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Friedrich Nietzsche

Curt Paul Janz on Nietzsche, 2

nietzsche_after_catastropheExcerpted from Curt Paul Janz’s last volume of his biography, Friedrich Nietzsche. Biographie. Band 3: Die Jahre des Siechtums, Chapter “The Catastrophe”:


On Sunday January 6, 1889 Jacob Burckhardt received a long letter from Nietzsche. While it is true that, from the Genealogy [On the Genealogy of Morals] at least Burckhardt had not followed Nietzsche’s philosophical way, he did continue to be humanely united to his former colleague. For long Burckhardt had watched with concern his state and inquired about it, but this turn towards mental disturbance surprised and deeply affected him.

Burckhardt did immediately what was in his hand: he went immediately with the letter to see Franz Overbeck, whose close contact with Nietzsche he knew. Although their houses were not far apart—from the suburb of St. Alban to the Sevogelstrasse there are only a few hundred meters—, Burckhardt had never felt moved to walk that way. But now, the terrible impression he received prompted him to overcome that barrier. Also for Overbeck it was an alarming surprise to see Jacob Burckhardt into his home.

Following a review of the two letters to Burckhardt and Overbeck, Wille [Prof. Dr. Ludwig Wille, a psychiatrist] had no doubt about how he had to try the case and what they had to do. He urged Overbeck that, without loss of time, to bring the friend from Turin to Basel, before he disappeared in any one of the dubious Italian centers.

Overbeck immediately followed the advice, which seemed more like an order. By doing so he had to weight two considerations: firstly the question of costs. Neither he nor Nietzsche were doing well economically. Professorial fees were then rather scarce. And besides, surely it was not easy to a conscientious teacher to leave without official dispensation for a few days.

In spite of everything, in the night of January 7 he parted to Turin, where he arrived the next day around 2 pm. Given his perennially poor health, the feat demanded a great effort from Overbeck, especially in the middle of winter. 18 hours in those times when trains, insufficiently heated or not heated at all during the night (no sleeper), meant a real sacrifice. But the worst still awaited him.

By his own efforts Overbeck found Nietzsche’s housing in a city unknown to him. The landlord, Fino, was absent. Nietzsche, with his behavior, had finally put Fino in a state of despair, and he was now seeking help from the German consulate and police. The whole family was scattered so that it took some time for Overbeck to find the wife. Only then he approached his friend. In his letter of January 15 to Köselitz he narrates the encounter:

It happened in the last time when it was still possible to get him without official impediments, except his own state. I pass over the moving circumstances in which I found Nietzsche as a pupil of his landlords; which seem to be also characteristic of Italy in general. With the terrible moment as I saw Nietzsche I come again to the principal issue: a terrible moment like no other, and totally different from everything that happened afterwards.

I see Nietzsche in a corner of the armchair, curled up and reading—as it was apparent later, the latest proofs of Nietzsche contra Wagner—, tremendously deteriorated in external appearance. He sees me and rushes towards me, recognizing me he hugs me tightly, and becomes a sea of tears. He goes back then, in convulsions, to sink himself into the armchair. Neither do I find strength, because of the shock, to pull myself on my legs. Did it open at that moment the abyss in which he finds himself, or better, into which he has fallen? In any case, no such thing has been repeated. All of the Fino family was present.

Just as Nietzsche returned to rest there, moaning and with convulsive contractions, the watered bromide that was on the table was given to him. Instantly he relaxed, and, laughing, began to talk about the great reception that was prepared for him at night. Thus Nietzsche moved in a circle of delusions from which he never came out after I lost sight of him; being always clear of mind about me in general and other people, but caught in a full night about him. It happened that, exalting himself without measure, and with strong songs and frenzies on piano, shreds of the ideas were recovered from the world in which he had lived lately.

Then, in short sentences, uttered in a tone indescribably flat, he had us hearing sublime, wonderfully visionary things and unspeakably terrible about himself as the successor of the dead God, tapping all, so to speak, at the piano. Afterwards the convulsions and fits of indescribable suffering returned. But, as said, this only happened in rare and fleeting moments. While I was present, generally the profession statements that he awarded himself dominated: to be the jester of the new eternities, and he, the incomparable master of expression, was unable to represent the enthusiasm even from his joy otherwise than through the most trivial expressions or by a ridiculous dancing and jumping.

Overbeck’s report in his memoirs and letters to Köselitz is very summary. Carl Albrecht Bernoulli was able to complete it:

He then wrote to Peter Gast [Heinrich Köselitz] everything that happened in Turin during the terrible encounter; his hand refused to transcribe to paper the latest and most sordid details. Although occasionally he alluded to this in the most intimate circles, and to me personally he completed by word the description.

Overbeck was also more forthcoming with Möbius, who visited him on April 10, 1902. Möbius informs us:

In Turin he met a Jewish man who volunteered as a caregiver of the crazy (but he was not) and that with the help of his intervention they carried out the risky venture. Nietzsche was in bed and refused to get up. The Jew told him that they were prepared for large receptions and festivities, and Nietzsche got up, dressed and went to the station with them.

There he wanted to embrace all people, but the companion explained him how it was not appropriate for such an important man: and Nietzsche calmed down. Using large quantities of sleeping pills the patient remained quiet during the trip, and thus came the three happily to Basel.

Another visitor to Overbeck, the writer Eduard Platzhoff-Lejeune, based on an earlier conversation with Overbeck, presented the episode thus:

The Turin police was already aware, and only a true kidnapping could prevent a forced entry into a center of that place.

Then, miraculously, a stranger, a German Jew, apparently offered himself [for a fee] to transport the sick. Overbeck agreed and did not repent of his acceptance. With surprising touch the stranger immediately got influence on the wayward sick, something that the friend was not able to.

Nietzsche obeyed as a child, left the bed and dressed. A new outburst became a torture for Overbeck on the way to the station. Shouting and chasing them, Nietzsche was addressing the curious crowd, at the point of nearly thwarting the traveling. The train left while Nietzsche sang a fishermen’s Neapolitan song [?]. That deeply touched the excited friend. The caregiver tried a suggestion: “You’re a prince. In Basel station a festive crowd is expecting you. Come in before it without greeting to the car that is waiting to you!”

The trick worked better than expected. The morning of January 10, 1889, around 8, Nietzsche and his caretakers arrived to Basel. A ready-cab took them to “Friedmatt” where the patient could be entrusted to the care of specialists.

With that Nietzsche stopped being a person acting autonomously.

Categories
Bible Christendom Hojas Susurrantes (book) Infanticide Jesus New Testament Old Testament

Matthew Kersten’s hilarious review

Of the Holy Bible

1-First-Edition-King-James-Bible-1611

Poor editing, logical fallacies, one-dimensional characters, and narrative inconsistencies ruin an otherwise imaginative dystopian fantasy novel in which a vengeful deity enslaves humanity into worshipping him. The King James Bible has an extremely intriguing premise, but the execution of that premise is poor and doesn’t do it justice at all. Regardless, the King James Bible is one of the world’s bestselling books of all time and has garnered a massive cult following, and understandably so, as it comes with a provocative promise of eternal life after death for anyone who believes it to be true. After reading it for myself, I find belief in this book’s alleged validity to be impossible.

It is worth noting that the King James Bible is not simply one book but an anthology of books (which are categorized under two iterations labeled as the Old and New Testaments) spanning many generations, all written by different authors at different points in time. And it shows. Oftentimes books in this collection offer redundant information and, at other times, contradictory information. In fact, the very first two chapters of the first book, titled Genesis, which lays out the origins of the book’s fictional universe, heavily contradict each other, and it all goes downhill from that point on. The editing in this book is absolutely atrocious.

The story starts off simple enough. There’s an omniscient, omnipotent, immortal celestial entity that has existed before the universe even began. This being, known as God, is bored and lonely and decides to create the universe to amuse himself. He creates light, which he calls day, followed by darkness, which he calls night, before he creates the sun. He then creates a flat earth of water, followed by dry land, grass and plant life, two great lights (one to rule the day and one to rule the night, even though the latter of which—the moon—isn’t actually a light and the former of which—the sun—would have been vital to the survival of the previously created plant life); firmament through which precipitation may occasionally be allowed to pass, creatures, and man. There’s also a tree with fruit that gives knowledge to whoever eats it and a sneaky, malicious talking snake, so if you’re into fantasy novels, the creation story at the beginning of Genesis should hold your interest.

It doesn’t take long before things go awry. The talking snake convinces the first woman, Eve, to eat fruit from the knowledge tree. Eve then convinces Adam, the first man, to do the same. God, despite supposedly being omniscient, is shocked to learn that they have done this and starts laying down the law on them, saying that men will be forced to work all the days of their life and women will be subservient to men. (To add insult to injury, childbirth will also be painful.) He punishes all of humanity for the disobedience of the first humans.

It seems puzzling that an omniscient God couldn’t devise a better creation plan. Even more puzzling is that the humans who disobeyed him were punished, along with all future members of humanity, for what they did despite not having any knowledge of what the consequences would be beforehand. Besides, if a creation is bad, does the blame rest upon the creation or the creator? Still more puzzling is that God doesn’t bother to attempt to refine his human design but sticks with the original failed one.

