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Architecture Art Catholic Church Italy Martin Luther Paris Table talks (commercial translation)

Uncle Adolf’s table talk, 5

the-real-hitler

 

Night of 21st-22nd July 1941

Similarities between Germany and Italy—Dante and Luther—Delightful Italian towns—Rome and Paris.

Luther had the merit of rising against the Pope and the organisation of the Church. It was the first of the great revolutions.

And thanks to his translation of the Bible, Luther replaced our dialects by the great German language! It’s remarkable to observe the resemblances between the evolution of Germany and that of Italy. The creators of the language, Dante and Luther, rose against the oecumenical desires of the papacy. Each of the two nations was led to unity, against the dynastic interests, by one man. They achieved their unity against the will of the Pope.

The Italian people’s musical sense, its liking for harmonious proportions, the beauty of its race! The Renaissance was the dawn of a new era, in which Aryan man found himself anew. There’s also our own past on Italian soil. A man who is indifferent to history is a man without hearing, without sight.

Such a man can live, of course—but what a life? The magic of Florence and Rome, of Ravenna, Siena, Perugia! Tuscany and Umbria, how lovely they are! The smallest palazzo in Florence or Rome is worth more than all Windsor Castle. If the English destroy anything in Florence or Rome, it will be a crime.

Giuseppe Zocchi - The Piazza della Signoria in Florence

I’ve seen Rome and Paris, and I must say that Paris, with the exception of the Arc de Triomphe, has nothing on the scale of the Coliseum, or the Castle of San Angelo, or St. Peter’s. These monuments, which are the product of a collective effort, have ceased to be on the scale of the individual. There’s something queer about the Paris buildings, whether it’s those bull’s-eye windows, so badly proportioned, or those gables that obliterate whole façades. If I compare the Pantheon in Rome with the Pantheon in Paris, what a poor building—and what sculptures! What I saw in Paris has disappeared from my memory: Rome really seized hold of me.

Naples, apart from the castle, might be anywhere in South America. But there’s always the courtyard of the royal palace. What nobility of proportions!

My dearest wish would be to be able to wander about in Italy as an unknown painter.

Categories
Alexandr Solzhenitsyn Arthur Schopenhauer Egalitarianism Free speech / Free press Galileo Galilee Individualism Kali Yuga Liberalism Martin Luther Newspeak Real men

Truth, heresy, and heroes

by Christian Miller



White identity politics is a form of heresy, and heresy has grave consequences. Advocating White nationalism or merely defending White interests often results in a loss of social standing. Moral cowards, amoral sycophants, and racial traitors are rewarded while heroes and righteous guardians are demonized. Pretending that Whites are social constructs or have no legitimate interests to defend is accepted, even celebrated, in a society infested with anti-White multiculturalism. White racialists realize that the cornucopia of cultures is designed to exclude any White culture, and the future rainbow of races is actually a muddled mess of miscegenation. It is therefore a tremendous challenge to remain in steadfast support of the White extended genotype. The anti-White opposition is well-funded, well-organized, malicious, and persistent.

White advocacy is beset on all sides. Campaigning against White genocide attracts derision and scorn from anti-Whites. Lamenting the decline of the White population into minority status is attacked as intolerance. Merely calling attention to, let alone denouncing, the maliciously disproportionate amounts of violent interracial crime committed against White people is paradoxically described as hate. Protecting the continuity of family lineage by expecting exclusively White marriages and White procreation is seen as backwards, provincial, or outdated. Suggesting that many trends or ideas that harm White interests have been disproportionately created, organized, disseminated, or financed by Jewish interests can lead to accusations of insanity or mental instability.

This derision, scorn, and accusations of intolerance, hate, and insanity are reactions that require White nationalists to have a thick skin in order to maintain their viewpoints. It is hard to be a heretic. But the requisite resilience to carry forward is about more than insensitivity to insults or threats. It is inspired by the love of truth. White racialists know that race is real and that it has important consequences for civilization and ethnic genetic interests. White nationalists realize they are being systematically dispossessed and ethnically cleansed from their homelands. Defenders of White identity understand that there is nothing hateful or unhealthy about wanting to continue their heritage by having White babies in White societies.

The steely resolution that guides a White nationalist is a personality trait or perhaps a spiritual constitution that values eternal truth more than ephemeral social standing. A patriotic White man understands that truth can be directly opposed to popular opinion, and that such a situation is not without historical precedent. An exemplary White man is willing to act in accordance with that wisdom. A heroic White man can marshal these convictions into effective action and change the dynamics of society. The White race is in desperate need of more heroes.

White people are known to be more individualistic than other races. In a White-dominant society, free from ethnic or racial competition from non-White groups, this individualism helped propel White people beyond the established limits of science, technology, philosophy, and religion. The individualist refusal to conform to the “popular consensus”—which always opposes scientific breakthroughs or heretical ideas—is precisely why so many White historical figures persist within the collective memory as titans of Western civilization. Nobody remembers a conformist, but everybody remembers a successful catalyst of righteous revolution. The reward for success in such a struggle is immortal fame. How could it be any other way?

Why would anyone remember Galileo Galilee if he were not individualistic and self-assured enough to confront the ruling dogma of a geocentric universe? Whose bookshelf would carry the works of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn if he decided to bow his head to Soviet oppression because speaking out was not worth going to the gulag? Who could call themselves Protestant if Martin Luther lacked the courage and conviction to stand before the Catholic Church and criticize it without fear? All of these White men had radical ideas that stood directly against the ruling orthodoxies of their societies. These men would be scattered to the winds of time had they not found everlasting fame by tenaciously promoting important ideas despite intense societal opposition. These were all rebels with a cause, and that cause was truth. Truth is heresy before it is accepted as truth, so all of these men were once called heretics.

White nationalists face similar pressures because being pro-White is heresy in modern America. Professors will express hostility to ideas about White interests, and this may translate to lowered grades or a denial of tenure in the academic world. Employers often terminate workers who openly defend the civil rights of Whites in their private lives. Former friends may cut ties when they sense the imminent risks to social standing that follow from associating with a racially-conscious White person. Sometimes even immediate family members will choose material security and peer-group acceptance rather than support a relative who is protecting the entire extended family. Heresy has social consequences, as Galileo, Solzhenitsyn, and Luther knew all too well.

Galileo_before_the_Holy_Office
 
“Racist!” is the modern equivalent of “heretic!” Words like “intolerance” and “hate” are used as shibboleths to shout down dissension and preclude debate. The words have changed, but the methods of social ostracism remain the same. Cry “heretic!” or its equivalent, and let the crowd take care of the rest.

History is replete with examples of entrenched orthodoxy stultifying new ways of thinking in an oppressive manner. In more primitive times, the mystical shamans or oracles consulted with the gods in order to divine wisdom for tribal consumption. To deny the oracle’s wisdom, or to suggest the shaman was merely influenced by psychotropic drugs, was grounds for ostracism from the tribe. Only a heretic would oppose the dominant spiritual class because it was social suicide.

