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Month: February 2021
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A more virile language
O Freunde, nicht diese Töne! Sondern laßt uns angenehmere anstimmen, und freudenvollere.
Below Commander Rockwell’s drawing on the sidebar of this site you can read these words by Guillaume Faye: ‘Let us prepare our children for war. Let us educate our youth, be it only a minority, as a new aristocracy’.
I have often said that American white nationalism is charlatanism and these words of the French intellectual exemplify it. Who among the Americans is preparing his children for war, creating a new aristocracy of the intellect like the one William Pierce dreamed of at the end of Who We Are?
If I’m starting an intensive German course it’s because I am fed up with the feminised males of the continent where I was born, and I need to breathe new ideas into my spirit with what was said in Germany before the darkest hour. So if I won’t add many entries this year, while my course lasts, you should know it is because I’m occupying my time with a more virile language than English…
by Dietrich Schuler
Editor’s note: This is the German-English translation of the first article we have published in German at the German section of The West’s Darkest Hour.
______ 卐 ______
If we try to fathom the special fate of the Germans within the framework of the European tragedy, it is not enough to look at the superficial slogans of daily politics, the propaganda theses of the world wars, the mutual prejudices of the European peoples or the moralising blame of re-education. Also, the rather psychological argument that the aversion against the German is rooted in his general efficiency doesn’t probe deeply enough, although there may be a great deal of truth in it.
It has been almost completely overlooked that the birth of anti-Germanism already occurred at the beginning of Christianisation. The Christian apostles first gathered around themselves everywhere the proletarian masses, the poor, the badly off and the socially weak of the ancient world. Christianity was nothing else than a pre-Marxism in the magical feeling of life of that time. ‘Evil’ then, for the early baptised, was everything that shone in the Roman Empire: the rulers, the leaders in politics, economics, art and science, the military and administrators. Christianity thus contained—Nietzsche had recognised this crystal-clearly—an ancient slave revolt against everything high and well-bred, and the mean vindictiveness of that lower-class revelled in their lust to see the hated, envied and secretly admired languish in the hottest hell. Therefore, this religion had to be anti-Germanic in and of itself. The heathen races and peoples of Central and Northern Europe, with their elementary joy of being and sensuality, formed the direct antipode to the Christian state of mind. In particular, it was the soldierly ‘barbarian tribes’ of the Germanic peoples who attracted the hatred of the oriental desert religion. For oriental was and is the original Christian spirit.
The European nobility, however, is still today, after 2,000 or 1,500 years, predominantly Nordic, and the Teutons embodied in a special way the forest soul of northern Europe, which was now subjugated in the course of many centuries by the desert spirit alien to its nature. This is to be understood quite literally. Thus the celebrated jungle doctor Albert Schweitzer said: ‘I am subjugated by Jesus’. But he didn’t want to understand this negatively, but triumphantly. The servant-like, emasculating effect of this religion can no longer be demonstrated more clearly.
In addition, it has always been overlooked or, at least, it has never been clearly pointed out, that the Christian religion encountered harsh military resistance in its spread exclusively in Germany, nowhere else in Europe. The Christianisation of south-eastern and southern Europe, as well as that of Russia and Poland, took place completely smoothly. Likewise, it found no opposition throughout Western Europe. This is of fundamental importance and symbolic of what was in the offing in Europe through many centuries, leading to the tragic inferno of the white continent since about 850. What we are told about ‘persecutions of Christians’ in antiquity is mostly fictitious: they are the legends of saints, hardly any of which would stand up to thorough scrutiny. Antiquity was, religiously, extremely tolerant and all too tolerant to its detriment.
The decisive point, however, lies in the following: the Christianisation of Germany took place in the West, starting from those two states whose modern shape was formed by three important Germanic tribes: England and France. And these tribes, as is well known, are called Franks, Saxons and Angles. It was a double attack, waged on the one hand by the most brutal military force by the Frankish Emperor Charles in a thirty-year war of extermination, and on the other hand by preaching, flattering persuasion and treacherous actions, such as the felling of the Donar Oak by Boniface. And this insidious attack, supported by Germanic courage, came from those Anglo-Saxons who had been Christianised on the British Isle and now continued the work of alienation on the mainland of whom Winfried, the so-called ‘German Apostle’, together with his relative Lioba, were particularly well known.
The guardian of central European paganism was first and foremost the Saxon tribe, which remained in the mainland, supported by the Frisians. From here the re-Germanisation of northeast Germany would take place. Without these Lower Saxons there would be no German people. But they were subjugated by the part of the closely related Franks, which the Gallo-Roman foreigners had Frenchified with the help of the Franks, who remained Germanic.
The sneering and often arrogant tone that for centuries has always been heard in Western Europe as soon as German things are mentioned goes back to the 8th and 9th Christian centuries. And it is therefore no coincidence that worldwide summons to arms, which were directed twice against Germany in the 20th century, had its spiritual-political leadership essentially with France and England, which were bearers of world languages and high moral standing.
Therefore, it cannot really be surprising, although curiously it was never really stated, that the whole anti-German atrocity propaganda, as it found its dramatic climax in the first half of the 20th century, was nothing but the increased echo of sermons to the pagans and anti-Germanic incantations of Christian missionaries, apostles and itinerant teachers more than a thousand years ago.
The core of anti-Germanism was always political theology. The orators, ‘clergymen’, article writers, and radio propagandists of our Allied war opponents merely transposed into modern language what those apostles had once prefigured: the Teuton as a hulking barbarian, stupid, brutal, uneducated and, as an additional variant, absolutely humourless!
After the Germans were finally incorporated into the fold of the Christian herd of Europe, they themselves continued the subjugation of Central and Eastern Germany to the Wends and Old Prussians. Especially the Baltic Old Prussians were now subjugated by the Order of the Teutonic Knights in the 13th and 14th centuries, just as had happened 400 to 500 years earlier to the Saxons on the part of the Franks. Christianised Poles weren’t able to conquer these freedom-loving pagan Old Prussians.
The Baltic Prussians weren’t Slavs, they formed together with the Latvians and Lithuanians a special branch of the Indo-Germanic language family. Linguistically, they occupied an intermediate position between Germanic and Slavic, as can be seen, for example, in the word garbas which means mountain. ‘Garbas’ is only a metathesis of ‘mountain’ with a Baltic suffix attached. In Slavic it became ‘gora’.