Things get all screwed up and a few chapters later. God, despite being omniscient, comes to a realization that his creation plan was a massive failure and that most of humanity is a lost cause and decides to destroy the world in a giant flood. That’s right; the world is destroyed at the very beginning of the book, and only a select few of each species are allowed to survive, somehow all crammed into an ark made from gopher wood. (How the plant life survives is not explained, nor is it explained how aquatic life survives salt water and fresh water mixing together, nor is it explained where the excess water ends up after the flood is over.) Why this omnipotent God couldn’t just stop the hearts of all humans who displeased him is quite beyond me. This flood plan is remarkably inefficient and serves as filler material, as the surviving human family needs to engage in incest to repopulate the world just like the first humans needed to engage in incest to originally populate the world. It’s just the same scenario rehashed. I can’t help but feel as though the contrived flood account was interpolated into the beginning of Genesis to dress it up and make it appear more impressive. It might help hook some readers early on, but I found it to be unnecessary.

Through various semi-comical, semi-irritating mishaps involving a giant tower, a child sacrifice practical joke, and a sold birthright, a tribe known as Israel arises. Israel is the tribe that God favors over all others, though it doesn’t take long for the Israelites to become enslaved in Egypt despite possessing the guidance of this omniscient God.

The second installment in the anthology, Exodus, deals with their emancipation from Egypt. God decides to give this guy named Moses some cheat codes for the universe, so that he’ll be able to use them in an attempt to intimidate the Pharaoh into allowing the Israelites to go free. Whether or not this plan would have actually worked is anyone’s guess, as God decides to violate the Pharaoh’s free will to allow the Israelites to leave (Exodus 4:21, 7:3, 7:13, 7:22, 8:19, 9:7, 9:35, 10:1, 10:20, 10:27, 11:10, 14:4, and 14:8), giving himself an incredibly flimsy excuse to send ten plagues on all of the Egyptians, punishing them for the Pharaoh’s compulsory obstinacy, just to show off. After this fiasco, the Pharaoh is finally allowed to let the Israelites go. Very shortly thereafter, the Pharaoh changes his mind about letting them go and chases them with his army. He almost catches them, but Moses uses his magical powers that God gave him to divide the waters of the Red Sea so that the Israelites can walk through them. There’s also a pillar of fire separating the Egyptians from the Israelites. If you enjoy fantasy epics, Exodus should be right up your alley.

Once the Israelites are through, the fire pillar dissipates and the Egyptians very stupidly charge into the path between the parted waters. The waters collapse onto the Egyptians, drowning them, and the Israelites celebrate the grisly deaths of their enemies before setting up camp in the desert.

This is where the real fun begins. From the remainder of Exodus and all throughout Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, the vindictive, tyrannical God establishes a delightfully sinister theocracy under which basic happiness is impossible. He endorses slavery (Exodus 21:2-27, Leviticus 25:44-46, and Deuteronomy 20:10-14), public execution by stoning for failure to worship him on the Sabbath (Numbers 15:32-36), stoning of unruly children (Deuteronomy 21:18-21), and death as punishment for nearly every crime, usually by stoning. (Stoning seems to be his preferred method of execution.)

He also demands that virgin women who are raped marry their rapists (Deuteronomy 22:28-29), calls for genocide (Exodus 23:23-27, Leviticus 26:7-8, and Deuteronomy 7:1-5 and 12:2-3), and condones all sorts of other atrocities. The Israelites, who witnessed his power during the plagues and parting of the waters, have no choice but to submit to this new horrific celestial totalitarian regime.

After the death of Moses, Joshua takes over as leader of the Israelites. In Joshua, the sixth installment, the Israelites fulfill God’s call for genocide by fighting battles with other tribes all throughout the desert, winning them simply because God rigs them in their favor. After some initial victories, the Israelites forget about God’s power and start worshipping other gods.

In the next book, Judges, God, who freely admits to being jealous (according to Exodus 34:14, his very name is Jealous), punishes them for doing so and delivers them into bondage. When they repent, a “judge” is sent to free them. This happens multiple times throughout Judges, making for repetitive reading. (God also allows a man named Jephthah to sacrifice his daughter to him in exchange for a battle victory in Judges 11:30-40; a testament to how much he loves human death.)

After this nonsense goes on for awhile, delaying exposition, the Philistines arrive on the scene and pose a major threat to the Israelites. A guy named David scares them away by killing a Philistine giant by firing a rock at his head with a slingshot. He then becomes Israel’s king. (There’s also a disgusting yet somewhat amusing anecdote in which David slays two hundred Philistines, cuts off their foreskins, and gives them to Saul as a dowry for his daughter, Michal, in 1 Samuel 18:25-27. This seems like a very poor deal to me. I’ll bet that Saul later had buyer’s remorse.)

Some less important, not particularly memorable (save for God’s killing of King David’s illegitimate seven-day-old son in 2 Samuel 12:15-18, a census mishap in 2 Samuel 24:1-15, and an incident involving two she bears in 2 Kings 2:23-24) events take place throughout the next nine books before the reader is forced to trudge through 150 chapters of dull, repetitive, excessively slavish poetry written to God by one of his more abject followers in Psalms.

The author of that book has the audacity to claim that both God and his statutes are perfect (Psalms 119:142, 119:151, 119:160, and 119:172), even though this would mean that God would need to follow his own rules, which he doesn’t. It is also claimed in Psalms that happiness can be derived from bashing children’s heads against rocks (Psalms 137:9), which is a proclamation that thoroughly baffles me. I’m not sure what the author was going for here. Perhaps this verse is supposed to be some sort of black comedy joke intended to express the impaired judgment of those living under the theocratic dystopia depicted in this collection of books, or it might have been included to emphasize the ghastly nature of the aforementioned theocratic dystopia, or it might just be there for shock value.


[Chechar’s interpolated note: I think I have psychoanalyzed well those barbaric Semites in a passage of my book Hojas Susurrantes. Just click on this link and then scroll almost to the bottom of that entry until you hit the subtitle “The historical Israel”.]


Whatever the case may be, it’s far too mean-spirited. The author of Psalms also frequently and redundantly berates anyone who is not a member of the tribe(s) that God favors, making for tiresome and irritating reading.

The next three books provide even more dull reading material. After slogging through these books, the reader arrives at the writings of the Old Testament prophets.

Throughout Isaiah and Jeremiah, God ruthlessly annihilates entire nations that fail to submit to his terrorist demands. Isaiah also mentions unicorns (Isaiah 34:7), dragons (Isaiah 34:13), and satyrs (Isaiah 34:14) and identifies them as legitimate safety hazards, so if you enjoy fantasy novels, you should enjoy chapter 34 of Isaiah.

Furthermore, Jeremiah 10:1-5 forbids cutting trees out of the forest, adorning them with decorations, and displaying them as a holiday custom. A substantial portion of the cult followers who claim to live by this book’s teachings fail to uphold this passage, which is puzzling. (In fact, there are many passages that they fail to uphold.) It’s almost as if they don’t even realize that decorated trees are explicitly forbidden by their highly revered literary work, but that would mean that they haven’t actually read the entire book for themselves and are blindly accepting the subjective interpretations of others, which would be just plain absurd. Right?

The next book in the series is Lamentations, which is just as pathetic as it sounds. (The entire Old Testament is excellently summarized in one sentence by Lamentations 2:21.)

The celestial terrorism continues throughout Ezekiel, in which God sinks to a new low by demanding that Ezekiel eat cakes containing human excrement (Ezekiel 4:12). (The entire Old Testament is excellently summarized in one sentence in Ezekiel 25:17.) Ezekiel also sees creatures that each has four faces, four wings, and straight feet with calf’s soles in Ezekiel 1:5-28, so if you enjoy fantasy novels, you should enjoy that passage.

Some more less important events happen throughout the next ten books, which consist mainly of more divine terrorism and ultimatums. Jonah, in which a man survives being swallowed by a giant fish and is vomited up three days later, is amusing.


The second (much shorter) iteration of the King James Bible, the New Testament, starts off with this guy named Jesus, who is supposed to be God in human form, gathering followers on Earth and spreading his word to them.

Given how much of a tyrannical, ethnic-cleansing maniac God was in the Old Testament, one would most likely expect Jesus to be a Terminator-style infiltrator who goes on killing sprees, but instead he’s a hippie. This almost complete character reversal makes the main protagonist (I use that word loosely) seem even more contrived and unbelievable.

Granted though, traces of God’s evil do remain within Jesus, as he brings his followers the most horrendous news of all; that anyone who fails to accept him as his or her totalitarian slave master will be tortured for all eternity after death! It is the epitome of horror, revamping God’s vindictive, petty, unforgiving nature that was established in the Old Testament.

The inherent problem with the premise of the Jesus story is that a man who is an omniscient deity incarnate would have extremely advanced knowledge; knowledge far beyond that of the humans who wrote this collection of books, called gospels. However, the gospel authors were able to work around it in an extremely clever way. The four authors telling the story of Jesus and his time on Earth all pieced together a generalized account of his life from minor, disjointed details and the four resulting accounts all heavily contradict each other. Brilliant!

Some fans of this book claim that Jesus abolishes the atrocious laws established in the Old Testament, making up for them. This, however, is not the case, as Jesus himself states in Matthew 5:17-18 and Luke 16:17 that he came not to “destroy the law” but to fulfill it and that not “one tittle” of the law would fail until “heaven and earth pass.” Once again it seems as though those who claim to admire and adhere to this book don’t actually know it very well. Go figure.

Two of the gospel authors claim that Jesus was born to a virgin, which is rather far-fetched, but then again, it is a fantasy novel. Jesus also claims that anyone who has faith in him will be able to magically transfer mountains and trees into the sea (Matthew 17:20 and 21:21, Mark 11:23, and Luke 17:6), further emphasizing the alternate, fictional universe (where sorcery is possible) in which this story is set.