Skip forward thousands of years. Oracles and shamans became priests. The mystical priests consulted with God and the Bible in order to divine wisdom for public consumption. To deny the priests’ monopoly on the word of God, or to suggest they were power-hungry sycophants, was grounds for excommunication from the Church and society—a lesson Martin Luther learned the hard way. The charge of heresy was used to preclude reasonable debate, just as racism or anti-Semite is used today.

The modern ruling orthodoxy follows political correctness—the anti-White bastard child of Cultural Marxism. Nietzsche declared the death of God, but nature abhors a vacuum. In His place, the elite cabals in academia, finance, media, and politics erected a new totem pole to worship and venerate. Whether it is called liberalism, egalitarianism, Cultural Marxism, multiculturalism, or diversity, the dynamics of enforcing this untenable, genocidal, and anti-White worldview remain the same: ridicule, isolation, defamation, prosecution, ostracism, or humiliation— but never open debate. Heresy is not to be debated.

While most of humanity has evolved beyond burning heretics at the stake or performing ritual human sacrifice, the same procedural thought control remains, consistently corrupting and subverting impressionable White minds. Anyone who denies the existence of ritual sacrifice is not looking closely enough. If an influential figure violates the dogma of multiculturalism, the gatekeepers will quickly close ranks. Instead of ominous tribal drumbeats, the background music will be cries of “racist!” or “hater!” or “anti-Semite!” as the eager executioners prepare the sacrificial altar. Instead of carving out the heretic’s heart, the mainstream media and its supporters will try to ruin the heretic’s reputation as he is defamed as an intolerant, hateful, and bigoted person.

Public persecution of heretics persists in the modern age. Remember that the public sacrifice is also a warning. It is a powerful message to the rest of the group: heresy has serious consequences.

Unfortunately, the heretical path of White nationalism, White identity, and White interests is a narrow one. The trailblazers of the movement must deal with the prickly thorns, rough terrain, and back-breaking labor needed to clear the brush so others may be enticed to follow. At this stage, it is inevitable that some people will sever social connections with a pro-White person once the nationalist motivations are made clear. It seems strange that these same people would gladly continue the friendship, or express glowing admiration, if the cause at issue concerned the rights of any other racial group except for White people. This promiscuous out-group altruism is at the height of absurdity when an ostensibly White person rejects the company of another White person who advances both of their shared interests. But this is the reality of anti-White multiculturalism. The perverted ideas that have poisoned American discourse are designed to marginalize, ostracize, and demonize any remaining White person who dares to stand against the rolling tide of White dispossession.

What keeps a White nationalist from throwing in the towel? Why trudge on, when the road ahead is uphill and laden with obstacles at every turn? Beyond an undying love for one’s people, it is the same determination that drove Henry Ford to publicize Jewish subversion in the Dearborn Independent despite the imminent threat it posed to his financial interests. It is the same zeal for truth and liberty that compelled Thomas Jefferson to pen the Declaration of Independence.

The same love for truth burns in the heart of every White nationalist, and no amount of social pressure, slander, or temporary isolation is enough to extinguish the flame. The fuel source is the righteous indignation that arises when one man recognizes a cosmic injustice and is willing to fight through Hell to rectify it. The temptation of capitulation is great, the course of retreat is enticing, and the punishment for having the gall to continue is severe, but the footprints of so many great men of the past are enough to inspire forward progress. Spiritual man values virtue infinitely more so than material comfort or fleeting adoration from those not worthy to provide it. Patrick Henry confirmed his status as a spiritual man when he thundered his revolutionary call-to-arms to the Virginia House of Burgesses: “give me Liberty or give me Death!”

The movement for White identity and White interests needs more spiritual men. This is not intended to be a criticism of capitalism, profits, or material success. White nationalism needs donors, financiers, talented businessmen, and creative capitalists. But it is an inescapable conclusion that defending White people is not a get-rich-quick scheme, and it is not guaranteed to win more friends than enemies in the short term. Arthur Schopenhauer said “All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Finally, it is accepted as being self-evident.” White identity politics is somewhere between ridicule and violent opposition. The goal is to move towards Schopenhauer’s third stage. It will not be easy.

White nationalism is not for the weak, the timid, the gullible, or the emotionally dependent—instead, these attributes describe the demoralized and deracinated White person. The strong have always helped the weak; right now, the White race is in a position of weakness. Those who have not fallen under the spell of White guilt must reawaken their White brothers and sisters. Those who have looked beyond the horizon and gazed upon the possibility of White extinction must warn the unenlightened about the reality of White genocide. Those who value truth and who retain a healthy sense of White pride and White identity must shoulder the burden for the rest of the group who have been robbed of their heritage.

Leadership, integrity, persuasive ability, organizational skills, and inspirational ideas are sorely needed in the White nationalist movement. The genetic capacity to express these skills and traits has not been lost—yet. The potential remains within the White genotype, whether expressed or dormant, waiting to be expressed in the next familial iteration. Preserve that potential as an irreplaceable treasure. Remember that the spirit of conquest, scientific discovery, opposition to tyranny, bravery in the face of adversity, and most importantly, unshakeable determination in the pursuit of truth are all fundamental aspects of White genetic and historical heritage. The same individualism that has been cruelly exploited to disenfranchise Whites in the midst of hostile minorities can be redirected to fight against the injustice of White dispossession.

The inherently White characteristic of Western individualism can be rescued from its current subversion and redirected towards the improvement of White society. There was a time, not so long ago, when protecting the White race, the White nation, the White village, or the White family was a heroic and virtuous act to be celebrated, rather than a reason to be called a “racist.” This spirit of brotherhood, kin, and race has not been completely extinguished from the White population.

The task ahead is to awaken the yearning for truth, focused determination, sense of justice, ethnic identity, and iron will that resides within the White race. Part of the struggle is to destroy taboos and transform heresy to accepted truth. When that day comes, the titans will stand up, yawn, and throw off the shackles of anti-White multiculturalism with an effortless shrug of the shoulders. Charges of heresy will be ignored and fade away. Unencumbered and emancipated, the White race will continue its eternal march throughout history, breaking philosophical barriers, reaching higher plateaus of health and virility, discovering profound scientific truths, inventing exciting new technologies, and achieving greater zeniths of civilization. Who will lead the charge?

Categories
Catholic Church Martin Luther Table talks (commercial translation) Third Reich

Uncle Adolf’s table talk, 111

the-real-hitler 
7th April 1942, at dinner

If the slightest attempt at a riot were to break out at this moment anywhere in the whole Reich, I’d take immediate measures against it. Here’s what I’d do: (a) on the same day, all the leaders of the opposition, including the leaders of the Catholic party, would be arrested and executed; (b) all the occupants of the concentration camps would be shot within three days; (c) all the criminals on our lists—and it would make little difference whether they were in prison or at liberty—would be shot within the same period.

The extermination of these few hundreds or thousands of men would make other measures superfluous, for the riot would be aborted for lack of ringleaders and accomplices. As for the justification of these summary executions, I’ve only to think of the German idealists who are risking their lives in front of the enemy or showing their devotion in a war factory, whatever their job may be, and employing all their efforts for the victory of the fatherland.

