Editor’s note: This is the first regular article after the June 8th accident: some excerpts from Richard Weikart’s chapter ‘Did Hitler derive his anti- Semitism from Christianity?’
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Hitler blamed the Jews for just about everything that he opposed: communism, capitalism, internationalism, liberalism, materialism, egalitarianism, pacifism, and, of course, Christianity. That sneaky rabbi Paul had formulated his version of Christianity, Hitler believed, on the “Jewish-Bolshevik” principles of human equality. When Hitler wrote Mein Kampf, he complained that the Christian churches were not sufficiently anti-Semitic. He asked, “In the Jewish question, for example, do not both denominations [Catholic and Protestant] today take a standpoint which corresponds neither to the requirements of the nation nor to the real needs of religion?” A few paragraphs later, he remarked that Protestantism was better than Catholicism in defending the national interests of Germany, but it was still deficient, because it “combats with the greatest hostility any attempt to rescue the nation from the embrace of its most mortal enemy, since its attitude toward the Jews just happens to be more or less dogmatically established.” For Hitler, Christianity was essentially Jewish and thus weakened the German effort to combat the Jewish threat. He certainly did not see his anti-Semitism as congruent with the teachings and policies of the Christian churches…
Anti-Jewish animus was sometimes tempered by the Christian ethic of loving one’s neighbor and even one’s enemies. Also, Christians often opposed the biological racism that flourished in intellectual circles in the late nineteenth century. Historian Leon Poliakov remarks, “Judeo-Christian tradition was both anti-racist and anti-nationalist.” If one reads the biological racist literature of early twentieth-century Germany, one frequently finds that racist ideologues criticized the Christian churches for their racial egalitarianism.
Christian anti-Semites differed from racial anti-Semites because Christians usually did not object to the Jews as a biological entity; rather, they opposed their religion. If Jews would give up their Jewish religion and be baptized into the Christian faith, they would be accepted as full-fledged members of German society, as they often were. But the secular, racial form of anti-Semitism that flowered around 1900—and which Hitler embraced— regarded conversion and assimilation as the absolute worst things that could happen, because then Jews would intermarry with Germans. Hitler believed this would pollute the German bloodline with inferior hereditary traits. Thus, the key difference between Christian anti-Semitism and racial anti- Semitism was that the former wanted to assimilate the Jews into German society while the latter believed it was necessary to eliminate them physically from Germany. Racial anti-Semites usually did not see the churches as allies in their campaign against the Jews.
NS propaganda: “Baptism did not make him a
non-Jew” from Ernst Hiemer, Der Giftpilz (1938).
One of the leading figures in developing the racist anti-Semitism that became prominent in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was Wilhelm Marr, who coined the term anti-Semitism. Marr warned in a popular book in 1879 that the Jews were conquering the Germans in a racial war. This battle of the Germans against the Jews “was from the beginning no religious [war], it was a struggle for existence, that was waged against the foreign domination of Jewry.” Marr, a harsh critic of Christianity, depicted his theory about the racial struggle against Jews as a secular, scientific standpoint. Because he believed the Jews were a race, not a religion, he advocated segregation and discrimination, not assimilation, as the cure for the “Jewish question”… Marr’s antireligious, racist version of anti-Semitism gained many adherents at the end of the nineteenth century, especially as biological racism exploded in popularity among secular-minded intellectuals…
In the period 1919 to 1923, one of the main topics in Hitler’s speeches was the Jewish threat. In August 1920, Hitler delivered a programmatic speech in Munich on “Why Are We Anti-Semites?” Hitler depicted the Aryans or Nordic people as a race that developed in the northern parts of Europe. Because of the harsh climate, the Aryan race developed a diligent character, viewing labor as a duty to the community. Also, the tough conditions of life weeded out the weak and sickly among them, giving them greater physical stamina and contributing to the development of an inner life. The Jews, on the other hand, never developed an appreciation for labor.
In sum, Hitler said, “We see that here two great differences lie in the race: Aryanness means a moral conception of labor and through it what we hear so often today: socialism, sense of community, common welfare before self-interest—Jewry means an egoistic conception of labor and thereby mammonism and materialism, the exact opposite of socialism!”
Hitler emphasized these moral and immoral traits of Aryans and Jews were biological and hereditary. In answering the question, “Why Are We Anti- Semites?,” Hitler made clear that he opposed the Jews’ supposedly hereditary immoral qualities, especially their laziness and greed. His anti- Semitism was not based on religious considerations. To be sure, he did mention a couple of passages from the Hebrew Bible, but these were used to illustrate Jewish greed and immorality, not because he opposed their religious beliefs or practices. Not only do we find zero Christian anti- Semitic themes in this speech, but Hitler specifically distanced himself from Christianity by accusing the Jews of spreading Christianity, a theme he would take up often later, but usually in private, not in public forums…
The secularized version of anti-Christian anti-Semitism that became prominent in late nineteenth and early twentieth-century Germany was grafted onto the earlier Christian version of anti-Semitism. Centuries-old caricatures of the Jews were reinterpreted as Jewish biological traits. Further, the Christian churches in Germany and Austria continued to peddle a good deal of anti-Jewish animosity in the early twentieth century, thus giving succor to the Nazi anti-Semitic juggernaut. Both Christian anti-Semitism and anti-Christian anti-Semitism—thus, both religion and secularization—were necessary conditions for the advent of the Nazi Holocaust. The anti-Semitic message that Hitler preached, however, was far more anti-Christian than Christian.