Also, in this universe, all ailments are caused by demons, which Jesus is able to cast out of the ill and physically deformed.

The end of the story of Jesus and his time on Earth, however, ruins the whole thing, as it is completely nonsensical. Jesus (also God) is there to die for the imperfect nature of all humans (in which God created them) as a blood sacrifice to God (also himself) simply so that he can ask God (also himself) to forgive all humans for involuntarily existing in an imperfect nature in which they were created by God. It is supposed to be a noble sacrifice, but it instead comes across as utterly absurd and obscene.

It isn’t even a sacrifice, because Jesus magically comes back to life three days later, which he knew ahead of time would happen. Besides, given the other resurrections throughout this anthology of books (1 Kings 17:21-22, Ezekiel 37:9-10, Matthew 27:51-53, Mark 5:41-42, Luke 8:54-55, and John 11:41-44), the Jesus resurrection doesn’t seem all that significant. It would have had greater effect if those other completely random resurrections had been omitted. As I’ve already stated, this book would have benefited tremendously from better editing.

The next 22 books describe the actions and teaching of the followers of Jesus. The writings of his followers contradict each other numerous times regarding what is required to attain salvation. (Is it faith or works or both?)

Most of these books are written by some guy named Paul and are comprised of rambling about how faith is the only way to attain salvation (even though Paul apparently was made witness to the spirit of Jesus in Acts 9:3-6, making faith for him impossible, making him a hypocrite) and how sex is evil and women are inferior and must be submissive to men and all kinds of other crap that Jesus doesn’t say in any of the gospels. The writings of Paul are irritating and dull. (Although 1 Corinthians 1:18-29 is good for a laugh.)

After these writings, the final book, Revelation, describes the end of the world when Jesus comes back to kill all nonbelievers. Revelation is replete with cartoonish imagery and prophecies more vague than an astrology horoscope. It feels to me as though it was tacked on as an afterthought so that the book could have a climactic ending, no matter how contrived. What exactly was the point of adding all of this extra material to the end of the book if the savior of humanity was already dead and resurrected?

As far as dystopian novels go, I prefer George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four by a long shot. That book isn’t self-contradictory, poorly written, fallacious, or outright absurd and it doesn’t insult the reader’s intelligence by claiming that Big Brother is good.

Categories
Axiology Miscegenation William Pierce Women

Hunter – 2

dr_pierce

This entry has been moved: here.

Categories
Americanism Civil war Conservatism Egalitarianism Emigration / immigration Enlightenment Individualism Liberalism Thomas Hobbes

An overly traveled road to extinction

by Hajo Liaucius



Klan-sheet-music

As a distant observer of the American White Nationalist scene, I am struck by its utter irrelevancy in public discourse outside of being a fund-raising tool for anti-Occidental activists[1] and as a subject of lurid speculation. In part, this distressing situation is a product of the typical pathologies and corruption endemic to counter-culture groups but I am not inclined to cover the endless scandals that have in large part defined the White Nationalist scene during the last fifty years or so. While the character issue and other matters should be approached, the issue of what exactly American Occidental advocacy presently entails in terms of an ideological foundation is of paramount importance.

Currently paleoconservatism dominates what little racialist discourse occurs in the States. Given that the mainstream of racialist thought in the states since the reconstruction era has been remarkably consistent, it matters little if one refers to it as Americanism, racial populism or racial paleoconservatism in terms addressing its ideological validity. Before considering the present-day applicability of the paleocon doctrine I think a consideration of the golden era of modern American racialism is worthwhile simply because it provides an excellent case study of the consequences of the character issue alluded to earlier as well as the utility of a racially based paleoconservatism as a governing ideology.

The golden age of American racialism coincided with the birth of what is commonly referred to as the Second Klan Era, which was founded by the publisher of The Jeffersonian newspaper and U.S. senator Thomas Watson in 1915. Watson built the Klan into a nationwide organization with more than four million members (about 15 percent of the white male Protestant population of the country at the time) that was particularly powerful in the Midwest and Southern states. The influence attained by the Second Klan Era far exceeded the accomplishments of American racialism at any time since as they managed to gain control of state legislatures in Tennessee, Indiana, Oklahoma, and Oregon as well as electing a governor in Indiana and several Congressmen and Senators. Most impressive of all, they managed to heavily influence the Democratic Convention of 1924 and helped get a Klansman on the Supreme Court.

The combination of segregation, constitutionalism, opposition to Southern/Eastern European immigration, Protestant fundamentalism, isolationism and economic populism were all popular causes fully within the mainstream of public social and political thought at the time. Simply put, the Second Klan Era enjoyed a nearly ideal historical context in which to transform America into a society far more reflective of Occidental values. Yet they achieved little in terms of societal reform and lapsed into obscurity very quickly. The reason for this failure was largely a result of the limitations of the paleoconservative ideology they promoted, as will be shown.

The Second Klan Era was largely, with the notable exception of The Black Legion, committed to working within the confines of electoral politics for the purpose of advancing its public policy agenda. That agenda consisted of the preservation of the constitutional order of the day, maintaining the predominance of Europeans of Nordic, Western and Celtic origins in cultural and political terms; restoring Protestant fundamentalism to a place of preeminence, the maintenance of American neutrality, advancing prohibition and advancing the economic populist agenda of the time.

Needless to say, the reelection of Wilson in 1916 resulted in America’s subsequent entry into the First World War (as well as numerous imperialistic adventures in Central and South America during the 1920s), and the entry into the League of Nations ended American neutrality and weakened its sovereignty. On the domestic front Klan influence failed to slow the flood of immigrants from Eastern and Southern Europe, the suffragette movement’s triumph, the decadence of the 1920s or the rise of the anti-Occidental mass media during the 1930s. In short, they failed to preserve the societal order that defined America at the turn of the century or protect the ethnic and religious interests they held dear despite being given an ideal opportunity to do so.

While the Klan was heavily involved in promoting prohibition and progressive economic policies popular during the first two decades of the 20th century, the passage of such measures happened because they were promoted by popular sentiment across major portions of the political spectrum (including Negroes, organized labor, fundamentalist Protestants and women) as well as the efforts of significant portions of the political establishment that were entirely unsympathetic to the Klan. As a result, it is very unrealistic to view the Second Klan Era as anything more than one of several significant factions promoting progressive reforms and prohibition.

The collapse of the Second Klan Era began in large measure as a result of Stephenson scandal of 1925. Under Stephenson’s guidance, Klan membership swelled to 300,000 in the State of Indiana and, in the 1924 elections, Klan-backed candidates won all but one of Indiana’s U.S Congressional seats as well as the Governor, Lieutenant Governor and the Secretary of State. Stephenson was the most charismatic leader the Klan ever had as he was a gifted orator and a popular leader throughout much of the country as well as the Grand Dragon of Indiana which was a major Klan stronghold at the time. Yet all he is remembered for now is the extremely brutal kidnapping, rape and subsequent suicide of Madge Oberholtzer. The resultant media coverage devastated the Klan and turned formerly cordial elite opinion against the organization resulting in a dramatic and rapid decline of its influence and popularity.

In 1936 the kidnapping and murder of Charles Poole and the subsequent crackdown on the Black Legion (a paramilitary offshoot of the Klan active in Illinois, Michigan and Ohio) sped the disintegration of what remained of the Klan forcing its sale in 1939 and it subsequently bankrupted because of tax avoidance in 1944, thereby ending the Second Klan Era and hastening the decline of racially-based paleoconservatism. The lesson provided by the Black Legion is that poorly planned, sporadic political violence can’t threaten state power but it does motivate repression and the political marginalization of would-be revolutionaries.

Any post-mortem analysis of the Second Klan Era naturally raises the matter of what would have happened had the rape and subsequent death of Oberholtzer been concealed, or conjecture about how history might have been different had Stephenson been able to control his depraved instincts. Such conjecture doesn’t seem fruitful given that sexual psychopaths tend to behave in ways that are incompatible with the rational life of self-sacrifice needed of anyone that aspires to revolutionary political leadership. In light of the savagery directed against Oberholtzer it appears obvious that his bestial nature couldn’t be controlled nor concealed indefinitely. His arrest for sexual assault in 1961 after spending decades in prison seems to confirm his unsuitability for life among Occidental people although other aspects of his conduct during the 1920s paint a very troubling portrait of the man as well as the organization that he led.

On a more fundamental level, the problem of the Second Klan Era was metapolitical in nature, which is to say that they ceded the parameters of discourse which predetermined the sorts of policies and tactics they adopted. Accepting the paleoconservative notion of Americans meant that the Second Klan Era accepted contemporary egalitarian notions about democracy while promoting a narrow form of racialism. Practically what this meant was that they hoped to restrict enfranchisement to the old Nordic/Western/Celtic racial base with no meaningful thought given as to how pragmatically exclude the already substantial Southern and Eastern European populations within the confines of universal suffrage, nor how the established party system could be dissuaded from catering to emerging demographics. Long-term Negro demographic trends in the South and Midwest made the Klan’s strategy of regional race-based enfranchisement unviable in the long term, which wasn’t surprising given the overwhelming financial, institutional and cultural strength of the establishment that dominated the rest of America.

