans legally qualified etc., we get the leadership we deserve. Don’t underestimate the influence of envy in voting. There is a reason why envy is numbered among the Deadly Sins.
Larkrise, I did not vote against Trump himself but against his following, the sociopathic Vance in particular, all of whom, my opinion, have no business anywhere near our government. And, I would add, the attempt of a South African businessman to buy his way into our government infuriates me. If he is such a genius, why does not he spend his wealth and influence on uplifting his African neighbors?
Alvin, we have seen this movie before. In 2012, Obama was vulnerable, and Romney was, all things considered, not an incompetent candidate, and with the might of Mormons, our most successful minority group, behind him, he had a real shot at an upset victory. Then, someone asked a Republican Senator an easy peasy question about pregnancies that might result from assault. Rather than give the usual conservative response–brag about one’s tough on crime credentials, express sympathy for all victims of violent crimes, ending with the pious hope that the victim, in consultation with family, doctor and pastor, might come to the understanding that what is a tragedy for her might be a blessing for a family unable to have children–the blithering idiot stated something to the effect that a new life is a blessing from God. So it is, but an ongoing association with a violent criminal is no such thing, as any number of pro-life, conservative women were quick to point out. Romney failed to denounce or distance himself, and then came another fool referring to “legitimate rape’, something which we had previously thought was for a judge and jury to decide. After the election, Karen Hughes, who had been GWB’s chief of staff, threatened to personally cut out the tounge of any Republican pol who used the word ‘rape’ without also calling it a crime.
Alvin, speaking for myself only, I raised two girls on less money than what those MAGA loudmouths spend on their bar tabs. Both are now employed, law abiding citizens who earn more than I ever did. What I think they got from me was a certain working class edge, that you do what you have to do and the understanding that the Lord God doesn’t love fools.
About the unhelpful comedian: you don’t need to be a graduate of Snob University to look at a @#$% map. I know of three islands in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. Their names are Tristan de Cunha, St. Helena and Iceland. Furthermore, Puerto Ricans, American citizens all as the Rs seem to have forgotten, are just now recovering from Hurricane Maria, reported Cat. 5 at the time, now said to be Cat .4 by Wiki, a distinction without a difference one would think, which all but wiped out human habitation on Puerto Rico during the Trump administration. Pace what wiki says now, Federal response was woefully slow. How long does it take to get a hospital ship from Norfolk to the Caribbean? Puerto Rican celebrities, such as Jennifer Lopez and some famous athletes, were chartering planes to take the injured to the mainland for treatment. The problem a lot of us have with the Trump admin was that it was chaotic and inefficient.
As for Harris, we have had mediocre presidents before and I see no signs in her of active malevolence, which I do see in Vance.
Hello JMG and everybody,
Something to share about Hitler and Company… In the 70-s in the USSR, there was a tremendously popular TV series – Seventeen Moments of Spring. It was the first time since the war when the Nazis were portrayed not as cartoonish evil, but as… well… people. Hitler, Himmler, Goring, Schelenberg, Muller were shown up close and personal. They had as much good and evil in them as the rest of us. This series somehow elevated the Russian victory. It was hard to persevere over smart, well-prepared, and very real people, but Russia did it anyway. 30 years passed (from the 40-s to the 70-s) and Russia could afford to loosen the grip of propaganda. As of lately, Hitler did become HITLER in Russia as well, with Putin being called Putler quite often by his opponents. FWIW, Putin in his public life went out of his way to visit synagogues and be photographed wearing a kippah. In his more private actions, he was very helpful to the Orthodox Jewish community in Saint Petersburg on many occasions (I know that through a personal friend).
Switching to a different subject… I went for a morning stroll around my neighborhood and saw a huge Harris banner attached to… drum roll… a huge new Lexus SUV. Does this person realize what they are doing?
Lol! For sure, any work of folklore – including playground lore – is going to spawn many versions and variations. 🙂
Hi John and kommentariat. Maybe I’m off topic, maybe not. I mean:
The floods here in Spain have been the “perfect storm” for the worst European “natural” disaster since the 60s (in 60 years!). There are more than 200 corpses in the morgues in Valencia. But there are more than 2,000 people not found, disappeared. Help has been chaotic and spare especially the first 3 days after the flood day. There are mud mountains in a lot of streets in the Valencian flooded towns.
It’s interesting and sad that today, the King and Queen of Spain, and the spanish President were visiting a flooded town, and they were called “murders” and other profanities. Some extreme right guys were staying there, making a crowd in the town, and started throwing mud and stones against the King and his people. President Sánchez was attacked with a shovel and had to run to his car, which was damaged with some windows broken. OK, President Sanchez is hated by half of this country, but it has been a near assesination attempt!
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c5ypgjg2jrpo
“Normal” citizens told to the King, very angry, that there wasn,t enough help for the people there.
Maybe this flood disaster has opened a can of worms and it could be profit for the extreme far right in my country…”normal” people in Valencia flooded area are very tired and angry, and extremists know that fact. I’m sad and worried by this news.
I would be more worried about a Napoleon than a Nazi in today’s world. I have a hunch that there are many smart people (I mean genius-level) hiding underneath rocks, perhaps because they see this current turmoil as a cost and not a opportunity.
In this hypothetical theory: When/If they should take action, then I think the current game of power itself would change. As it is right now, it is too profitable to start rocking the boat, and it is easy to align the ruling mafias against us serfs, who can potentially rock the boat the most.
But if infighting should happen, then opportunities arise for new management. The human mind is capable of great things (such as a memory palace), and there are many tools out there which can potentially destroy entire societies (such as the drug trade.) Certainly there are geniuses out there with enough creativity to rise over our coming tumultuous situation, and conquer it the same as Napoleon?
Add a group of those people together with an army, and all bets are off on Global hegemony. More like Global survival at that point. Nukes being nukes, and all that extinction level fun with firecrackers.
It never occurs to these centralist that their best laid plans could fall straight into the hands of someone else, who has a completely different vision. Is this not how the armed forces of Germany made a financially invested resurgence, only to be obtained by the untimely party of nationalist/populist with said mustache. And then the eastern front happened, instead of the plan to use the German army to conquer Europe for the West’s own imperialistic aims.
Miscalculations that get millions killed, which always somehow seem to be financed from London or New York city. You think people would have caught on by now.
At least these are my assumptions, let me know if I am wrong on this.
You stated ‘By 1933 it was as clear as anything could be that the British Empire—the largest empire in recorded history, and also one of the most cruel and rapacious—was in its death throes, burdened by a massive overhang of unpayable debts and an equally massive and dysfunctional bureaucratic state that had long since stopped doing much of anything besides enriching its inmates. The British pound sterling, the worldwide reserve currency of the day and the foundation of global trade, was lurching from one crisis to another, and the mere fact that no other currency was ready to take its place didn’t give it any particular staying power.’
The British empire had a particular dislike for massive bureaucracy, it prided itself on all the important people who ran the raj (far more complicated business than the contemporary domestic USA) fitting into Westminster Abbey. The germans also noted before the first world war that the entire empire was controlled by about 300 families. Today this is mis-remembered by conspiracy theorists as the world is run by 300 families. The army at the height of the empire was about 250,000 far below contemporaries manpower.
Over manning and its attendant costs was not a British thing before the second World War. The rest maybe true but not the massive bureaucratic state, you could argue that it was bigger than before ww1 but compared to ww2 and after it was tiny.
As an aside, I remember reading that the bit of the USA North of the Columbia River tried to defect to the British empire, in the mid 19th century to avoid paying the higher costs of americas bureaucracy vs britain’s, and dc had to send the soldiers in to put a stop to it.
Regarding Hitler, there is a change in the 1970s in how the germans and by extension him are portrayed.
Prior to the 70s they are portrayed in way very similar to napoleon and the French or kaiser bill and imperial Germany.
After the 1970s they become this metaphysical evil. So while I agree with your analysis before the 70s, after there seems to be something missing to your analysis, which seems to be more important to the question of the special evilness of hitler.
Why did Hitler aquire this special evil status in the 1970s?
