The example of Japan in the second half of the 19th century, suddenly opening itself without restraint to the trade and technology of the mechanised world, under the threat of Commodore Perry’s guns; moreover, taking up the challenge of all those peoples for whom economic success is everything, and accepting to compete with them on their ground, while striving to lose nothing of its tradition, seems to be the most resounding affirmative answer to the two questions posed above. Gandhi seems to proclaim that, if a certain (sometimes very advanced) degree of mechanisation is inevitable today for a people that refuses to become, or to remain, the prey of a conqueror, or the weakened, humiliated, ruined loser of a war, it doesn’t follow that it must automatically forsake what makes it itself; consider its past as a ‘state of infancy’ to be left behind and change its gods and its scale of values.
No doubt a factory is a factory, and an office, and a supermarket a place of all too material utility to be attractive in any climate, whatsoever the immense industrial agglomerations of Osaka, Kobe or Tokyo should disappoint the tourist in search of local colour and even more so the artist in search of beauty. Pre-1868 Japan, which had been closed to all foreign contact for almost two and a half centuries and was living in a prolonged Middle Ages, was undoubtedly more fascinating to see. But this is not an observation limited to one country.
The whole earth, including Europe, was more beautiful to contemplate in the Middle Ages and Antiquity than after the advent of big industry. What is remarkable and admirable is that, despite the ugliness inherent in all large-scale mechanisation, so much beauty has remained in the Empire of the Rising Sun, and above all that this beauty is so obviously linked to the preservation of Tradition in the particular expression that the people and their history and geographical environment have given it: a living and active Tradition, capable, as in the past, of impregnating the entire life of an elite, and even of creating an atmosphere in which the entire country, including factories, is bathed.
______ 卐 ______
Editor’s Note: Here and in the following passages Savitri idealises modern Japan. Just look at the island today, or China! Regarding what she wrote above, remember what Kenneth Clark said in the last program of Civilisation: ‘One sees why heroic materialism is still linked with an uneasy conscience. The first large iron foundries like the Carron Works or Coalbrookdale, date from about 1780. The only people who saw through industrialism in those early days were the poets. Blake, as everybody knows, thought that mills were the work of Satan. ‘Oh Satan, my youngest born… thy work is Eternal death with Mills and Ovens and Cauldrons’ (the above image appeared in the Civilisation TV series). Savitri continues:
______ 卐 ______
What is admirable is that in Japan there are still masters like Kenzo Awa, who taught the German Herrigel the sacred art of archery according to the rules and spirit of Zen Buddhism, and a whole legion of disciples thirsting for true knowledge: that knowledge which leads the one who acquires it to ‘be’ more. What is admirable is the survival, even in politics, of this Shintoism whose origin is lost in prehistory and to which the great Japanese thinkers of the eighteenth century, Moturi and Hirata, have definitively given that character of sacred nationalism: a Far Eastern version of our cult of Blood and Soil which Japan has kept to this day.
A few days before December 7, 1941, our Japanese allies most naturally sent an official delegation to the Temple of Isé, an embassy of the Imperial Government to the Gods of the Empire and the ancestors of the Emperor-Gods: ‘Is it agreeable to you that we declare war on the United States of America?’ And it was only after the Gods (or their priests) responded favourably that war was declared. Four years later, after the bombing of Hiroshima, it was again with the permission of the Gods that the surrender was decided, as was the opening of Japan to foreign trade and modern technology in 1868, as the supreme measure of salvation for the Empire. What is admirable about all this is the persistence in Japan of the spirit of bushido in the middle of the 20th century; it is the cult of national honour in its highest expression, and the total contempt for death, both among the famous Kamikaze (‘living-bomb’ pilots of the Second World War) and among the twenty-five thousand Japanese on the island of Saipan, in the middle of the Pacific, all of whom killed each other when the Americans arrived; it is the resistance, unshakeable in its smiling politeness, to the occupation of the Yankees and to their political-philosophical proselytism: the reinstatement, in the school curriculum, immediately after the signing of the peace treaty, of the Kojiki or history of the National Gods, banned under the Democracy Crusaders’ regime; it is the construction, at Gamagori, of a temple to Tojo and the other Japanese hanged by the Americans as ‘war criminals’: a temple where school children will bow and burn a stick of incense before the image of the martyrs and defy any ‘moral conquest’ of the People of the Sun, after visiting the (only partly reconstructed) site of Hiroshima.
It all fits together: this teaching, as alive as ever, of traditional esotericism in its national forms, and this refusal of a whole people, penetrated by the radiance of its elite without even realising it, to renounce its soul under the sway of technology and in response to the lies of the men who have imposed it on them. It may be that the Japanese worker, who works at a discount in large companies and helps to flood the world with manufactured goods—tangible products of his country’s industrial expansion, whose prices defy all competition—has a material life almost as hard as that of a Russian proletarian in a kholkose. But he knows that he is working for the glory of the Empire, to which he belongs. And this Empire is, contrary to the Marxist state, the guardian of a Tradition that goes far beyond it. It is the link between the common man and the eternal. (For the belief in the divinity of the Emperor and the Nipponese land, which itself sprang from the body of a Goddess,[1] is not dead in Japan, despite its noisy official denial, repeated over and over again to give the foreigner the conviction of a lasting ‘progress’ in the democratic sense.)
On the other hand, the dream of a world dictatorship of the proletariat—or even that of the Slavic (or ‘yellow’) world, unified under such a dictatorship with a view to ever-increasing production and the comfort of an ever-growing number of individuals—is, if it constitutes an ideal, in the final analysis only a limited ideal. It doesn’t go beyond the material plane or man. Even the simplest of people can only ever be satisfied with it by becoming robots.
__________
[1] lzana-mi, wife of Izana-gi. The Emperor is descended from the Sun Goddess: Amaterasu-ohomi-kami.
This book is about crime and the evil things evil men do. This book is about words and hate and the powerful price of propaganda. This book is about the savage, no-quarter war waged against Japan during the summer of 1945 and it is about the equally savage no quarter “peace” waged against Germany during that same summer, 1945. There is no attempt herein to recite the numerous atrocities attributed to the Germans and Japanese by the victorious powers. Certainly, some of these crimes were true; equally certain, many of these crimes were not. Such is winning and losing. Such is war.
To most modern readers, the “unique” guilt attributed to the Axis powers in starting World War II as well as their supposed barbaric behavior in prosecuting it are too well known to repeat. For those who wish to learn more of the victor’s version of the war, a simple trip to the book store or library, or the viewing of virtually any feature-length movie or documentary film will offer up the Allied account of the war. This book is, instead, devoted to the inhuman treatment and savage atrocities directed at the losers of the war by the winners, both during and after that war. This book is about the evil things evil men do.
Just as my previous book on Allied war crimes during and after World War II in Europe—Hellstorm: The Death of Nazi Germany, 1944-1947—illustrated how deadly propaganda can be, especially when the intended target audience for such propaganda are eighteenyear-olds with weapons in their hands, so too does this book attempt to illustrate how vicious words fired by experts are far more deadly than bombs and bullets for, unlike bombs and bullets which kill only once, words kill again and again and again. Simply, Japanese and German propaganda never came close to matching Allied propaganda in pure hate; Japanese and German propaganda never had the dripping venom and murderous malice that American and British propaganda had then, and, for the most part, still has now.
While the victors, to this day, vilify and condemn the Germans and Japanese for their treatment of American POWs, never mentioned is that at least the Germans and Japanese took prisoners. Few, very few, German and Japanese soldiers survived actual combat to reach an American POW camp. While the victors, to this day, assail again and again the Germans for crimes against Jews or attack the Japanese for crimes against the Chinese, seldom does one hear about the crimes against the Germans or the crimes against the Japanese, of the deliberate firebombing of millions of German and Japanese women and children, of the wholesale rape of countless women and children, of the utter and abject subservience that both nations even today still find themselves locked in.
Finally, it is the most fervent hope of the author that after finishing Hellstorm and this, its companion study, Summer, 1945, that the reader will not simply set the volumes down and return to a life of indifference and apathy. It is the author’s greatest wish that each reader will instead work with others to ensure that never again—not in our name, not in our time, not in our world—will we ever allow such evil propaganda such as was used in World War II to ever repeat itself; that no matter who it may next be directed at, be it Germans, Japanese, Iranians, North Koreans, or Israelis, we will not ever again allow such vicious, sadistic, and evil words to be used to either create a war or create a “peace.” As the past has proved, such reckless, murderous words reap reckless, murderous harvests of innocent and guilty alike. Unless we all work to throttle evil men and their evil words and evil deeds, then soon, very soon, that evil will almost certainly be directed at us and those we love.
Thomas Goodrich
Sarasota, Florida
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About the author
Tom Goodrich is a professional writer who lived on the Gulf Coast of Florida while writing Summer, 1945: Germany, Japan and the Harvest of Hate (The Palm Press, Siesta Key, Florida, 2018).
His biological father was a United States Marine during the Pacific War, 1941-1945, and his adoptive father served in the US Air Force in Europe during World War II. Visit the author at thomasgoodrich.com.
Wikipedia has the problem that many of its editors and administrators are either white traitors to the West or Jews like those of deMause’s journal. Although some scholars contribute to editing it, there is always an anti-westerner who censures the passages opposing the anti-white zeitgeist. For example, regarding the articles on infanticide I edited in 2008, a couple of Australian administrators from the English Wikipedia abused their powers. Not only did they eliminate most of the section on Australia within the article “Infanticide.” They went so far as to erase, from that online encyclopedia, an entire article that another editor had started. This last article focused on expanding the subject of the infanticide committed by aboriginal Australians. (Part of what was censored by Wikipedia is covered in this chapter, in the section on Australia.) Almost a decade later I learned that, since the 1970s, it has been a common practice in that continent to censor studies on infanticide, insofar as the aborigines have been idealized. Rewriting the history of the natives by vaporizing, in Stalin’s style, part of the collective memory of a nation misinforms visitors to the encyclopedia. But not all Wikipedia editors have behaved like that pair of administrators, so zealous in idealizing the natives in their country. In the archived Wikipedia talk page of Psychohistory, Loren Cobb said:
In my view, the psychohistory of Lloyd deMause is indeed a notable approach to history, in the sense in which Wikipedia uses the term “notability.” I am not personally involved in psychohistory—I am a mathematical sociologist—but here are some thoughts for your consideration.
Psychohistory as put forth by deMause and his many followers attempts to explain the pattern of changes in the incidence of child abuse in history. This is a perfectly respectable and non-fringe domain of scientific research. They argue that the incidence was much higher in the past, and that there has been an irregular history of improvement. This is a hypothesis that could just as easily have been framed by an epidemiologist as a psychologist. DeMause proposes a theory that society has gone through a series of stages in its treatment and discipline of children.
Again, this is well within the bounds of social science. None of these questions are pseudoscientific. Even the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, a bastion of scientific epidemiology, is interested in these kinds of hypotheses.1
I exchanged a few e-mails with Cobb, who like me is very critical of the psychoanalytic tail in deMausean legacy, and his position piqued my interest.