In terms of blood, however, these later Germanised Old Prussians, who gave the name to the later state of Prussia, were the closest relatives of the Germanic tribes. Until the Second World War the real Latvia as well as East Prussia belonged to the areas with the strongest predominance of the Nordic race. Let us therefore note two things: the northwest of Germany was forcibly Christianised in the same way as later would happen to its extreme northeast. The area around Königsberg was forced under the Christian yoke only a full millennium after southern France with Marseille and Bordeaux. Only through this do we recognise the full historical root of the talk of the ‘German barbarians’, which has long been in vogue especially in our western neighbouring country.
From a purely political point of view it must of course be said that, as things stood, the subjugation of the Saxons by the Frankish Emperor may have been positive, in spite of the terrible Germanic fratricides, because otherwise the establishment of a German state and state people, as we know it historically, couldn’t have been carried out. This has also been asserted again and again. The same applies to the Christianisation and simultaneous Germanisation of East Germany, which, however, was actually a re-Germanisation. It is possible that without the influence of foreign religious elements a large Germanic northern empire would have arisen from Scandinavia to the low mountain ranges. Without the Roman Church, the Germanic tribes of northern France would most probably not have been Romanised, so that quite other possibilities of Germanic state formation in the European framework seem conceivable. But these are speculations. The main purpose here is to prove that through Christianity everything in Europe became mendacious to the core.
If the opposing propaganda in the Second World War tried to divide the Germans by the confrontation of ‘Nazis’ and ‘anti-Nazis’, it did the same in the First World War by the use of the terms ‘Prussians’ and ‘non-Prussians’. If we have internalised all this, then the German Sonderweg is no longer a mystery to us. The Germans are, often and largely quite unconsciously, the conscience of the real, down-to-earth, pagan Europe. There is nothing else. Christian Europe was a falsification, a pseudo-morphosis. Central Europe is the original homeland of the Indo-Germanic root people, not some Asian steppes, as we have been led to believe. What this primitive pagan Europe could have become with the great ruler virtues and the political talent of the old Romans, but above all the unequalled philosophical height of the Hellenes, give us a faint idea.
Along with Germany, Europe, the entire white race would have to die. But by paying homage to anti-Germanism themselves, the Germans, blocked the way to the right knowledge for the other Europeans. He who destroys the core of a thing, destroys thereby also the whole. And it is therefore no wonder that the deep division of the soul, which came to Europe with Christianity, raged especially painfully among the Germans.
The adoption of this foreign religion and the attempt to adapt it to our way of being was the real fall from the grace of Europe. Religion is the highest and most sacred thing: one doesn’t allow it to be taken away from the foreigner, nor, what is just as bad, to be foisted upon him. A race of the rank of the White European without its own religion is a historical scandal, a mortal sin…
He whoever walked through the German people with an awake heart, has recognised the deep inner misery of this people… Especially since the 20th century, the division of the soul has become abundantly visible, which runs through our tribes, our clans, families, even the individual personalities. The feeling becomes more and more urgent that we live in an unholy, hopeless, evil and un-homely world.
But the other European peoples also know this feeling. Sham victories over Germany have benefited neither them nor Europe as a whole. Quite the contrary! All of them are not one bit better off today than the Germans themselves. Christianity has not eliminated a single of the world’s evils, nor has it even alleviated them: it lives from evil. Only in it, in an ugly, miserable, cloying world, do its rotten fruits blossom and flourish.
But the struggle against Germany with unwarlike but all the more effective means goes on unceasingly. Fortunately, more and more people, even in non-German countries, are realising that there is anti-white racism everywhere.
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Dietrich Schuler (1927-2011) was a German educator, writer and philosopher of religion.
Source: Dietrich Schuler: Untergang der Weltmacht USA: Rettung für die weißen Völker? (2003). This excerpt has been translated by Albus from German using DeepL; reworked by him, and the resulting English syntax edited by C.T.
Von Dietrich Schuler
Wenn wir das Sonderschicksal der Deutschen und darin eingebettet die europäische Tragödie zu ergründen versuchen, genügt es nicht, die oberflächlichen Parolen der Tagespolitik, die Propagandathesen der Weltkriege, die gegenseitigen Vorurteile der europäischen Völker oder die moralisierenden Schuldzuweisungen der Umerziehung zu betrachten. Auch das eher psychologische Argument, die Abneigung gegen den Deutschen wurzle in dessen allgemeiner Tüchtigkeit, lotet nicht tief genug, obwohl sehr viel Richtiges darin stecken mag.
Es wurde bisher so gut wie ganz übersehen, daß die Geburtsstunde des Antigermanismus bereits bei Beginn der Christianisierung schlug. Die christlichen Apostel sammelten zunächst überall die proletarischen Massen, die Armen, Schlechtweggekommenen und sozial Schwachen der antiken Welt um sich. Das Christentum war nichts anderes als ein Vormarxismus im magischen Lebensgefühl jener Zeit. „Böse“ war dann für diese Frühgetauften alles, was im römischen Imperium strahlte, die Herrschenden, die Führer in Politik, Ökonomie, Kunst und Wissenschaft, die Militärs und Verwaltungsbeamten. Das Christentum beinhaltete also – Nietzsche hatte das glasklar erkannt – einen antiken Sklavenaufstand gegen alles Hohe und Wohlgeratene, und die mesquine Rachsucht jener Unterschicht schwelgte in der Wollust, die Gehaßten, Beneideten und insgeheim Bewunderten in der heißesten Hölle schmachten zu sehen. Daher mußte diese Religion schon an und für sich antigermanisch sein. Denn die heidnischen Rassen und Völker Mittel- und Nordeuropas mit ihrer elementaren Daseinsfreude und Sinneslust bildeten den direkten Gegenpol zur christlichen Befindlichkeit. Insbesondere waren es die soldatischen „Barbarenstämme“ der Germanen, die den Haß der orientalischen Wüstenreligion auf sich zogen. Denn orientalisch war und ist der ursprüngliche Christengeist.