Re: Marie-Louise von Franz
I read most of her books and enjoyed them. She is quite an orthodox Jungian (well, she did know the man very closely, so there’s nothing wrong with that), but her presentation is much clearer than Jung’s, with a lof of penetrating observations about modern life. The one work where she goes most clearly beyond Jung is ‘Zahl und Zeit’ (‘Number and Time’), which makes some tentative steps towards reconnecting number theory with divination. In one interview taken towards the end of her life she says that she would like to write a book about the unconscious and the landscape; unfortunately there is no published work of hers about that, but maybe they’ll find something in her archive (her collected works are being edited bit by bit right now)!
JMG, I think you mean that I care too much about what is said not what is done? — perhaps I misunderstand you? — but I do take a man’s word seriously. To discount rhetoric is a mistake in my view — but maybe you didn’t mean this. I am not sure what your ref to class difference is, pls elucidate?
I heartily agree with the sentiment that there are surely hundreds if not thousands of marvellous human beings who clearly have no desire to enter the cut and thrust of politics … and quite frankly who can blame them. Also, of course, Douglas Adams’ wry observation remains as true as it’s ever been …
“ it is a well-known fact that those people who want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it … anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.” …
Mary Bennet 278, hard agree on Vance and Musk. As I have said before, one thing I feel apprehensive about with Trump is what he may (not necessarily on purpose) be opening the door to. Still, the first season for these speculations is nearly over, and the next chapter awaits …
Some context for understanding how the Pol Pot regime became so intensely homocidal; it was not just a matter of crazy ideology.
First, most of Pol Pot’s supporters were from the countryside. They had been subject to intense, ruthless bombing from the air for years. This included gasoline bombs that burnt all the oxygen for miles and suffocated anything oxygen breathing, even folks in otherwise safe deep caves. As a result, the survivors (part of the death toll in the killing fields was the result of this bombing, not of the Khmer Rouge) were extremely traumatized and very, very angry.
Second, in Cambodia in particular and Southeast Asia more generally, the split between cities and countryside was historically quite severe. Well into the 1800s, the folks who did the actual work were mostly slaves or serfs and the folks in the city lived off the work of their “inferiors” and looked down on them. (I think it is an accident of geography that the Atlantic slave trade was of Africans. If the geographical position of African and Southeast Asia had been reversed, the slaves in the Americas would have been Southeast Asian.) Even after slavery and serfdom were abolished (in Thailand, about the same time as in the US and Russia), the intense class distinction and resentment remained.
This does not make the killing fields OK or even sane, but it does make them revenge for real short-term and long-term evils inflicted on the agricultural working folks. Without that fuel, Pol Pot would have been a Cambodian intellectual so obscure that he might never have even been a footnote.
One other curious note: apparently the top Khmer Rouge, the top folks in the pro-US Lon Nol government of 1970-1975, and Prince Sihanouk (who led Cambodia and kept it out of the war until the 1970 coup and was a figurehead during and after the Khmer Rouge regime) were all related.
I just recalled my favourite movie – the Russian comedy Гитлер Капут! [Hitler kaput!] – well worth watching (even without subtitles! The action is easy to follow without understanding the words)
@ 252: “On a different matter, have you ever looked into the claims that Hitler and his wife fled to Argentina after the war and lived for years onwards. I’ve read a book about it and it is certainly interesting. Some powerful anecdotal stories from quite simple people who swear they met Hitler in the 1940s/1950s (cleaners etc).”
Since the door has been opened, and JMG let it through… The weakness of these claims would seem to be that the Zionists certainly would ave figured this out, and tracked him down — like they did with Eichmann and with that poor old guy from Cleveland, and they would have made a very big fuss about it. I suspect the book you read is “Greywolf.” The author of “Greywolf” claims that the CIA knew about it, and if the CIA knew, it’s a near certainty that the Mossad also knew.
So how do you reconcile this? The only answer I can come up with is that, during or before the war, a deal had been made between the Zionists and the Nazis. Deal making between the Zionists and the Nazis??? How likely or unlikely would this be?
JMG, I was able to access a research paper by Herrmann Beck called “The Antagonism between German Nationals and National Socialism in the Phase of the Nazi Seizure of Power” (German Nationals refers to the DNVP, Hitler’s initial coalition partner). Beck shows, based on original sources, that
1. NSDAP speakers, including Hitler, had long vociferated against “the bourgeois”, and from February to July 1933, spoke a lot about the new “socialist”, “workers’ state” government.
2. In spite of this, on many occasions between 1928 and 1933, leaders on the right downplayed their differences with Hitler because they thought it was expedient to do so.
3. After DNVP and NSDAP formed the government, between about February and July 1933, low-level NSDAP officials and SA leaders quite often bullied and even beat up non-Nazi leaders on the right. Victims on the right usually didn’t complain in public because it made them look stupid for having brought Hitler to power.
4. However, persecution of SPD and KPD by the government was massive, was much more violent and was coordinated from the top down, especially by Göring as Prussian secretary of the interior.
5. As soon as the NSDAP had monopolized power, around July 1933, the anti-bourgeois speeches, the talk of social revolution and the bullying of politicians on the right stopped. Persecution of the left continued unabated until at least 1939.
My conclusion (not the author’s) is that there was very little difference between Nazis and other groups on the right with regard to concrete actions they wanted to be taken, but that the NSDAP booted out their competitors.
@False Eruption #267: Equating the right with “less government” may make sense to some Americans in 2024, but it was definitely not the position of any rightist party in Germany in the 1920s or 1930s. The DVP (national liberals) came closest to such a position. It is simply anachronistic to call the NSDAP “left” because it advocated a strong state.
@Larkrise,
Thank you for your response.
Re: “Something I think I am gnawing at here is the uncomfortable truth that good leaders are often bad men, and the obverse is true also.”
When you consider the qualities that tend to correlate with leadership (such as charisma and courage) and then you consider the energy that gets directed at someone with those qualities, it is not surprising that some people in leadership positions do not know how to channel that energy effectively and it ends up manifesting in behaviors that are considered “bad”.
And that sort of segues into your question about Musk and am I bothered about the potential for unbridled power he might have…
One of the initial reasons, way back in 2015, that I liked Trump was that he was already rich and famous. I didn’t like him for being rich and famous, but I know of too many politicians who entered politics with normal bank accounts and, after years of making a good (in some cases, extremely good) salary, they are worth multi-millions. I figured if Trump was already rich, there was a lower chance he would be susceptible to bribery.
I only know superficial things about Musk. He’s already rich and famous, too, so hopefully he won’t be susceptible to bribery, either. Am I bothered about the power Musk might have? As much as I am bothered by the power than the unelected bureaucracy already has. (Which means yes, I am bothered. But I would rather err with someone who wants to cut spending and regulation…)
What is the opposite of Hitler? Peanut the Squirrel.
While shrieking Trump is Hitler, the Democrats are keeping themselves busy doing their best to show the electorate that they are the best Hitler. Yes, Kamala had nothing to do with killing Peanut the Squirrel, but the symbolism of state employed thugs coming for a famous maga hat wearing Tik/Tok pet after the electorate has watched years of the same kind of thugs coming for Trump and the J6 tourists is obvious to all to see.
JMG, your comment about “saying mean things” has lost me. I live and have lived in working class, and once an underclass, neighborhoods all my adult life. One thing you Do. Not. Do. is say mean things, much less engage in the vituperation, name-calling and insults we hear coming from Trumpworld. About the man himself, I don’t call the statement “Global warming is a hoax” mean. I call it either ignorant or a deliberate lie, which is part of why I don’t respect him. And, at this point, I do not care what the context might have been. Then there was the shooting up bleach as a remedy for covid remark. That is akin to the British govt. advising its citizens during WWII to eat rhubarb, without mentioning that rhubarb leaves are quite poisonous.
You, yourself expect and enforce certain standards of civility and courtesy on your blogs, which I do very much appreciate. Is that a reflection of your own social class background?
> the political establishment was so busy shrieking its rage and hatred at Trump It never occurs to them that their hatred and rage might be feeding what they think they’re fighting So many people these days are so subservient to peer pressure, so terrified of the disapproval of the crowd
Feminization of society and politics at play? (That would make an interesting topic for one of the 5th Wednesdays, btw)
Apropos, there is a common Russian saying that goes “there only one step between love and hatred “.