It’s a real scandal that we must give the German Churches such extraordinarily high subsidies. It isn’t like that anywhere else, even in the most fundamentally Catholic countries, with the exception of Spain. Unless I’m mistaken, our Churches are still at present receiving nine hundred million marks a year. Now, the priests’ chief activity consists in undermining National Socialist policy. The habit of exploiting the State goes back a long way. In periods of national tension, the Catholic Church always tried to occupy positions of temporal power, and always at the expense of the German community.

The difficulties of our emperors never provided the priests with a chance to prove their German feelings. On the contrary, it’s a tradition amongst them to profit by every circumstance to indulge in their egoistic activities. Thus one can never regret too much that such a powerful personality as Luther found only feeble successors.

Otherwise it would never have been possible, in Germany, to restore the Catholic Church on a sufficiently solid foundation to enable it to last until the present.

Categories
Ethnic cleansing Judaism Karlheinz Deschner Kriminalgeschichte des Christentums (books) Martin Luther

Kriminalgeschichte, 3

Below, translated excerpts from the first chapter of Karlheinz
Deschner’s Kriminalgeschichte des Christentums

(“Criminal History of Christianity”):

 
The ravages of David and the modern translators of the Bible

Samuel, the last judge and first prophet of Israel, fought against the Philistines and defeated them but then, feeling old, anointed Saul as army commander and ordered him in God’s name:

“Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy all that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys.”

The Catholic encyclopedia of many volumes, Lexikon für Theologie und Kirche annotates that the prophet in question was a character “without blemish” and goes even further in praise of his successor: “A great effort in defending the theocracy, the law and the right, was the major garment of character in Saul.” And this king, the first of Israel (1020-1000 BCE) anointed by Samuel, figures typically as a “charismatic” who acted through “the spirit of the Lord” and yet, “was obviously a psychotic depressive, tormented by persecution” (Beck) who energetically continued the tradition of “holy wars.” As the Bible tells, Saul fought “many enemies around him”: Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites, the kings of the Philistines and Amalekites. Of course, when according to superior orders they killed all the Amalekites including the infants, but kept the best cattle, he incurred in the wrath of both the Lord and the prophet Samuel, after which he suffered a tremendous defeat at the hands of the Philistines and committed suicide (by the way, this is the first act of this kind mentioned in the Bible).

His successor, David, name that means the chosen one (of God), who bought as wife Saul’s daughter, Michal, for the price of a hundred Philistine foreskins, towards the end of the millennium heralded the beginning of the national state, thus achieved the maximum period of splendor for Israel, which possessions came then from the middle Syria to the borders of Egypt and was the strongest nation among the great empires of Mesopotamia, Hamath and Egypt.

As had happened with Saul, David (1000-961 BCE) was also possessed by “the spirit of the Lord” and made a campaign after another, as many were “oppressors” from the north. And so David said in his hymn of thanksgiving: “I will pursue my enemies, exterminate them; will not turn my back until they are wiped out. I will consume and shatter them all, so they can no longer recover.” “But he never started a war”—St. Ambrose hastens to add, doctor of the Church—without first asking advice of the Lord.

David is admired not only in Jewish theology, but also in Christianity and Islam as a person of outstanding religious significance. “Whenever he went on campaign, David did not leave a man or woman alive… so did David when he dwelt in the land of Philistines.” Other customs of the Lord’s chosen included to cut off the horses’ tendons of the enemy; once he also cut the hands and feet of the enemies themselves. Another hobby of “the divine David, great and softest prophet” (according to bishop Theodoret, a Church historian) was to grind prisoners with saws and iron tongs and burn them in brick kilns, as he did to the people of all cities of the Ammonites.

It is relevant to remember that, in 1956, the Council of the German Evangelical Church and the Union of Evangelical Bible Society agreed in the publication of a Bible “according to the version of Martin Luther in German,” an authorized edition in 1964 and published in 1971, which reproduces as follows the passage just quoted thus: “to the people he brought them out, and put them into slave labor with saws and axes of iron, and brick kilns.”

However, Martin Luther had translated it thus:

“To the people he took away and commanded them to be sawn, passing iron drays, and butcher them with knives, and toss them in the brick kilns.”

This passage corresponds to one of the 1st Book of Chronicles (20,3), where the above Bible authorized by the Council of the German Evangelical Church, “according to the version of Martin Luther,” says, “whose inhabitants he took away, and put them down in labor servitude in the trails, saws and harrows.” But the words Luther chose were:

“Whose inhabitants he took out, and made that drag harrows and chariots armed with cutting scythes ran over them, so that they were made pieces and shattered.”

The approved Bible is a fabrication, and responds to a certain method.

In the course of the last hundred years, the Evangelical Church has proposed no less than three reviews of the Lutheran Bible. Luther did not suspect that his spiritual heirs would amend his words so flatly, so widely—he, whose motto as a translator was that “words must serve the cause, not the cause serve the words.”

When the Evangelical Church announces a Bible “according to the version of Martin Luther in German language,” it actually is selling a gross forgery. Anyway, if the ancients, being idolaters, had been made slaves surely they would not have run a more enviable fate, even the noncombatants as reported by the archaeologist Glueck, who excavated the ruins of Eilat. His report on the slaves who worked in brick kilns was that “the rate of mortality must have been terrific.”

In the Bible, a man named Shimei curses David calling him a “bloodthirsty” and throws stones upon him. Erich Brock and a few others have opined that the words were uttered “for good reason.” Even the Lord himself confirms it: “You have shed much blood, and done many wars.” But yes, it is always “with the Lord,” always moved “by the will of the Lord”; hence, no doubt, “pleased, the Lord watched David” for example after passing on the knife “twenty-two thousand Syrians” or after a massacre of “ eighteen thousand” Edomites. “Do whatever inspires your heart, for God is with you,” he says in another place.

But if God praised the “bloodthirsty” David for keeping his commandments and walk always in the shadow of the Lord, doing only what would please him, and if David praised himself, he is also praised forever, tireless, by the Christian clergy: a clergy that, as I will try to argue, in all ages has been in favor of the great criminals of history if they are useful to the Church. The same bloodthirsty king was the first to encourage the clergy as he could, and so he has set an example for millennia: for being faithful to the Lord, for making war in the name of the Lord, for sanctifying the loot destined to the construction of the Temple. (He who tried to hide the contribution was exposed to the extermination of his entire family, livestock included.)

Categories
Free speech / Free press Jesus Martin Luther New Testament Old Testament Porphyry of Tyre Theology

Hermann Samuel Reimarus

The following is excerpted from a classic in New Testament studies, Albert Schweitzer’s The Quest of the Historical Jesus, published in 1906: a scholarly yet readable introduction to the field of NT studies from a modern viewpoint. Schweitzer’s second chapter is titled “Hermann Samuel Reimarus”:

Hermann_Samuel_Reimarus

“Von dem Zwecke Jesu und seiner Junger.” Noch ein Fragment des Wolfenbuttelschen Ungenannten. Herausgegeben von Gotthold Ephraim Lessing. Braun- schweig, 1778, 276 pp. (The Aims of Jesus and His Disciples: A further Instalment of the anonymous Woltenbiittel Fragments. Published by Gotthold Ephraim Lessing. Brunswick, 1778.)