Although an aristocratic remnant survived in the South as late as the 1930s, an adherence to democratic dogma and the economic/social populism of the period meant that the acceptance of the foundations of capitalism negated any consideration of natural hierarchies as a basis for establishing both rights and responsibilities, as well as a means of providing for greater social cohesion. The old Southern aristocracy provided a bulwark against Eastern financial interests in the antebellum and reconstruction eras, making such a choice tactically questionable and ideologically puzzling for an allegedly conservative movement based in the South. However, since no thought at all was given to syndicalism, guildism or corporatism, the Klan was left with populist prescriptions for state-based restraints upon the influence of capital which had proven to be a dead-end by the beginning of the 1930s.

While the Second Klan Era paid homage to the Confederacy, any serious discussion about secession simply didn’t exist within its circles at the time. Instead, lots of effort was spent praising constitutionalism resulting in the Klan seeing itself as the standard bearer of a contemporary Americanism rather than as a revolutionary secessionist movement. Unaddressed was the matter of how the constitution failed to stop the transformation of the country into a society dominated by North Eastern plutocrats or how a regional movement like the Klan could formulate a long term defensive strategy against a national leadership animated by a deep malevolence to all that the Klan stood for.

When one considers the obvious unsuitability of its foundations and practical experiences that should have been gleaned from what was then recent history, it is reasonable to presume that the Second Klan Era was content with being a regional force with no long-term strategy for remaining relevant. It appears instead that they hoped that somehow state-level autonomy could be maintained with current societal trends.

A consideration of contemporary written material clearly indicates that the Second Klan Era lacked any metapolitical foundation or coherent ideology but instead was a manifestation of incoherent but well-intended sentiments opposed to Occidental dispossession in the American South and Midwest. In a practical sense, the Second Klan Era was purely defensive and reactive and destined to fail even if Stephenson’s sexual psychopathy would have been concealed or repressed.

The ideology promoted by the Klan and like-minded groups since the Reconstruction Era is extremely similar to the ideology promoted by the mainstream of American racialist groups such as Stormfront, American Renaissance, Liberty Lobby, VDARE, the Council of Conservative Citizens, various Klan factions, the American Nationalist Union, the recently disbanded National Vanguard [2] and several other organizations as well.


American paleoconservatism

Given the failure of paleoconservatism to preserve Occidental interests in America within the nearly ideal historical context that presented itself in the Second Klan Era, honest men should question the suitability of the ideology within the current era even if most in the White Nationalist community refuse to do so, as has been the case for nearly ninety years.

obsolete constitution

As an adherent of the Revisionist Integralism/Organicism school, my critique of paleoconservatism is metapolitical in nature rather than drawn from a historicist perspective or bound by a narrowly conceived ideological preference.[3] As such, I would maintain that a foundational consideration of the paleoconservative disposition is needed.

Fundamentally, paleoconservatism should be about the preservation of that which makes a people or a nation-state unique. Yet within the American context that uniqueness has unfortunately come to mean classical liberalism, capitalism, constitutionalism and a less permissive form of Christianity.

The single greatest flaw with such an ideology is that the things it wishes to preserve are already dead. The constitutional republic of the founders so revered by the paleocons is like any other legal doctrine: it can’t help but die along with the societal conditions that gave rise to it.

It died when the states ceased to be sovereign entities able to withdraw from the union. The ordinal constructs that succeeded it are as alien to the vision of the 18th century liberals that created the constitution as the founders compared to the typical Obama voter or Howard Stern fan. When American paleocons speak of an American Order they incorrectly presume that a consistent legal and governing doctrine upon which public life is ordered has suffered degradations over time while still being salvageable and relevant by means that have never been meaningfully articulated. Such a view ignores the legal doctrines of the Confederated Republic era or simply presumes it to be a consistent, logical precursor to a perfected legal doctrine that began in 1789 and degraded to a major extent sometime after 1861 yet still represents an ideal that can be restored via the subverted institutions that have perverted America beyond recognition if some unspecified populist course of action is taken by a population wholly removed from the societal framework that gave birth to it.

In philosophical terms a major challenge to the notion of ordinal continuity so beloved of American paleocons and the angst about the decline of the republic is the reality that history has thus far given birth to six distinct American ordinal eras. With the exception of the First Federal Republic, the fundamental reordering of American life has involved a commixture of constitutional amendments and the practical nullification of constitutional rule via legislation, executive orders and the natural Dissipative effects inherent in liberalism.[4]

The paleoconservative notion of the American Order is premised upon an institutional and civic societal construct that hasn’t existed for several generations. Instead, it is more accurate to see American history defined by ordinal epochs characterized in terms of the degree to which Occidental folkways and mores within society had been dominating, are in decline, or nonexistent. Within the American context Permanence had always been undermined by the Degenerative aspects inherent in classical Liberalism. When Dissipationist forces became ascendant to such an extent that the order of the area became fundamentally changed, a new, more degenerate order with a new set of systemic contradictions comes into being giving birth to a new ordinal era.[5]

In the briefest of all possible terms these ordinal eras are:

1.- The Confederated Republic (1781-1788). This period was characterized by an extremely decentralized and weak confederation of effectively sovereign agrarian states whose cooperative association formed a republic defined by the radical liberalism of the late 18th century and an expansionist, racial supremacy led by Occidentals. This order was Generative in nature.

2.- The First Federalist Republic (1789-1861). This period was characterized by strong sub-national governments that voluntarily became part of a federated national state defined by a less radical form of liberalism and an expansionist racial supremacy led by Occidentals. Although agrarian economic interests dominated a large portion of the country, industrial elites had obtained substantial financial and political power during this era. This order was Generative in nature.

3.- The Second Federalist Republic (1861-1912). This period was characterized by sub-national governments with high degrees of autonomy involuntarily forced to remain part of a federated national state with significant centralization of power, typical of 19th century liberalism. For most of this period America was still defined in terms of an expansionist racial supremacy led by Occidentals although an ascendant Jewish minority held major influence in media, finance and government. This period was also characterized by experiments with imperialism and a decline of agrarian societies and a typically liberal consolidation of wealth. This order was characterized by a tension between Regenerative and Dissipationist forces with dominion of the former, but in decline.

4.- The Third Federalist Republic (1913-1954). This period was characterized by sub-national governments with significant but declining autonomy consistent with the progression of 20th century liberalism. America was for most of this ordinal era defined in terms of a preservationist racialism that had fully abandoned the Celtic/Nordic/Western core identity in favor of a pan-European ideal held together by propositional nationalism. Although still nominally led by Occidentals, an ascendant Jewish minority held a major (or arguably a dominant) position in media, finance and government. This period was also characterized by experiments with imperialism, the establishment of Chesterton’s Servile State, and the ascendancy of globalism. This order was characterized by a tension between Regenerative and Dissipationist forces with the latter ascendant.

5.- The First Post-Federal Republic (1954-2001). This period was characterized by sub-national governments with moderate and declining autonomy and centralization of power consistent with typical late 20th century liberalism. America was for most of this period defined in Cultural Bolshevik terms of racial nihilism, globalism and Chesterton’s Servile State. America’s ruling elite by this time was characterized by a mixture of racialist Asian, Mestizo and Negro factions as well as deracinated Occidentals subservient to Jewish power. This order principally represented Transience with Regenerative forces in steep decline.

6.- The Second Post-Federal Republic (2001 to the present). This period is characterized by sub-national governments without any meaningful degree of autonomy forced to remain part of a federated national state with a far greater centralization of power consistent with typical 21st century liberalism. The current American order is defined as an increasingly militant expression of Cultural Bolshevism which is manifested in terms of racial nihilism, familial collapse, globalism and an increasingly common form of authoritarianism created by the merger of finance and statist authority. America’s current ruling elites differ from that of the previous order in terms of the militancy used in the service of the destruction of America’s Occidental remnant and its growing insolvency. This order represents the triumph of Transience with Regenerative forces playing a negligible societal role.

The essence of the paleocon perspective on the constitution is that it can somehow resurrect a classically inspired form of liberalism while ignoring the reality that the foundational elements of Liberalism are naturally Dissipative. Instead of representing a force of Continuance the constitution has been reinterpreted and restructured to serve successive orders whose values are fully divorced from those created by those that founded their nation state.[6]

One endlessly hears commentary about the sacred glory of the constitution and debate among paleocons over its relevance in various contemporary controversies. Constitutionalists at best ignore and often celebrate that the constitution failed to protect Occidental children from literally being militarily forced to attend publicly funded indoctrination centers extolling the virtues of miscegenation while being physically abused by racial aliens.

In fact the constitution made of such travesties a celebrated basis of decades of legal doctrine. Although the constitution failed to prevent Occidentals in America from being dispossessed by an endless tidal wave of flotsam from the third world, it has granted the invaders legal equality with those that created a nation state. The constitution failed to prevent America from becoming a client-state of Israel just as it failed to prevent the rise of Bush’s Orwellian surveillance state.

The constitution has been powerless to stop the ascension of a multi-billion dollar industry based upon sexual debasement and an economic order in which tens of millions of Americans live the lives of serfs for global enterprises which buy legislators, presidents and judges. Although Constitutionalism has done absolutely nothing to prevent cultural Bolshevism dominating American life, it has given legal license to every manner of social malignancy one can imagine. And yet for more than one hundred and fifty years American paleocons cling to the fantasy that the very same legal/governmental doctrine that gutted the republic they love will somehow restore it back to the halcyon days of the 1950s, the early 1900s, the antebellum South, 1789 or whatever nostalgic fantasy they aspire to.

The reason that such a tragedy has come to pass is because such an outcome is a consequence of the individualistic nature of liberalism without which cultural Bolshevism simply would not have been possible.