“Deal making between the Zionists and the Nazis??? How likely or unlikely would this be?”
The Nazis and the Zionists had an agreement to transport Jews in Nazi Germany to Palestine before WWII broke out:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haavara_Agreement
Martin Back, #246, writes, “I’m coming round more and more to economist Michael Hudson’s view that the natural tendency of any economic system is to drift towards oligarchy.”
I don’t know Hudson, but the German sociologist Robert Michels argued back in 1911 that all organizations drift that direction. “Who says organization, says oligarchy.”
See, for example, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_law_of_oligarchy.
Martin Back-
Pres. Wilson wouldn’t be the leader to eliminate, to prevent the oppressive terms at the WW-1 conclusion. He was practically ineffective, anyway, being in very poor health (some say stroke, others lingering effects of the Spanish Flu). It was the French and English leaders, whose countries had suffered the most, who were most interested in punishing Germany.
Well HeyZeus on a Stick! What the Hail is up with all these NYstate nazis?? Its like they have a collective allergy to peanuts and black masks.. I just don’t get it.
Hey JMG
You won’t be disappointed; Simon Leys is one of the best essay-writers I am aware of.
Also, while we are still talking about him, you may want to read his “The wreck of the Batavia”. It is a long essay/short book about a historical incident that fascinated him, the shipwreck of a VOC ship on some islands off Western Australia that lead to the temporary existence of a brutal dictatorship lead by one of the crew, with as much senseless murder as anything Pol Pot did. It fascinated Leys since in his view the whole incident was a kind of prototype or foreshadowing of the kind of society Mao, Hitler and Stalin would create.
https://archive.org/details/wreckofbataviatr00simo
Cugel, #258, writes [of “The Producers”], “I wonder if anyone could write a movie like that now?”
Well, they did a remake in 2005. Not sure if that counts. More strikingly, in 2015 someone released the black comedy “Er ist wieder da” (released in English as “Look Who’s Back”), in which Hitler wakes up in a Berlin park in 2014. He spends much of the movie coming to grips with the changes in the modern world, and finally starts planning a comeback.
Wer here
Well this post really hits home with me. Things are becoming hectic here in Poland. You just won’t believe what is going on, the current (wretch) prime minister just announced that “there is not enough money” remember that floods that damaged southern Poland this September? (In one powiat where 14 thousand families lost their homes only 16 of them recieved aid) The current Polish prime minister also cancelled the celebration march of independence in our country 11th of November under the impresion that it was racist, sexist and misoginist (yes some liberals are using this language) while also declaring that “patriot movements in Poland are you guesss it sponsored by… Putin) Polish patriots who hate Russia are somehow financed by … Russia.
For years the members of the liberal left in Poland had been assaulting ordinary people you know:
White people are all racists
Donald Trump is Hitler
You are not vaccinated you are Putin’s agent/insane/stupid/a nazi/dangerous right wing extremist/conspiracy theorist etc.
CATHOLICS ARE NAZIS (repeated endless times by liberals in my country WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE)
And after everything you said and done and projected you delusions, shadow etc on me and other people like me you are expecting “help” you scream about democracy while claiming everybody who cannot afford you stupid electric car is a “dangerous extremist” you lie constantly about everything in your media that “illegal migration is fine” “the economy was never doing better” “Ukraine will win the war next week” “stop using coal furnances (especially now in November when it is so cold)”
And and the end of it you wonder “How did the MAGA movement came to be?” look in the mirror
Stay safe Wer
Aldarion and JMG, the best book I know for that research is khuenhelt ledhins Liberty or Equality, published as menace of the herd. Kirk wrote the forward. A map of voting in Germany shows that protestant areas of dominance went for NSDAP, and roughly is the old eastern Germany. It was progressive protestant regions that liked Hitler particularly. The Catholic areas were either not won or just barely so. It’s a great book with copious footnotes in the classical liberal vein, and he’s a monarchist. He has a lot of stuff on Hitler and various parties, in there.
Another German, rosenstock huessy, has good data and thinking in Our of Revolution. FWIW, he considered that Hitler was Germany’s return to the papacy, but with a secular pope. It was, he argued, the combination of progressivism with the old yearning for absolutism left over from Catholicism, that made Hitler a fit for Germany. Combine that with Ledhins analysis, and a pretty interesting picture emerges. America isn’t identical, by any means, but the runaway progressivism combining valency with something older is a concern.
Sorry, Out of Revolution. A brilliant examination of revolutions in the west, if something a little Hegelian, at times.
Mary Bennet @278, you intrigued me with your comments about “…the sociopathic Vance…” and further “…active malevolence, which I do see in Vance.” These seem like rather strong characterizations!
I’ve read “Hillbilly Elegy” (note the pages and pages of laudatory praises from numerous sources inside the front cover), watched various vids featuring Vance in different contexts (the most-recent one was the 3 hour 17+ minute one viewable via YouTube on Joe Rogan), and first really identified Vance as someone to watch via this article: https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/03/15/mr-maga-goes-to-washington-00147054
Note that Politico isn’t exactly MAGA central, yet even they were, in an interesting sometimes-conflicted sort of way, complementary of him.
None of those sources have pointed to or highlighted “active malevolence” or sociopathological tendencies. So I’m going to set my hat back on my head, Gene Wilder Willy-Wonka style, and ask: “Tell Me More!” ☺️
I too have noticed that the obsession with Hitler & the nazis has reached new heights with the Culture War. Naturally, he’s the villain in the founding myth of postwar progressive liberalism, so that new challengers get conflated with the old.
The transformation from democracy to tyranny is reminiscent of Plato’s Republic, which warns against the same process; notably, it ranks democracy fairly low in its hierarchy of just regimes, with aristocracy & monarchy scoring much higher.
The only objection I have is with characterizing Hitler as a mediocrity and a failure — as it happened, he did fail, crashing and burning in glorious flames (as you described), but this outcome was not guaranteed. The Third Reich took on much of the world and made it a close contest; even as late as the Battle of the Bulge, they could’ve forced a stalemate. And had they not invaded the Soviets so recklessly, we could’ve easily been on a very different timeline.
However, I see your point — it’s not that Hitler was a monster, it’s that the liberal status quo needs him to be, so that we can be the hero of the story. Especially notable is how the D-Day landings are remembered here in the US — bathed in the hallowed light of myth and eternal glory. This, despite the fact that the Western front was opened in the late stages of the war, and much of that titanic conflict was settled on the Ostfront! But, we need our myths like anyone else; and as Liberalism unravels, so does its mythology.
Aldarion,
I apologize if it seems that I was trying to dismiss you with the word revisionist. For me, it does not have a strong emotional resonance. When you write a story, you then revise it. If there is new evidence that changes the view of history, you are revising the story. I wonder if there a better word? Because you are correct — that word seems only used when trying to discredit someone trying to revise a narrative our regime wants to keep around. (In that I wonder if it was actually deployed deliberately like the term “conspiracy theory” was to discredit the dubious official story about the Kennedy assassination.
As for German archives– I have not dug into the source material, but to my understanding it is terrible in comparison. Nobody bombed down Moskow in 1991, or fought over the ruins. Where the records did survive the war it seems the Germans must have been to keep much of that genocide business “off the books” as it were. The most offensively low estimates you see from “deniers”(there’s a snarl word!) seem to be the ones that use only the official Third Reich archives. (Or at least claim to.) The real numbers have to be reconstructed. It’s awkward.
I find it ironic, really — if I were asked in vacuo if I would expect the Germans or the Russians to better document their crimes, I certainly would have guessed the Germans. From what you are saying, that is not how it seems to have turned out.
Thank you for your prayers. I am travelling now but will provide an update to the prayer list once we make it home.
Hattori Hanzo – “If Australia Nazis didn’t exist, they’d have to create them”? That’s what I’ve thought about Ukrainian Nazis, as well. How hard would it have been for Russian covert actors to organize a neo-Nazi movement in Ukraine? Some report that “forces of the Special Military Operation expected to be welcomed by a secret army of Russia sympathizers, when in fact the funds for this army were simply pocket by Russian intelligence officers”, but the visibility of the Ukrainian Nazis could have proven that the (Russian) organizers of said Nazis actually deserved their compensation.