This chapter summarizes the data collected in the first exhaustive study on infanticide: a book by Larry Milner, Hardness of Heart, published in the last year of the 20th century. That so many researchers have produced astronomical figures on the extent of infanticide moves me to think that Milner’s initiative to devote ten years of his life researching the topic should be undertaken by others. Only then can we be sure if such large numbers are accurate.
Joseph Birdsell believes in infanticide rates of 15-50 percent of the total number of births in prehistoric times.2 Laila Williamson estimated a lower rate ranging from 15-20 percent.3 Both believe that high rates of infanticide persisted until the development of agriculture.4 Some comparative anthropologists have estimated that 50 percent of female newborn babies were killed by their parents in the Paleolithic.5 These figures appear over and over in the research of other scholars.
Paleolithic and Neolithic
Decapitated skeletons of hominid children have been found with evidence of cannibalism. Neanderthal man performed ritual sacrifices of children. As shown in the bas-reliefs of a Laussel cave, a menstruating goddess is appeased only by the sacrifice of infants.6
Marvin Harris, the creator of the anthropological movement called cultural materialism, estimated that in the Stone Age up to 23-50 percent of newborns were put to death. However, Harris conceived a rational explanation. In his book Cannibals and Kings: Origins of Cultures, published in 1977, he says that the goal was to preserve the population growth to 0.001 percent. This explanation of more “civilized” cavemen than us has not been taken seriously among other scholars. But the renowned geneticist James Neel surpasses him. Through a retroactive model to study the customs of contemporary Yanomami Indians he estimated that in prehistoric times the infanticidal rate was 15-20 percent. However, Neel wrote: “I find it increasingly difficult to see in the recent reproductive history of the civilized world a greater respect for the quality of human existence than was manifested by our remote ‘primitive’ ancestors.” Ark would have scoffed at this claim. The fact that Neel published such praise for the infanticidal cavemen in Science,7 one of the most prestigious scientific journals, shows the levels of psychogenic regression that we suffer in our times.
Ancient World
As we have seen, the sacrifice of children was much more common in the Ancient World than in present times. Three thousand bones of young children, with evidence of sacrificial rituals, have been found in Sardinia. Infants were offered to the Babylonian goddess Ishtar. Pelasgians offered a sacrifice of every tenth child during difficult times. Syrians sacrificed children to Jupiter and Juno. Many remains of children have been found in Gezer excavations with signs of sacrifice. Child skeletons with the marks of sacrifice have been found also in Egypt dating 950-720 B.C. In Carthage “[child] sacrifice in the ancient world reached its infamous zenith.”8 Besides the Carthaginians, other Phoenicians, and the Canaanites, Moabites and Sepharvites offered their first-born as a sacrifice to their gods.
Carthage. Charred bones of thousands of infants have been found in Carthaginian archaeological sites in modern times. One such area harbored as many as 20,000 burial urns. It is estimated that child sacrifice was practiced for centuries in the region. Plutarch (ca. 46-120 AD) mentions the practice, as do Tertullian, Orosius, Diodorus Siculus and Philo. The Hebrew Bible also mentions what appears to be child sacrifice practiced at a place called the Tophet (from the Hebrew taph or toph, to burn) by the Canaanites, ancestors of the Carthaginians, and by some Israelites. Writing in the 3rd century B.C., Kleitarchos, one of the historians of Alexander the Great, described that the infants rolled into the flaming pit. Diodorus Siculus wrote that babies were roasted to death inside the burning pit of the god Baal Hamon, a bronze statue.9
Greece and Rome. In the Persian mythology of Zoroastrianism, at birth some children are devoured by their parents: a fable reminiscent of Cronus. Rhea hid Zeus and presented a stone wrapped in strips, which Cronus took as a swaddled baby and ate it. Cronus represents the archaic Hellas.
The historical Greeks considered barbarous the practice of adult and child sacrifice.10 It is interesting to note how conquerors like Alexander are diminished under the new psychohistorical perspective. If we give credence to the assertion that Thebes, the largest city in the region of Boeotia, had lower rates of exposure than other Greek cities, its destruction by Alexander was a fatal blow to the advanced psychoclass in Greece. A few centuries later, between 150 and 50 B.C. an Alexandrian Jew wrote Wisdom of Solomon, which contains a diatribe against the Canaanites whom he calls perpetrators of “ruthless murders of their children.” (Note how the biblical classics, the 16th-century chroniclers, and the 19th-century anthropologists wield value judgments, something banned in an academy under the shadow of Franz Boas.)
In The Histories Polybius was already complaining in the 2nd century B.C. that parents severely inhibited reproduction, and by the 1st century there were several thinkers who spoke out against the exposure of babies. Epictetus wondered “A sheep does not abandon its own offspring, nor a wolf; and yet does a man abandon his?” In the Preface we saw that in the same century Philo was the first philosopher to speak out against exposure.11
“The greatest respect is owed to a child,” wrote Juvenal, born in 55 AD. His contemporary Josephus, a Romanized Jew, also condemned exposure. And in Heroides, an elegiac poem that he wrote before his exile, Ovid asked, “What did the child commit, in so few hours of life?” However, two centuries after Augustus, in times of Constantine Rome struggled with a decreased population due to exposure. The legend of Romulus and Remus is also revealing: two brothers had been exposed to die but a she-wolf saved them. Romulus forced the Romans to bring up all males and the first female and forbade killing them after a certain age. As Rhea saving his son Zeus, this legend portrays the psychogenic landmark of classical culture compared with other cultures of the Ancient World. But even so, exposure was practiced. A letter from a Roman citizen to his wife, dating from 1 B.C., demonstrates the casual nature with which infanticide was often viewed:
Know that I am still in Alexandria. […] I ask and beg you to take good care of our baby son, and as soon as I received payment I shall send it up to you. If you are delivered, if it is a boy, keep it, if a girl, discard it.12
In some periods of Roman history it was traditional for a newborn to be brought to the pater familias, the family patriarch, who would then decide whether the child was to be kept and raised, or left to death by exposure. The Twelve Tablets of Roman law obliged him to put to death a child that was visibly deformed. Infanticide became a capital offense in Roman law in 374 AD but offenders were rarely if ever prosecuted.13
Hebrew people. Although the Bible says many Hebrews sacrificed their children to pagan gods, Judaism prohibits infanticide (I will approach the subject of the recent studies on the Israelites in the last chapter). Tacitus recorded that the Jews “regard it as a crime to kill any late-born children.”14 Josephus, whose works give an important insight into first-century Judaism, wrote that God “forbids women to cause abortion of what is begotten, or to destroy it afterward.”15
Pagan European tribes. John Boswell believed that in ancient Germanic tribes unwanted children were exposed, usually in the forest. “It was the custom of the pagans that if they wanted to kill a son or daughter, they would be killed before they had been given any food.”16 In the most influential archeological book of the 19th century, Prehistoric Times, John Lubbock invented the terms Paleolithic and Neolithic. He described that burnt bones indicated the practice of child sacrifice in pagan Britain.17
The Christian Era
Something goes completely unnoticed for the modern mind. In a world plagued by sacrifices like the Old World, the innocent son has to die ordered by his father: a well-known practice. It is impossible to understand the psychoclass that gave rise to Christianity by overlooking this reality converted into a powerful symbol. This is true despite, as I have stated in the previous pages, that forms of upbringing should have suffered, in general terms, a regression throughout the Middle Ages. The Teachings of the Apostles or Didache said: “You shall not murder a child by abortion nor kill that which is born.”18The Epistle of Barnabas stated an identical command.19 So widely accepted was this teaching in Christendom that apologists Tertullian, Athenagoras, Minucius Felix, Justin Martyr and Lactantius also maintained that exposing a baby to death was a wicked act. In 318 AD Constantine considered infanticide a crime but reinstated the practice of selling one’s own children. The West took its time to consider criminal the late forms of infanticide. The author of the Codex Theodosianus complained in 322 AD:
We have learned that in provinces where there are shortages of food and lack of livelihood, parents are selling or pledging their children. Such an ignominious act is repugnant to our customs.
Towards 340 AD Lactantius argued that strangling newborns was sinful. Already within the historical period known as Christendom, infanticide was not officially banned in Roman criminal law until 374 AD when Valentinian I mandated to rear all children (exposing babies, especially girls, was still common). However, both exposure and child abandonment continued in Europe.
Middle Ages. The practice was so entrenched, as well as the sale of children, that it had been futile to decree the abolition of such customs. Until 500 AD it could not be said that a baby’s life was secure. The Council of Constantinople declared that infanticide was a homicide, and in 589 AD the Third Council of Toledo took measures against the Spanish custom of killing their own children.20 Whereas theologians and clerics preached to spare their lives, newborn abandonment continued as registered in both the literature record and in legal documents.21 More archaic forms of infanticide, such as sacrifice, were practiced by the Gauls, Celts and the Irish. “They would kill their piteous wretched offspring with much wailing and peril, to pour their blood around Crom Cruaich,” a deity of pre-Christian Ireland.22 Unlike other European regions, in the Middle Ages the German mother had the right to expose the newborn.23 In Gotland, Sweden, children were also sacrificed.24 According to William Langer, exposure in the Middle Ages “was practiced on a gigantic scale with absolute impunity, noticed by writers with most frigid indifference.”25 By the end of the 12th century, notes Richard Trexler, Roman women threw their newborns into the Tiber River even in daylight.26 In Russia, peasants sacrificed their sons and daughters to the pagan god Perun. Some residents of rural areas got rid of their babies by throwing them to the hogs. In Medieval Russia secular laws did not deal with what, for the church, was a crime.27 The Svans killed the newborn females by filling their mouths with hot ashes. In Kamchatka, babies were killed and thrown to wild dogs.28
The darkness of Europe would begin to fade in the 12th century. As explained above, the “little Renaissance” of that century reminds me the famous series of Kenneth Clark, the first of its kind that showed us the personal view of an intellectual in a television series. Other cultures would be arrested in their ways of treatment of women and children.
China and Japan. The American explorer George Kennan noted that among the Koryaks, a Mongoloid people of north-eastern Siberia, infanticide was still common in the 19th century. One of the twins was always sacrificed.29 Since the 17th century Jesuit missionaries had found thousands of babies, mostly women, abandoned on the streets of China. Marco Polo, the famed explorer, saw newborns exposed in Manzi.30 China’s society promoted gendercide. The philosopher Han Fei Tzu, a member of the ruling aristocracy of the 3rd century B.C., who developed a school of law, wrote: “As to children, a father and mother when they produce a boy congratulate one another, but when they produce a girl they put it to death.”31 Among the Hakka people, and in Yunnan, Anhwei, Szechwan, Jiangxi and Fukien a method of killing the baby was to put her into a bucket of cold water, which was called “baby water.” 32 Even before feudal Japan infanticide was performed. The common slang for infanticide was mabiki which means to pull plants from an overcrowded garden. It has been estimated that 40 percent of newborn babies were killed in Kyushu.33 A typical method in Japan was smothering through wet paper on the baby’s mouth and nose.34Mabiki persisted in the 19th and early 20th centuries.35
India and Pakistan. Female infanticide of newborn girls was systematic in feudatory Rajputs in India. According to Firishta (approx. 1560-1620), as soon as a female child was born she was holding “in one hand, and a knife in the other, that any person who wanted a wife might take her now, otherwise she was immediately put to death.”36 The practice of female infanticide was also common among the inhabitants of Kutch, Kehtri, Nagar, Gujarat, Miazed, Kalowries and also among the Sind in Pakistan.37 It was not uncommon that parents threw a child to the crocodiles in the Ganges River as a sacrificial offering. The British colonists were unable to outlaw the custom until the beginnings of the 19th century.38
Arabia and Islam. Female infanticide was common all over Arabia during pre-Islamic Arabia, especially by burying alive the newborn female.39 Later it would be explicitly prohibited by the Koran: “And do not kill your children for fear of poverty; We give them sustenance and yourselves too; Surely to kill them is a great wrong.”40 However, in spite of this emergent psychoclass, if compared with their infanticidal neighbors of the Arabian peninsula, the forms of childcare and the treatment of women in Islam would be stagnant for centuries.
