Resist Commie Prop, Support Indy!

... with a pro human record like the Russian Communist Party's, who wouldn't feel deeply offended at Hollywood's creative license? Everything else aside (!) thanks to their successful agitprop everyone has forgotten they had been secretly wheeling and dealing with their Hegelian brother party - the National Socialists - until Hitler betrayed them. Only then did they come to the Allied side ...

"The 1922 anti-Versailles Rapallo Treaty between the German Weimar Republic and the Soviet Union against the Western Allies is hardly ever remembered, let alone its secret addendum allowing Germany to train their military in Soviet territory. ["(...) the Soviet Union [was] crawling with German engineers, instructing Soviet generals on the uses of poison gas and the intricacies of tank warfare (...)", Tom Reiss, "The Orientalist", Random House, 2006, p. 187]

The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, also known as the Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact of 1939 is today a buried public secret. It remained in effect until 1941 when Hitler in Operation Barbarossa invaded the Soviet Union. The treaty foresaw in another secret protocol that divided Finland, the Baltic states, Poland, and Romania into Nazi and Soviet spheres of influence. All were subsequently invaded, or forced to cede territory to Nazi Germany, or the Soviet Union. Stalin joined the Allies against Nazism only on 1941 after Hitler treacherously turned his back on his former conspiracy partner. Since then 'Fascist' is the pejorative designation of choice for all opponents of 'progress'".
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Yahoo!News: "Indiana Jones Makes Russian Communists See Red"

Russian Communist Party members condemned the new "Indiana Jones" film on Friday as crude, anti-Soviet propaganda that distorts history and called for it to be banned from Russian screens. "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull" stars Harrison Ford as an archeologist in 1957 competing with an evil KGB agent, played by Cate Blanchett, to find a skull endowed with mystic powers.

"What galls is how together with America we defeated Hitler, and how we sympathized when Bin Laden hit them. But they go ahead and scare kids with Communists. These people have no shame," said Viktor Perov, a Communist Party member in Russia's second city of St. Petersburg.

The comments were made at a local Communist party meeting and posted on its Internet site www.kplo.ru. The film, the fourth in the hugely successful Indiana Jones series, went on release in Russian cinemas on Thursday. Russian media said it was being shown on 808 screens, the widest ever release for a Hollywood movie.

In past episodes Indiana Jones has escaped from Nazi soldiers, an Egyptian snake pit, a Bedouin swordsman and a child-enslaving Indian demigod.

"Harrison Ford and Cate Blanchett (are) second-rate actors, serving as the running dogs of the CIA. We need to deprive these people of the right of entering the country," said another party member, Andrei Gindos.

Though the ranks of the once all-powerful Communist Party have dwindled since Soviet times, its members see themselves as the defenders of the achievements of the old Soviet Union.

Other communists said the generation born after the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union were being fed revisionist, Hollywood history. They advocated banning the Indiana Jones outright to prevent "ideological sabotage."

"Our movie-goers are teenagers who are completely unaware of what happened in 1957," St Peterburg Communist Party chief Sergei Malinkovich told Reuters.

"They will go to the cinema and will be sure that in 1957 we made trouble for the United States and almost started a nuclear war."

"It's rubbish ... In 1957 the communists did not run with crystal skulls throughout the U.S. Why should we agree to that sort of lie and let the West trick our youth?"

Vladimir Mukhin, another member of the local Communist Party, said in comments posted on the Internet site that he would ask Russia's Culture Ministry to ban the film for its "anti-Soviet propaganda." (...) >>>

- Filed on Articles in "History Compiled" -

Resist Commie Prop, Support Indy! - now updated with historical perspective

... with a pro human record like the Russian Communist Party's, who wouldn't feel deeply offended by the Hollywood creative license? Everything else aside (!) thanks to their successful agitprop everyone has forgotten they had been secretly wheeling and dealing with their Hegelian brother party - the National Socialists - until well into WWII when Hitler betrayed them. Only then did they come to the Allied side ...

"The 1922 anti-Versailles Rapallo Treaty between the German Weimar Republic and the Soviet Union against the Western Allies is hardly ever remembered, let alone its secret addendum allowing Germany to train their military in Soviet territory. ["(...) the Soviet Union [was] crawling with German engineers, instructing Soviet generals on the uses of poison gas and the intricacies of tank warfare (...)", Tom Reiss, "The Orientalist", Random House, 2006, p. 187]

The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, also known as the Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact of 1939 is today a buried public secret. It remained in effect until 1941 when Hitler in Operation Barbarossa invaded the Soviet Union. The treaty foresaw in another secret protocol that divided Finland, the Baltic states, Poland, and Romania into Nazi and Soviet spheres of influence. All were subsequently invaded, or forced to cede territory to Nazi Germany, or the Soviet Union. Stalin joined the Allies against Nazism only on 1941 after Hitler treacherously turned his back on his former conspiracy partner. Since then 'Fascist' is the pejorative designation of choice for all opponents of 'progress'".
______________________________________________________________

Yahoo!News: "Indiana Jones Makes Russian Communists See Red"

Russian Communist Party members condemned the new "Indiana Jones" film on Friday as crude, anti-Soviet propaganda that distorts history and called for it to be banned from Russian screens. "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull" stars Harrison Ford as an archeologist in 1957 competing with an evil KGB agent, played by Cate Blanchett, to find a skull endowed with mystic powers.