Maybe part of the enduring visibility of Herr Hitler himself is due to Russia’s re-living their last Great Patriotic War, painting every opposition to Russian imperialism as “Fascists” (whether they still consider themselves Communists or not). They’ve needed a dangerous external enemy (which is not to say that they didn’t have real enemies). Keeping the memory of Hitler alive helps with that.
@Mary Bennet,
Trump didn’t recommend “shooting up bleach” as a remedy for covid. Biden said Trump said that.
I cannot find a transcript of what was said verbatim, but this is close: https://www.whqr.org/2024-04-03/fact-check-did-trump-once-tell-americans-to-inject-bleach-to-fight-covid-19
And if you are interested in reading about the internal ultraviolet tech that Trump was referring to, it is discussed here: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/05/02/fact-check-covid-19-uv-light-treatment-research-underway-los-angeles/3053177001/
Thanks for trying to understand the German psyche. But maybe things are more simple.
Let my give you one more data-point with regards to the Jewish community in Germany before 1914. Prussia had already full religious freedom, the state was secular, this was implemented in whole Germany in 1871. The community was well integrated and intermarriage was quite common and they were also integrated in the German army and business, see Mr. Ballin the owner of the biggest merchant fleet at that time.
In the 1920 anti-semitism arose, the question is why that relationship went sour.
Here is your data-point: In 1916 Germany was winning the war. The USA were nominally neutral. So Britain wanted the US to enter the war on their side to turn the tide.
Here comes the point, the Balfour declaration:
“Beginning in 1916, the British hoped that in exchange for their support of Zionism, “the Jews” would help to finance the growing expenses of the First World War, which was becoming increasingly burdensome. More importantly, policy-makers in the Foreign Office believed that Jews could be prevailed upon to persuade the United States to join the War. At this time, there were very strong pro-Zionist feelings by many of the political elite and establishment”
From: https://www.rothschildarchive.org/family/family_interests/walter_rothschild_and_the_balfour_declaration
In the 1920 this fact became known in Germany and the loss of WW1 with the harsh consequences of Versailles were also blamed on the Jews. The Nazis picked up that feeling and propagandized it.
https://www.paulgraham.com/writes.html
Essay on writing and thinking. “If you’re thinking without writing, you only think you’re thinking.”
@JMG said,
“In the United States, Franklin Roosevelt took charge of the country after the bitterly contested 1932 election… He proceeded to reinterpret the US constitution in ways no previous politician had ever attempted, centralizing power in the federal executive and giving the national government unprecedented control over economic life. In Germany, a nearly identical process made Adolf Hitler Chancellor; the great difference was that the German constitution of the time was much more flexible than the US constitution, and allowed the New Germany (as it was called then) to proceed much further than the New Deal ever did.”
While I agree with most of your article (see my previous comment) I’ll admit that I find this characterization of FDR rather baffling. In one sentence you say that he “reinterpreted” the US constitution radically; a few sentences later you say that “the great difference” between what he did and what Hitler did was that the US constitution somehow constrained FDR from going further.
I think that real reason President Roosevelt’s regime didn’t behave like Hitler’s has a lot less to do with the constitution, and a lot more to do with the fact that FDR wasn’t a monster. And also that he didn’t have a party that backed him unquestioningly – FDR was dependent on Congress to approve his major policies (ironically he was the last president who waited to get full congressional approval before going to war) and other New Deal Democrats often quarrelled with their leader enough to slow him down (i.e. with Lend-Lease) or restrain him from action entirely (i.e. court-packing), something that the NSDAP never did with their Führer. Nor did FDR ever try to do anything remotely like Kristallnacht or the Night of the Long Knives. And so on and so on. It’s not that the constitution (which he was already interpreting in newfangled ways) somehow stopped this – it’s that he and his followers hadn’t the slightest desire to do it at all.
Nor is the US constitution lacking in flexibility. Since well before either of us were born, the US constitution has basically meant whatever a majority of justices on the Supreme Court says it means. This may vary radically from generation to generation (i.e. on things like segregation, legislative redistricting, abortion rights, gay rights, economic freedom, capital punishment etc.) but even court decisions that obviously bear no relation to the constitution’s original public meaning are still treated with the force of law. (Think about it: tens of millions of Americans insist that abortion is literally murder, and yet only a tiny minority of these had to be arrested – and none at all had to be shot – in order for the government to enforce Roe v. Wade. And Roe‘s eventual repeal, which was equally horrifying to progressives, also produce minimal violence.)
So if, by some bizarre train of events, an American analog of the Nazi Party was able to get five seats on the Court (or whatever other number would make a majority on a packed Court) then it seems to me this party would have a very easy time declaring that the US constitution requires the government to confiscate most Jewish-owned property, or to transfer the bulk of executive power to a new official called the “Führer” who wasn’t term limited like the president (while turning the actual president into a powerless figurehead like Hindenburg was during his last year in office). It would be equally easy to declare that freedom of the press doesn’t apply to people who say bad things about the Führer or good things about the Jews. (American jurists have always agreed there are exceptions to the First Amendment, it’s just that every generation or two they change their minds about what those exceptions are.)
Obviously these decisions would be controversial, just like a lot of Supreme Court decisions already are, but they wouldn’t be any less legally binding than any other 5-4 decision. The only way Americans could stop the Nazi takeover is if state and local governments mustered stiff, and perhaps violent, resistance to the Court, which resistance would be illegal according to the present interpretation of the constitution. (And one would have to go all the way back to the Antebellum era to find precedents for it.)
Granted, I have no fear that this will happen in real life, but this is because (Democratic hysteria about Donald Trump notwithstanding) there is no organized political movement in America that wants to do these kinds of things. It isn’t because our constitution is somehow rigid enough to stop such a movement if there was one. And I think it’s important for Americans to realize that our democratic values, or our civic virtue, or our public morality, or whatever you call it, is simply much more important to our Republic than a written constitution ever was or ever will be.
Hi JMG and friends,
Recently, I’ve been seeing a lot of attention directed at the rightward shift in young men, especially in America. I’ve seen people attributing it to social media figures like Andrew Tate, white supremacy (never mind the fact that this shift is seen across all races), and a host of other factors, all of which I see as incorrect.
What drives me up the wall about all of this is that “liberals/progressives” (for lack of a better word) are not only blind to the factors which have caused the radicalization of young men, but they reject any evidence presented to them. If you tell them that their rhetoric comes across as misandrist, they’ll refuse to believe you, or snap back with a phrase like “equality feels like oppression for the privileged” (which probably feels pretty good to say but which I can assure you serves only to ensure young men shift further right). If you point out concrete cases where young men are clearly lagging (college attendance, employment, life expectancy, etc.) you’ll get a mix of noncommittal acknowledgements of the problem (without a mention of a solution) and poorly disguised schadenfreude.
Now, I do not believe the American right has any real solution to the problems facing young men, and in fact most of their ideas will only further serve to shred our tattered social fabric and isolate young men even more, furthering the crisis. And of course people like Mr. Trump are far from being examples of good men. But by virtue of not mocking and ignoring the “young man population”, they have made deep and permanent inroads into what was traditionally a liberal cohort.
To link my thoughts back to your blog post, masses of young men were a major factor in the rise of the NDSAP. I believe young men today are too isolated and too sucked-in to the virtual world for such an outcome today (which in a very real way is a good thing). But the frustrations of this cohort will find an outlet, which I think will come in the form of them checking out of society, retreating further into their video-game/social media/Internet pornography prisons. This time it’ll be a whimper, not a bang.
I fantasize about the creation of a society which is able to address the issues of young men but “fantasize” is the operative word there. I think addressing the issues would be quite simple from a left-wing view, it’s just that the narrative they’ve adopted blocks them from doing so. To echo what you and others have said in the comments, the political crisis they face would have been avoided entirely had they solved the problems a decade ago. But their narratives made them unable to do that.