Tribes
Infanticide in tribal societies was, and in some tribes still is, more frequent than infanticide in both Western and Eastern civilizations.
Africa. In this continent newborns were killed because of fear that they were an evil omen or because they were considered unlucky. Twins were usually put to death in Arebo; as well as by the Nama Hottentots of South West Africa; in the Lake Victoria Nyanza region; by the Tswana in Portuguese East Africa; among the Ilso and Ibo people of Nigeria; and by the !Kung Bushmen of the Kalahari Desert.41 The Kikuyu, Kenya’s most populous ethnic group, practiced ritual killing of twins.42 Lucien Lévy-Brühl noted that, as a result of fearing a drought, if a baby was born feet first in British East Africa, she or he was smothered.43 The Tswana people did the same since they feared the newborn would bring ill fortune to the parents.44 Similarly, William Sumner noted that the Vadshagga killed children whose upper incisors came first.45 If a mother died in childbirth among the Ibo people of Nigeria, the newborn was buried alive. It suffered a similar fate if the father died.46 In The Child in Primitive Society, Nathan Miller wrote in the 1920s that among the Kuni tribe every mother had killed at least one of her children.47 Child sacrifice was practiced as late as 1929 in Zimbabwe, where a daughter of the tribal chief used to be sacrificed as a petition of rain.48
Oceania and the Pacific Islands. Infanticide among the autochthon people in the Oceania islands is widespread. In some areas of the Fiji islands up to 50 percent of newborn infants were killed.49 In the 19th-century Ugi, in the Solomon Islands almost 75 percent of the indigenous children had been brought from adjoining tribes due to the high incidence rate of infanticide, a unique feature of these tribal societies.50 In another Solomon island, San Cristóbal, the firstborn was considered ahubweu and often buried alive.51 As a rationale for their behavior, some parents in British New Guinea complained: “Girls […] don’t become warriors, and they don’t stay to look for us in our old age.”52
Australia. According to Bronislaw Malinowski, who wrote a book on indigenous Australians in the early 1960s, “infanticide is practiced among all Australian natives.”53 The practice has been reported in Tasmania, Western Australia, Central Australia, South Australia, in the Northern Territory, Queensland, New South Wales and Victoria. Anthropologist Géza Róheim wrote:
When the Yumu, Pindupi, Ngali, or Nambutji were hungry, they ate small children with neither ceremonial nor animistic motives. Among the southern tribes, the Matuntara, Mularatara, or Pitjentara, every second child was eaten in the belief that the strength of the first child would be doubled by such a procedure.54
Family units usually consisted of three children. Brough Smyth, a 19th century researcher, estimated that in Victoria about 30 percent of the births resulted in infanticide.55 Mildred Dickeman concurs that the figure is accurate in other Australia tribes as a result of a surplus of the birthrate.56 Cannibalism was observed in Victoria at the beginning of the 20th century. The Wotjo tribe, as well as the tribes of the lower Murray River, sometimes killed a newborn to feed an older sibling.57 Thomas Robert Malthus said that, in the New South Wales region when the mother died sucking infants were buried alive with her.58 In the Darling River region, infanticide was practiced “by a blow on the back of the head, by strangling with a rope, or chocking with sand.”59 In Queensland a tribal woman only could have children after the age of thirty. Otherwise babies would be killed.60 The Australian Aranda tribes in the Northern Territory used the method of choking the newborn with coal, sand or kill her with a stick.61 According to James George Frazer, in the Beltana tribes in South Australia it was customary to kill the first-born.62 Twins were always killed by the Arrernte in central Australia.63 In the Luritcha tribe occasional cannibalism of young children occurred.64 Aram Yengoyan calculated that, in Western Australia, the Pitjandjara people killed 19 percent of their newborns.65 In the 19th century the native Tasmanians were exterminated by the colonists, who regarded them as a degenerate race. Richard H. Davies (fl. 1830s-1887), a brother of Archdeacon Davies, wrote that Tasmanian “females have been known to desert their infants for the sake of suckling the puppies,” which were later used for hunting.66 Like other tribal Australians, when the mother died the child was buried as well.67
Polynesia. In ancient Polynesian societies infanticide was fairly common.68 Families were supposed to rear no more than two children. Writing about the natives Raymond Firth noted: “If another child is born, it is buried in the earth and covered with stones.”69 In Hawaii infanticide was a socially sanctioned practice before the Christian missions.70 Infanticidal methods included strangling the children or, more frequently, burying them alive.71 Infanticide was quite intense in Tahiti.72 Methods included suffocation, neck breaking and strangulation.73
North America. Infanticide and child sacrifice was practiced in the New World at times when in Western Europe it had been largely abandoned. There is no agreement about the actual estimates of the frequency of newborn female infanticide in the Eskimo population. Carmel Schrire mentions diverse studies ranging from 15-50 percent to 80 percent.74 Polar Eskimos killed the child by throwing him or her into the sea.75 There is even a legend in Eskimo folklore, “The Unwanted Child,” where a mother throws her child into the fjord. The Yukon and the Mahlemuit tribes of Alaska exposed the female newborns by stuffing their mouths with grass before leaving them to die.76 In Arctic Canada the Eskimos exposed their babies on the ice and left them to die.77 Female Eskimo infanticide disappeared in the 1930s and 1940s after contact with the Western cultures of the South.78 The Handbook of North American Indians reports infanticide and cannibalism among the Dene Indians and those of the Mackenzie Mountains.79 In the Eastern Shoshone there was a scarcity of Indian women as a result of female infanticide.80 For the Maidu Native Americans in the United States twins were so dangerous that they not only killed them, but the mother as well.81 In the region known today as southern Texas, the Mariame Indians practiced infanticide of females on a large scale. Wives had to be obtained from neighboring groups.82
South American tribes. Although data of infanticides among the indigenous people in South America is not as abundant as data from North America, the estimates seem to be similar. The Tapirapé indigenous people of Brazil allowed no more than three children per woman, and no more than two had to be of the same sex. If the rule was broken infanticide was practiced.83 The people in the Bororo tribe killed all the newborns that did not appear healthy enough. Infanticide is also documented in the case of the Korubo people in the Amazon.84
While Capacocha sacrifice was practiced in the Peruvian large cities, child sacrifice in the pre-Columbian tribes of the region is less documented. However, even today studies on the Aymara Indians reveal high incidences of mortality among the newborn, especially female deaths, suggesting infanticide.85 Infanticide among the Chaco in Paraguay was estimated as high as 50 percent of all newborns in that tribe, who were usually buried.86 The infanticidal custom had such roots among the Ayoreo in Bolivia and Paraguay that it persisted until the late 20th century.87
Conclusion
As can be gathered from the above data, it is possible to support psychohistory’s cornerstone, the idea of an infanticidal psychoclass, with sources other than those used by deMause. The main criticism of historian Julie Hofmann Kemp to the deMausean model has, therefore, been solved.
References
1 Loren Cobb signs under a penname in Wikipedia. His post appeared in the talk page of Psychohistory (03:41, April 3, 2008).
2 Birdsell, Joseph, B. (1986), “Some predictions for the Pleistocene based on equilibrium systems among recent hunter-gatherers,” in Richard Lee and Irven DeVore, Man the Hunter, Aldine Publishing Co., p. 239.
3 Williamson, Laila (1978), “Infanticide: an anthropological analysis,” in Kohl, Marvin, Infanticide and the Value of Life, New York: Prometheus Books, pp. 61-75.
4 Milner, Larry S. (2000). Hardness of Heart / Hardness of Life: The Stain of Human Infanticide. Lanham/New York/Oxford: University Press of America, p. 19.
5 Hoffer, Peter, N.E.H. Hull (1981). Murdering Mothers: Infanticide in England and America, 1558-1803. New York University Press, p. 3.
6 Simons, E. L. (1989). “Human origins.” Science, 245: p. 1344.
7 Neel, James. (1970). “Lessons from a ‘primitive’ people.” Science, 1: p. 816.
8 Milner: Hardness of Heart (op. cit.) p. 324.
9 Brown, Shelby (1991). Late Carthaginian Child Sacrifice and Sacrificial Monuments in their Mediterranean Context. Sheffield Academic Press, pp. 22s. See also: Stager, Lawrence, Samuel R. Wolff (1984). “Child sacrifice at Carthage—religious rite or population control?” Biblical Archaeology Review 10: pp. 31-51.
10 Hughes, Dennis D. (1991). Human Sacrifice in Ancient Greece. Routledge, p. 187.
11 Philo (1950). The Special Laws. Harvard University Press, Vol. VII, pp. 117s, 551, 549.
12 Naphtali, Lewis, ed. (1985), “Papyrus Oxyrhynchus 744,” Life in Egypt Under Roman Rule, Oxford University Press, p. 54.
13 Radville, Samuel X. (1974), “A history of child abuse and infanticide,” in Steinmetz, Suzanne K. and Murray A. Strauss, Violence in the Family, New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., pp. 173-179.
14 Tacitus (1931). The Histories. London: William Heinemann, Vol. II, p. 183.
15 Josephus (1976). The Works of Flavius Josephus, “Against Apion.” Cambridge: Harvard University Press, II.25, p. 597.
16 John Boswell (1988). The Kindness of Strangers. New York: Vintage Books, p. 211.
17 Lubbock, John (1865). Pre-historic Times, as Illustrated by Ancient Remains, and the Manners and Customs of Modern Savages. London: Williams and Norgate, p. 176.
18 Robinson, J. Armitage (translator) (1920), “Didache,” Barnabas, Hermar and the Didache, Vol. D.ii.2c, New York: The MacMillan Co., p. 112.
19 Ibid., Epistle of Barnabas, xix. 5d.
20 Radbill, Samuel X. (1974), “A history of child abuse and infanticide,” in Steinmetz, Suzanne K. and Murray A. Straus, Violence in the Family, New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., pp. 173-179.
21 John Boswell (1984). “Exposition and oblation: the abandonment of children and the ancient and medieval family.” American Historical Review 89: pp. 10-33.
22 Dorson, Richard (1968). Peasant Customs and Savage Myths: Selections from the British Folklorists. University of Chicago Press, p. 351.