Before Reimarus, no one had attempted to form a historical conception of the life of Jesus. Luther had not so much as felt that he cared to gain a clear idea of the order of the recorded events. Speaking of the chronology of the cleansing of the Temple, which in John falls at the beginning, in the Synoptists near the close, of Jesus’ public life, he remarks: “The Gospels follow no order in recording the acts and miracles of Jesus, and the matter is not, after all, of much importance. If a difficulty arises in regard to the Holy Scripture and we cannot solve it, we must just let it alone.”

When the Lutheran theologians began to consider the question of harmonising the events, things were still worse. Osiander (1498-1552), in his “Harmony of the Gospels,” maintained the principle that if an event is recorded more than once in the Gospels, in different connexions, it happened more than once and in different connexions. The daughter of Jairus was therefore raised from the dead several times; on one occasion Jesus allowed the devils whom He cast out of a single demoniac to enter into a herd of swine, on another occasion, those whom He cast out of two demoniacs; there were two cleansings of the Temple, and so forth. The correct view of the Synoptic Gospels as being interdependent was first formulated by Griesbach.

Thus there had been nothing to prepare the world for a work of such power as that of Reimarus. It is true, there had appeared earlier, in 1768, a Life of Jesus by Johann Jakob Hess (1741-1828), written from the standpoint of the older rationalism, but it retains so much supernaturalism and follows so much the lines of a paraphrase of the Gospels, that there was nothing to indicate to the world what a master-stroke the spirit of the time was preparing.

Not much is known about Reimarus. For his contemporaries he had no existence, and it was [David Friedrich] Strauss who first made his name known in literature. He was born in Hamburg on the 22nd of December, 1694, and spent his life there as a professor of Oriental Languages. He died in 1768. Several of his writings appeared during his lifetime, all of them asserting the claims of rational religion as against the faith of the Church; one of them, for example, being an essay on “The Leading Truths of Natural Religion.” His magnum opus, however, which laid the historic basis of his attacks, was only circulated, during his lifetime, among his acquaintances, as an anonymous manuscript.

In 1774 Lessing began to publish the most important portions of it, and up to 1778 had published seven fragments, thereby involving himself in a quarrel with Goetze, the Chief Pastor of Hamburg. The manuscript of the whole, which runs to 4000 pages, is preserved in the Hamburg municipal library.

The following are the titles of Fragments which he published:

• The Passing of the Israelites through the Red Sea
• Showing that the books of the Old Testament were
not written to reveal a Religion
• Concerning the story of the Resurrection
• The Aims of Jesus and His Disciples

The monograph on the passing of the Israelites through the Red Sea is one of the ablest, wittiest, and most acute which has ever been written. It exposes all the impossibilities of the narrative in the Priestly Codex.

To say that the fragment on “The Aims of Jesus and His Disciples” is a magnificent piece of work is barely to do it justice. This essay is not only one of the greatest events in the history of criticism, it is also a masterpiece of general literature. The language is as a rule crisp and terse, pointed and epigrammatic—the language of a man who is not “engaged in literary composition” but is wholly concerned with the facts. At times, however, it rises to heights of passionate feeling, and then it is as though the fires of a volcano were painting lurid pictures upon dark clouds. Seldom has there been a hate so eloquent, so lofty a scorn; but then it is seldom that a work has been written in the just consciousness of so absolute a superiority to contemporary opinion. And withal, there is dignity and serious purpose; Reimarus’ work is no pamphlet. This was the first time that a really historical mind, thoroughly conversant with the sources, had undertaken the criticism of the tradition.

[Editor’s note: Because the Christians destroyed all copies of Porphyry’s book, we don’t really know if Porphyry’s anti-Christian polemic was also “thoroughly conversant with the New Testament sources.” From a few fragments discovered by the end of the 20th century I believe it was. One could barely imagine the revolution in thought that could have occurred since the later phases of the Roman Empire and the Early Middle Ages had Porphyry’s biblical criticism been allowed to survive 1,300 years before Reimarus…]

It was Lessing’s greatness that he grasped the significance of this criticism, and felt that it must lead either to the destruction or to the recasting of the idea of revelation. He recognised that the introduction of the historical element would transform and deepen rationalism. Convinced that the fateful moment had arrived, he disregarded the scruples of Reimarus’ family and the objections of Nicolai and Mendelssohn, and, though inwardly trembling for that which he himself held sacred, he flung the torch with his own hand.

Reimarus takes as his starting-point the question regarding the content of the preaching of Jesus. “We are justified,” he says, “in drawing an absolute distinction between the teaching of the Apostles in their writings and what Jesus Himself in His own lifetime proclaimed and taught.” What belongs to the preaching of Jesus is clearly to be recognised. It is contained in two phrases of identical meaning, “Repent, and believe the Gospel,” or, as it is put elsewhere, “Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.”

Jesus shared the Jewish racial exclusiveness wholly and unreservedly. According to Matt. x. 5 He forbade His disciples to declare to the Gentiles the coming of the Kingdom of God. Evidently, therefore, His purpose did not embrace them. Had it been otherwise, the hesitation of Peter in Acts x. and xi., and the necessity of justifying the conversion of Cornelius, would be incomprehensible.

Baptism and the Lord’s Supper are no evidence that Jesus intended to found a new religion. In the first place the genuineness of the command to baptize in Matt. xxviii. 19 is questionable, not only as a saying ascribed to the risen Jesus, but also because it is universalistic in outlook, and because it implies the doctrine of the Trinity.

The “Lord’s Supper,” again, was no new institution, but merely an episode at the last Paschal Meal of the Kingdom which was passing away, and was intended “as an anticipatory celebration of the Passover of the New Kingdom.” A Lord’s Supper in our sense, “cut loose from the Passover,” would have been inconceivable to Jesus, and not less so to His disciples. Miracles have no basis in fact, but owe their place in the narrative to the feeling that the miracle-stories of the Old Testament must be repeated in the case of Jesus, but on a grander scale. It is useless to appeal to the miracles, any more than to the “Sacraments,” as evidence for the founding of a new religion…

For popular uprising, however, He waited in vain. Twice He believed that it was near at hand. The first time was when He was sending out the disciples and said to them: “Ye shall not have gone over the cities of Israel before the Son of Man comes” (Matt. x. 23). He thought that, at the preaching of the disciples, the people would flock to Him from every quarter and immediately proclaim Him Messiah; but His expectation was disappointed. The people in Jerusalem refused to rise, as the Galilaeans had refused at the time when the disciples were sent out to rouse them.