“Much of what’s going on right now, of course, is a conflict between the 20% of Americans who belong or aspire to the managerial class, and who have had disproportional influence over American life, and the 60% or so who belong to the working and lower middle classes, who don’t share their values and, more importantly, have gotten the short end of the stick for the last fifty years and know they can count on a steady diet of further impoverishment and immiseration under managerial class rule.”
Sort of hard to reconcile this with the fact that democrats are getting far more small donations than Trump this election cycle, compared to 2020. Trump is much more reliant on wealthy donors (hence the Silicon valley outreach this campaign, Elon etc) https://t.co/3b10wYXQdA
This is much more a power struggle between the west and east coast money centres IMO—new money is trying to take over.
You wonder, how did Hitler get to be Hitler? Was it inborn?
Was it his upbringing? I don’t think so, in Mein Kampf, he said he respected his father who came up from poverty to become a customs official, and while he was demanding and rough in manner, seemed to want the best for young Adolf.
And Hitler also apparently revered his mother. While his family life may not have been a model of domestic bliss, it didn’t seem to me all that bad.
Hitler’s schooling seemed to me not to blame. Hitler said he only cared about history and another subject and led the class in those areas and neglected the rest and so he never got his school certificate. The art school that turned down his application told him to apply to their architecture department as this looked to be Hitler’s area of talent. But Hitler lacked academic certification so that was out. Was he just an exemplar of the German values of his time? I read one account that claimed as much.
It is widely known that Hitler was greatly aggrieved by Germany’s 1918 capitulation as he said as much in his memoir. And maybe even more by the 1919 treaty. One thing is for sure, he had a lot of fellow travelers among German Great War veterans who shared Hitler’s view that Germany had been betrayed.
One other thing is for sure, at least to me; nobody who lived through front-line combat in the Great War and survived was the same person coming out as going in. I know that from accounts by my mother who said as much about my grandfather who spent three years on the front lines and somehow made it through. It was much the same thing as my paternal grandfather who survived WW2 by the skin of his teeth. He was described as even tempered and mild-mannered pre-war but extremely irritable and foul tempered post-war to the point that my grandmother threatened to leave him. So does war-time experience account for Hitler?
P.S. my grandfather straightened himself out and my grandmother stayed with him
Chuaquin:
I disagree with you about that the Valencians who atacked the King the spanish President Sanchez, and the Valentian President Mazon, are extreme right activists. They are outraged people of the flooded town and voluntaries that are aiding them, outraged by these things:
1) Mazon sent the warning against floods at 20:15, when hundreds of people was drowning.
2) Mazon didn’t asked for military support for the survivors, some of then trapped in basements or in cars not covered totally by water, or trapped in their homes due to mountains of cars and mud without water suply, electricity, food and medicines, exposed to pillage made by bands of thieves.
3) Sánchez didn’t ordered military support because he argued that Mazon should ask for It.
The retinue composed by 50 vehicules of the King, Sánchez and Mazon for visiting the flooded zone interrumped the activity of the voluntaries and the access of the trucks with resources for the survivors bought by people of diferent places was interpretated like a sabotage and a derision an insult for many of the voluntaries and survivors
Situated as I am, I have a hard time sorting out fact from fiction from b.s., simply because everything I get is at second-hand. The newspapers say this, the media say that, various ideologues say different and conflicting things, most of it about things I have no first-hand knowledge of. Add to that, a proven track record of being unable to judge people by anything other than what I see them do, first-hand and in person – “thinking for yourself” becomes more and more difficult, since “Garbage in, Garbage out.” I wonder how many people out there are in the same predicament? If you’re not on the firing line, how can you judge the battles? Especially if your own judgment is (proven track record again) not very good? Besides throw up one’s hands and say “A plague on all your houses?” (Serious question, BTW. Dead serious. Answers welcome.)
Also welcome would be a discussion of the results of the election, apart from the predictable hair-tearing over the loss of “Our Democracy!” For some values of “Us.”
The Greeks had a word for the sort of leader who arises after a time of chaos or deadlock to knock heads, kick butts, and take names: “Tyrant.” Some of whom were good leaders in their lifetime. Spengler walled the same thing “Caesarism.” Roman history records a number of wannabes – Catalina. Clodius. Pompey. Crassus. So does American history: Huey Long, for example. Eric Hoffer describes movement leaders as “the original inspired one who starts the movement,” followed by an organizer who makes if work, followed by a bureaucrat…. rinse and repeat.
Meanwhile, the mass media moans about the lack of work ethic among the young adults of today, their lack of commitment to anything, whose main tendency, if you ask me, is “playing it safe.,” a mindset I remember all too well from 70 years ago.
An Egyptian papyrus called “The Man Who Was Tired of Life,” and begins “Who can we trust today?” echoes the Norse “Seeress’ Prophecy” with “Wolf age, axe age, brothers betray brothers….” and Bishop Wulfstan’s “Sermon of the Wolf to the English,” describing the same sort of chaos, social decay, famine, lack of trust or honor….” ….. The Wars of Stephen and Maude, when “The King was weak and did no justice” and warring nobles ran rampant, and “God and His Angels slept.”…. the Thirty Years War of the 17th Century….read up on those, not to mention the blood-drenched 20th, and say with The Preacher, “I came and i saw that there was nothing new under the sun…..”
End Rant.
I would like my thanks to the discussion about the obsession with Gitler. It is a timely, and, in my opinion, important, discussion because of the direction in which the Western world seems to move.
About the looks of Pol Pot, I think his looks are not so iconic, because, firstly, in Cambodia there was no personality cult around him, in contrast to the situation in Stalin’s Russia, Mao Zedong’s China or in Kim Il Sung’s North Korea. So, Pol Pot’s face was not seen much. And he didn’t have a beard or other memorable facial features. He just looks a bit sinister, that’s all.
And it seems to me that the craziness in the Western world, especially so in the United States, is reaching new feverish heights which are even manifesting in this comment secton.
>> Can you think of any other historical figure whose image and reputation can be evoked so instantly by two abstract blotches of black on white? <<
Charley Chaplin comes to mind, if you'd replace the hair lock by an abstract bowler hat.
Interesting post, JMG. I liked the love/hate flip and the kitler cat, of course.
Lathechuck #296
When I suggested offing President Wilson to render Hitler harmless, it was because his was the only name I could think of at the Paris Peace Conference. I was too lazy to research who all the participants were, and who among them were the most vindictive. Please forgive me.
@celadon: Thanks for both references, I wasn’t acquainted with either!
One thing that surprises me is your mentioning “Protestant progressive” regions as among the earliest Nazi strongholds. As far as I know, the Nazis first made inroads at the 1928 election among the hardest-hit rural parts of the North Sea coast of Schleswig-Holstein, then at the 1930 and subsequent elections in the easternmost, poorest and most rural parts of then-Germany (Eastern Prussia and Pomerania). They also came to power in Brunswick and parts of Thuringia. None of these regions would normally be considered particularly progressive.
The town where I grew up, somewhat south of Brunswick, was also an early adopter (and the subject of a sociological study of Nazi seizure of power by an American political scientist). The earliest Nazi voters were small shop owners, then also school teachers and other government workers. Later, the railroad workers came around, too.
It seems to me that both Kuehnelt-Leddihn and Rosenstock Huessy are among the minority of conservative, devout Christian anti-Nazis. Mind you, I am sure Kuehnelt-Leddihn would consider the MAGA crowd leftist and much too democratic!
I just thought of a good name for a band. ” Kamala and the Squirrel Killers.”
Hey hey JMG,
This is probably worth your time to read:
https://acoup.blog/2024/10/25/new-acquisitions-1933-and-the-definition-of-fascism/
By a historian who has done some interesting things on his blog, and generally put in some solid work making the past accessible to nonacademics. Broadly speaking, I really enjoy his blog. There have been a couple of posts that drifted into ‘I support the current thing’ territory, but by and large he covers the past well.
This post was interesting and challenging because, while he does stretch some things to fit into the boxes that they are supposed to go in to, he’s also not wrong about some of them.