23 Westrup, C.W. (1944). Introduction to Roman Law. Oxford University Press, p. 249.
24 Turville-Petre, Gabriel (1964). Myth and Religion of the North: The Religion of Ancient Scandinavia. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, p. 253.
25 Langer, William L. (1974). “Infanticide: a historical survey.” History of Childhood Quarterly, 1, pp. 353-366.
26 Trexler, Richard (1973). “Infanticide in Florence: new sources and first results.” History of Childhood Quarterly, 1: p. 99.
27 Ransel, David (1988). Mothers of Misery. Princeton University Press, pp. 10-12.
28 McLennan: Studies in Ancient History (op. cit.), pp. 105s.
29 Kennan, George (1986 [originally published in 1871]). Tent Life in Siberia. New York: Gibbs Smith.
30 Polo, Marco (1965). The Travels. Middlesex: Penguin Books, p. 174.
31 Yu-Lan, Fung (1952). A History of Chinese Philosophy. Princeton University Press, p. 327.
32 Yao, Esther S. Lee (1983). Chinese Women: Past and Present. Mesquite: Ide House, p. 75.
33 Kushe, Helga and Peter Singer (1985). Should the Baby Live? Oxford University Press, p. 106.
34 Shiono, Hiroshi and Atoyo Maya, Noriko Tabata, Masataka Fujiwara, Junich Azumi and Mashahiko Morita (1986). “Medico-legal aspects of infanticide in Hokkaido District, Japan.” American Journal of Forensic Medicine and Pathology, 7: p. 104.
35 Vaux, Kenneth (1989). Birth Ethics. New York: Crossroad, p. 12.
36 Westermarck, Edward (1968). A Short History of Marriage. New York: Humanities Press, Vol. III, p. 162.
37 Panigrahi, Lalita (1972). British Social Policy and Female Infanticide in India. New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal, p. 18.
38 Davies, Nigel (1981). Human Sacrifice. New York: William Morrow & Co, p. 18.
39 Milner: Hardness of Heart, (op. cit.), p. 59. See also: Smith, William Robertson (1903). Kinship and Marriage in Early Arabia. London: Adam & Charles Block, p. 293.
40 The Koran, XVII:31. See also LXXXI:8-9, XVI:60-62, XVII:42 and XLII:48.
41 Milner: Hardness of Heart (op. cit.) pp. 160s.
42 LeVine, Sarah and Robert LeVine (1981), “Child abuse and neglect in Sub-Saharan Africa,” in Korbin, Jill, Child Abuse and Neglect, Berkeley: University of California Press, p. 39.
43 Lévy-Brühl, Lucien (1923). Primitive Mentality. London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd., p. 150.
44 Schapera, I.A. (1955). A Handbook of Tswana Law and Custom. Oxford University Press, p. 261.
45 Sumner, William (1956 [originally published in 1906). Folkways: A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals. Oxford University Press, p. 274.
46 Basden, G.T. (1996). Niger Ibos. New York: Barnes & Noble, pp. 180-184, 262s.
47 Miller, Nathan (1928). The Child in Primitive Society. New York: Bretano’s, p. 37.
48 Davies: Human Sacrifice (op. cit.), p. 143.
49 McLennan, J.F. (1886). Studies in Ancient History, The Second Series. New York: MacMillan & Co., Ltd., pp. 90s.
50 Guppy, H.B. (1887). The Solomon Islands and Their Natives. London: Swan Sonnenschein, p. 42.
51 Frazer, J.G. (1935). The Golden Bough. New York: MacMillan Co., pp. 332s.
52 Langness, L.L. (1984), “Child abuse and cultural values: the case of New Guinea,” in Korbin, Jill, Child Abuse and Neglect: Cross-Cultural Perspectives, Berkeley: University of California Press, p. 15.
53 Malinowski, Bronislaw (1963). The Family Among the Australian Aborigines. New York: Scocken Books, p. 235.
54 Róheim, Géza (1962). “The Western tribes of Central Australia: childhood.” The Psychoanalytic Study of Society, 2: p. 200.
55 Smyth, Brough (1878). The Aborigines of Australia. London: John Ferres, p. 52.
56 Dickeman, Mildred (1975). “Demographic consequences of infanticide in man.” Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics, 6: p. 121.
57 Howitt, A.W. (1904). The Native Tribes of South-East Australia. MacMillan & Co., Ltd., pp. 749s.
58 Malthus, Thomas Robert (1963). On Population. New York: The Modern Library, I.III, p. 170.
59 Bonney, Frederic (1884). “On some customs of the aborigines of the River Darling.” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, 13: p. 125.
60 Cowlishaw, Gillian (1978). “Infanticide in aboriginal Australia.” Oceania, 48: p. 267.
61 Murdock, G.P. (1971). Our Primitive Contemporaries. New York: Macmillan, p. 34.
62 Frazer, James George (1963). The Dying God. New York: Macmillan, p. 180.
63 Murdock: Our Primitive Contemporaries (op. cit.), p. 34.
64 Spencer, Baldwin, F.J. Gillen (1904). The Northern Tribes of Central Australia. London: MacMillan & Co., p. 475.
65 Yengoyan, Aram (1972). “Biological and demographic components in aboriginal Australian socio-economic organization.” Oceania, 43: p. 88.
66 Roth, H. Ling (1899). The Aborigines of Tasmania. Halifax: King & Sons, pp. 162s.
67 Murdock: Our Primitive Contemporaries (op. cit.), p. 7.
68 Ritchie, Jane and James Ritchie (1979). Growing Up in Polynesia. Sydney: George Allen & Unwin, p. 39.
69 Firth, Raymond (1983). Primitive Polynesian Economy. London: Routledge, p. 44.
70 Dibble, Sheldon (1839). History and General Views of the Sandwich Islands Mission. New York: Taylor & Dodd, p. 123.
71 Handy, E.S. and Mary Kawena Pukui (1958). The Polynesian Family System in Ka-’U, Hawaii. New Plymouth, New Zealand: Avery Press, p. 327.
72 Ritchie: Growing Up in Polynesia (op. cit.), p. 189.
73 Oliver, Douglas (1974). Ancient Tahitan Society. Honolulu: University Press of Hawii, Vol. I, p. 425.
74 Schrire, Carmel and William Lee Steiger (1974). “A matter of life and death: an investigation into the practice of female infanticide in the Artic.” Man: The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Society, 9: p. 162.
75 Fridtjof, Nansen (1894). Eskimo Life. London: Longmans, Green & Co., p. 152.
76 Garber, Clark (1947). “Eskimo Infanticide.” Scientific monthly, 64: p. 98.
77 Langer: “Infanticide: a historical survey” (op. cit.), p. 354.
78 Balikci, Asen (1984), “Netslik,” in Damas, David, Handbook of North American Indians (Arctic), Washington DC: Smithsonian Institution, p. 427.
79 Savishinsky, Joel and Hiroko Sue Hara (1981), “Hare,” in Helm, June, Handbook of North American Indians (Subarctic). Smithsonian Institution, p. 322. See also: Gillespie, Beryl (1981), “Mountain Indians,” in Helm, June, Handbook of North American Indians (Subarctic). Smithsonian Institution, p. 331.
80 Shimkin, Demitri, B. (1986), “Eastern Shoshone,” in D’Azevedo, Warren L., Handbook of North American Indians (Great Basin). Smithsonian Institution, p. 330.
81 Riddell, Francis (1978), “Maidu and Konkow,” in Heizer, Robert F., Handbook of North American Indians (California). Smithsonian Institution, p. 381.
82 Campbell, T.N. (1983), “Coahuitlecans and their neighbors,” in Ortiz, Alonso, Handbook of North American Indians (Southwest). Smithsonian Institution, p. 352.
83 Johnson, Orna (1981), “The socioeconomic context of child abuse and neglect in native South America,” in Korbin, Jill, Child Abuse and Neglect, Berkeley: University of California Press, p. 63.
84 Cotlow, Lewis (1971). The Twilight of the Primitive. New York: Macmillan, p. 65.
85 de Meer, Kees, Roland Bergman and John S. Kushner (1993). “Socio-cultural determinations of child mortality in Southern Peru: including some methodological considerations.” Social Science and Medicine, 36: pp. 323, 328.
86 Hastings, James (1955). Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics. NY: Scribner’s Sons, Vol. I, p. 6.
87 Bugos, Paul E. and Lorraine M. McCarthy (1984), “Ayoreo infanticide: a case study,” in Hausfater, Glenn and Sarah Blaffer Hrdy, Infanticide, Comparative and Evolutionary Perspectives, New York: Aldine, p. 510.
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The objective of Day of Wrath is to present to the racialist community my philosophy of The Four Words on how to eliminate all unnecessary suffering. If life allows, next time I will reproduce the penultimate chapter. Day of Wrath will be available again in printed form.
Summer, 1945: Germany, Japan
and the Harvest of Hate
A book review by Thor Magnusson
Sometimes a book comes along that changes the way we think. Sometimes a book comes along that changes the way we act. Sometimes a book comes along that changes the way we think and the way we act. Such a book was Hellstorm–The Death of Nazi Germany, 1944-1947.
That masterpiece by Thomas Goodrich changed forever not only how we would view World War Two, but it changed how we would view the world itself. For the first time since it happened, because of one bold and breath-taking book, the scales fell from our eyes and we were finally able to see free and unfettered what the abomination called World War Two was really all about.
Swept forever into a dark, dirty corner was the filth and disease of seventy years of Jewish propaganda, seventy years of Jewish lies about the so-called “Good War” and the so-called “Greatest Generation,” seventy years of Jewish mendacity about who was bad and who was good. Suddenly, overnight, replacing those lies was an honest, impartial, unbiased, but driving, relentless, and utterly merciless account of the fate that befell Germany in 1945.
As incredible as Hellstorm was, is, and will always remain, we now know it was only half the story. While the bloody obscenity that was World War Two was being acted out against a largely helpless German population by as evil a cast of creatures as ever haunted any hell anywhere, a similar horror show was taking place on the far side of the globe. And what is revealed in Tom Goodrich’s latest book, Summer, 1945–Germany, Japan and the Harvest of Hate, is a story so savage and sadistic as to numb the senses.
While some of the events described in Summer, 1945 will be familiar to readers of Hellstorm, many will not. Clearly, the author did a vast amount of new research for this new book since much material is previously unknown, especially regarding the contributions of the “Greatest Generation” to its already ghastly list of war crimes against Germany. In fact, what was previously revealed about the Americans in Hellstorm, horrific as it was at the time, was only the faintest foretaste of what was to come in Summer, 1945. For example…
Massive, monstrous, staggering as was the scale of Red Army rape in Germany, it now seems clear that the Americans were not far behind, if behind they were at all. Simply put: No one in control cared. Far from trying to halt the nonstop sexual attacks that their men committed against helpless German females, US officers, like Soviet officers, either ignored them, laughed at them, or actively encouraged them. Upon entering their communities, American officers forced Germans to write the age and sex of all occupants in their homes, then ordered the lists nailed to doors.