What little remains of the paleocon movement is committed to racial egalitarianism and the notion that Occidental civilization can be perpetuated by races other than the one that created it. Mainstream paleocons believe that racial aliens can be assimilated to accept and even advance Occidental culture ignoring the realities of racial psychometrical differences and evolutionary psychology, and historical evidence to the contrary. In short, they embrace a major cause of Occidental decline (multi-racialism) and even uphold it as an example of enlightened Western values while bemoaning the societal disintegration it engenders.

Although racially conscious paleocons have been relegated to the margins of political and cultural discourse for several decades, they have continued to embrace classical liberalism because they fail to understand that the liberalism of the 18th century has cultural Bolshevism as its logical consequence.[7]

In part this stems from the egalitarianism and individualism expressed in the American constitution. America as a nation state can’t be understood to be an organic national entity in any meaningful sense of the term since it was not the product of the confluence of blood and soil and the folkways produced from such a dynamic. Rather, the old republics came about as an expression of the liberal idealism of the late 18th century and as such they exemplified a rejection of Occidental traditionalism with its emphasis upon communal responsibilities, privileges and hierarchy which are the foundational elements of Occidental social existence. The afore-mentioned confluence animates a society by defining its strengths and contradictions as well as determining what attempts are made to resolve said conflicts from the standpoint of furthering national uniqueness and survivability.

Liberalism is expressed economically as capitalism and socially as atomistic individualism.

Restorative forces are incompatible with capitalism because social interactions are determined largely by financial prowess and conformity to fleeting consumerist fads. Within such an environment, communing with ancestors and descendants becomes impossible when individuals can at best think in terms of family welfare and the occasional act of charity while typically they become defined by crass materialism or merely serfs living at the edge of subsistence.

The_worship_of_Mammon

The Worship of Mammon by Evelyn De Morgan (1909)

A notion often promoted in mainstream paleocon and White Nationalist circles is that modern day capitalism (often termed super-capitalism) is somehow substantially different than capitalism of whatever era they romanticize. Such a notion is absurd because it fails to recognize the antisocial nature inherent in capitalism.

Such destructiveness is demonstrated by the accumulation of financial power via usury which results in an extreme consolidation of wealth distorting so-called market forces, allowing oligopolies and/or monopolies to control markets and limit competition. In so doing they further consolidate their economic power by creating an economy in which purchasing decisions, competition and chances for individual enrichment suffer. Oligopolies and/or monopolies also subvert supposedly free markets and democratic institutions when they inevitably discover that legislation, and political parties and public office holders can be purchased as easily as any other commodity.
In effect, highly concentrated capital is able to nullify popular will via well-funded lobbying campaigns, dramatically manipulative electoral campaigns and molding public opinion to suit plutocratic interests. In practical terms the so-called private sector can be just as an effective oppressor as an omnipotent state although some would argue that the engineering of consent via a highly concentrated, corporate media creates a propasphere[8] that is far more capable of controlling dissent than any state could.

Paleocon economic thought is like mainstream libertarianism in that they both prefer to believe the flagrant lie that capital is not inevitably concentrated and/or that such concentration does not distort the market nor cause, social havoc.

Surveying the formally Occidental portions of the world makes it apparent that the political power of concentrated finance often cannot be overcome by regulatory regimes or tax policies consistent with the current liberal gestalt because the means by which such policies are crafted are owned by the very interests they seek to regulate. To the extent that various Western states have implemented social-democratic inspired controls over capital, the same dynamics of alienation remain in part because excessive statist regulation and taxes have simply shifted the power of capital to the state rather than to society at large. Statist regulation of capital is ineffective as transnational finance has far more power culturally and politically than any nation state can possibly muster within its own boarders. This unfortunate reality has been the case from the earliest days of the East India Trading company and remains so today.

Racially aware paleocons are cognizant of the reality that culture is a biologically based construct and that demographics determine the destiny of nations. Unfortunately they fail to realize that capitalism shapes demographics to suit the interests of those able to control capital.

When racial paleocons look upon the Antebellum South under the soft, uncritical glow of an unfocused nostalgic yearning for that which never was, they choose to ignore the enslavement of Europeans and the misery that was inflicted upon free White men forced to compete with slave labor. In the case of Rhodesian and South African segregation and the concentration of political power in White hands did not translate into economic security for working-class Occidentals who were forced to compete with far more abundant Negroid labor while paying higher taxes to support parallel social services for two separate races. Elsewhere in the Western World slave labor came to be supplanted by an endless supply of low-cost alien labor when it became technologically and politically possible to do so during the second half of the 20th century.

If by some miracle the racial paleocons of the likes of American Renaissance take power tomorrow, bringing back segregation and ending the influx of alien peoples, the twin forces of third world fertility and capitalism’s need for ever cheaper labor will do away with whatever demographic gains the racial paleocons may achieve in short order. Because a nation’s demographics determine its destiny, any such a White Nationalist democracy will be faced with disenfranchised alien masses that will have common cause with the plutocrats whose economic logic demands a system highly similar to what the formerly Occidental world has now.

While mainstream and racial paleocons alike pay homage to Burke’s famous call for self-determination from Madras to Manchester, they ignore that the traditionalism of both will perish when left to so-called market forces. Since capitalism views individuals as any other commodity, why should one expect tradition to be anything more than a marketing tool, discarded when something else can be sold with a greater return on investment? The same market forces which imported slaves nearly two centuries ago for higher profits while taking bread from the mouths of White laborers exports Occidental jobs for higher profits today.

With rare exceptions, rebellion within the context of a consumerist society has nothing to do with upholding traditionalistic values. Instead, uniqueness is based upon purchasing items which convey a pseudo-rebellion likely to win approval from one’s peers or reaffirm the carnality and nihilism sanctioned by the media.

Occidentals must confront the discomforting reality that we are faced with a relentless marginalization and a looming extinction for the benefit of an elite that hold us in contempt, rather than as individual members of a transcendent order in which commonality of purpose extends beyond material advancement and fashionableness. When a societal consensus is based upon ever fluxuating fads and the need to produce wealth for others with ever greater efficiency. Promiscuity, homosexualism, substance abuse, familial disintegration and delinquency will follow.[9]

Capitalism, and the individualism which gave birth to the classical liberalism of yore, and the liberty so cherished by those that claim to be conservatives, have seen the legal doctrines and institutions they cherish transformed into mere tools for competing interest groups and ascendant racial entities seeking to impose themselves over groups of individuals lacking any sense of common identity and purpose. Such an outcome is to be expected as Occidental peoples have had any sense of organically derived sense of purpose torn from them by design. Occidentals of all nations have no sense of an inherent uniqueness and value extending across countless generations of the past and those yet to be born, and are doomed to extinction as long as such a mindset persists. Occidentals merely produce greater profits for a global plutocracy which uses those returns to fund our displacement with no thought of communal purpose beyond our grandchildren (if that).

Surveying the decaying remnants of the Occidental world after more than two centuries of Liberalism in action has, without exception, meant cultural devolution, the rise of the anti-culture and our demographic decline culminating in the apocalypse slowly unfolding upon us. Segregationist efforts and slavery have uniformly failed to preserve a liberalism meant to serve Occidental humanity because of the inerrant contradictions within liberalism necessitate either continued Devolution or Restorative revolution. Realizing the uniformity of the Dissipative effects of liberalism upon Occidental societies, the only sensible conclusion one can reach is that liberalism cannot be fine-tuned or reformed into a Restorative force. We will not vote our way out of Annihilation and our tormentors won’t simply collapse, allowing a return to some halcyon era that never was. A viable attempt at a Restorative revolution has never been based upon liberalism because liberalism as an ideal intrinsically serves Transience.

Given that mainstream as well as racial paleocons lack the fortitude to realize the corrosive effects of capitalism and atomistic individualism upon what remains of the liberal democratic order, they cannot help but bemoan the demise of our traditions—while hoping that institutions controlled by racial aliens and deracinated Occidentals will once again serve the vision of the liberals of the late 18th century. A return to the liberalism of ages past presumes an electoral awakening of masses of lemmings motivated by gut and groin. Since history and current experience proves otherwise the continued paleocon adherence to such a fantasy demonstrates a Fourierian contempt for reality every bit as unreal as skull shapes being explained by Boasian anthropology.

A legal code is nothing more than a mechanism for articulating and balancing competing interests for the greater good of a society, as reflected within the confines of texts recognized as reflecting some transcendent truth. For a collection of texts to have such authority depends upon a nation being defined in terms of a people with a sense of common purpose, history and destiny. To pretend that such an authority can be instilled in a fractious collection of rival cultures bound by force and avarice (as is the case in the post-Occidental West) simply cannot hold up to even a mildly honest bout of cognizance.

The vast material disparities and attendant political/societal dispossession we suffer should be seen as an inevitable consequence of capital becoming ever more focused resulting in the amplification of the social and economic Hobbesian struggle of all against all. Given that paleocons have chosen to accept the foundational elements that have gutted our civilization and will continue to do so, it is sensible to conclude that constitutionalism has no chance of reviving Burke’s proud submission to the responsibilities of class and providence revealed in custom. Instead, recent generations have inherited the negation of those things, resulting in the end of common identity and purpose which has been replaced by the current anti-culture abhorred by all who reject the modern crapulence of liberalism.

What now is termed paleoconservatism is simply a sentimental attachment to the vestigial institutions of a largely mythical and deceased liberalism. Paleoconservatism is in practice nothing more than the collective delusion of viewing an apparition as a viable basis for restoring society to an idealized past.