Der europäische Adel aber ist auch heute noch, nach 2.000 bzw. 1.500 Jahren, vorwiegend nordisch geprägt, und die Germanen verkörperten in besonderer Weise die Waldseele Nordeuropas, die nun im Laufe vieler Jahrhunderte durch den ihr wesensfremden Wüstengeist unterjocht wurde. Dies ist durchaus wörtlich zu verstehen. So sagte der gefeierte Urwalddoktor Albert Schweitzer: „Ich bin unterjocht durch Jesus.“ Doch wollte er solches nicht etwa negativ verstanden wissen, sondern triumphierend. Deutlicher kann die knechtselige, entmännlichende Wirkung dieser Religion nicht mehr demonstriert werden.
Hinzu kommt ein Zweites: Es wurde bisher immer übersehen, bzw., es wurde zumindest nie deutlich darauf hingewiesen, daß die christliche Religion bei ihrer Ausbreitung ausschließlich in Deutschland auf harten militärischen Widerstand gestoßen ist, nirgends sonst in Europa. Die Christianisierung Südost- und Südeuropas, aber auch diejenige Rußlands und Polens vollzog sich völlig reibungslos. Ebenso fand sie in ganz Westeuropa keinerlei Gegenwehr. Dies ist von fundamentaler Bedeutung und symbolhaft für das, was sich in Europa durch viele Jahrhunderte anbahnte und seit etwa 850 zum tragischen Inferno des weißen Kontinents führte. Was uns von „Christenverfolgungen“ in der Antike erzählt wird, ist meist frei erfunden, es sind das Heiligenlegenden, von denen kaum eine der gründlichen Nachprüfung standhalten würde. Diese Antike war religiös äußerst duldsam, allzu duldsam zu ihrem Schaden.
Das Entscheidende liegt nun aber im folgenden: Die Christianisierung Deutschlands erfolgte vom Westen her, ausgehend von jenen beiden Staaten, deren moderne Gestalt durch drei wichtige germanische Stämme geformt wurde: England und Frankreich. Und diese Stämme heißen bekanntlich Franken, Sachsen und Angeln. Es war ein Doppelangriff, der einerseits mit brutalster militärischer Gewalt vom Frankenkaiser Karl in einem 30jährigen Vernichtungskrieg geführt wurde, andererseits aber auch durch Predigt, schmeichlerische Überredung und tückische Aktionen, wie beispielsweise das Fällen der Donar-Eiche durch Bonifatius. Und dieser heimtückische Angriff, gestützt von germanischem Mut, ging von jenen Angelsachsen aus, die auf der britischen Insel christianisiert worden waren und nun auf dem Festland das Überfremdungswerk fortsetzten, davon besonders bekannt Winfried, der sogenannte „Deutschenapostel“, nebst seiner Verwandten Lioba.
Der Hüter zentraleuropäischen Heidentums war in erster Linie der festländisch gebliebene Sachsenstamm, unterstützt durch Friesen. Von hier aus vollzog sich später ja auch die Regermanisierung Nordostdeutschlands. Ohne diese Niedersachsen gäbe es kein deutsches Volk. Gerade sie aber wurden durch den Teil der nahverwandten Franken unterworfen, den die galloromanische Fremde verwelscht hatte, wobei auch die germanisch gebliebenen Franken mithalfen.
Der hämische und oft überhebliche Ton, der seit Jahrhunderten in Westeuropa stets laut wird, sobald von deutschen Dingen die Rede ist, geht auf das 8. und 9. christliche Säkulum zurück. Und es ist daher kein Zufall, daß der Heerbann der Welt, der im 20. Jahrhundert zweimal gegen Deutschland ins Feld geführt wurde, seine geistig-politische Leitung im wesentlichen bei Frankreich und England hatte, welche Träger von Weltsprachen und eines hohen moralischen Ansehens waren. Daher kann es eigentlich nicht verwundern, obwohl es merkwürdigerweise nie wirklich konstatiert wurde, daß die gesamte deutschfeindliche Greuelpropaganda, wie sie ihren dramatischen Höhepunkt in der ersten Hälfte des 20. Jahrhunderts fand, nichts war als der gesteigerte Nachhall von Heidenpredigten und antigermanischen Beschwörungen christlicher Missionare, Apostel und Wanderlehrer – mehr als 1.000 Jahre zuvor. Denn der Kern des Antigermanismus war immer politische Theologie. Die Redner, „Geistlichen“, Artikelschreiber und Rundfunkpropagandisten unserer alliierten Kriegsgegner setzten lediglich in moderne Sprache um, was jene Apostel einst vorgeformt hatten: Der Germane als ungeschlachter Barbar, dumm, brutal, ungebildet und – als zusätzliche Variante – absolut humorlos!
Aber noch mehr der Tragik: Nachdem die Deutschen schließlich in den Pferch der christlichen Herde Europas eingegliedert waren, setzten sie selbst die Unterwerfung Mittel- und Ostdeutschlands gegenüber Wenden und Altpreußen fort. Besonders die Prußen, die baltischen Altpreußen, wurden nun vom Orden der Deutschritter im 13. und 14. Jahrhundert unterworfen, so wie dies 400 bis 500 Jahre früher den Sachsen seitens der Franken geschehen war. Die längst christianisierten Polen waren nicht in der Lage, diese freiheitsliebenden heidnischen Altpreußen zu bezwingen. Die Prußen waren keine Slawen, sie bildeten zusammen mit den Letten und Litauern einen besonderen Zweig der indogermanischen Sprachfamilie. Sprachlich nahmen sie eine Mittelstellung zwischen Germanisch und Slawisch ein, wie man es etwa an dem Wort „garbas“, das Berg bedeutet, ablesen kann. „Garbas“ ist lediglich eine Metathese von „Berg“ mit angehängter baltischer Endung. Slawisch wurde es zu „gora“. Blutsmäßig aber waren diese später eingedeutschten Altpreußen, die dem nachmaligen Staat Preußen den Namen gaben, den Germanen nächstverwandt. Noch bis zum Zweiten Weltkrieg gehörte das echte Lettland ebenso wie Ostpreußen zu den Gebieten mit dem stärksten Vorwiegen der nordischen Rasse. Halten wir also zwei Dinge fest: Der Nordwesten Deutschlands wurde in gleicher Weise gewaltsam christianisiert wie später sein äußerster Nordosten. Das Gebiet um Königsberg wurde erst ein volles Jahrtausend nach Südfrankreich mit Marseille und Bordeaux unter das Christenjoch gezwungen. Erst hierdurch erkennen wir die volle historische Wurzel des Geredes von den „deutschen Barbaren“, das lange besonders in unserem westlichen Nachbarland im Schwange war.