“The results are not difficult to imagine,” said one horrified priest from a village where women and children were soon staggering to the local hospital after the predictable sexual assaults commenced. Some US generals even blamed the victims themselves for their own gang rape when they dared leave their homes to beg for food. Lt. General Edwin Clarke went further when he announced that the thousands of rape reports in his area were nothing more than a conspiracy by die-hard Nazis to belittle and embarrass his well-behaved and totally innocent troops.
Clarke apparently believed that the hundreds of thousands of beaten, bruised and bleeding women and children were all liars with self-inflicted sex wounds. Also, to drive home German defeat, it was noted that GIs were being ordered by their “political officers” to make the gang rapes as public as possible. Although such brutal attacks were already common on streets and sidewalks, in schools and shops, an audience of family members was the preferred crowd for gang rape. Forcing German men to watch was also favored by the Americans, just as it was by their communist comrades.
Another hideous American war crime, a despicable act of hate and savagery, was the cold-blooded murder of SS and Wehrmacht soldiers the moment they surrendered their weapons. “You will not accept the surrender of any German SS,” announced one American general, demonstrating his commitment to barbarity and a criminal contempt for the Geneva Convention. By the tens of thousands these German soldiers, some of the best fighters the world had ever seen, were shown no mercy by the cowardly US murderers. In one massacre alone over seven hundred SS men were murdered in a matter of minutes; in another massacre, five hundred died, and so on.
“The Americans forced the Germans to walk in front of them with raised hands,” said an eyewitness regarding one group of fifty. “Then they shot the prisoners in their heads from behind.”
Additionally, the unbelievably sick and sadistic torture camps operated by the US Army and European Jews in Germany and Poland was on a psychopathic scale beyond belief. Well over a hundred thousand German men, women and even children suffered brutal deaths in these nightmarish torture pens. One might have imagined, and one would have certainly hoped, that after Hellstorm nothing more could have possibly been added to this perfectly hellish script of torture—victims buried alive, women forced to lay with and kiss rotting corpses–but one would have imagined wrong.
Those few who survived these demonic camps where dying was a thing to be postponed, not hurried, could no longer be called human. Of virtually all German men and boys who somehow survived to reach home, it was noticed all had their reproductive organs destroyed beyond repair.
But horrific as the so-called “peace” in Germany was, perhaps the greatest revelations for readers of Summer, 1945 come in the war chapters devoted to Japan. From the first page forward we readers, especially we Americans readers raised on the mythology of the “Dirty Jap,” will find our world of make believe turned upside down and inside out. Winners do write the history. And never was this more apt and terribly illustrated than in the case of America’s victory over Japan.
With the possible exception of the so-called Jewish “Holocaust,” one of the greatest lies to emerge from WWII and survive for over seventy years in tact, is the one we have been told over and over ever since December 7, 1941, viz., that the Japanese soldier was a mindless, murderous automaton, that he would never surrender, that he would always fight to the death, that he “lived to die” for the Emperor, that suicide was his second nature, and so on. There is no truth to any of these fairy-tales. Such a revelation as I have just stated here should not have come as any great surprise to anyone when they think about it, but it did come as a great shock to me and it will to everyone else, I am sure. When one has been told a “truth” such as this about the “robotic” Japanese soldier, a truth told for so many years from so many sources, one simply believes it as totally, completely and mindlessly as they believe in the Jewish Holocaust or that night follows day. After reading a few pages of Summer, 1945, however, it will be very clear to everyone that never was there a greater falsehood.
While reading what the opposing sides thought, in their own words, it is quickly clear that emotionally there was no appreciable difference between what a Japanese eighteen-year-old wanted and what an American eighteen-year-old wanted. First and foremost, both wanted to live. Both wanted to survive the war so that each might return home and marry that girl they loved so much, to have kids, to get a good job, to buy a car, to raise a small garden, to play in the backyard with pets. The problem for the Japanese was that Americans were taking no prisoners. From the very first battle on Guadalcanal when frightened young Japanese began walking forward with their hands held high to surrender muttering the only English word they knew, “Mercy, mercy,” US Marines began mowing them down… all of them, not just an isolated few here and there… all of them. In countless testimonies, it is readily apparent that Japanese soldiers in hopeless situations would have gladly surrendered, by the thousands, if only they could. The hatred was so great, however, and the propaganda so virulent following President Franklin Roosevelt’s orchestrated attack at Pearl Harbor that American soldiers, sailors and airmen were simply taking no prisoners, nor did the folks back home or their commanders want them to.
“You will take no prisoners, you will kill every yellow son-of-a-bitch, and that’s it,” yelled a marine colonel as he and his men were about to land on one island.
Thus, the manufactured belief after Pearl Harbor that the Japanese always fought to the death and never surrendered worked perfectly into the deep desire of Americans to kill the “sneaky Japs,” kill them all. And so, with no option now but to fight fanatically to the death, the Japanese did. And thus, it was a case where propaganda became a self-fulfilling truth.
Added to the merciless murder of helpless enemy soldiers was the torture and mutilation the Americans inflicted on those who were merely wounded. Ears, noses, fingers, toes, and other body parts were cut off the dead and dying for souvenirs; heads were hacked off and their “cured” skulls then sold to sailors or sent home to friends and family members; even Roosevelt received a letter opener carved from a Japanese arm bone.
“This is the sort of gift I like to get,” beamed the US president proudly.
The few Japanese who were in fact saved for interrogation were kept alive only as long as their information was useful, then they too were shot, bayoneted or pushed from flying aircraft.
Another falsehood that has existed as fact for the past seventy years is that the US military conducted itself properly during the occupation of Japan and helped the defeated nation gently back to its feet during peace. Again, nothing could be further from the truth. From the day they arrived, the Americans took ruthless control of what little remained of the destroyed nation. Women, children and the elderly were thrown into the streets and forced to shift among the ruins as best they could. At every available opportunity, Japanese men suffered humiliation and degradation and many were slapped, kicked and beaten in public “for fun.” All Japanese were treated like third-class citizens for years. Starvation stalked the land even before the conquerors arrived but though the Americans had a surplus to draw from food was denied to the people, just as it was in Germany. As a result, it is likely that millions perished during the first years of occupation. It was noticed that starving children were smaller in 1946 than they were in 1936.
Additionally, just as in Germany, rape reared its filthy head in “peace.” From the moment American troops came ashore on Saipan and Okinawa—two Japanese islands with large civilian populations–rape of females, and sometimes rape of males, began. And just as in Germany following its surrender, the violent sexual assaults in Japan continued unabated for years. No one in power, from General Douglas MacArthur down, was concerned in the least about the despicable, plague-like crime. Indeed, MacArthur was much more concerned with censoring the news of rape from the outside world than stopping rape in Japan itself. It is estimated that over a million Japanese women and children were raped after the war.
There are many other shocking revelations that might be lifted from this blistering book but then, after all, this is only a review of the book and not the book itself. Readers will have to discover the rest of this startling, riveting read for themselves. Truly, Summer, 1945 is aptly subtitled, “the harvest of hate.”
In closing, a few final thoughts on the author himself. Anyone who has read anything by Tom Goodrich knows that he is a passionate man who writes with great power, strength and scope. It is a trademark that sets him apart from others. But his books also reveal the inner-writer; a writer within who displays a large heart and soul. One senses early in a book that Goodrich actually cares about his subjects. There is, of course, the larger focus of each book, the “big picture,” but Goodrich never loses touch with the small, the fragile, the seeming insignificant, the all-but-forgotten.
A touching example is offered in Summer, 1945 when a Japanese adolescent, whose face has been melted beyond recognition by the atomic blast at Hiroshima, makes plans to kill herself rather than be chained for the remainder of her life to the face of a monster. Just as the child is about to commit the final act, she overhears in the next room her anguished father quietly discussing his daughter with her mother. Sadly agreeing that the child’s face is indeed hideous beyond belief, the man then states with both pain and love in each word that he loves his girl so much that her life, not her looks, is all that matters to him. Stunned, never imagining that anyone could ever love her again with such a terrifying face, the words of love were startling to the child, so startling that she suddenly realized that although death would indeed release her from a life of pain and shame, such a selfish act would only add to the heartbreak of her father. The girl matures to womanhood when she decides then and there to accept her fate, deal with her problems herself, and simply be thankful for the love that still blesses her life when so many others are now bereft of all.
Generally, to reach an honest and accurate understanding of an event such as World War Two, one must be so dedicated to the truth that they are prepared to plow through days, weeks, months, and years of dry, sterile material filled with tedious facts, figures and stats. Few of us have the time, patience or stamina for such research. Thankfully, there are those like Tom Goodrich who do have what it takes for the long haul. Ultimately, it is the “long haul” that delivers the details of history from which comes what we know as truth. Without our history, without our truth, we are nothing as a people.
That’s why our enemy is so determined to hide or distort our history; it is also why people like Tom Goodrich are so determined to retrieve our history. Discovering the truth of our history, even after decades of propaganda and lies, is what will ultimately set us free. These two books—Summer, 1945 and Hellstorm–have gone a very long way toward setting us free. And this is what makes Thomas Goodrich’s writing style so special. Almost in spite of ourselves, we sense the truth in his words. We, the readers, are drawn into a Goodrich book before we hardly know it. Truth is like that, like a strong magnet. A day or two later, when one emerges from the book—one “emerges” from a Tom Goodrich book, they never “finish” something that stays with them forever—they feel like they are different people; they have been to places that they never knew existed; they have gone to worlds that they were not supposed to go; they have gained knowledge and understanding that they were never meant to gain. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is an uncanny writing ability. We call it genius. Summer, 1945—Germany, Japan and the Harvest of Hate has already taken its place with Hellstorm as one of the all-time most memorable and important books ever written, not just on World War Two, but on history in general. If that sounds biased, that’s because it is. We White Nationalists are extremely fortunate to have one of the world’s finest and most dedicated historians fighting on our side. People like Thomas Goodrich are why we are winning and why our victory is just a matter of time.
______________ Summer, 1945 and Hellstorm can each be purchased at Amazon.com, Barnesandnoble.com, Booksamillion.com, and through the author’s website at thomasgoodrich.com. For faster delivery, order each book separately via the author’s Paypal at [email protected] ($20 US / $25 Abroad ) or order both books together as one ($40 US / $50 Abroad).
For the first time, we have on our side a first-rate military power, Japan. We must therefore never abandon the Japanese alliance, for Japan is a power upon which one can rely.
There’s one thing that Japan and Germany have absolutely in common—that both of us need fifty to a hundred years for purposes of digestion: we for Russia, they for the Far East.
Free trade, and the deindustrialization of America
by William Pierce
Every regular television news watcher has heard the expression “New World Order” often enough now to be familiar with it. George Bush really popularized the expression during the last two years of his administration. Prior to that one heard only occasional veiled references to it, but as Mr. Bush ordered wave after wave of bombers over Iraq to pound Baghdad into rubble and attempted to kill Iraq’s President with “smart” bombs, he spoke repeatedly of the need to punish those who tried to stand in the way of the New World Order.