Raspail is right when he sees us as Hermit Crabs inhabiting the bounty of an ancestry we neither build upon, preserve, appreciate nor recognize. Instead they identify with a romanticized concept of institutions and doctrines that once gave prosperity within a highly unique historical and demographic context which they refuse to understand. That such a context also conflated license for freedom making our current decrepitude inevitable is also ignored. Paleocons of all sorts as well as libertarians have done so partly out of ignorance and nostalgia, but also out of cowardice. The cowardice I speak of is that what they imagine to be prudence is nothing more than a hope—in opposition to reason that submission will ingratiate them to those that loath them and control the institutions that destroyed the ideals held dear so as to be co-opted by their tormentors. In the end all the paleocons of any description can hope for is the demented fantasy that, contrary to evidence and reason, revolutionary change can be avoided by merely fine tuning the legal code; withering the state, praying more fervently, or that assimilation will magically transform aliens into Occidentals as we fade as an anthropological curiosity.

Such a perspective is a biological and ideological distraction the Occidental world hasn’t been able to afford for several generations. A genuine conservatism, given the current demographic and institutional context, must be revolutionary in its rejection of the foundational assumptions of liberalism. Paleoconservativism and libertarianism never have and will never rescue a decadent, deracinated people from oblivion, nor even have made a credible attempt at doing so.

By contrast National Revolutionary doctrine has done so several times during the last century. Occidental man requires a revolutionary traditionalism totally divorced from liberalism. Anything else is merely an overly traveled road to the extinction of Occidental humanity.


__________________

Endnotes:

[1] The services provided by white nationalist groups in the U.S. seem to be to generate scary stories published by the ADL/OPP/SPLC etc., which get old Jewish ladies and paranoid urban hipsters to give money to those groups.

[2] National Vanguard was founded by William Pierce but it degenerated after read Pierce’s death. (Note of the Ed.)

[3] Like its Iberian/French/Italian predecessors, the Revisionist Integralism/Organicism school is principally concerned with the goal of societal unity as a means for the preservation and expansion of the nation which is understood as a product of the confluence between a homogenous folk and the land it inhabits. History is principally the record of how the national organism comes to define itself it in experiential terms and produce a communal entity reflective of providential will.

Both schools see the innate value of the individual realized within the context of a communion with ancestors, decedents and the living in which transcendent responsibilities to the values of Permanence shape collective and individual identity.

Like its predecessors, the school maintains that economic, political and spiritual matters can’t be seen as distinct from each other as the coherent expression of a nation is a prerequisite for survival in an anarchic world of rival nations and forces antithetical to all nations. Both perceive folkways as an expression of what is termed the associative/formative drive or verbunden Bildungstrieb of a nation and that state legitimacy is a product of how well it reflects and maintains a communion of ancestors, the living and descendants of a folk.

The Revisionist Integralism/Organicism differs from its predecessors in that it perceives human social existence primarily in terms of folk-specific conflicts between foundational elements that animate a society and how attempts to resolve such conflicts further national uniqueness and survivability. While historically Integralism often wasn’t explicitly concerned with the biologic foundation of national organicism, Revisionist Integralism/Organicism attributes the associative formative drive of a folk as well as the culture produced by it as unintelligible outside of a racial context.

Likewise, cultural and biologic decline is seen as inseparable tendencies although the mechanism that initiates the decline is seen as resulting from an interaction between the inherent contradictions with the application of folk’s verbunden Bildungstrieb and Mosca and Pareto’s understanding of elite degeneration. The practical resolution of the contradictions mentioned above usually involves blended elements of corporative, syndicalist, guildist and distributivist prescriptions within an explicit biologic and revolutionary conservative context broadly compatible with the formulations of the original Integralist movements.

[4] The concept of Dissipationism is an aspect of a broader metapolitical weltanschauung known as Integralism or Organicism and its successor movement, Revisionist Integralism/Organicism. Dissipationism is a force that is manifested as a range of social movements animated by a utilitarian reason that serves the ascendance of the Transience ideal. In practical terms Dissipationism is appositional to Burkian notions of prejudice, prudence and civilization as a consequence of biologic uniqueness formed by the confluence of genetics and geography which has historical progression and culture as it’s byproduct.

Examples of expressions of Dissipationism include feminism, globalism, egalitarianism, anti-racism, organized expressions of libertine lifestyles, liberalism and trans-humanism. Transience as an ideal is effected when social relations have wholly, or nearly so, dispensed with any sense of communion between the descendants and ancestors of the living in favor of social propositions that are not resultant from anything uniquely attributable to a genetically distinct folk.

[5] The concept of systemic contradictions within the Revisionist Integralist/Organic school posits that all political doctrines and the societal constructs that create them have inherent contradictions that are an expression of the folkish character that produced them. These contradictions consequently give rise to alienation within individuals, a class or society at large which lessens societal cohesion giving rise to Dissipative forces.

[6] The diametrical ideal to Transience is Permanence which when effected entails the ordering of social relations resulting from the confluence of genetics and geography which define history so as to provide a continuity of uniqueness and purpose to a genetically distinct folk expressed in terms of an organic state and society. Forces that are Generative are in effect when the ideal of Permanence is in ascendance or dominates social discourse. When the Transience ideal is in ascendance or dominates social discourse the oppositional forces are said to be Regenerative.

[7] Within the context of Revisionist Integralist/Organicist thought America’s radical liberalism of the Confederated and the First Republican orders owe their regenerative qualities only partly to the biologic qualities of the colonizers and the positive aspects of liberalism specific to a given era and place. The vitalism of the fist two republican eras is owed in equal measure to a combination of the Paleolithic condition of the American aboriginal folk dispossessed by Occidental colonizers, the geographic isolation and natural resources of the New World and the limited technological options then available to capital acting upon its naturally Dissipative tendencies.

[8] Propasphere: A sphere of propaganda. (Note of the Ed.)

[9] Alienation within the Revisionist Integralist/Organicist context refers not to the Marxist use of the term but rather to a process by which individuals, social groups or entire societies become disassociated from the values of Permanence.

Alienation is a product of the anti-culture in which societies and the constituents that comprise them cease to maintain a communion with the land and as an integral component of current, past and coming generations with a common purpose and identity. The forming of identity on the basis of shared banalities in the form of propasphere generated sports or media consumption present the most obvious and ubiquitous manifestations of alienation although in some instances thematic strains within such unwholesome diversions can be harnessed into efforts that have some utility to the Restorative cause.

Categories
Axiology Deranged altruism Liberalism

Christianity’s secular offshoot


Alex Kurtagic said…

The so-called “universal declaration of human rights” is a Western concept, developed by Westerners, and only genuinely believed in by Westerners—so what makes them human and universal?


Commenter responded

I have been struck by the extent to which this UN Declaration mimics the tenets of the Sermon on the Mount.

Categories
Conservatism Egalitarianism Enlightenment Individualism Liberalism

Liaucius’ metapolitical essay (2)

Moved into a single entry:

https://westsdarkesthour.com/2013/08/10/liaucius-metapolitical-essay-3/

Categories
Catholic Church Charlemagne Christendom Franks Inquisition Kriminalgeschichte des Christentums (books) Philosophy of history Protestantism

Kriminal

Below, translated excerpts from the first pages of Deschner’s 10-volume Kriminalgeschichte des Christentums, published in German in 1986.

 

______ 卐 ______

 

Introduction

To begin, I will say what the reader should not expect. As in all of my criticisms of Christianity, here there will be missing many of the things that also belong to history, but not to the criminal history of Christianity that the title indicates. That, which also belongs to history, may be found in millions of works that fill up the libraries, archives, bookstores, academies and the lofts of the parish houses. He who wants to read those materials can do so long as he has life, patience and faith.

This religion has thousands, hundreds of thousands of apologists and defenders; it has books in which many boast of ‘the luminous march of the Church through the ages’ (Andersen), and that the Church is ‘one’ and ‘the living body of Christ’ and ‘holy’ because ‘its essence is holiness; sanctification its end’ (the Benedictine von Rudloff). It is understood, on all this, that the unfortunate side details (religious wars, persecutions, fighting, famine) happened in the designs of God; often inscrutable, always just, full of wisdom and salvific power. Given the overwhelming predominance of the silly, misleading and deceitful glorifying, was it not necessary to show the opposite view insofar as it is much better proven? At any event, those who always want to see the bright side are shielded from the ugly side, which is often the truest.

The distinction between the Church and Christianity is relatively recent. As is known, there is a glaring contradiction between the lives of the Christians and the beliefs they profess: a contradiction which has always been downplayed by pointing to the eternal opposition between the ideal and the real. Nobody dares to condemn Christianity because it has not fulfilled all its ideals, or has fulfilled half of them, or not at all. But such an interpretation ‘equals to carry too far the notion of the human and even the all too human, so that when century after century and millennium after millennium someone does the opposite of what he preaches then becomes, per share and effect of all his history, epitome and absolute culmination of worldwide and historical criminality’ as I said during a conference in 1969 which earned me a visit to the courthouse.

Because that is really the question. Not that they have failed the ideals in part or by degrees, no: it is that those ideals have been literally trampled, without which the perpetrators lay down, for a moment, their claims of self-proclaimed champions of such ideals, nor stop their self-declaration of being the highest moral authorities in the world.

Western Christianity, in any case, ‘was essentially created by the Catholic Church’; ‘the Church, organised from the papal hierocracy down to the smallest detail, was the main institution of the medieval order’ (Toynbee).