So, a question. We had a phase of ideological extremism in the last crisis, WWI to WWII, and we’re moving toward a phase of cult of personality. I’m curious how you would compare and contrast Spengler’s Ceasars to fascism. There’s definitely some overlap.
On the overlap, I’m struck by point #6, “Appeal to a Frustrated Middle Class. This may be the single best-documented part of the entire movement.” As it relates to Spengler’s analysis that Ceasars come to power to correct the failings of an entrenched, senile elite. Also, it reminds me of John Kenneth Galbraith’s “every successful revolution is the kicking in of a rotten door.” As you said up thread, if the Democrats had done anything to address the concerns of the working class in the last four years, then Trump wouldn’t have a chance in this election.
To parse my question a little differently, do the failings of the entrenched, senile elite necessitate that the “strange bright banners” will come at a horrible cost with ugly baggage and bunch of stupid?
https://archdruidmirror.blogspot.com/2017/06/strange-bright-banners.html
I’m unsure about whether it’s Tucker Carlson’s search for demonic forces or the insistence that that’s the least important thing about the clip by the post’s author (all all his commentators) is the more interesting thing here:
https://x.com/justinbaragona/status/1853486380770529405?t=H4H2SEMiq6PL5z3LWUiHJQ&s=19
On a related tangent from the original topic, I was diving a little deeper into the claims about Trump being a “fascist”.
A lot of the blame, I believe, is because of Umberto Eco’s essay on “Ur-Fascism”. I enjoyed Eco’s fiction, but even modern progressive academics who research fascism say that the essay is too broad to offer anything useful in studying fascism. Eco has 14 points, of which he says, any single one could be the core around which a “fascist” movement could coalesce, this is patently nonsense. A lot of midwits basically took Eco’s essay as a hammer to nail the fascist nail anywhere they could.
Along the way, I also read some of the critiques of fascism from the Right, in particular, Julius Evola’s Fascism Viewed from the Right. He clearly sees some affinities between Italian fascism as he lived through it and the aristocratic right he himself espoused, mainly in the central role of the State (something foreign to most American “conservatives”) but he sees key differences as well.
Happy popcorn day – have already voted by mail. This morning I set out the flag, Lady Liberty, and the Ben Franklin quote “A Republic – if you can keep it,” and expect that display to be unique.
Will be buying the Gainesville Sun at the grocery store tomorrow, never mind that I get it in the mail – usually around supper time. That paper had been all over Our Governor for using taxpayers’ money to battle two amendments on the ballot – legalizing (and taxing and regulating) the sale and use of marijuana; and restoring the old Roe v. Wade limits to abortions. The paper included some statistics about maternal deaths and infant deaths in states with a strict ban or rigid limits like “after 6 weeks. True to yesterday’s whining rant, I take note that the Sun is bluer than blue, but find the statistics believable. The photo showed him with a face of tight, dour righteousness and disapproval of all that wasn’t.
That said, have a good election day, and don’t let the so-and-so’s get you down.
“But the frustrations of this cohort [young men] will find an outlet, which I think will come in the form of them checking out of society, retreating further into their video-game/social media/Internet pornography prisons. This time it’ll be a whimper, not a bang.”
The Chinese are ahead of us. Google ‘let it rot movement’
Or see this, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tang_ping
In China there is also the problem of an actual shortage of women due to the habit of preferentially aborting girls during the one child policy.
In the US there is a shortage of women perceived as marriageable due to cultural issues including a biased court system.
So if a family is not an option for whatever reason slaving away for the Glory of the State/System loses its attraction quickly.
Johnny, good! You’re quite correct, of course; we put human bootprints on the moon because a bunch of teenage boys, half a century earlier, became obsessed with space travel while pawing through the pages of cheap pulp magazines.
Mary, I don’t discount the effect of any of the deadly sins in voting. As Churchill said, democracy is the worst system of government, except for all the others.
Inna, interesting! As for the Harris banner, why, yes. One of the things that got me out of my early flirtation with left-wing politics was seeing one of those bumper stickers saying “Live Simply That Others Might Simply Live” on the back of I forget which make of brand new, gargantuan SUV. It took that to get me to start noticing the raw hypocrisy of so much environmentalism.
Chuaquin, many thanks for the update. What a horrible situation — it sounds like the mess we’ve got in North Carolina.
Eruption, Bonapartism is also a risk, of course.
Jp, interesting. Can you point me to some sources for your claims about the status of the bureaucracy in the late British Empire? It seems to contradict what I’ve read, but I’m willing to consider your evidence if you can present it.
Robert, I’ve read a little of her work in the past, and liked it; Number and Time is going high on my list, as that’s relevant to several of my research projects.
Larkrise, my experience with working class men — the class to which Trump is directing his appeal most strongly — is that they mouth off a lot and don’t mean it; I’ve watched straight (and rather homophobic) guys joking about having a gay affair, for example, and nobody thought anything of it. In that class, you judge people by their actions. The middle and (especially) upper middle classes are much more fixated on saying the right things, and even when their actions don’t conform to their words they tend to get a pass; a guy in the upper middle class will be treated much more harshly for uttering a racial slur than he will for quietly making sure people of color don’t get promoted in his department.
Jessica, thank you for this. That said, every mass murder has a context.
Aldarion, thanks for this.
Clay, I’m really starting to wonder if this meme will turn out to be on target:
Mary, that’s interesting. I’ve also spent a lot of time with working class people, and my experience differs sharply from yours — my comment to Larkrise above summarizes my experiences fairly well. I also note that the bleach business is a repeatedly disproved slur, right up there with the “fine people” hoax. As for me, the courtesy rules I enforce here are partly a matter of class background but much more a matter of my own life. I was repeatedly bullied when I was young, and I tend to have a very hard reaction against anything that reminds me too much of that experience.
Phil, um, well, yes, if I ever want to get world-class shrieking fits out of a good share of my readership, talking about the feminization of society and the pathologization of the masculine would do it. The Russian proverb, though, is quite correct — it’s quite common, in fact, for those two to be mixed in various proportions.
Polecat, it’s quite simple. They abuse power because abusing power is a real rush for some people, and a lot of the petty busybodies who make a career out of scolding others live for that rush.
J.L.Mc12, so noted!
Wer, so it’s the same template that’s played out here in the US. Gotcha.
Celadon, many thanks for both of these.
Xcalibur, no, the Germans couldn’t have forced a stalemate in the autumn of 1944. The Allies at that point weren’t interested in a stalemate, and they would have just kept pushing until the Wehrmacht broke or a mushroom cloud over Berlin settled the matter. Once Hitler invaded Russia he was doomed, and his hubris made it impossible for him to do anything else. Thus my point that he was a failure.
B3rnhard, hmm! Thank you for this.
Siliconguy, he’s not wrong.
Sandwiches, yes, I expected that to get pushback. One of these days, if I decide to get into writing history, I’ll do a history of the response to the Great Depression that fleshes out the parallels in detail. In the meantime, you might consider the extent to which “reinterpreting the constitution” is different from overturning it.
Hobbyist, you’re quite correct, of course. The pathologizing of maleness and the demonization of young men have been central themes of our mainstream cultural discourse for a while now, and watching pundits squeal in outrage because young men have responded to this by abandoning the mainstream cultural discourse has a certain amusement value. I’m far from sure that you’re right, though, that young men will withdraw further in response. I’ve heard from conservative Christian friends that young men are flooding into their denominations; I’ve seen the way that young man are rallying around Trump. The left wing isn’t going to do anything about it, so that tells you where the young men will rally. Watch this space…
Daed, not at all. You’re basing your analysis on a massively oversimplified analysis of the American class structure. The Democrats at this point are the party of the managerial class; the GOP is the party of the insurgent entrepreneurial class, which is rising to power by championing the situation of the working and lower middle classes — exactly as the managerial class did 90 years ago, when it took power from the old capitalist class. Thus rich entrepreneurs sick of bureaucratic muddle are providing the money, and working class Americans are providing the muscle, for the new populism.
Smith, I’ve got my own theory, but since I’ve suggested it above I’ll leave it at that.
Patricia M, oh, granted. I pay less attention to what people claim to be for and more to how they actually behave, but your mileage may vary. When the left talks about “our democracy,” of course, they mean theirs — not mine, or yours, or most other people’s. It’s a claim of ownership.