Vom rein staatspolitischen Standpunkt her ist natürlich zu sagen, daß, so wie die Dinge nun einmal lagen, die Unterwerfung der Sachsen durch den Frankenkaiser trotz der furchtbaren germanischen Brudermorde positiv gewesen sein mochte, weil sonst die Errichtung eines deutschen Staates und Staatsvolkes, wie wir sie geschichtlich kennen, nicht zu verwirklichen gewesen wäre. Dies ist auch immer wieder geltend gemacht worden. Ähnliches gilt für die Christianisierung und gleichzeitige Eindeutschung Ostdeutschlands, die aber eigentlich eine Regermanisierung war. Es ist möglich, daß ohne die Einwirkung fremder Religionselemente ein großes germanisches Nordreich von Skandinavien bis zu den Mittelgebirgen entstanden wäre. Ohne die römische Kirche wären die Germanen Nordfrankreichs höchstwahrscheinlich nicht romanisiert worden, so daß noch ganz andere Möglichkeiten germanischer Staatsbildungen im europäischen Rahmen denkbar erscheinen. Doch sind das Spekulationen. Hier soll vor allem der Nachweis geführt werden, daß durch dieses Christentum in Europa alles bis in den Grund hinein verlogen und verbogen wurde.
Versuchte die gegnerische Propaganda im Zweiten Weltkrieg, die Deutschen durch die Gegenüberstellung von „Nazis“ und „Antinazis“ zu spalten, so verfuhr sie desgleichen im Ersten Weltkrieg durch die Verwendung der Begriffe „Preußen“ und „Nichtpreußen“.
Wenn wir dies alles verinnerlicht haben, dann ist uns der „deutsche Sonderweg“ kein Rätsel mehr. Die Deutschen sind, oftmals und weitgehend ganz unbewußt, das Gewissen des echten, bodenständigen, des heidnischen Europas. Es gibt kein anderes. Das christliche Europa war eine Verfälschung, eine Pseudomorphose. Denn Mitteleuropa ist die Urheimat des indogermanischen Wurzelvolkes, nicht irgendwelche asiatischen Steppen, wie man es uns hat weismachen wollen. Was dieses urwüchsige heidnische Europa hätte werden können, davon geben uns die großartigen Herrschertugenden und die politische Begabung der alten Römer, aber vor allem auch die unerreichte philosophische Höhe der Hellenen eine leise Ahnung.
Mit Deutschland müßte auch Europa, müßte die gesamte weiße Rasse sterben. Indem aber die Deutschen nun selbst dem Antigermanismus huldigen, versperren sie den übrigen Europäern den Weg zur richtigen Erkenntnis. Denn wer den Kern eines Dinges zerstört, vernichtet damit auch das Ganze. Und es ist daher auch kein Wunder, daß die tiefe Seelenspaltung, die mit dem Christentum nach Europa kam, gerade in den Deutschen besonders schmerzhaft wütete. Die Übernahme dieser fremden Religion und der Versuch ihrer Anpassung an unsere Wesensart war der eigentliche Sündenfall Europas. Religion ist das Höchste und Heiligste: Man läßt sie sich vom Fremden weder wegnehmen noch, was ebenso schlimm ist, unterschieben. Eine Rasse vom Range der weißeuropäischen ohne eigene Religion, das ist ein Stilbruch, ein historischer Skandal, eine Todsünde. Europa war sich für eine levantinische Tschandalenlehre nicht zu schade: Die Quittung hat es jetzt bekommen. Denn das Christentum ist Verrat, es ist Rassenverrat an Europa. Grausig diese Versatzstücke à la Sigrid Hunke, diese „gutgemeinten“ und also schlechten Verlegenheitslösungen, wo es dann doch an allen Ecken und Enden wieder christelt, sobald nur das Wort Religion fällt, krampfhafte Versuche zu „Europas eigener Religion“, die aber in Halbheiten stecken bleiben und die dann schließlich damit enden, daß unsere Vorfahren schon vor Jahrtausenden eigentlich bereits die allerbesten, vorzüglichsten, ganz und gar unübertrefflichen, bloß verkannten „Christen“ gewesen seien – wenn das dabei natürlich auch nicht so genannt wird! Dahinter verbergen sich Entzugserscheinungen und die Unfähigkeit, sich von einer falschen Tradition zu lösen. Hier gibt es nur eine einzige Lösung, die auf der Höhe der Zeit liegt: die kreatistische Idee.
Wer je mit wachem Herzen durch das deutsche Volk ging, erkannte die tiefe innere Not seiner Menschen, heute notdürftig überdeckt von der rissigen Fassade einer „Spaßgesellschaft“. Besonders seit dem 20. Jahrhundert wurde die Seelenspaltung überdeutlich sichtbar, welche durch unsere Stämme, unsere Sippen, Familien, ja die einzelnen Persönlichkeiten geht. Das Gefühl wird immer drängender, daß wir in einer unheiligen, heillosen, bösen und unbehausten Welt leben. Aber auch die anderen europäischen Völker kennen dieses Gefühl. Scheinsiege über Deutschland haben weder ihnen noch Europa insgesamt genützt. Ganz im Gegenteil! Sie alle stehen heute um keinen Deut besser da als die Deutschen selbst. Das Christentum hat kein einziges der Weltübel beseitigt, noch auch nur gelindert, nein, es lebt vom Übel. Nur in ihm, in einer häßlichen, elenden, verköterten Welt blühen und gedeihen seine faulen Früchte.
Doch der Kampf gegen Deutschland mit unkriegerischen, aber um so wirksameren Mitteln geht unentwegt weiter. Zum Glück erkennen immer Menschen auch in nichtdeutschen Ländern, daß es sich hier allenthalben um einen antiweißen Rassismus handelt.
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Quelle: Dietrich Schuler: Untergang der Weltmacht USA – Rettung für die weißen Völker? (2003), S. 87-91.
Dietrich Schuler (1927–2011) war ein deutscher Pädagoge, Schriftsteller und Religionsphilosoph.
Um diesen Artikel auf Deutsch zu lesen, wie er auf der Original-Website “Die schwärzeste Stunde des Westens” aussehen würde, siehe: hier.