All this implies that the time of the fulfilment of these hopes was not thought of by Jesus and His disciples as at all remote. In Matt. xvi. 28, for example, He says: “Truly I say unto you there are some standing here who shall not taste of death, till they see the Son of man coming in his kingdom.” There is no justification for twisting this about or explaining it away. It simply means that Jesus promises the fulfilment of all Messianic hopes before the end of the existing generation.

Thus the disciples were prepared for anything rather than that which actually happened. Jesus had never said a word to them about His dying and rising again, otherwise they would not have so played the coward at His death, nor have been so astonished at His “resurrection.” The three or four sayings referring to these events must therefore have been put into His mouth later, in order to make it appear that He had foreseen these events in His original plan.

Inasmuch as the non-fulfilment of its eschatology is not admitted, our Christianity rests upon a fraud.

Such is Reimarus’ reconstruction of the history. We can well understand that his work must have given offence when it appeared, for it is a polemic, not an objective historical study. But we have no right simply to dismiss it in a word, as a Deistic production, as Otto Schmiedel, for example, does; it is time that Reimarus came to his own, and that we should recognise a historical performance of no mean order in this piece of Deistic polemics. His work is perhaps the most splendid achievement in the whole course of the historical investigation of the life of Jesus, for he was the first to grasp the fact that the world of thought in which Jesus moved was essentially eschatological.

In the light of the clear perception of the elements of the problem which Reimarus had attained, the whole movement of theology, down to Johannes Weiss, appears retrograde. In all its work the thesis is ignored or obscured that Jesus, as a historical personality, is to be regarded, not as the founder of a new religion, but as the final product of the eschatological and apocalyptic thought of Late Judaism. Every sentence of Johannes Weiss’s Die Predigt Jesu vom Reiche Gottes (1892) is a vindication, a rehabilitation, of Reimarus as a historical thinker.

Even so the traveller on the plain sees from afar the distant range of mountains. Then he loses sight of them again. His way winds slowly upwards through the valleys, drawing ever nearer to the peaks, until at last, at a turn of the path, they stand before him, not in the shapes which they had seemed to take from the distant plain, but in their actual forms. Reimarus was the first, after eighteen centuries of misconception, to have an inkling of what eschatology really was.

The sole mistake of Reimarus—the assumption that the eschatology was earthly and political in character. Thus theology shared at least the error of the man whom it knew only as a Deist, not as an historian, and whose true greatness was not recognised even by Strauss, though he raised a literary monument to him.

The solution offered by Reimarus may be wrong; the data of observation from which he starts out are, beyond question, right, because the primary datum of all is genuinely historical. He recognised that two systems of Messianic expectation were present side by side in Late Judaism. But what matters the mistake in comparison with the fact that the problem was really grasped?

The attitude of Jesus towards the law, and the process by which the disciples came to take up a freer attitude, was grasped and explained by him so accurately that modern historical science does not need to add a word, but would be well pleased if at least half the theologians of the present day had got as far.

Further, he recognised that primitive Christianity was not something which grew, so to speak, out of the teaching of Jesus, but that it came into being as a new creation, in consequence of events and circumstances which added something to that preaching which it did not previously contain; and that Baptism and the Lord’s Supper, in the historical sense of these terms, were not instituted by Jesus, but created by the early Church on the basis of certain historical assumptions.

Still more remarkable is his eye for exegetical detail. He has an unfailing instinct for pregnant passages like Matt. x. 23, xvi. 28, which are crucial for the interpretation of large masses of the history. The fact is there are some who are historians by the grace of God, who from their mother’s womb have an instinctive feeling for the real. They follow through all the intricacy and confusion of reported fact the pathway of reality, like a stream which, despite the rocks that encumber its course and the windings of its valley, finds its way inevitably to the sea. No erudition can supply the place of this historical instinct, but erudition sometimes serves a useful purpose, inasmuch as it produces in its possessors the pleasing belief that they are historians, and thus secures their services for the cause of history.

In truth they are at best merely doing the preliminary spade-work of history, collecting for a future historian the dry bones of fact, from which, with the aid of his natural gift, he can recall the past to life. More often, however, the way in which erudition seeks to serve history is by suppressing historical discoveries as long as possible, and leading out into the field to oppose the one true view an army of possibilities. By arraying these in support of one another it finally imagines that it has created out of possibilities a living reality. This obstructive erudition is the special prerogative of theology, in which, even at the present day, a truly marvellous scholarship often serves only to blind the eyes to elementary truths.

Reimarus’ work was neglected, and the stimulus which it was capable of imparting failed to take effect. He had no predecessors; neither had he any disciples. His work is one of those supremely great works which pass and leave no trace, because they are before their time; to which later generations pay a just tribute of admiration, but owe no gratitude.

Thus the magnificent overture in which are announced all the motifs of the future historical treatment of the life of Jesus breaks off with a sudden discord, remains isolated and incomplete, and leads to nothing further.

Categories
Brigade (novel) Civil war Harold Covington Justice / revenge Martin Luther

The Brigade excerpts, chapter XXIX

by Harold Covington


“We Won!”


Covington in uniform
“Exactly,” agreed Zack with a nod. “Kind of hard to trade stocks in a hole in the ground. But if anything, the offensive we’re carrying out right in the belly of the Beast may bring on some kind of especially horrible retaliation here in the Homeland, although I’ve no idea what they can feasibly do that they’re not already doing here. But there’s no way ZOG is going to just throw in the towel and finally give us our freedom, Len. We’re going to have to physically drive them out, every last soldier and bureaucrat and Jew, and then drive stakes through their hearts before they’ll let us go. They can’t afford to give in. Once they concede that the actual territory of the United States is divisible by race, then everybody’s going to want a piece of the pie. The Mexicans are going to demand the Southwest for this Aztlan they’ve been hablamosing about foryears, the niggers will want the South for New Africa, the Cubans and Haitians will demand Florida, the bugger boys may ask for some kind of Faggotstan somewhere, the French might start getting stroppy up in Quebec again, who knows where it will end? Every other continent is composed of multiple small nations, so why not this one? If we go then the whole empire goes, eventually. The power structure doesn’t dare give in to us, or they’re done and their power is finished, and they know it.”

Lear asked. “Are you going to turn into some kind of medieval tyrant now, and decorate the streets with the heads of everybody who’s ever offended you in the past?”

“I am going to secure this area for the Republic, Ted, and I am going to make sure the Americans never come back,” Hatfield told him.

“You were an American yourself, once,” said Lear sardonically.

“I was,” replied Zack with a nod. “I’ve found I prefer being a white man instead. To answer your question, Ted, we’ve had a lot of law in the past few generations. Too damned much law, and not enough justice. Now there’s going to be justice, and some of it may be pretty rough, but I don’t think it’s going to be anywhere near as bad as people think.

Some of the Boys from Operation Applesmash and Operation Pigkill made a stop-offin Houston. Within the space of a week the CEO [Chief Executive Officer] of Exxon turned the ignition key on his Ferrari and was blown through the roof of his garage; the chief financial officer of Gulf Oil was found hanging in his pool house by his own necktie wearing only black net stockings and high heels and lipstick; and the huge, garish main tabernacle of an Evangelical television ministry that was one of Israel’s main financial and Scriptural supporters was leveled by a truck bomb full of gelignite.