Part of our question are the wars started or commanded by the Church, the extermination of entire nations: the Vandals, the Goths, and the relentless slaughter of East Slav peoples—all of them, according to the chronicles of the Carolingian and the Ottos, criminals and confused peoples in the darkness of idolatry that was necessary to convert by any means not excepting betrayal, deceit and fury. Of the fourteen legislated capital crimes by Charlemagne after subduing the Saxons by blood and fire, ten offenses relate exclusively to the religious camp. Under the old Polish criminal law, those guilty of eating meat during the Easter fast were punished by pulling their teeth out.

We will also discuss ecclesiastical punishments for violations of civil rights. The ecclesiastical courts were increasingly hated. There are issues that we will discuss extensively: sacrificial practices (the stolen goods from the Church to be repaid fourfold, and according to Germanic law up to twenty times); ecclesiastical and monastic prisons, especially of the ergastulum type (the coffins were also called ergastula), where they were thrown both ‘sinners’ as the rebels and madmen, and usually installed in basements without windows or doors, but well equipped with shackles of all kinds, racks, handcuffs and chains. We will document the exile punishment and the application of it to the whole family in case of the murder of a cardinal; which extended to the male descendants up to the third generation. Also very fashionable were torture and corporal punishment, especially in the East where it became furiously popular to mutilate limbs, pull out eyes and cut off noses and ears.

It is quite plausible that not all authorities indulged themselves in such excesses, and certainly not everyone would be as insane as the Abbot Transamund, who tore off the eyes of the monks of the Tremiti Convent, or cut their tongues (and, despite this, enjoyed the protection of Pope Gregory VII, who also enjoyed great notoriety). Without a doubt, the churches, particularly the Roman Church, have created significant cultural values, especially buildings, which usually obeyed no altruistic reasons (representing power), and also in the domain of painting, responding to ideological reasons (the eternal illustrations of biblical scenes and legends of saints). But aside from such opted love of culture that contrasts sharply with paleo-Christianity—that with eschatological indifference contemplated the ‘things of this world’, as they believed in the imminent end of all (a fundamental error in which Jesus himself fell)—, it should be noted that most of the cultural contributions of the Church were made possible by ruthlessly exploiting of the masses, the enslaved and the impoverished, century after century. And against this promotion of culture we find further cultural repression, cultural intoxication and destruction of cultural property.

The magnificent temples of worship of antiquity were destroyed almost everywhere: irreplaceable value buildings burned or demolished, especially in Rome itself, where the ruins of the temples served as quarries. In the 10th century they still engaged in breaking down statues, architraves, burning paintings, and the most beautiful sarcophagi served as bathtubs or feeders for pigs. But the most tremendous destruction, barely imaginable, was caused in the field of education. Gregory I, the Great, the only doctor Pope of the Church in addition to Leo I, according to tradition burned a large library that existed on the Palatine. The flourishing book trade of antiquity disappeared; the activity of the monasteries was purely receptive. Three hundred years after the death of Alcuin and Rabanus Maurus, the disciples were still studying with manuals written by them. Even St. Thomas Aquinas, the Church’s official philosopher, writes that ‘the desire for knowledge is a sin when it does not serve the knowledge of God’.

In universities, the Aristotelian hypertrophy aborted any possibility of independent research. Philosophy and literature were subject to the dictation of theology. History, as a science, was completely unknown. The experimentation and inductive research were condemned; experimental sciences were drowned by the Bible and dogma; scientists were thrown into the dungeons, or sent to the stake. In 1163, Pope Alexander III (remember in passing that at that time there were four anti-popes) forbade all clerics studying physics. In 1380 a decision of the French parliament forbade the study of chemistry, referring to a decree of Pope John XXII. And while in the Arab world (obedient to Muhammad’s slogan ‘The ink of scholars is more sacred than the blood of martyrs’) the sciences flourished, especially medicine, in the Catholic world the bases of scientific knowledge remained unchanged for more than a millennium, well into the 16th century. The sick were supposed to seek comfort in prayer instead of medical attention. The Church forbade the dissection of corpses, and sometimes even rejected the use of natural medicines for considering it unlawful intervention with the divine. In the Middle Ages, not even the abbeys had doctors, not even the largest. In 1564 the Inquisition condemned to death the physician Andreas Vesalius, the founder of modern anatomy, for opening a corpse and for saying that man is not short of a rib that was created for Eve.

Consistent with the guidance of teaching, we find another institution, ecclesiastical censure, very often (at least since the time of St. Paul in Ephesus) dedicated to the burning of the books of pagans, Jews or Saracens, and the destruction (or prohibition) of rival Christian literature, from the books of the Arians and Nestorians until those of Luther. But let us not forget that Protestants sometimes also introduced censorship, even for funeral sermons and also for non-theological works, provided they touched on ecclesiastical matters or religious customs.

The above is a selection of the main issues that I refer to in my history of the crimes. And yet, it is only a tiny segment of the overall history.

History!

Like any other historian, I only contemplate a history of the countless possible histories, a particular one, worse or better defined, and even this biased aspect cannot be considered the whole ‘complex of action’: an absurd idea, given the volume of existing data; theoretically conceivable, but practically impossible and not even desirable. The author who intends to write a criminal history of Christianity is constrained to mention only the negative side of that religion which weight has exceeded ultimately that of the perceived or real positives. Those who prefer to read about the other aspects ought to read other books: The Joyful Faith, The Gospel as Inspiration, Is it True that Catholics are No Better Than the Others?, Why I Love My Church?, The Mystical Body of Christ, Beauties of the Catholic Church, Under the Cloak of the Catholic Church, God Exists (I Have Known Him), The Way of Joy Toward God, The Good Death of a Catholic, With the Rosary to Heaven, SOS from the Purgatory, The Heroism of Christian Marriage.

The pro-Christian literature! More numerous than the sands of the sea: against 10,000 titles just one of the style of this Criminal History of Christianity, not to mention the millions of issues if we add the countless religious periodicals.

It turns out that truly there are among Christians men of good will, as in all religions and in every game, which should not be taken as data in favour of those religions and parties, because if that were allowed how many crooks would testify against such belief? And good Christians are the most dangerous, because they tend to get confused with Christianity, or to borrow the words of Lichtenberg, ‘unquestionably there are many righteous Christians, only that it is no less true that in corpore their works as such have never have helped much’.

What is the basis of my work? As with most historical studies, it is based on sources, tradition, contemporary historiography; especially texts. But when I expose my subjectivity bluntly, my ‘point of view’ and my ‘positioning’, I think I show my respect to the reader better than the mendacious scribes who want to link their belief in miracles and prophecies; in transubstantiations and resurrections from the dead; in heavens, hells and other wonders with the pretence of objectivity, accuracy and scientific rigor. Could it not be that, with my confessed bias, I am less biased than them? Could it be that my experience, my training, did not authorise me to form a more independent opinion about Christianity? At the end of the day I left Christianity, despite having been formed in a deeply religious household, as soon as it ceased to seem real.

Let’s face it: we are all ‘partial’, and he who pretends denying it is lying. It is not our bias what matters, but confessing it, without the pretence of impossible ‘objectivities’. We are all biased. This is particularly true in the case of historians who are more bent on denying it, because they are the ones who lie the most—and then they throw to one another the dogs of Christianity. How ridiculous, when we read that Catholics accused the Protestants of ‘bias’; or the Protestants accusing the Catholics, when thousands of theologians of various confessions throw over each other so common reproach; for example, when the Jesuit Bacht wants to see in the Protestant Friedrich Loofs ‘an excess of zeal against monastic status as such’, for which ‘his views are too one-sided’. And how would not the Jesuit Bacht opine with partiality when he refers to a reformed; he, who belongs to an order whose members are required to believe that white is black and black white, if mandated by the Church? Like Bacht, unquestioning obedience is imposed upon all Catholic theologians in the habit through baptism, dogma, the chair, the ecclesiastical license to print and many other obligations and restrictions. And so they live year after year, enjoying a steady income in exchange for advocating a particular view, a particular doctrine, a particular interpretation of history strongly impregnated with theology… not so much to deceive themselves but to continue cultivating the deception of others. For example, by accusing of bias the opponents of their confession and pretending to believe that Catholics are safe from such defect; as if it didn’t exist, for two thousand years, another bias sneakier than the Catholic.

Historiography is no more than the projection into the past of the interests of the present. The conservative historian who compared his job to that of the priest (for heaven’s sake!) and issued for himself reports of maximum impartiality and objectivity, claimed that he ‘erased his subjectivity’! This unshakable faith for objectivism, called ‘ocularism’ by Count Paul York Wartenburg and lampooned as a proposal for a ‘eunuch objectivity’ by Droysen (‘only the unconscious can be objective’), is illusory. Because there is no objective truth in historiography, nor history as it happened. ‘There can only be interpretations of history, and none is definitive’ (Popper). All historiography is written against the background of our personal vision of the world. It is true that many scholars lack such a worldview and thus are often considered, if not markedly progressive, at least notably impartial, honest and truthful. Those are the champions of ‘pure science’, the representatives of an alleged stance of neutrality or indifference as to value statements. They reject any reference to a particular point of view, any subjectivity, as if they were unscientific sins or blasphemies against the postulate of the true objectivity they advocate; against that sine ira et studio [without anger and affection] which they have as sacrosanct and that, as Heinrich von Treitschke ironizes, ‘nobody respects, let alone the speaker himself’.