Categories
WDH in German
With the help of a comrade we will soon start Die schwärzeste Stunde des Westens: a section of The West’s Darkest Hour in German:
https://westsdarkesthour.com
Remember that the above site is also a backup of the English entries in case WordPress decides to suspend our account here.
Editor’s note: On 18 August 2019 this was originally uploaded as a video in YouTube by YezenIRL under the title ‘Forgiving Game of Thrones: An Unpopular Opinion’:
[Tyrion on the Iron Throne] Disclaimer: The following is not necessarily meant to argue whether or not Season 8 of Game of Thrones was good or bad. But rather to challenge the way we as an audience engaged with the story, and reframe our expectations regarding what value we can take from an imperfect work.
Jon: ‘You can forgive all of them. Make them see they made a mistake. Make them understand’.
Dany [Daenerys Targaryen]: ‘I can’t’.
Okay, so I’m back, and we have to talk about Toxic Fandom.
Since Season Eight ended, the internet’s been flooded with countless takes on the ending of Game of Thrones. From fans insisting they know the story better than the writers, to a petition demanding re-shoots, it’s clear that reactions are mixed. And while criticism is important, I think that if we want to be critical of media we should also be critical of our own opinions.
So, in light of some of the extreme reactions we’ve been seeing…
Youtuber: ‘…the worst, the worst, the worst [emphasis in his voice] finale episode in the history of television!’
…I’m gonna say we need to take a step back as a culture, and take a look at ourselves.
[Cersei on the Iron Throne] This kind of reaction isn’t really exclusive to Game of Thrones. Fandoms actually have a history of toxic backlash when things don’t go their way… Now look, I know we all have a right to our opinion and I realise negative opinions are not the same as bullying, but I do have to ask—how much of this is constructive? Do people understand the thing they’re criticising? And, are we maybe overreacting?
Part One: What if we’re overreacting?
It’s hard to talk about fandoms without generalising people, because everyone responds to a story in their own way. Some people loved the ending, some hated it, some hated the ideas, and others hated the way they were executed.
Obviously not everything I say can apply to every single person, so in order to be objective, I’m gonna be a nerd and start with some graphs. Looking at the data, there seems to be a distinct sense from the critical community that Game of Thrones fell apart in the last three or four episodes.
Before that, the show was mostly a critical hit. But was this sudden drop in scores actually fair? For me, the show had been struggling for years to depict organic character development and realistic politics. And to be frank, the books Game of Thrones is based on are way too dense and expansive to be accurately adapted to television. The problem so many had with the ending are problems I’ve been seeing for a while now, and so I’ve come to look at the show as kind of a preview for the books.
[Jorah on the Iron Throne] While I understand people’s frustration with certain sloppily handled twists, I’m also kind of just ‘over it’ and prefer to focus more on the core ideas, like what does the ending say about moral certitude and the glorification of war? Or about power, redemption and choice?
In the backlash, these bigger discussions aren’t really being had. Yet, the show-runners that fans are now calling ‘Dumb and Dumber’ are the same ones who’ve been writing the show since Season One, and had been receiving critical acclaim well after they passed the books—as we saw with episodes like ‘Battle of the Bastards’ and ‘The Winds of Winter’.
Stannis: ‘A good act does not wash out the bad. Nor a bad the good’.
Though many repeat the mantra that ‘the problem isn’t what happened, it’s how it was executed’, I don’t think that sentiment captures the full story behind the backlash. And that’s not to say that everything was well executed, but to say that for several years fans have been forgiving and even applauding sloppy writing, because they liked what was happening. For example, the resolution of the ‘Slaver’s Bay’ storyline and the ‘Battle of the Bastards’ aren’t really set up much better than anything in Season Eight. They just have more popular outcomes.
What changed in the last three episodes is that the outcomes got controversial. For example, many believed that defeating the Night King was Jon’s whole arc, and insist that Jon was robbed of his destiny. But even before he encountered the White Walkers, Jon’s conflict was always framed as Love versus Duty—the human heart in conflict with itself. His arc is about making difficult choices, not accomplishing great feats. And in that, Jon is still a chosen hero. It’s just that his heroism isn’t supposed to be cool, or honourable, or even triumphant. The point is that doing the right thing isn’t always totally awesome.
[Brienne on the Iron Throne] That kind of subversion is classic Game of Thrones. I mean: if we look to the beginning, Ned’s arc seemed to be going South to become Hand of the King and solve the mystery of Jon Arryn’s murder. Yet, not only does Ned die, he also never figures out who the real killer was. The true arc was Ned’s inner struggle, and like Jon, the legacy of his actions on the world isn’t immediately apparent.
Tyrion: ‘Ask me again in ten years’.
Not all, but so many of the complaints around the final season come down to some form of ‘this isn’t what I expected’. From the belief that the Night King was the true threat, through the belief that Jon would sit the Iron Throne, to the belief that Jamie’s ending would be more heroic. Which leads us to question: why did the audience have the expectations they did? And what is it about subverted expectations that’s so hard to accept?
Part Two: What if Game of Thrones was never meant to be popular?
Throughout its eight-year run, Game of Thrones became what can only be described as a landmark television drama, pushing the limits of what a show could accomplish in terms of scope and story, and gaining popularity approaching that of Star Wars, Harry Potter, or the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Simply put, the show reached mainstream status, which is complicated.
So for those who don’t know, Game of Thrones is based on this series of gritty fantasy novels by George R.R. Martin, who’d previously been known for writing really weird niche sci-fi, filled with telepathic hive-minds, body-snatching, and Space Catholicism. The books, as well as the early seasons, trade out straightforward character arcs and cathartic victories for messy, soul-crushing realism. I say this to point out that, unlike Star Wars, Harry Potter or the MCU, Martin’s story was probably never meant to be a big crowd-pleaser.
Shireen: ‘Father, help! Please don’t do this, father!’ [she’s being burned alive at the stake as a plea to the Lord of Light]
But with the growing popularity of the show, Season Six and Seven saw Benioff and Weiss shift gears to a more mainstream narrative. There were probably a lot of reasons for this; some business-related, others to do with the challenges of adaptation. But the story that once built up Joffrey as a villain for four seasons, only to have him poisoned by a relatively minor character, became the show that gave every victory to the fan-favourite character that most wanted it.