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Editor’s note: In this chapter I begin to glimpse the tragedy of the leading NS ideologues and their compromise with the Christian masses of Germans.
The fact is that, publicly, they could not speak out. And they themselves believed in an Aryan and fictitious Jesus because there was no research like Richard Carrier’s (see the video linked in the sticky post).
That’s why they focused so much on the JQ—the CQ was taboo in Nazi Germany, as it still is now in American white nationalism.
For example, it is common on the racial right to distort the driving force that moved the Yankees to war with southern racists, something that Robert Morgan has taken issue with a galaxy of conservative commenters on The Unz Review for some time now.
The following is his last exchange this month but, as I don’t yet know how to modify the theme code of this new incarnation of WDH (the software automatically italicises all indented quotes and turn the indented quotes brown), I won’t indent Morgan’s next quotes or those he argues with:
Robert Morgan: Jared Taylor is such a brazen liar I decided to make an annotated version of his remarks about Lincoln.
“Lincoln didn’t like slavery, but he didn’t like blacks, either.”
Yet Lincoln was more responsible than any other man for freeing them and turning them loose on white people. I ask you, is this the action of a man who hated blacks?
“Once they were free, he wanted them gone.”
Correction: he once or twice said he wanted them gone, but his actions prove he didn’t.
“In 1862, when you’d think he was busy fighting a war, he was worrying about how to get rid of black people.”
But not worrying very much, apparently. In his last public address before being assassinated, he called for them to be made citizens and given the vote. It should be easy to see from this facile turnabout that at heart, Lincoln was no racist, but a dyed-in-the-wool racial egalitarian.
“He appointed James Mitchell as United States Commissioner of Emigration [of negroes] to find a place, far away, where all blacks would go. Mitchell invited a delegation of blacks to the White House so Lincoln could ask them to clear out.”
And here we come to the nub of the matter. Any “plan” that relied on all the negroes volunteering to leave was not a plan at all, only a pipe dream.
“This was the first time blacks had set foot in the White House on official business and not as servants, slaves, or workmen.”
In other words, on terms of equality with whites. Another first from Jared Taylor’s hero, “Honest” Abe. I suppose it’s fitting, in a way, that a liar such as Taylor should admire Lincoln, one of the greatest and most successful liars to ever hold the American presidency. And that’s saying something!
“He told the blacks that it was only because their people were in this country that Yankees and Confederates were slaughtering each other.”
Let’s note that this is the exact opposite of what Taylor and other Civil War revisionists argue. They are quite fond of making the astonishingly stupid claim that the Civil War had NOTHING at all to do with slavery. Why, it was only an attempt to save the Union, doncha know! LOL.
“He told them he had picked out a nice place for them in Central America, and asked them to convince all other blacks to pack up and go there.”
Asked them! To convince all the other blacks to pack up and go there! LOL. Yes, very realistic! If Lincoln actually believed that had a snowball’s chance in hell of happening then he must have been even stupider than the average “white nationalist” who buys into the lie that Lincoln didn’t like negroes.
“But, somehow, it’s today’s Democrats—not Lincoln in 1862—who are ‘the real racists’.”
Jared Taylor’s comical attempt to portray the Great Emancipator as “the real racist” is an epic fail.
Sollipsist: “No matter how big you make the word NOTHING, it still fails to accurately represent the factual and historical arguments that correctly identify slavery as a catalyst rather than a first cause.”
Robert Morgan: Lincoln says it’s the ONLY cause. Again, as Taylor puts it: “He told the blacks that it was only because their people were in this country that Yankees and Confederates were slaughtering each other. ”
How’s that for “factual and historical”? So who’s lying here? JT? Lincoln? Both?
Sollipsist: “It would be progress just to get most people to the point at which they’d realize (or maybe even grudgingly admit) that economics, manufacturing concerns, and centralized political control had ANYTHING to do with sending 600,000+ people to their death.”
Robert Morgan: In The Battle Hymn of the Republic, the Union soldiers sang the line Let us die to make men free! N.b., they didn’t claim to be willing to die for manufacturing concerns, for economics, for tariffs, for centralized political control, or even to save the Union. Their cause was freeing the slaves. Without this moral cause, it’s hard to see how they would have justified the war, either to themselves or anyone else.