Bill Clinton has used the expression even more freely: he has referred to the New World Order in connection with his futile efforts to assassinate Somalia’s uppity warlord Mohammed Aidid, with his support of Russia’s current clown prince Boris Yeltsin, and, most recently, with his campaign to push the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) through the Congress. Probably most of you remember Mr Clinton talking on television about NAFTA being essential for the New World Order and for equality in the world.
Most people who have become familiar with the term assume that it is merely an abstraction: a convenient label for referring, in a general, loose sort of way, to the reordering of international power relationships which has been going on ever since the Second World War—and especially since the collapse of the Soviet Empire at the beginning of this decade.
Actually, for the initiated, the New World Order has a much more specific and concrete meaning. In brief, it is a utopian system in which the U.S. economy (along with the economy of every other nation) will be “globalized”; in which the wage levels of U.S. and European workers will be brought down to those of workers in the Third World; in which national boundaries will for all practical purposes cease to exist; in which an increased flow of Third World immigrants into the United States and Europe will have produced a non-White majority everywhere in the formerly White areas of the world; in which an elite consisting of international financiers and the masters of the mass media will call the shots; and in which so-called “peace keeping” forces from the United Nations will be used to keep anyone from opting out of the system.
This particular scheme for world rule has very deep historical roots. Tracing those roots is fascinating, but I won’t have time for that on this program today. If you want to study the historical details, then you should read my article on the New World Order in the current issue of National Vanguard magazine, which is available from the producer of this program.
I’ll simply say today that the New World Order conspiracy had its origins in a series of international Zionist conferences held around the beginning of this century. It picked up steam during the First World War and really began acquiring concrete substance with the formation of a number of organizations in the period immediately after that war, the foremost of which was the Council on Foreign Relations. By the end of the Second World War the New World Order planners formed a virtual ruling class in America with total control of U.S. foreign policy and also a growing power to mold domestic policy to suit their internationalist aims. What these people understood, long before anyone else did, is the potential power of the mass media. They understood what enormous, hidden political power could be wielded in an age of mass democracy by a tiny group of well-organized people who could manipulate public opinion by controlling the mass media.
It should be noted that the New World Order booster club has developed a rather diverse membership as its schemes have matured. There are, of course, the original, power-hungry conspirators, who believe that their god intended for them to rule the world, and there are the cynical politicians of the Bush/Clinton stripe who go along with the conspirators, hoping to receive a few choice scraps from their table.
Then there are the crazies: the homosexuals and feminists, for example, who see in the New World Order the antithesis of the heterosexual, patriarchal world they hate with such insane fervor. Along with these are the lunatic egalitarians, who are hell-bent on “equalizing” everyone.
A substantial portion of the membership consists of a rabble of academics and literati who simply want to be fashionable; they would as enthusiastically support any other intellectual fashion possessing as large and skillful a press claque.
Besides all of these, however, there are many people on the New World Order bandwagon today for more or less benign reasons. The world population really is far too large. The ongoing destruction of the global ecosystem really is unacceptable. Something must be done—and soon. Many of those who recognize these facts are neither power-hungry cynics nor deranged haters nor even fashion-conscious eggheads, but instead are sane, principled men who simply do not have the moral courage to deal in a forthright way with the population explosion in the non-White world and with a number of other pressing demographic and ecological problems. They have opted for what seems to them the only solution for halting the self-destruction of the world which has a sufficiently powerful advocacy group behind it to be feasible. They really believe that under the New World Order Kenyans no longer will be permitted to machine-gun herds of elephants from helicopters in order to collect their tusks, Brazilians no longer will be permitted to destroy the rain forests with chainsaws and flamethrowers, and Haitians will be forced to use condoms. Even White Americans will be forced to curb their wasteful habits.
The New World Order schemers have played a very significant role in bringing about many social and economic changes in America, and I could spend a lot more time than we have today talking about these changes—and why the internationalists wanted them. If you want to understand that part of the scheme you’ll just have to read my article in the current issue of National Vanguard magazine. Today I must limit myself to just one New World Order policy, and that’s so-called “free” trade and what that policy means for America.
Our first really notable experience with “free” trade in the post-Second World War period was with Japan. A few years after the war Japanese cameras began displacing U.S.-made cameras from stores in the United States, until today they totally dominate the market: Nikon, Canon, Minolta, Pentax, Olympus, Fuji—they’re all Japanese. The only two American brands left are Polaroid and Kodak. If you’ll go into a camera store and look carefully at the Polaroid and Kodak cameras on display, howeever, you’ll discover that most of them were actually manufactured in Japan or elsewhere, not in the United States.
After succeeding in establishing a virtual camera monopoly the Japanese began moving into the consumer electronics business: portable radios, television receivers, VCRs, pocket calculators, microwave ovens, hi-fi tuners and amplifiers, etc. Within two decades they virtually wiped out domestic production. The few U.S. consumer electronics companies still surviving have their products made in Asia and then put their names on them and bring them into this country to sell them.
The average American saw nothing amiss with this; indeed, he regarded it as a boon. More products were available to him, at lower prices, than there would have been if Japanese products had been kept out by trade barriers. The unhappy voices of the few hundred thousand Americans who had been employed in the camera and consumer electronics industries were drowned out by those of millions of happy consumers. When Japanese automobiles began appearing on American streets in large numbers in the 1970s, there was more of a reaction. The unionized automobile and steel workers were able to make their voices heard. They smashed Japanese cars with sledgehammers in publicity stunts designed to win sympathy for their plight. Even the politicians who had been bought by the internationalists got into the act: worried by the threat of losing union votes, they put on serious faces and talked to the television cameras about limiting the number of Japanese cars which could be brought into the country. The percentage of Hondas, Toyotas, Subarus, Nissans, and other Japanese vehicles sold in America eventually stopped rising. General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler pulled in their belts, fired a few hundred thousand American workers, and announced that they would survive. Although the U.S. steel-making industry was hit hard and was forced to close dozens of plants, it also managed to hang onto life.
All was not quite as it seemed, however. Americans were reassured by the sight of new Fords, Chevrolets, and Dodges on their highways, but in many cases not much more than the name was actually American. The Chrysler corporation sold Dodge Colts which, in fact, were made in Japan by Mitsubishi. Under a Chevrolet label General Motors sold light pickup trucks which were produced entirely in Japan. Ford did the same thing, not only with some of its consumer vehicles, but also with its farm tractors.
Japan is not the only country which has claimed a part of what used to be the American automobile industry. U.S. auto companies have stayed in business only by having more and more of the work which goes into their cars performed outside of the United States, in order to take advantage of vastly cheaper labor. Wiring harnesses from Mexico, electronic ignition modules from Taiwan, seat covers and other upholstery from Korea, alternators from Brazil, speedometers and other dashboard instruments from Hong Kong: more and more of what is sold as “American” is made elsewhere and only assembled in the United States.
The Asian country which has benefited most in recent years from the U.S. policy of “free” trade is China. The Chinese assault on American industry was not widely noticed at first, because the Chinese did not begin with high-profile consumer items, such as cars or television receivers. They began at a more basic level, first with machine tools and then with hand tools. They have virtually destroyed the American machine-tool industry singlehandedly.
In the 1950s the United States was the world leader in the manufacture of machine tools, with more than 50 per cent of the total production. Machine tools—lathes, milling machines, grinders, stamping machines, and the other large, motorized tools used in factories—are the most essential component of a nation’s industrial base. Today we make only six per cent of the world’s machine tools. In the last decade alone our share of the world’s production has declined by a factor of three, down from 19 per cent in 1984. It’s still dropping. In another five years we’ll have only three or four makers of machine tools left, and they’ll be making only highly specialized, computer-controlled tools. All of the general-purpose machine tools used in the United States will come from China or Brazil.
The same thing is happening to the U.S. hand-tool industry. If one examines the plastic-packaged tools and accessories hanging on the display peg-boards in any of the larger automotive parts stores—the spark plug wrenches and screwdriver sets and compression testers—one will find that somewhere between two-thirds and three-quarters of them are imported from Asia, mostly from China. With the larger tools—hydraulic floor jacks, for example—the situation is worse: the chances are about nine out of ten that one will find a “Made in China” label. If there are any U.S.-made jacks still to be found, they will be priced at about three times the price of a Chinese jack of similar quality. American manufacturers, with their much higher labor costs, simply cannot compete with Chinese industry, and they are being driven out of business.
For the past few years the Chinese have been moving into the production of low-priced consumer goods as well: the sort of plastic household goods that housewives buy in K-Marts or Wal-Marts. Because these goods are priced substantially lower than similar American products, consumers welcome them. They do not consider the fact that the well-paid American workers who formerly made such goods in U.S. factories now are scrambling to find service-industry employment at substantially lower wages.
The Chinese (including those in Hong Kong and Taiwan) and the Japanese are not the only Asians who are destroying the U.S. industrial base. The Koreans, for example, have had the U.S. clothing industry under attack for years and have devastated large sections of it. Mr. Clinton has just invited the Vietnamese to join the feeding frenzy.
There is a double significance to this transfer of American industry out of the country. In the first place, it lowers the average wage level of American workers, as they are forced to move from manufacturing into a service industry or into less than full-time employment. And although factory workers are the first to be hit, eventually most other segments of the work force suffer as well, even the yuppies and others who would never think of working with their hands. When people who used to work in factories have less money to spend, there’s less money to earned by everyone.
In the second place, the transfer of industry out of the United States robs us of national self-sufficiency. It may not matter much whether we have factories for producing panytyhose and plastic hair curlers or we import these things from Korea, but it matters very much whether or not we produce our own machine tools. If the Koreans give us an ultimatum: do what we say or no more plastic hair curlers, we can laugh in their faces. If the Chinese decide not to sell us more machine tools, however, we’ll be in trouble.
This, of course, is exactly what the New World Order boys planned. “Interdependence,” they call it. They began selling us on the virtues of interdependence—and the evils of independence—as early as the 1950s. The New World Order is a system in which every country is dependent on many other countries for its necessities of life, and no country is independent enough to opt out of the system and go its own way.
“Free” trade is essential to the whole scheme. The controlled media deliberately have created the impression in the public mind that “protectionism”—the regulation of imports through the imposition of tariffs or quotas—is a corrupt policy which benefits greedy industrialists at the expense of everyone else. Actually, it is a necessity for national survival and progress. Consider just three facts:
Fact Number 1: Merchants always will buy their manufactured goods from the supplier who will give them the best price for goods of a specified quality. If the best price is from a foreign supplier, and if international trade is unregulated, then the merchants will import their goods from abroad. On an individual basis the merchants really have no choice in the matter: a widget merchant who pays two or three times as much for his American-made widgets as other widget merchants do for their Chinese-made widgets soon will be out of the widget business.
Fact Number 2: For most manufactured goods the cost of the labor which went into them is the largest single component of the total production cost. When one country has a much lower wage scale than another country, then it will be able to sell its manufactured goods at a lower price, other things being equal. The other things are labor discipline, organizational skill, and the possession of the necessary machinery and raw materials. Thus, Ghana or Zambia, for example, could not compete with the United States in the production of manufactured goods even if it paid nothing at all for labor, because it lacks labor discipline, organizational ability, and an industrial base. China, on the other hand, has very cheap labor which is better disciplined than that in America, as well as the needed organizational skills for utilizing that labor effectively in large-scale enterprises. Furthermore, China has painstakingly built up its industrial base—with our collaboration—during the past 40 years or so.