Booklover, of course. I don’t think the US has ever gone through an elite replacement cycle without losing its marbles pretty comprehensively right out there in public. Other nations have their nervous breakdowns in private, but we’ve never managed that.
Ronald, hmm! Okay, that’s an interesting suggestion.
Clay, only if they’re going to rise and fall in the next year. Four years from now nobody will remember either Harris or the squirrel.
Team10tim, so noted! I’ve bookmarked it. In response to your question, we don’t know yet. It depends very much on what happens over the next few years.
Alvin, Eco’s essay is a rhetorical weapon rather than a contribution to understanding. He’s simply setting things up so he can shriek “Fascist!” any time he wants. Bleah. Evola’s not at all to my taste but at least the guy could build an argument.
Patricia M, I cast my vote on the 16th of October, the day the polls opened for early voting here in Rhode Island. I’ve got a quiet and, I hope, productive day ahead!
If the “bleach business” has been disproved, the global warming is a hoax remark has not been. It may or may not reflect the Orange Julius’s private opinion, but at this point that hardly matters.
Siliconguy, or anyone: this is a genuinely serious question. You mentioned:
“In the US there is a shortage of women perceived as marriageable due to cultural issues including a biased court system.”
I have seen feminists make counter claims, including bias favoring second wives with respect to custody and visitation rights.
Be that as it may, what does puzzle me is why does anyone, male or female, who is a grown adult, no longer a delusional teenager, want to live with someone who does not like them? If they don’t like you, they don’t like you. You don’t need the hassles and constant bickering, let alone worse that can happen. A Texas reporter was heard lamenting the fact that Texas laws allowed his wife to divorce him. What the freak? Did this well employed guy think he could never attract someone who would appreciate what he had to offer?
Siliconguy, I do very much respect your posts on this forum, and I would really like a serious answer to that question.
JMG wrote
If I ever want to get world-class shrieking fits out of a good share of my readership, talking about the feminization of society and the pathologization of the masculine would do it.
That sounds like a great topic for an upcoming fifth Wednesday post!
Monday evening, as I was putting my ballot into the collection box, I felt gratitude toward those over the long years who made it possible for ordinary folks like myself to vote. Even if that right has been largely hollowed out.
Mr. Greer, oh for sure! Harpies, Scolds, and Sadists abound. Anyone sane who has watched even a nano-second of say, the VIEW .. has to be comprised of very firm stuff. As for Hochul’s squirrelkiller apparatchiks – me thinks she has unwittingly unleashed the last-minute get-‘kracken’ garbage vote. I think donning a shield derived from a battered trashcan lid .. complete with that peanut sigil as per illustrated up top Kuntsler’s recent post .. on the underside – as seen from the street, would be an outstanding accoutrement for any discerning citizen-warrior.
Just trying to think through why Hitler is a perennial target of American obsession.
Could it be related to scientific racism and the specters that raises in the American conscience? As a path narrowly avoided?
@JMG – thanks for this. Will continue to focus on what I see people do, and ignore the rest.
Interesting OT: data point from home: I told my daughter my reaction to seeing a man dressed like a monk at the Hallowe’en party, which I thought was inappropriate. She didn’t see it. “How is it different from a sorceress’ gown?” I answered that I didn’t find dressing as clergy in any faith as a costume was appropriate, and she said “Why not?” I shrugged and said “older generation cultural difference,” and let it go at that. It struck me then how bone-deep her irreligiousness was. And wondered, later, what she’d say to my thinking dressing as a member of the armed forces (not historical, but IRL) as a Hallowe’en costume was inappropriate as well. No. I didn’t see any there, and never have. Except on little boys at Trick-or treat, which The Village held for the children of our workers last week, because costumes like those on children are aspirational.
Is this a cultural thing, or a generational thing? Opinions from different regions and cultures welcome.
OT: over – I now return you to the little man with the mustache and the big Shadow. (And no, I’m not telling the family how I voted.
On our Caesar conversation JMG, it just hit me that JD Vance and Erik Prince are military men, and Prince has what in reality amounts to a personal army. Trump is too old to really be a Caesar, but those two are right in the sweet spot age wise, with military experience and backing.
@JMG said,
“One of these days, if I decide to get into writing history, I’ll do a history of the response to the Great Depression that fleshes out the parallels in detail. In the meantime, you might consider the extent to which “reinterpreting the constitution” is different from overturning it.”
Oh, there are definitely big emotional and psychological differences between reinterpreting and overturning the constitution – after all people tend to feel differently when their leaders say “We must do away with old things and make a fresh start!” than when they say “We now understand our longstanding principles better than the last generation did.” And leaders who understand how propaganda works – Hitler and FDR and Churchill and Lenin and Mao and the whole lot of them – will choose the method that best fits their circumcstances.
But for the people on the business end of things, there isn’t all that much difference between hearing the chief executive say: “I am sending you to the labor camp, and I can do this because I signed an executive order this morning to abolish the constitution,” vs. hearing him say “I am sending you to the labor camp, and I can do this because I got a 6-3 supreme court ruling that says that the labor camp is constitutional.”
Since we Americans tend to have a lot of reverence for our constitution, I think that we’re more vulnerable to the second kind of tyranny than the first.
Hi John Michael,
Executing pet squirrels? Really? How have I missed this news?
That’s the thing, bureaucracy doesn’t seek solutions, it seeks administration – possibly for purely selfish reasons. Given so many folks are losing their minds about climate change and the environment, when some dude attempts a novel solution which flies in the face of err, rules, well that administration swings into force. Thought you might be interested in this story involving animal execution, for no good reason I can see: Meet the defiant grazier using feral donkeys to regenerate his land at Kachana Station in an ‘illegal’ experiment.
Good luck for today, and hope things don’t get too crazy. I will note that polls failed utterly to predict a republican win in 2016, or Brexit, or even the Voice referendum down here. Such constant failure should be a guide, and probably a suggestion that those pushing such stories be sacked for being consistently wrong.
Cheers
Chris
For Patricia;
10 U.S. Code § 771 – Unauthorized wearing prohibited
Except as otherwise provided by law, no person except a member of the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps, or Space Force, as the case may be, may wear—
(1) the uniform, or a distinctive part of the uniform, of the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps, or Space Force; or
(2) a uniform any part of which is similar to a distinctive part of the uniform of the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps, or Space Force.
In a following section there is an exception for actors playing their parts as well as veterans doing official veteran stuff.
This is off topic for the post but I just finished my walk, and at 7 pm on election day in Virginia with the temp at 70, not only were the crickets and tree frogs singing, but the regular frogs as well. Kek , meet global warming…
Larkrise (#274) and JMG (#275), regarding Trump’s utterances and class differences, it all seems quite simple to me – the work you do dominates your thoughts. E.g.:
1. People who write or communicate for a living (journalists, actors, lawyers, professionals) seem to take Trump’s bull at face value and more generally also seem to inordinately value the public stances people take, irregardless of their actual behavior (present company excluded, of course);
2. People who build things for a living or work with their hands see Trump’s bull as bull, are pretty cynical about public figure’s pronouncements, and are much more convinced by concrete actions;
3. People who are extremely rich seem to think everything and one is for sale and that money is the determining factor (e.g., Russia can’t win because it’s economy is smaller than Italy’s).
For Mary Bennet;
Women flip from hot to cold for reasons that men can’t figure out. They just “get tired” of the relationship and decide to leave. No reason given, no reason supplied due to no fault divorce laws (which had the benefit of not forcing women to Trump up abuse charges) and they are gone with half of everything, child support, possible alimony, child tax credits, and head of household deduction.
The guy gets to pay for everything out of his after tax income. He may get to see his children at her sole discretion. The women are essentially rewarded for breaking their contract, which is all a marriage is anymore. 80% of divorces are filed by the women. Last time I looked it up men get the kids 6% of the time.
So from the female point of view dumping the husband is a great deal. If she is clever she might be able to monkey-branch up an economic level although this doesn’t work that often. Men are catching on to the trap a single mother represents. There are plenty of examples of single mothers whining about why men aren’t eager for their company.