So of course people expected Jon and Dany to achieve their goals together. Of course they expected Jaime to save King’s Landing from Cersei. They just watched Sansa execute her rapist, and Arya assassinate everyone who took part in the Red Wedding, and Grey Worm kill the slave masters, and the Stark kids avenge their dad. Suddenly, we were being given a steady stream of good triumphing over evil, and people were eating it up.
So, when we got to the messy George R.R. Martin conclusion, audiences were jarred by the lack of cathartic victory. Thus came a flood of emotions from the fandom. People were upset by the execution and content of what happened, and it became hard to draw the line where one feeling ended and the other began.
[The Hound on the Iron Throne] So people stopped looking past flaws in the show’s execution like they used to, and instead fixated on them directly. After all, people don’t need much justification for stuff like ‘Jon is King now!’ or ‘Dany’s finally coming to Westeros!’ like they do for ‘Jaime goes back to Cersei’. We actually saw this already with Stannis Baratheon, whose tragic ending received highly polarised reactions depending on whether or not viewers had high hopes for the character, with his fans accusing the show-runners of intentional character assassination. And what happened with Stannis is now happening on a much larger scale, with much more popular characters.
While we can say that the tragedies of Ned, Catelyn and Rob were better set up, it’s also important to recognise that, thanks to online spoilers most people knew those characters were doomed within a month of starting the show. So those deaths didn’t really betray the people’s idea of who those characters were or shatter their expectations for what the story was supposed to be…
Due to its emphasis on prophecy and mystery, Game of Thrones actually engages in way more of this kind of theory baiting, with a fan community that’s built on piles of online theory discussions. For millions, speculating about Game of Thrones was a key part of enjoying it. Trust me, as a guy who once wrote a weirdly popular fan theory about Bran possessing Jon’s dead body, I know how it is.
And while that speculation was key to bringing together a dedicated fandom, it also led to fans taking an unwarranted sense of ownership over the story. To get even deeper into it, various fan communities even developed vastly different headcanons and would ridicule each other over their wildly different—and as it turns out—equally incorrect expectations.
[Jaime Lannister on the Iron Throne] People have difficulty accepting that Jon’s parentage is meant to subvert the secret lineage trope, revealing it to be a burden rather than a solution, or accepting that the Night King being defeated before the end is meant to reframe the Dark Lord trope—from being an external evil to an internal consequence of the pursuit of power [the social justice warrior Daenerys Targaryen]. Or accepting that Jamie’s story is an exploration of the limits of redemption arcs.
But we also have to bear in mind that Martin came up with the stuff in the 90’s, well before the internet had developed into what it is today. So we can’t blame him for not expecting fans to come to the conclusions that they did.
But it’s fan entitlement that causes literally a hundred percent of misunderstanding being blamed on the writers. At no point are most people accepting that they might have been wrong about anything. This is because people have projected their own ideas of where the story was headed onto the world and characters, and interpreted everything based on those expectations.
[Sansa on the Iron Throne] Basically, I’m saying that people tend to forgive a story that’s sloppily done if it gives them what they wanted. But those same people get hypercritical if a story subverts their expectations in a way that’s upsetting.
Which brings me to my first ever YouTube callout. I’m sure a lot of you have seen [YouTubber] Think Story’s ‘How Game of Thrones Should Have Ended’.
In this video, Think Story recites his fan-fiction of how the story should have played out—abandoning everything subversive and instead just playing out all the most popular fan theories: Jamie kills Cersei; Bran gets stuck in the Night King’s memories; Jon makes the big sacrifice and is remembered as a hero-King, and queen Dany carries forward his legacy. And of course, this video was wildly popular even though it ditches the tough questions Martin asks about war and power, and just offers a conformist fan-fiction about heroes saving the world from [the bad guy of the movies]. So Think Story, thank you for being such a perfect example of mediocrity!
I bring this up because it exposes the entitlement of fandom.
[Samwell on the Iron Throne] Not every story has to please the mainstream. That’s not what Game of Thrones was ever supposed to be. In a world where stories so often fail due to corporate greed, or a lack of creativity, or pandering too hard to a particular demographic, Game of Thrones is actually being punished for the opposite. It’s being punished for keeping through the artistic vision of its author.
Part Three: What if I’m wrong?
Ok, so I’ve made some harsh claims. I’ve said that a lot of people’s reactions are being driven by their attachment to an incorrect idea of what the story was supposed to be. As in, I believe the story was always gonna have Jamie choose to die with Cersei, Dany burn King’s Landing, Jon exiled to the Night’s Watch, and Bran chosen as King. That’s the story Martin was always telling, and for the most part, anything else would have been untrue to it.
But what if I’m wrong? Wrong about what’s driving people’s anger, or wrong about the story Martin is telling, or wrong about what’s good?
Jon to Dany in the finale: ‘What about everyone else? All the other people who think they know what’s good?’
Though my channel’s become most widely known for predicting that Bran would be King, I have to admit that over the years I’ve had a ton of theories, and most of them ended up being wrong. Yet, every time, I was so sure that I’d figured things out; that I knew what was good and what this story was supposed to be. Truth is, I’ve always been a little too certain that I’m right about things, and that’s something that I’ve always had to work on, and maybe so do a lot of us.
[Davos on the Iron Throne] And if you notice, that was a big part of the message of Game of Thrones there at the end. That maybe in the process of being so certain that you know what’s good, you aren’t doing anyone any good. Maybe people are out here pointing out plot holes while missing one of the key messages the show tried to deliver; that it’s destructive to be so stuck in our own perspective that we stopped trying to understand.
I mean, does this kind of backlash really benefit anyone? You know, probably not.
I think this need to direct all of our anger at a particular person when we feel let down tends to miss the bigger picture. With Game of Thrones, it’s Benioff and Weiss even though there are much bigger structural issues with adapting A Song of Ice and Fire into a television format. I mean, George R.R. Martin himself splits the story in half for Books Four and Five: a strategy which would have been impossible to do with the television show. Also, he throws in a bunch more characters, and he spent the last eight years writing the sixth book.
Meanwhile, D&D had to not only condense the story, but do it in a fraction of the time. People call them out on rushing the story, but they went one season beyond their initial plan, and spent an entire two years on the final six episodes. They made mistakes, yes, but they did so because they had a hard job…
This is kind of an obvious statement, but television and film is largely driven by the market, and so what gets made will typically be what can reliably turn a profit. On account of just how much goes into shows and movies today, studios avoid taking risks, leading to our current age of remakes, reboots and adaptations.