The fiction of the concealment of the ideological premises of the historical presentation can serve to conceal many things: an ethical relativism and a cowardly escapism fleeing categorical decisions on principles—which still is a decision: irresponsibility on behalf of scientific responsibility! For a science that does not make assessments, whether they like it or not, is an ally of the status quo: it supports the dominating and hurts the dominated. Its objectivity is only apparent, and in practice it means nothing but love to one’s own tranquillity, security and attachment to a career. Our life does not run value-free, but full of it; and scientists, insofar as they start from life, if they claim they are value-free incur in hypocrisy. I have had in my hands works of historians who were dedicated to the wife who had died in the bombings, or perhaps dedicated to two or three fallen sons on the fronts; and yet, sometimes, these people want to keep their writing as ‘pure science’, as if nothing had happened.

That’s their problem. I think otherwise. Even if it existed, and I say it does not, a totally apolitical historical research, oblivious to all kinds of judgments, such an investigation would serve no purpose but to undermine ethics and make way for inhumanity. Moreover, it would not be true ‘research’ because it would not be dedicated to revealing the relationships between the factors; as much as it would be mere preparatory work, the mere accumulation of materials, as noted by Friedrich Meinecke.

Now, to what extent does the reality of history coincides with my statement? I prefer life on principle to science, especially when it starts to become apparent as a threat to life in the broadest sense. It is often objected that ‘science’ is not to blame, but only some of the scientists (the problem is that there are many, at worst almost all): quite a similar argument that says that we should not take Christianity to task for the sins of Christendom. All this does not mean that I am a supporter of pure subjectivism, which does not exist. A limited capacity of conviction would have my thesis of the criminal character of Christianity if, to prove it, I confined myself to only some examples. But, being a multi-volume work, no one will say that these are isolated or inconclusive examples. Because I write ‘out of hostility’ the story of those I describe has made me their enemy. And I would not consider myself refuted by having omitted what was also true, but only when someone proves that something I have written is false.

There are even those who believe that it is very wrong to criticise, especially when they are criticised, although the latter they would never confess. Quite the contrary, they always claim they have nothing against criticism: that all critiques are welcome but, yes, provided they are positive critiques, constructive; not negative or deleterious. With swollen anger they set those high standards, precisely against the ‘mania of judging’ (Aitmeyer), and display their scandal with ‘scientific’ trims when an author dares to ‘value’; when ‘the historian, given his inability as a moralist, assumes the role of prosecutor’. Is it not grotesque that the sworn representatives of an ancient mystery cult, those who believe in trinities, angels, demons, hell, virgin births, celestial assumptions of a real body, conversion of water into wine and wine into blood, want to impress us with their ‘science’? And could it not be the height of grotesqueness that such people continue to receive the honours of the scientific world itself?

We are invited to take care on behalf of the ‘zeitgeist’ so that we understand and forgive. But precisely Goethe satirised it in his Faust: ‘What you call the spirit of the times, is ultimately the spirit of the masters’. If we are not worth the testimony of the poet for being notoriously anti-Christian and not less anticlerical, let us go to St. Augustine: ‘Times are hard, miserable times, people say. Let us live well, and times are good. Because we ourselves are the times that run; so that how we are, so will our time be’. In his other sermons, Augustine reiterated this idea that there is no reason to accuse the times or the ‘zeitgeist’, but the very humans that (as the historians of today) blame everything on the times: those miserable, difficult and murky times. Because ‘time does not offend anyone. The offended are men, and other men are the ones who inflict the offenses. Oh, pain! It offends men who are robbed, oppressed, and by whom? Not by lions, snakes or scorpions but by men. And so men live the offenses on pain, but will not themselves do the same, if they can, and as much as they have censored it?’ Augustine knew what he meant, as he himself fits perfectly in the last sentence of the quotation (see the last chapter of this volume). As this, ultimately, cannot be denied by the apologists, they object that sometimes—i.e., every time it was necessary, whatever the historical period under consideration—the agents ‘were not true Christians’.

But look, when there were true Christians? Were they the bloodthirsty Merovingians, the Franks so fond of plundering expeditions, the despotic women of the Lateran period? Was Christian the great offensive of the Crusades? Was it the burning of witches and heretics? The Thirty Years War? The First World War, the Second or the war of Vietnam? If all those were not Christians, then who was it? In any case, the spirit of the times was not ever the same at each particular time. While Christians were spreading their gospels, their beliefs and dogmas; while they were transmitting their infection to always larger territories, there were not a few men, such as the first great debunkers of Christianity in the 2nd century, Celsus; and Porphyry in the third, who knew how to raise a comprehensive and overwhelming criticism, which we still feel justified. As Christianity was guilty of appalling outrages, Buddhism, which never had a Western-style organised church in India or central authority dedicated to homogenise the true faith, gave signs of a much higher tolerance. Non-priest believers contracted no exclusive commitment, nor were forced to recant other religions, or converting anyone by force. Their peaceful virtues can be seen, for example, in the history of Tibet, whose inhabitants, a warrior nation among the most feared of Asia, became one of the most peaceful under the influence of Buddhism. In every century there was a moral conscience, even among Christians, and not less among ‘heretics’. Why should we not apply to Christianity its own scale of biblical standards, or even occasionally patristic standards? Do not they themselves say that ‘by their fruits ye shall know them’?

For me, history (and what I said is but a drop in an ocean of injustices) cannot be cultivated sine ira et studio. It would be contrary to my sense of fairness, my compassion for men. He who has not as enemy many enemies, is the enemy of humanity. And is not anyone who pretends to contemplate history without anger or affection similar to the one who witness a large fire and sees how victims suffocate and does nothing to save them, limiting himself to take note of everything? The historian who clings to the criteria of ‘pure’ science is necessarily insincere. He wants either to deceive others or deceive himself. I would add: he is a criminal, because there can be no worse crime than indifference.

And if the sentence of St. John Chrysostom retains its validity today, ‘he who praises the sin is guiltier than he who commits it’, would then praising the crimes of history and glorifying the criminals be even worse than these crimes? Would not human affairs be better, and also the affairs of history, if historians (and schools) illuminated and educated the public based on ethical criteria, condemning the crimes of the sovereigns rather than the praising? But most historians prefer to spread the faeces of the past as if they had to serve as fertiliser for the future havens.

An example of it, to cite only one, is the daily glorification of Charlemagne (or Charles the Great). The worst looting expeditions and genocides of history come to be called expansions, consolidation, extension of the catchment areas, changes in the correlation of forces, restructuring, incorporation domains, Christianization, pacification of neighbouring tribes. When Charlemagne oppresses, exploits, and liquidates what is around him, that is ‘centralism’, ‘pacification of a great empire’. When there are others who rob and kill, those are ‘raids and invasions of enemies across the borders’ (Saracens, Normans, Slavs, Avars) according to Kampf. When Charlemagne, with bags full of holy relics, sets fire and kills on a large scale, thus becoming the noble smith of the great Frank empire, the Catholic Fleckenstein speaks of ‘political integration’. Some specialists use even safer, more peaceful and hypocritical expressions as Camill Wampach, professor of our University of Bonn: ‘The country invited immigration, and the neighbouring region of Franconia gave inhabitants to newly liberated lands’.

The law of the jungle, in a word: the one which has been dominating the history of mankind to date, always where a State intended it (or another refused to submit), and not only in the Christian world, naturally. Because, of course, we will not say here that Christianity is the sole culprit of all these miseries. Perhaps someday, once Christianity disappears, the world remains equally miserable. We do not know that. What we do know is that, with it, everything will necessarily remain the same. That’s why I have tried to highlight its culpability in all cases I have found it essential, trying to cover as many cases as possible but, yes: without exaggeration, without taking things out of proportion, as those could judge who either do not have idea about the history of Christianity, or have lived completely deceived about it.

 

Categories
Americanism Conservatism

Liaucius’ metapolitical essay (1)

Moved into a single entry:

https://westsdarkesthour.com/2013/08/10/liaucius-metapolitical-essay-3/

Categories
2001: A Space Odyssey (movie) Axiology Friedrich Nietzsche

Absolute relevancy

denkmal-auf-dem-holzmarkt-in-naumburg
I have noticed that people are not interested in my recent entries on Nietzsche and the New Testament (and my next entry will be none other than Karlheinz Deschner’s introduction to his ten-volume Criminal History of Christianity). Why I believe these topics are relevant for the cause?

Let’s put it this way. If inspired by Nietzsche a million Whites transvaluated Christian values, as I have already done in my mind—a process that like this poor man almost drove me mad—, most of our current problems would evaporate in a decade or so.

Incidentally, today I moved my toughest post ever written to the Addenda only because the pic of the Star Child, symbol of this New Christ or transvaluated Overman who returns to Earth over the clouds with great power and glory, combines better with the bluish colors of the Addenda than with the reddish background of this main page.

Categories
Mexico City

Escape from mud city

Mexican UntermenschenI know that many visitors of this blog are rather skeptical that the dollar will crash and thus skeptical of my urge to escape a huge metropolis that (I believe) will become a trap right after the crash.

But even completely ignoring what Austrian economists are saying, yesterday, the front page of the newspaper Reforma, announced that crime across the broader metropolitan area has already surrounded all zones of Mexico City. Sooner or later violent crime will reach the very shores of the Elysian island among a sea of mud I live in.

Some concrete proposals for my moving overseas have been made through email exchanges and even phone calls, and I must be grateful to all those who have either contacted me or made a contribution, however small, for my fundraising plea to escape a place that will become a killing zone (donate button has been moved now to the very bottom of this page).