Then there is the whole sprinkle sprinkle/ drizzle drizzle thing going on. That was funny, but it made a valid point. If women are strong, powerful, and making more than the men, then why are men still paying for the date?
From the male point of view dealing with a woman is financially risky to the tune of 18 years of child support and possibly being required to contribute to college too. Since sperm-napping is now a thing even using a condom won’t protect you from child support. As always, If you are married and she has someone else’s kid, it’s yours by law unless real daddy signs up to take responsibility for it.
There is a movement afoot to require paternity testing of all newborns and women are screaming bloody murder at the idea. This is not increasing the confidence men have in the fundamental honesty of women.
Headlines like this do not help.
https://dnatesting.com/30-of-men-not-the-father/
It’s not that bad, but it’s not zero either.
So, the culture is not relationship friendly right now. If women want a kid they can visit a sperm bank. Men don’t have that option until China or North Korea invents a uteran replicator. Then men will be able to buy an egg and have their own kid.
Team10tim, I read that blog post earlier, it’s based on Umberto Eco’s essay which I mentioned above, which itself is a completely useless piece for actually understanding fascism. Bret knows a lot about military history, but he’s also very biased against Trump and he is not an expert on fascism.
If you want to read some academic works about fascism you can check out Roger Griffin’s work. He has quite a simple and elegant definition of fascism: palingenetic ultranationalism — the idea that society has to go through a social revolution to be reborn. He also doesn’t like Trump, but he’s quite clear that Trump isn’t a fascist.
If I ever want to get world-class shrieking fits out of a good share of my readership, talking about the feminization of society and the pathologization of the masculine would do it.
Now that I’ve got the Hitler post – and thank you for that – it was fascinating – I want this post
Brother Kornhoer 339 and JMG, I hear what you say and I understand that actions do indeed matter more than words; nonetheless, we are talking about powerful people or politicians and I believe what they say matters, because everything they are, do or say is amplified. Back in the day, as you surely remember, King Henry II of England burst out with the words “”Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?” — it was not an order, but it prompted four knights to travel from Normandy to Canterbury, where they bashed Thomas A Becket, the Archbishop, to death.
If you are really saying that people with followings of millions can say whatever they like because nobody is ever going to take them at their word, I have to disagree. I think actually we should hold those in public life to a high standard in both speech *and action, if possible. Not one more than the other, as the “thought is father to the deed”; surely speech is somewhere in between?
I agree with Mary Bennet re the “Climate change is a hoax” line. Most people who hear this will feel that he is freeing them from any concern whatsoever over the climate. I don’t know that Trump does think it is a hoax, I don’t think he cares either way. He seems to toss off this expression because it plays well to people. It has power. Excuse me for being middle class, but I would say it is, at the very least, deeply irresponsible.
JMG I wondered about the magical and occult dimensions of speech; what is said or put out there verbally. Is it really just breath, as irrelevant as all that?
JMG #327: I see your point. Yes, the Allies had alot of momentum, and Hitler was indeed fixated on Lebensraum in the East, so much so that he discussed it in Mein Kampf. I also hadn’t considered the possibility of dropping nukes on Germany, which certainly could’ve happened in another timeline. My main point is that the National Socialists gave the world a run for their money, and there’s a tendency nowadays to downplay that challenge, along with a sense of historical determinism, as if the course the war took was how it was always meant to be. But, point taken, although I’ll say that if Hitler was a failure, he was at least a romantic failure.
To respond to another point, ie getting a rush out of scolding ppl: one of the battles I’ve watched in the Culture War is Comicsgate, which is basically comics fans pushing back against woke infestation of the major comic companies, ridiculing their terrible work and crowdsourcing their own stuff, which is far better ofc. Back when comics were good, the emphasis was on action and heroic deeds, and when I watched the youtube critiques of woke comics, I noticed that the climax would involve the self-insert character ranting and bitching at someone, lol. So it seems that the radicals & subverters were also expressing their power fantasy, albeit in a very different way.
Congrats to MAGA on this fine victory!
@JMG, Thank you for the photo of Pol Pot. (I admit to not having been curious enough to look him up myself–such faces tend to infest my nightmares.) Really mild looking southeast Asian face, as I thought. The late journalist Andre Vltchek called him an “idiot” schooled in the salons of Paris, who returned to his native land–a real powder keg–for an opportunity to engage in a little social engineering. The beleaguered rural population had been subjected to years of bombing, and was aching for an excuse–any would do–to attack the urban elites, who had encouraged the bombing.
I met a man in the course of my environmental work who had survived the killing fields by pretending to be dead. His face stays with me in a positive way.
Well, Trump won. And now, what will happen?
Thank you to everybody for a very instructive discussion. I will try to summarize what I have learnt.
To somebody who believes international organizations are the best protection against war and in equal employment opportunities for women (this includes a large part of European voters), the Nazis certainly look far right. However, to an American who believes government always brings trouble and that nobody gets respect for their diploma or their family name, the Nazis might look leftist. I would caution that by these criteria no European movement of the 1930s or 1940s could be considered rightist.
Finally, to an old school monarchist like Kuehnelt-Reddihn, the Nazis, the MAGA crowd and just about everybody else would feel insufferably egalitarian and vulgar, though I am still not sure exactly at which policy proposal they would part company with the Nazis.
All of this comes back to JMG’s original point that it isn’t very useful to compare today’s politicians with Hitler.
PS: congratulations on a clear outcome of the election!
Anselmo #315.
OK; things have gone insane in Valencia Sur these days, and MSM aren’t innocent. I thought there were a lot of extremist people harassing politicians and the King and his wife, but indeed the majority of the howling crowd were in effect, Paiporta neighbours, not far right people.
I agree with you, there are some politicians here who are guilty at least for criminal negligence.
Saludos…
Should have said: “…who believes that government is always the problem and that nobody’s opinion is worth more than anybody else’s just because of their title or position”.
The Ghost of PEANUT has had it’s revenge!
@alvin: Palingenetic ultranationalism sounds like a very good definition of fascism.
If you do write about the feminization of society and the pathologization of the masculine, I hope you take into account the higher incidence of the autism-spectrum disorders, particularly ADHD, among males. Whenever I see one of those listicles that are like, “Men do X, women do Y”, I try replacing “men” with “people with ADHD” and “women” with “people who don’t have ADHD”. In about half the cases, my edited version is more accurate than the original. A few years ago I saw an article in a respectable PMC publication that purported to be about how young working class men aren’t preparing themselves for the postmodern economy because of some supposed attachment to traditionally masculine blue collar work. However, when it got down to cases, there were no young men who said they didn’t want to do desk work because it wasn’t manly enough. Instead, there were guys who only wanted to play video games, whose moms filled out the forms to enroll them in community college because they couldn’t be bothered. That doesn’t sound like traditionalism to me.
“Now we must hope Trump does a good job. I really hope he proves those Democratic fools wrong about him being another Hitler. I would prefer to be the only one.”
Quote from a Hitler Rant Parody.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=XpCdX2g31ww
Also;
“Trump refuses to be defeated and always manages to eventually win just like Stalin.”
When you said “man with the moustache” what actually first came to mind was Nietzsche….but maybe that’s just me….. Or is there a kind of synchronicty in the fact that here we have the two most famous moustaches in history? Maybe it goes even further: Nietzsche’s absurdly extravagant bush, and the other guy’s prim little lip-tab? Is there perhaps some symbolism in that? Less well known is that Heidegger sported one just like The Leader’s.
I haven’t read the other comments, so apologies if another commenter has already pointed this out.
I believe the key reason that Hitler and his atrocities persist so long in the American imagination is because we liberated the death camps. They were seen firsthand by thousands of American soldiers. What is more they were documented by American journalists and their images were broadly shared in media. Also, death camp survivors were allowed to settle in the United States
Stalin’s gulags may outnumber in death count, but how many Americans have seen a photo of them or met someon who had see one first hand?
It is an unfortunate fact that the suffering of others becomes abstract very easily.
Thanks for your unique perspective. Not necessarily cogent or convincing but welcome nevertheless.