“What is that?” whispered Christina in wonder. “I know that song.”

“You remember it from long ago in church, honey,” said her father, his hand on her shoulder. “It is A Mighty Fortress, a hymn written by Martin Luther.”

Ein Festem Burg Ist Unser Gött. They are singing in German,” said Sergeant Karl Vogler, Hatfield’s driver. Tears were streaming down his face.

“So they are,” said Hill somberly. “1945 is avenged, korpsbrüder.”



http://northwestfront.org/

Categories
Catholic Church Henry VIII Martin Luther Racial studies Who We Are (book) William Pierce

Saxon revenge

Excerpted from the 22nd article of William Pierce’s “Who We Are: a Series of Articles on the History of the White Race”:


With the close of the Viking Age in the latter half of the 11th century, we left the prehistoric period, with all its pagan vigor, behind us in the previous installment and entered an era described more or less fully by contemporary written accounts. Our aim here, in accord with the purpose of this entire series, is to select from the wealth of historical material covering the events of the last 900 years that which is especially pertinent to racial developments, rather than to political, religious, economic, artistic, scientific, or other cultural aspects of life—keeping always in mind, of course, that, in the final analysis, race and culture are inseparable.

We have already noted, however briefly, the racial developments in Iberia through the 15th century (installment 19) and in Eastern Europe through the 17th century (installment 20). Most of what follows will be concerned with the North and the West of Europe: more specifically, with the people of that region and their expansion over the globe.

The Black Death

For five centuries after the abandonment of the settlements in North America, Europe staggered along under the burden of a number of problems: battling Moors, Turks, and Mongols on its southern and eastern frontiers and often well inside those frontiers; yielding up the last of its spiritual and mental freedom and settling into a straitjacket of superstition and orthodoxy, as the Christian Church tightened its grip on all of Europe; succumbing to the Black Death by the tens of millions, as this dread scourge swept over the land in the 14th century and killed every fourth European. In addition to these problems imported into Europe from Asia, the Europeans were no slouches at generating problems of their own, and territorial and dynastic warfare continued to take their toll throughout the Middle Ages.

White Productivity

By the beginning of the 15th century, however, the indomitable spirit of the White race was clearly making gains on several fronts: material, intellectual, and spiritual. On the first of these, European energy and inventiveness had kept up a slow but steady increase in productivity, both in agriculture and in the crafts, so that, despite the ravages of war and plague, the accumulation of wealth in all social strata had resulted in an average standard of living vastly higher than in any Asian land.

Explosion in Knowledge

And it was only in Europe that this wit and will were manifested. Some of the earlier developments in the printing craft had come from Asia—ink and paper, for example—but the explosion in knowledge resulting from Gutenberg’s work was confined almost entirely to our own European ancestors. By the end of the 15th century 1,000 new titles per year were being produced by Europe’s book printers. By 1815 the number had climbed to 20,000 per year.

In contrast, Turkish Constantinople, Asia’s wealthiest city, did not even bother to acquire its first printing press until 1726. By 1815 the grand total of all the books published in Constantinople in the preceding 89 years was only 63 titles, and the going rate was in the neighborhood of one new title per year.

Saxon Revenge

Even on the spiritual front there was progress. The Church, grown soft, corrupt, and overconfident in the centuries since the Saxons and the Vikings had been forced to the baptismal font, was spoiling for an upset by the end of the 15th century. It had laid the basis for its own downfall, and early in the following century its monopoly in matters of the spirit was dealt two lethal blows, first by Martin Luther in Germany (1517), and, a little over a decade later, by King Henry VIII in England.

It is one of history’s sweetest ironies that Martin Luther was a Saxon and King Henry was the descendant of Norman Vikings.

Categories
Ancient Greece Arcadia Architecture Art Arthur C. Clarke Beauty Child abuse Christendom Civilisation (TV series) Counter-Reformation Degeneracy Demography Europe France Free speech / Free press Friedrich Nietzsche Harold Covington Homosexuality Industrial Revolution Islamization of Europe Italy Kali Yuga Kenneth Clark Mainstream media Martin Luther Michelangelo Montaigne New York Philosophy Philosophy of history Protestantism Raphael Real men Reformation Rembrandt Renaissance St Francis William Shakespeare

On Kenneth Clark’s “Civilisation”

Kenneth Clark may have been clueless about the fact that race matters. Yet, that our rot goes much deeper than what white nationalists realize is all too obvious once we leave, for a while, the ghetto of nationalism and take a look at the classics, just as Clark showed us through his 1969 TV series Civilisation.

Compared to the other famous series, Clark’s was unsurpassed in the sense that, as I have implied elsewhere, only genuine art—not science—has a chance to fulfill David Lane’s fourteen words.

By “art” I mean an evolved sense of beauty which is almost completely absent in today’s nationalists. Most of them are quite a product of Jewish modernity whether with their music, lifestyles or Hollywood tastes, to a much greater degree than what they think. For nationalism to succeed an evolved sense of female beauty has to be the starting point to see the divine nature of the white race. In Clark’s own words, “For all these reasons I think it is permissible to associate the cult of ideal love with the ravishing beauty and delicacy that one finds in the madonnas of the thirteenth century. Were there ever more delicate creatures than the ladies on Gothic ivories? How gross, compared to them, are the great beauties of other woman-worshiping epochs.”

Below, links to excerpts of most of the chapters of the 1969 series, where Clark followed the ups and downs of our civilisation historically:

“The Skin of our Teeth”

“The Great Thaw”

“Romance and Reality”

“Man—the Measure of all Things”

“The Hero as Artist”

“Protest and Communication”

“Grandeur and Obedience”

“The Light of Experience”

“Heroic Materialism”

Categories
Art Civilisation (TV series) Free speech / Free press Kenneth Clark Martin Luther Montaigne Painting Protestantism Reformation William Shakespeare

Civilisation’s “Protest and Communication”

For an introduction to these series, see here.

Below, some indented excerpts of “Protest and Communication,” the sixth chapter of Civilisation by Kenneth Clark, after which I offer my comments.

Ellipsis omitted between unquoted passages:

The dazzling summit of human achievement represented by Michelangelo, Raphael and Leonardo da Vinci lasted for less than twenty years. It was followed (except in Venice) by a time of uneasiness often ending in disaster. For the first time since the great thaw civilised values were questioned and defied, and for some years it looked as if the footholds won by the Renaissance—the discovery of the individual, the belief in human genius, the sense of harmony between man and his surroundings—had been lost. Yet this was an inevitable process, and out of the confusion and brutality of sixteenth-century Europe, man emerged with new faculties and expanded powers of thought and expression.