Fact Number 3: When industrial production moves from a country with high wages to a country with low wages, the immediate effect will be a reduction in the difference in wages between the two countries. Wages in the country which gains the industry will rise, and wages in the country which loses the industry will fall. This will be true whether the production is in the hands of nationally based companies or a multi-national corporation. Thus, if the North American Free Trade Agreement results in the Ford Motor Company closing a plant in Detroit and building a new one in Tijuana for the production of Fords, wages will rise in Mexico and fall in the United States just as surely as if the production had shifted from Ford to a company owned entirely by Mexicans.
What this means is that if an industrialized country which has built up a high standard of living for its citizens wants to maintain its industrial base and its living standard, it must regulate imports of goods from countries with lower wage scales. If it does not, its industrial base will be eroded, and its living standard will fall. This is a fairly simple economic fact, and most Americans could understand it if the proponents of the New World Order had not thrown up a smoke screen of obfuscation. They claim that there will be “readjustments” to be made when all trade barriers are down, but that in the long run everyone will benefit. We will import more goods, they say, but we also will export more, and everything will even out. That is not true, and they know it. What will “even out” will be wage scales around the world. The rich countries will become less rich, and the poor countries will become less poor, and if the process continues long enough wage scales—and standards of living—will approach equality, which is what the egalitarian ideologues among the globalists really are aiming at. To them the present state of affairs, with White Americans earning 20 times as much as Mexican peons or Chinese coolies, is “unjust.”
Other New World Order ideologues see in the interdependence which will result from wiping out a number of strategically vital industries in the United States (and other industrialized nations) a sure way to prevent international conflict in the future. They have taught two generations of Americans that “cooperation” is a virtue in itself, and we will be a more virtuous nation when we no longer are able to act unilaterally: that is, when we must secure the agreement of the countries which supply our ball bearings and our computer chips before we make a major move in international affairs.
All of this is not to say that international trade is a bad thing in itself. Trade, like many other things, should be an instrument of national policy. A nation’s international trade should be regulated with one aim in mind: to maximize the security and prosperity of the nation. Americans can hardly expect that of a government headed by a man who only two decades ago was demonstrating in the street with other draft-dodgers, gleefully chanting, “Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Minh, the Viet Cong’s gonna win!”
The only environment in which unregulated trade can be tolerated is within a natural community of interest: i.e., within a group of political entities which have a common sense of identity and a common set of interests, determined by Nature rather than by politics alone. In such an environment unrestricted trade usually is beneficial. For example, we do not want to protect Michigan’s automobile industry from competition by an automobile manufacturer in Indiana or Texas. If Texans can build a better car at a lower price, then we, as Americans, are better off for it. We don’t worry about people in Michigan becoming dependent on Texans, because we’re the same people.
But we damned well better worry about being dependent on Chinese and Mexicans, who are fundamentally different from us in many ways.
Most White Americans, I am sure, even if they have been taken in by the egalitarian propaganda that racial differences really don’t mean anything, are not willing to have their own living standards continue to go down, so that Chinese and Mexican living standards can rise. And very few real Americans are willing to sacrifice our national independence and security to a scheme which will make us dependent on countries like China and Mexico for a lot more than cheap consumer goods.
But that’s exactly what’s happening now. Mr. Clinton and the gang in the White House are pushing as hard as they can to destroy American sovereignty, to boost interdependence at the expense of national independence, and to make us equal to Mexicans and Chinese.
The only way we can stop this is to reach millions of people with our message, to make them understand the consequences of the ongoing destruction of America’s industrial base and the motives of those responsible for it. We must make every American understand what a dangerous and evil scheme the New World Order is and what disastrous consequences it will have for all of us if we fail to derail it while there is still time.
“The existence of Buddhism
should scare the White Nationalists
who can’t think of anything but Jews”
by Cesar Tort
In a previous post I talked about my golden rule: never read those authors or philosophers who write in obscure prose.
I confess that, in the past, when I was researching the pseudoscience called psychiatry, I had to read a book of one of those authors who deliberately and unnecessarily wrote in extremely opaque prose. I refer to Michel Foucault’s analysis of how the “mental health” movement was launched after an edict of Louis XIV that created, under the umbrella name of “General Hospital,” a prison in Paris for people who had not broken any law. While I found historical data in Foucault’s Madness and Civilization germane to my investigation, I also found much tasteless sludge in his text from a strictly literary, didactic viewpoint.
I mention this only to show that I can decipher opaque prose if I wish. But only in an exceptional case, where no other historical works on the same subject were available, I dared to break my rule.
Such was not the case when I tried to read Julius Evola’s Metaphysics of Sex. After a few pages I realized that it was written deliberately in opaque prose and, since I was not researching the subject to write a book (as was the case of my study of psychiatry), my copy of Evola’s book ended in the trash can.
This illustrates my extreme passion for crystal-clear and distinct language, and my loathsome even for the great minds of Western thought that refuse to write in readable prose. In fact, what I liked the most in Leszek Kolakowski’s monumental, three-volume deconstruction of Marxism was the passage where he said that every metaphysical insight of Hegel had already been written before him, and in much clearer language. Kolakowski’s honest sentence contrasted sharply with Hans Küng’s dishonest appraisal of Hegel in a heavy treatise of my library that, to date, has escaped the trash can, The Incarnation of God: An Introduction to Hegel’s Theological Thought as Prolegomena to a Future Christology where Küng dishonestly claims that Hegel wrote his philosophy in pristine prose!
One of my favorite books is Matthew Stewart’s The Truth About Everything: An Irreverent History of Philosophy. Stewart goes as far as trying to debunk almost the entire field of philosophy, partly for the specious use of obscure prose in many of the works of the greatest thinkers. Just for the record, of the Western philosophical canon I only like Augustine’s Confessions and Nietzsche’s Ecce homo in spite of the fact that both autobiographers became mad; Voltaire’s Candide, Schopenhauer’s Essays and Aphorisms and John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty, which I still like because free speech has now been curtailed in Mill’s native country. All of these works were written in clear prose. The Truth About Everything corroborated what I already knew but was afraid to say aloud. I would like to explain this book’s thesis not by quoting Stewart but by pointing out to something that I have figured out by myself.
The accepted view about Kant’s metaphysics is that it’s too complex and profound for the layman to understand. Those who study the snares of language, on the other hand, point out that Confucius detected the trick of using obscure language to pose as a profound metaphysician. Unlike the Chinese, the West hasn’t learned to detect this trick, and even today white nationalist sites such as Counter-Currents have presented obfuscating authors as deep thinkers (Alex Dugin, only the most recent case). A single example will suffice: If the interpretation of the universities is right, that is to say, if philosophers are so profound that only a few can grasp their ideas, how do you explain that Kant, the philosopher who introduced such obscurantism into the modern West, has been interpreted in dramatically different ways by such giants as Schopenhauer and Heidegger?
The answer is obvious. The goal of gratuitously obscuring language is that, by the heaviest and densest imaginable screens of smoke thus lifted, the philosopher’s System becomes impregnable to criticism. For instance, after honest psychologists found fatal flaws in Sigmund Freud’s edifice, the orthodox Freudian Jacques Lacan reacted by translating all of Freud’s claims, written in clear German prose, to an opaque French that only the initiate could understand. But of course: we don’t need to spend precious time trying to decipher the Ecrits of the charlatan Lacan to refute Freud. Just go directly to Freud’s original texts!
Today Counter-Currents published an erudite Evola essay on Buddhism, where Evola tries to spare the founder of Buddhism from any criticism from the Right by claiming that his philosophy was not effeminate like today’s liberals, but virile. But Evola represents exactly what is wrong with complex philosophizing that moved me to put one of his books into the trash can. In his essay published at C-C he even claims that Zen stands for a return to the original Buddhism, something that is patently untrue (see below). If you ask exactly what is Evola leaving out I would say that Buddhism contained the seeds of race treason for the Aryans in India. In a recent comment at this blog, Stubbs said:
Our race has had some really bad ideas over the ages: Alexander the Great telling all his soldiers to miscegenate, the Roman Empire making “citizens” out of aliens, the Aryan prince who founded Buddhism abolishing the caste system, White rulers in Egypt and Persia letting their countries go dark, not to mention the simple infighting and disorganization that would make our race easy prey for Jews or Muslims [and Mongols I would add]. Frankly, the existence of Buddhism should scare the White Nationalists who can’t think of anything but Jews.
Stubbs is right, and to prove it I have no choice but to debunk one of the most venerated religious icons of the West after the 1960s started to replace Christianity with Oriental cults and New Age nonsense.
♣
In my twenties I read The Three Pillars of Zen and was greatly impressed by the enlightenment experience (“satori”) of a Japanese executive in that book of Philip Kapleau. Since there were no Zen schools in the city where I lived it’s no coincidence that the same month that I became interested in Zen I fell, instead, in the Eschatology cult. Infinite soul odysseys I had to cross through before I stopped seeking my salvation in mysticism, cults or the paranormal. In the remainder of this entry I’ll dwell with some of my conclusions about Buddhism after my long, dark night of the soul was finally over.
Pali is an ancient dialect of India, the equivalent for Buddhists of Latin for Roman Catholics. A text called Tripiṭaka, written in Pali, is the oldest about the life of Buddha.
“Tripiṭaka” means three baskets or divisions called the Pali Canon: Digha Nikaya (Dialogues of the Buddha), Majjhima Nikaya (Sayings of average length) and Samyutta Nikaya (Similar sayings). This “Bible” of Buddhism is formidable: a mountain of literature that secular laymen cannot address as easily as the Torah, the New Testament or the Koran. Fortunately, Wisdom Publications sells a splendid English edition with extensive introductions, summaries of the sutras attributed to Buddha, and hundreds of notes and appendices in three volumes which together consist of more than 4,000 pages. Unlike the extensive Talmud the Pali Canon is, as to abstract ideas, very dense. In addition to abstract teachings it contains interpretations and the Order’s rule attributed to Buddha. The recent translation to English is an invaluable collection for those interested in Buddhism who don’t know Pali. However, since I follow my golden rule the dense psycho-metaphysics in The Long Discourses of The Buddha: a translation of the Digha Nikaya by Maurice Walshe (1995), The Middle Length Discourses of The Buddha: a translation of the Majjhima Nikaya by Bhikkhu Nanamoli (1995), and The Connected Discourses of The Buddha: a translation of the Samyutta Nikaya by Bhikkhu Bodhi (2002) might find a place in my personal library, but I’ll never read them from cover to cover. Never.
Evola did not read them either, since this translation is so recent. But whether we like it or not we have to start from the Pali Canon, aided by modern commentators, to speculate about who might have been the historical Buddha, if he was a historical figure at all. For the moment I must rely on other scholars for what I venture to say below.