[Theon on the Iron Throne] When we punish stories that try to be subversive we’re implicitly telling studios to keep playing it safe. So, for better or worse, I appreciate when people have the courage to try something different. We need more different. Frankly, we need more ‘weird’.
Jon: ‘I think you’re making a terrible mistake’.
Mance Rayder: [smirks] ‘The freedom to make my own mistakes was all I ever wanted’.
Which brings me back to the petition and maybe my most controversial point. In a recent interview, actor Nikolaj Coster-Waldau [Jaime Lannister] joked that the final season of Game of Thrones would be remade once the million people who signed the petition could all agree on an ending. And while he makes a great point about how it’s impossible to appease every headcanon out there, I do want to challenge his point just a little bit.
Because I actually think it would have been easy to make an ending that was better received than the one we got. Which is actually why David Benioff and D.B. Weiss deserve some credit. It would have been easy for them to abandon Martin’s vision and do a crowd-pleasing ending that people were expecting: Have Jon sword-fight the Night King; have Jamie heroically kill Cersei; have Dany install democracy, and then fly off into the sunset with Jon.
An ending like that isn’t hard to come up with. After all, that sort of fan-service and wish fulfilment is pretty much exactly what they wrote for ‘Battle of the Bastards’, and it received widespread acclaim. Seriously people, the last two episodes of Season Six are not well written. People just liked watching the heroes win.
So despite everything, I respect D&D for trying. For doing a final season that took big risks.
Do I think it was great? No! But it was ambitious, and to me that’s more important. Now, of course—of course!—there are things I would have done differently. Characters that I don’t think were handled well, and valid criticisms to make. But, we should consider that for everything that the show-runners might have gotten wrong, there were probably a ton of things we had wrong too. And instead of obsessing over plot holes, maybe our energy would be better spent trying to reach a better understanding. And appreciating that, despite being really flawed, the ending we got was genuine; not focus-grouped or test-marketed, but an attempt to explore some tough questions about who we are. Which is why we should forgive Game of Thrones.
[Varys on the Iron Throne] Although I can’t tell anyone how to feel, I can suggest that we also be self-critical. Though I can’t necessarily tell people what ideals to live by, I do suggest we try to understand the ideals present in the media we consume, and then make a choice whether or not to apply those messages in our own lives. And though it’s up to each of us to choose what we like and what we can forgive, maybe we owe it to ourselves, when our favourite stories let us down, to remember all of the things that made them our favourite stories in the first place.
Cersei: ‘Our marriage’.
Robert Baratheon: [laughter]
Thanks for watching. [Music]
by Tom Sunic
In order to tentatively elicit a convincing answer regarding the pathology of White guilt one needs to raise some rhetorical questions about Christian teachings. Why are White Christian peoples, in contrast to other peoples of other races and other religions on Earth, more prone to excessive altruism toward non-White out-groups? Why are guilt feelings practically nonexistent among non-White peoples?
One answer to these questions may be found in Christian teachings that have made up an important pillar of Western civilization over the centuries. Over the last one hundred years, modern Liberal and Communist elites have aggressively promoted those same feeling of White guilt, albeit in their own atheistic, secular and ‘multicultural’ modalities. One must rightfully reject the Liberal or Antifa palaver about White guilt, yet the fact remains that the Vatican, the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, the German Bishops’ conference, along with all other Christian denominations in Europe and the US today are the loudest sponsors of non-White immigration to Europe and America, as well as the strongest advocates of White guit. The Church’s ecumenical preaching about a global city under one god with all of humanity is fully in accordance with the early Christian dogma on man’s fall and his eventual redemption.
It must be pointed out that early Christian apostles, evangelists and theologians who foisted the dogma of man’s guilt were all by birth and without any exception non-Europeans (St. Augustine, Tertullian, St. Paul, Cyprian, etc.) from North Africa, Syria, Asia Minor and Judea.
Having this in mind, lambasting Islam or Judaism in the present as the sole carriers of aggressive non-European anti-White ideology, as many White nationalists do, while downplaying the Middle-Eastern birthplace of Christianity, cannot be a sign of neither moral nor intellectual consistency.
The Roman poet Juvenal, describes graphically in his satires the Rome of the late first century, a time when the city was swarming with multitudes of Syrian lowlifes, Chaldean star worshippers, Jewish conmen, and Ethiopian hustlers, all of them offering a quick ride to eternal salvation for some and eternal damnation for others.
Similar messianic, redemptive beliefs about the shining future, under the guidance of prominent early Bolshevik agitators, most of them of Jewish origin, have found their new location, two millennia later, among credulous intellectuals and equality-hungry masses. After the fall of Communism, the same messianic drive to punish the guilty ones who defy modern Liberal and multicultural scholasticism found its loudest mouthpiece among US neocons and antifa inquisitors.
This is not the place to rehash Friedrich Nietzsche’s own emotional ravings at Christians, nor quote dozens of thinkers and scholars who had earlier described the psychological link between early Jewish and Christian zealots of first-century Rome and communist commissars of the early twentieth century. Times have changed but the obsession as to how extirpate or reeducate those who doubt the myths of the System haven’t changed a bit.
The psychological profile of US modern-day Antifa zealots and their college professor supporters bears a close resemblance with early uprooted, largely miscegenated, effeminate Christian masses in the late Roman empire. The Jew St. Paul and later on the North African St. Augustine—judging by their own convulsive contrition—suggest that they suffered from bipolar disorder. Paul’s Epistle to the Romans (7:18) may be the key to grasping the modern version of neurotic White self-haters put on display by prominent news anchors and humanities professors today: ‘And I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. I want to do what is right, but I can’t. I want to do what is good, but I don’t. I don’t want to do what is wrong, but I do it anyway’.
Walter F. Otto, a renowned author on ancient Greek gods and one of the most quoted Hellenistic scholars, describes the differences between the ancient Greek vs. Christian notion of the sacred. He notes that ancient pagan Greeks laid emphasis on the feelings of shame, unaware of the meaning of feelings of guilt…
At some point Whites will need to realise that a successful healing of their feelings of guilt presupposes a critical reassessment of their Judeo-Christian-inspired origins. If Whites in Europe and the US were once upon a time all eager to embrace the Semitic notion of original sin, no wonder that two thousand years later they could likewise be well programmed to put up with a variety of World War II necrophiliac victimhoods, as well as tune in to fake news delivered by their politicians.