In this room in the castle of Würzburg are the carvings of Tilman Riemenschneider, one—perhaps the best—of many German carvers in the late Gothic style. The Church was rich in fifteenth-century Germany, and the landowners were rich, and the merchants of the Hanseatic League were rich; and so, from Bergen right down to Bavaria, sculptors were kept busy doing huge, elaborate shrines and altars and monuments like the famous group of St George in the old church at Stockholm: a supreme example of late Gothic craftsman deploying his fancy and his almost irritating skill of hand.

The Riemenschneider figures show very clearly the character of the northern man at the end of the fifteenth century.

First of all, a serious personal piety—a quality quite different from the bland conventional piety that one finds, say, in a Perugino. And then a serious approach to life itself. These men (although of course they were unswerving Catholics) were not to be fobbed off by forms and ceremonies. They believed that there was such a thing as truth, and they wanted to get at it. What they heard from Papal legates, who did a lot of travelling in Germany at this time, did not convince them that there was the same desire for truth in Rome, and they had a rough, raw-boned peasant tenacity of purpose. Many of these earnest men would have heard about the numerous councils that had tried throughout the fifteenth century to reform the organisation of the Church. These grave northern men wanted something more substantial.

So far so good. But these faces reveal a more dangerous characteristic, a vein of hysteria. The fifteenth century had been the century of revivalism—religious movements on the fringe of the Catholic Church. They had, in fact, begun in the late fourteenth century, when the followers of John Huss almost succeeded in wiping out the courtly civilisation of Bohemia. Even in Italy Savonarola had persuaded his hearers to make a bonfire of their so-called vanities, including pictures by Botticelli: a heavy price to pay for religious conviction.

The Germans were much more easily excited. Comparisons are sometimes an over-simplification; but I think it is fair to compare one of the most famous portraits, Dürer’s Oswald Krell, with Raphael’s portrait of a cardinal in the Prado [above]. The cardinal is not only a man of the highest culture but balanced and self-contained. Oswald Krell is on the verge of hysteria.

Those staring eyes, that look of self-conscious introspection, that uneasiness, marvellously conveyed by Dürer through the uneasiness of the planes in the modelling—how German it is.

Four pages later Clark devotes several pages to Erasmus of Rotterdam, whom Bronowski praised even more in The Ascent of Man. I have quoted Clark at length on the German character because I believe that Nietzsche was spot on in blaming Luther and Protestant hysteria for the restoration of Christianity when Christendom was falling apart in the times of the Renaissance popes. But in the next entry I will try to convey some of my antichristian thinking by taking the Catholic Erasmus to task. Meanwhile let’s continue with Clark’s views:

In 1506 Erasmus went to Italy. He was in Bologna at the exact time of Julius II’s famous quarrel with Michelangelo; he was in Rome when Raphael began work on the Papal apartments. But none of this seems to have made any impression on him. His chief interest was in the publication of his works by the famous Venetian printer and pioneer of finely printed popular editions, Aldus Manutius. Whereas in the last chapter I was concerned with the enlargement of man’s spirit through the visual image, in this one I am chiefly concerned with the extension of his mind through the word. And this was made possible by the invention of printing.

Printing, of course, had been invented long before the time of Erasmus. Gutenberg’s Bible was printed in 1455. But the first printed books were large, sumptuous and expensive. It took preachers and persuaders almost thirty years to recognise what a formidable new instrument had come into their hands, just as it took politicians twenty years to recognise the value of television. The first man to take advantage of the printing press was Erasmus. He poured out pamphlets and anthologies and introductions; and so in a few years did everyone who had views on anything.

This should remind us of our own age! Take heed of the elucidating excerpts from a 2009 interview of James Bowery by Jim Giles.

Bowery said: “We are essentially living under a theocracy. I call it Holocaustianity but other people call it political correctness. It’s essentially a canon of morals that have taken over Christianity, and the primary sins of this religion involve ‘racism’ which is an undefined word, and anti-Semitism (sexism is certainly down their list; it is like a venial sin, not a mortal sin). So people have been indoctrinated in this by the media and the academia. The government has passed legislation about these morals to make them violation of law. So people [in the 21st century] are essentially in a medieval mindset, living in a theocracy. It’s just that it is not operating under that name… Right now people are essentially in a State where there cannot be a Protestant Reformation. You can’t have other religions than this State religion of political correctness” (39:40).

And later during the interview Bowery added: “Let me go back to my point about the theocracy, and the dissolution of the theocracy in Europe. The Gutenberg press created a situation in which the monopoly of the Church on the written word was broken. A large portion of what the Church was about was media control. So through the media control they could indoctrinate the populations and maintain, you know, a revenue stream. The Gutenberg press broke that. Now all of a sudden you get lots of other voices. As I said, I have been working in this Internet stuff since the early days” (1:29:42).

And that is altogether crucial for our cause. Bowery concludes: “I knew this time was coming. The Internet is the new Gutenberg press. And the theocracy is being taken apart because its control of the media is being taken apart. And we are getting a new Protestant Reformation and following on the heels of that, people are going to say: ‘Look: We have our own beliefs… This is the way things should be.’ Even the Jesuits just couldn’t stand up to that. I don’t think the Jews can’t either.” (1:31:35).

That’s exactly why Erasmus was so notable, as the nationalist Internet bloggers will be equally notable from the standpoint of a latter-day Clark in the coming ethno-state, once the current theocracy falls apart.

Both Erasmus and Luther were involved in important translations of the Bible that shaked the medieval worldview. Although in the next episode Clark spoke highly about Counterreformation art, after the last indented quotation he said: “Whatever else he may have been, Luther was a hero; and after all the doubts and hesitations of the humanists, and the hovering flight of Erasmus, it is with a real sense of emotional relief that we hear Luther say: ‘Here I stand.’” However, at the same time Clark was also dismayed that the Protestants smashed the colored glasses of beautiful Catholic churches, and that artistic images of the Virgin were decapitated.

But it had to happen if civilisation was not to wither, or petrify. And ultimately a new civilisation was created—but it was a civilisation not of the image, but of the word.

But even the Protestant reaction had to be triumphed over, this time by secularism.

It is refreshing to see, in the closing remarks of the episode, Clark praising Montaigne as “completely sceptical about the Christian religion” and of Shakespeare as “the first great poet without a religious belief.”

Categories
Ancient Greece Ancient Rome Antichrist (book) Christendom Friedrich Nietzsche Martin Luther Philosophy of history Renaissance St Paul Transvaluation of all values

Nietzsche on Christianity

Last pages of The Antichrist, which Nietzsche finished on September 30, 1888 but was not published until 1895. Though ellipsis are in the original, I omitted adding more of them between unquoted sentences:




The order of castes, the highest, the dominating law, is merely the ratification of an order of nature, of a natural law of the first rank, over which no arbitrary fiat, no “modern idea,” can exert any influence.

The order of castes, the order of rank, simply formulates the supreme law of life itself; the separation of the three types is necessary to the maintenance of society, and to the evolution of higher types, and the highest types—the inequality of rights is essential to the existence of any rights at all. A right is a privilege. Every one enjoys the privileges that accord with his state of existence. Let us not underestimate the privileges of the mediocre. Life is always harder as one mounts the heights—the cold increases, responsibility increases. A high civilization is a pyramid: it can stand only on a broad base; its primary prerequisite is a strong and soundly consolidated mediocrity.