The Buddha of dogma
Buddha was born between the fifth and sixth centuries B.C. in a border of what is now Nepal and India (incidentally, a border crossed by one of my brothers in one of his searches for the “spiritual”). This seems to be true story. But legend says that Buddha was conceived when his virginal mother dreamed with a white elephant, which of course brings to mind the gospel’s nativity legends.
(Birthplace of Siddhatta in Lumbini)
Very few know that the narrative of the gospels of Matthew and Luke about the virginal conception of Jesus is not original. The Tripiṭaka also mentions a sage and a king worshiping the baby Buddha, which appears centuries after in the gospel narrative of the Magi. Moreover, the texts say that when Buddha was about thirty he suffered temptations by a devil (like Jesus in the desert at the same age) that wanted to prevent his enlightenment. And like the famous Sermon on the Mount of Jesus, Buddha is credited with the famous Sermon of Fire in which he speaks of the passions and human deceit (“Everything is on fire …”).
Like Jesus, Buddha is regarded by tradition as a man of extraordinary compassion for the downcast, and believers also attribute to him diverse miracles, like the Enlightened One having walked on the sea and calmed storms; stopped a plague in a village; more spectacular levitations than the ones attributed to Catholic saints, and even bilocations of his body. Like the Christian gospel, when Buddha died tradition says that the earth trembled and that the light of heaven was darkened. New Testament scholar Randel Helms suspects that the narrative of Jesus walking on the sea was modeled on Buddhist legends.
The Pali Canon claims that at thirty-five Buddha attained enlightenment; that the man reached the level of awakening from a world of illusion and thus became a “buddha” (legend speaks of previous Buddhas, like the Buddha Amida or the Buddha Kakusandha, but according to scholarship they are not historical figures). It is fascinating to compare the oldest and concise narrative of Buddha’s enlightenment with the legends about the same event, developed in much more recent types of Buddhism, like the Japanese Zen. But before doing it let’s think of the development of the Easter story in the New Testament.
The earliest New Testament writing, the epistles of Paul, do not talk of empty tombs, appearances of the risen Jesus, or the Ascension: they are only tortuous proclamations of faith without colorful resurrection narratives.
The Gospel of Mark, the earliest of the canonical gospels, speaks for the first time of the empty tomb but no Ascension or postmortem appearances of the risen Jesus to his disciples.
Matthew and Luke do talk about the apparitions, but Matthew omits Jesus’ Ascension into heaven.
Luke’s Acts mention the ascension but the theological type of Christology like “In the beginning was the Word…” was not yet developed.
Only in the last of the gospels to be written, the gospel of John, appears a developed Christology interwoven with other narratives about Jesus.
For the critical reader it is obvious that the writers of the New Testament added layer after layer of inspiring legends to a more primordial tale. And if the resurrection is the top event in Christianity, the Buddha’s enlightenment after his last meditation under the Bo tree is the maximum event for Buddhism. The story that conquered my imagination about the Buddha when I just left behind my teens was precisely the experience of the satori, or enlightenment, when he saw the planet Venus in the morning after his final session under the tree. “Wonder of wonders!” the Buddha said aloud. “Intrinsically all living beings are buddhas, endowed with wisdom and virtue, but because men’s minds have become inverted through delusive thinking they fail to perceive this.”
The mistake I made at twenty was taking for real the late and extremely elaborated narratives about the Buddha’s enlightenment: the story told by Yasutani-roshi in The Three Pillars of Zen. At that time I could not think as modern historians do: study the oldest texts if you want to speculate about what might have happened in history. However, had I read the new, most scholarly edition of the Tripiṭaka instead of The Three Pillars of Zen, no numinous spirit would have awakened in my mind, a spirit sparked by my reading the words of the roshi.
Once “enlightened,” the official story goes, Buddha’s mission was to teach the dharma to mankind and he delivered his first sermon. Rewording some later texts, the starting point of his teaching seems to be something like this: “Here is the sacred truth of suffering. Birth is suffering, aging is suffering… Here is the truth about the origin of suffering: desire.” And the way to suppress human suffering involves an austere life, a happy golden mean between the ruthless asceticism that the saint practiced and the worldly life. The eightfold path or “path to liberation” leads to nirvana.
The Siddhatta of history?
This eightfold path suggests that Buddha taught a kind of what Scientologists call “OT levels.” We could see the arhats or “perfected ones” as the “clears” or “liberated” in Ronald Hubbard’s psycho-babble cult. The Tripiṭaka also says that the five ascetics who had departed him then recognized the Buddha, underwent their “path to liberation” and reached the level of arhats. Buddha would be the leader of a sect with half hundred arhats or perfected men.
My comparison to modern, destructive cults may sound pretty irreverent, but that’s precisely what the irreverent history of Western philosophy by Matthew Stewart taught me. If we can mock the Wisdom of the West, why aren’t we allowed to mock the Wisdom of the East too?
White nationalist circles are fond of saying that Buddha was ethnically Aryan. But “The Buddha” is a title similar to “The Christ” of Christians to designate the man Jesus, or “The Prophet” of Muslims to refer to Mohammed. Unlike Jesus or Mohammed, the stories about Buddha were written several centuries after his death. If we want to speculate from such late legends, we must start with the name itself. As I never call “Christ” the human Jesus because I’m not Christian, from this line on I won’t call “Buddha” the human Siddhatta because I’m not Buddhist.
Sidhartha Gautama is Sanskrit for Siddhattha Gotama in Pali, the language that perhaps the founder of the religion spoke. If he existed he would have been called “Siddhatta” (Gotama was the name of his father). A person who has reached the “buddha” level simply means that he is an “enlightened one,” as the word Christ means “anointed one” in Greek (i.e., the messiah).
Like the charlatan Hubbard, who obscured his message with a mountain of unnecessary neologisms for terms already known in previous esoteric movements, Siddhatta was not original. Alara Kalama, his first teacher, had told Siddhatta that he, Siddhatta’s master, had reached “the sphere of nothing,” and his second teacher taught him to achieve “the sphere without perception and without no perception.” Whatever they told him in real life, these cryptic thoughts would inspire Siddhatta about his idea of the nirvana. Like Hubbard, all he did was to change the names and claim that “nirvana” was a plane superior to our own plane of existence.
After dropping his first teachers, and like the sanctimonious Christians of later centuries, it seems that Siddhatta practiced severe asceticism, increasingly eating less rice. Later artistic representations depict the anorexic Siddhatta with the skin of his stomach appearing almost next to his spine. The ancient text Majjhima Nikaya puts in Siddhatta’s mouth these words: “My buttocks seem wild ox hoof.” Siddhatta felt the danger of dying and accepted milk and rice offered by a peasant girl. He recovered gradually and his first disciples abandoned him after he quitted ascetics. Legend tells us that after surpassing the temptations of the devil, in his meditation sessions Siddhatta retrieved the memories of his past existences. (The founder of another religion, Hubbard, also claimed having remembered his past lives.)
Whether these stories were historical or not, may I remind my readers the most elementary rules of logic. Clearly, if reincarnation does not exist, both Hinduism and Buddhism are based on deception. Similarly, if Yahweh didn’t speak to Moses at Sinai, Judaism is based on a lie. If Jesus was not resurrected, Christianity is based on a lie. And if the angel did not speak to Muhammad, Islam is based on a lie. The only difference with the doctrine of reincarnation is that it was not original of Siddhatta: it preceded him within the metaphysical tradition of his homeland. But the postmodern psyche is shaped so that the mere fact that such an ancient doctrine enjoys wide acceptance makes it respectable.
Siddhatta visited the house of his father. Legend tells us that Yasodhara, the wife Siddhatta had abandoned, fell under his feet. Siddhatta’s father asked his son to establish the rule that no child could be ordered monk of the new religion, unless he obtained permission of his father. Siddhatta nodded. If the anecdote is historical it proves that the now “enlightened” man allowed himself to be treated like a child, again.
(Dhâmek Stûpa in Sârnâth, India, site of the first teaching of Siddhatta)
In Jetavana Siddhatta founded a famous monastery which became his headquarters and where he gave his sermons. The movement grew and soon many monasteries were founded in the major towns of the valley of Ganges. The Hindus believed that Siddhatta had a special trick for galvanic attraction. As Mother Teresa would later do also in India, Siddhatta visited the patients: a PR trick we see even in the careers of politicians during election campaigns.
Siddhatta died of old age, and it is instructive to know that before dying he became seriously ill. Similar to what the leader of the Church of Scientology, David Miscavige, said after his guru died in 1986—that Hubbard voluntarily got rid of his body—, Siddhatta’s followers believe that he passed away voluntarily. He was cremated; his relics divided to the satisfaction of the various groups.
♣
The central Buddhist doctrine, that suffering is caused by attachment to life, is a typical oriental escape from Life. After the magnificent sculptures in classical times of young Aryan bodies, the Eastern spirit of apathy and resignation (see my recent quote of Will Durant at Occidental Dissent) was reflected in Greek art through sculptures of sick old men. What a difference with the self-image of the Hellenes when Athens was at its height!
The other Siddhatta doctrine, that overcoming worldly attachment overcomes suffering, is the perfect corollary of such a pessimistic worldview. It is surprising that the religions that arose on dry soil, like Judaism and Christianity, have fantasized about a utopian future while moist religions, such as Buddhism and other Indian cults, preach the annihilation of the desire: one of the oldest definitions of nirvana. The central belief of Buddhism is that, if we get rid of attachment, we free ourselves from suffering. From this standpoint you will understand why devout Buddhists meditate hour after hour. The object is, to put it in contemporary terms, to turn the ego faculty off, an ego from which all suffering is derived.
Anyone who believes that we must cast out our desires would do well to shoot himself: the most direct way to destroy the ego, and forever. Siddhatta’s followers would object because of their sacred belief in the reincarnation chain, which condemns the suicidal individual to another, and probably worse, life. I remember how I was disappointed by the author of The Three Pillars of Zen while reading another of his books in a bookstore. The now “roshi-Kapleau” condemned both suicide and euthanasia. But the concept of nirvana is much like what we may experience after death: going nowhere, as we were before birth.
The painful way that the historical Siddhatta died contrasts with the serene depictions in Buddhist art. This is why in this post I did not reproduce any artistic iconography of India’s saint. They are all flawed and depict the Buddha of dogma, not the Siddhatta of history. More fundamental is the fact that the doctrine of reincarnation, as understood by Hinduists, Buddhists, Scientologists and many New Agers, is cowardly and un-Aryan.
Pace Evola I see no Übermensch in Siddhatta or in early Buddhism.
Editor’s Note: Here and in the following passages Savitri idealises modern Japan. Just look at the island today, or China! Regarding what she wrote above, remember what Kenneth Clark said in the last program of Civilisation: ‘One sees why heroic materialism is still linked with an uneasy conscience. The first large iron foundries like the Carron Works or Coalbrookdale, date from about 1780. The only people who saw through industrialism in those early days were the poets. Blake, as everybody knows, thought that mills were the work of Satan. ‘Oh Satan, my youngest born… thy work is Eternal death with Mills and Ovens and Cauldrons’ (the above image appeared in the Civilisation TV series). Savitri continues: 