Eventually Whites will need to make a decision about where to choose the location of their identity. In Athens or in Jerusalem.
__________
Read it all: here.
Categories
Forthcoming new series
Today I received the complete series of Game of Thrones in German as part of the course that I have imposed myself on the language. But I can take advantage of the course by posting entries about every bad message I see in the notorious HBO series, about which I have already written several articles, especially criticising feminism.
But before doing so I would like to say that the fans, mostly normies, didn’t see any bad message just as the common normie doesn’t see bad messages in other television series or movies.
My standard for judging the evil or goodness in the seventh art is simply the fourteen words. And from this angle even a movie that contains such beautiful moments as The Sound of Music, which I was talking about in my previous post, contains terrible messages.
The anti-Nazi message from The Sound of Music was the first bit of propaganda I received while going to the cinema, fifty-five years ago! Although it was a huge hit at the time, many of the younger generations haven’t seen the film that catapulted the career of the now-deceased Christopher Plummer. That’s why I prefer to focus on the latest hits.
True: unlike Greg Johnson (Trevor Lynch) I don’t have the stomach to watch today’s TV series or movies, although last November I made an exception for Netflix’s The Queen’s Gambit.
However, I chose Game of Thrones for my German course because I have used the finale’s message of the series for this blog, and even in one of my books. And the first thing that comes to my mind is that the normies didn’t grasp George R.R. Martin’s philosophy, as we shall see in a subsequent post.
Categories
Christopher Plummer
Yes: he tore down the Nazi flag in The Sound of Music. But the film’s Ländler represents the cinematic pinnacle of how we should dance with Aryan ladies.
I saw The Sound of Music in 1965, when it was released. I was a boy then and was impressed by the elegance of Plummer (1929-2021) when the bride caught up with him on the stairs on their wedding day.
Music reflects a people’s soul. Just compare how people used to dance in Hitler’s homeland with the fashionable music of Gomorrah today…
Categories
My father’s tale
I’ll be busy for a few days and won’t post articles until I finish a course. But I would like to leave these lines during my absence. The thing is, when reading Karlheinz Deschner’s chapter on Pope Gregory I came across this sentence:
Archbishop Maximus did public penance in July 599, prostrate after hours in a street and shouting: ‘I have sinned against God and blessed Gregory’.
The anecdote reminded me of a story that my father told me decades ago. A king had to humble himself for days at the doors of the pope’s residence because he feared for the salvation of his soul: begging the Vicar of Christ to forgive him (I think the pope’s name was Gregory). Finally the pope deigned to open the doors and forgive him. My father told me this with enthusiasm, in the sense that even the most powerful king had to humble himself before the headperson of the Roman Catholic Church. The lad I was didn’t like that story, but only much later did I begin to understand my father’s mind.
One of the milestones in understanding why he was so destructive to me was Silvano Arieti’s book that I have already talked about in Day of Wrath. In Father, the sixth book of my series of eleven I quote some passages from Arieti that astonished me and I’m going to explain them with my own examples. Think of the baby monkeys that are sold as pets, how they cling to the owner as if she were a mother (the instinct is hard-wired in the creature as it’s vital not to fall from the trees). The point is that some adults deal with childhood trauma like these young pets do with their owners: by desperately clinging to authoritarian figures.
Arieti mentions his patients who, to use my example, hung themselves like little apes onto substitute images of their parents: a church, a political party, and even their own spouse. In Father I analyse how, in repressing his childhood traumas, he clung to no less than three defensive mechanisms: religion, nationalism, and his wife. But we are talking about pathological levels of hanging onto the surrogate parent, like an ape who never grows. The example that comes to mind is a biographer of Mary Baker Eddy who recounted that one of her most faithful disciples declared that even if she had seen Mrs. Eddy commit a crime, she wouldn’t believe her own eyes!
That is the level of co-dependent subjugation my father wielded regarding his church, the nationalist myths of the country where he was raised, and his wife. So when in my adolescence my mother went crazy my father went crazy too: what in my books I’ve called the captive mind or folie à deux.
I am not going to explain here everything I said in my sixth book in Spanish. The English speaker can order a copy of my first book to get an idea (see Letter to mom Medusa on the sidebar). What I want to get to is that some insecure people tend to fall into a state of folie à deux not only with the wife, but with the church or political party to which they belong. Analogous cases of Eddy’s disciple are endemic, for example, when I try to argue with those who cannot conceive that Mesoamerican Indians ate their children despite the overwhelming evidence from the first ethnologist of the American continent.
Once the defence mechanism is established, for instance the nationalistic pride of some Mexicans, the subject is capable of the most irrational scepticism before the evidence for the simple fact that what he is doing is protecting a worldview, his ego or substitute parent. From this angle we can understand why even some Jew-wise racialists, as we saw in my post yesterday, don’t tolerate that one fails to honour the god of the Jews. That powerful archetype functions like a surrogate parent.
Arieti’s book is entitled Interpretation of Schizophrenia and, although it deals with psychiatric cases, as I read it I realised that it could apply equally to an enormous number of people who have never been diagnosed psychiatrically.
My father comes to mind. He was enthusiastic about the pious tale of the pope who made a king humble himself in Rome. Now many Americans, equally childish, desire a powerful father in the form of the State and are excited that the country of the First Amendment will soon repudiate that amendment. It doesn’t matter whether the defence mechanism is religious or political: the psychological need is the same. Just as Eddy’s disciple wouldn’t believe her eyes as Mrs. Eddy became a god-like figure, I have met people who deny the historicity of Lenin’s and Stalin’s crimes.
The drive that compels us—to quote the lyrics of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony—to believe in ‘a loving Father behind the starry vault’ means that Beethoven had a drunken father who, as a child, often beat him. We are mammals and, as the monkey of the anecdote, the unconscious need to have a surrogate father once our dad fails is infinite: a Christian attempt to heal childhood traumas. But it is deceptive magic because Yahweh is not our father, he’s our enemy.
Those who haven’t read my essay ‘God’, a page from one of my eleven books, could read it now.