Whom do I hate most heartily among the rabbles of today? The rabble of Socialists, the apostles to the Chandala, who undermine the workingman’s instincts, his pleasure, his feeling of contentment with his petty existence—who make him envious and teach him revenge…. Wrong never lies in unequal rights; it lies in the assertion of “equal” rights…. What is bad? But I have already answered: all that proceeds from weakness, from envy, from revenge. The anarchist and the Christian have the same ancestry…

The harvest is blighted overnight… That which stood there aere perennis, the imperium Romanum, the most magnificent form of organization under difficult conditions that has ever been achieved, and compared to which everything before it and after it appears as patchwork, bungling, dilletantism—those holy anarchists made it a matter of “piety” to destroy “the world,” which is to say, the imperium Romanum, so that in the end not a stone stood upon another. The Christian and the anarchist: both are décadents; both are incapable of any act that is not disintegrating, poisonous, degenerating, blood-sucking; both have an instinct of mortal hatred of everything that stands up, and is great, and has durability, and promises life a future… Christianity was the vampire of the imperium Romanum—overnight it destroyed the vast achievement of the Romans: the conquest of the soil for a great culture that could await its time. Can it be that this fact is not yet understood?

The imperium Romanum that we know, and that the history of the Roman provinces teaches us to know better and better—this most admirable of all works of art in the grand manner was merely the beginning, and the structure to follow was to prove its worth for thousands of years. To this day, nothing on a like scale sub specie aeterni has been brought into being, or even dreamed of! This organization was strong enough to withstand bad emperors: the accident of personality has nothing to do with such things—the first principle of all genuinely great architecture. But it was not strong enough to stand up against the corruptest of all forms of corruption—against Christians… These stealthy worms, which under the cover of night, mist and duplicity, crept upon every individual, sucking him dry of all earnest interest in real things, of all instinct for reality—this cowardly, effeminate and sugar-coated gang gradually alienated all “souls,” step by step, from that colossal edifice, turning against it all the meritorious, manly and noble natures that had found in the cause of Rome their own cause, their own serious purpose, their own pride.

One has but to read Lucretius to know what Epicurus made war upon—not paganism, but “Christianity,” which is to say, the corruption of souls by means of the concepts of guilt, punishment and immortality. He combatted the subterranean cults, the whole of latent Christianity—to deny immortality was already a form of genuine salvation. Epicurus had triumphed, and every respectable intellect in Rome was Epicurean—when Paul appeared… Paul, the Chandala hatred of Rome, of “the world,” in the flesh and inspired by genius—the Jew, the eternal Jew par excellence… What he saw was how, with the aid of the small sectarian Christian movement that stood apart from Judaism, a “world conflagration” might be kindled; how, with the symbol of “God on the cross,” all secret seditions, all the fruits of anarchistic intrigues in the empire, might be amalgamated into one immense power. “Salvation is of the Jews.” Christianity is the formula for exceeding and summing up the subterranean cults of all varieties, that of Osiris, that of the Great Mother, that of Mithras, for instance: in his discernment of this fact the genius of Paul showed itself.

This was his revelation at Damascus: he grasped the fact that he needed the belief in immortality in order to rob “the world” of its value, that the concept of “hell” would master Rome—that the notion of a “beyond” is the death of life… Nihilist and Christian: they rhyme in German, and they do more than rhyme…

The whole labour of the ancient world gone for naught: I have no word to describe the feelings that such an enormity arouses in me. And, considering the fact that its labour was merely preparatory, that with adamantine self-consciousness it laid only the foundations for a work to go on for thousands of years, the whole meaning of antiquity disappears!… To what end the Greeks? to what end the Romans? All the prerequisites to a learned culture, all the methods of science, were already there and had been there for two thousand years! All gone for naught! All overwhelmed in a night, but not by a convulsion of nature! But brought to shame by crafty, sneaking, invisible, anæmic vampires! Not conquered,—only sucked dry!… Hidden vengefulness, petty envy, became master! Everything wretched, intrinsically ailing, and invaded by bad feelings, the whole ghetto-world of the soul was at once on top! One needs but read any of the Christian agitators, for example, St. Augustine, in order to realize, in order to smell, what filthy fellows came to the top.

Here it becomes necessary to call up a memory that must be a hundred times more painful to Germans. The Germans have destroyed for Europe the last great harvest of civilization that Europe was ever to reap—the Renaissance. Is it understood at last, will it ever be understood, what the Renaissance was? The transvaluation of Christian values: an attempt with all available means, all instincts and all the resources of genius to bring about a triumph of the opposite values, the more noble values…

To attack at the critical place, at the very seat of Christianity, and there enthrone the more noble values—that is to say, to insinuate them into the instincts, into the most fundamental needs and appetites of those sitting there… I see before me the possibility of a perfectly heavenly enchantment and spectacle: it seems to me to scintillate with all the vibrations of a fine and delicate beauty, and within it there is an art so divine, so infernally divine, that one might search in vain for thousands of years for another such possibility; I see a spectacle so rich in significance and at the same time so wonderfully full of paradox that it should arouse all the gods on Olympus to immortal laughter: Cæsar Borgia as pope!… Am I understood?… Well then, that would have been the sort of triumph that I alone am longing for today: by it Christianity would have been swept away!

What happened? A German monk, Luther, came to Rome. This monk, with all the vengeful instincts of an unsuccessful priest in him, raised a rebellion against the Renaissance in Rome… Instead of grasping, with profound thanksgiving, the miracle that had taken place: the conquest of Christianity at its capital—instead of this, his hatred was stimulated by the spectacle. A religious man thinks only of himself. Luther saw only the depravity of the papacy at the very moment when the opposite was becoming apparent: the old corruption, the peccatum originale, Christianity itself, no longer occupied the papal chair! Instead there was life! Instead there was the triumph of life! Instead there was a great yea to all lofty, beautiful and daring things!… And Luther restored the church.

With this I come to a conclusion and pronounce my judgment. I condemn Christianity; I bring against the Christian church the most terrible of all the accusations that an accuser has ever had in his mouth. It is, to me, the greatest of all imaginable corruptions; it seeks to work the ultimate corruption, the worst possible corruption. The Christian church has left nothing untouched by its depravity; it has turned every value into worthlessness, and every truth into a lie, and every integrity into baseness of soul.

This eternal accusation against Christianity I shall write upon all walls, wherever walls are to be found—I have letters that even the blind will be able to see… I call Christianity the one great curse, the one great intrinsic depravity, the one great instinct of revenge, for which no means are venomous enough, or secret, subterranean and small enough,—I call it the one immortal blemish upon the human race…

And mankind reckons time from the dies nefastus when this fatality befell—from the first day of Christianity!—Why not rather from its last?—From today?—

Umwertung aller Werte!…