"What galls is how together with America we defeated Hitler, and how we sympathized when Bin Laden hit them. But they go ahead and scare kids with Communists. These people have no shame," said Viktor Perov, a Communist Party member in Russia's second city of St. Petersburg.

The comments were made at a local Communist party meeting and posted on its Internet site www.kplo.ru. The film, the fourth in the hugely successful Indiana Jones series, went on release in Russian cinemas on Thursday. Russian media said it was being shown on 808 screens, the widest ever release for a Hollywood movie.

In past episodes Indiana Jones has escaped from Nazi soldiers, an Egyptian snake pit, a Bedouin swordsman and a child-enslaving Indian demigod.

"Harrison Ford and Cate Blanchett (are) second-rate actors, serving as the running dogs of the CIA. We need to deprive these people of the right of entering the country," said another party member, Andrei Gindos.

Though the ranks of the once all-powerful Communist Party have dwindled since Soviet times, its members see themselves as the defenders of the achievements of the old Soviet Union.

Other communists said the generation born after the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union were being fed revisionist, Hollywood history. They advocated banning the Indiana Jones outright to prevent "ideological sabotage."

"Our movie-goers are teenagers who are completely unaware of what happened in 1957," St Peterburg Communist Party chief Sergei Malinkovich told Reuters.

"They will go to the cinema and will be sure that in 1957 we made trouble for the United States and almost started a nuclear war."

"It's rubbish ... In 1957 the communists did not run with crystal skulls throughout the U.S. Why should we agree to that sort of lie and let the West trick our youth?"

Vladimir Mukhin, another member of the local Communist Party, said in comments posted on the Internet site that he would ask Russia's Culture Ministry to ban the film for its "anti-Soviet propaganda." (...) >>>

Corporal Hitler's Master of Ceremonies

Sir Winston S. Churchill in his Nobel Prize winning "Memoirs of the Second World War" touches briefly on one of the most colourful people of the interbellum. Without context or further identification - we'll fill that in later - he mentions meeting one Putzi Hanfstaengl during the summer of 1932 while on a research trip for the purposes of his book "Life of Marlborough".

"At the Regina Hotel a gentleman introduced himself (...) and spoke a great deal about "the Fueher", with whom he appeared to be intimate. As he seemed to be a talkative fellow, speaking excellent English, I asked him to dine. (...) After dinner he went to the piano and played and sang many tunes and songs in such a remarkable style (...) He was a great entertainer (...) He said I ought to meet him (the Fuehrer), and that nothing would be easier to arrange. Herr Hitler came every day to the hotel about five o'clock, and would be very glad to see me."

Churchill is giving an account of his considerations, in the process giving us a lesson in patriotism, chivalry, and realism. It just goes to show how 'politically correct' we've all become! We'll come back to the subject later in the post.

"I had no national prejudices against Hitler at the time. I knew little of his doctrine or record and nothing of his character. I admire men who stand up for their country in defeat, even though I am on the other side. He had a perfect right to be a patriotic German if he chose. I always wanted England, Germany and France to be friends."

Then Churchill happened to pass a few adverse remarks, questioning Herr Hitler's "so violent views about the Jews," and the arrangement was stopped short from the German side. "This was the last I saw of 'Putzi' (...) Thus Hitler lost the only chance of seeing me."

Putzi Hanfstaengl resurfaces in another literary master piece. The joy of one of the best books I have come across in years could easily have been spoiled by the politically correct activities of the Dutch publishers who, for reasons best known to themselves, are marketing the book to an audience of multicultis, describing the protagonist as pleading for 'the multicultural society' and 'diversity'. This is a ludicrous notion in the context of the interbellum. Perhaps such a philistine approach to marketing has occurred in other countries as well. The English language 2006 Random House Trade Edition I know for a fact to have escaped the addition of 'narrarives'.

"The Orientalist" by Tom Reiss is not a piece of cheap propaganda for activists to exploit for their own purposes. It is a thoroughly and uniquely researched work that accounts hitherto less known historical and personal facts. It is well written, and chronicles a fascinating and remarkable story, encompassing four empires, three continents, three religions, two revolutions and two world wars. I have already written about it on earlier occasions, in "History Class: of agit-prop, revolution and terror!".

An episode during the early period of the advancing Nazi party, touches the surreal and the absurd in a truly hilarious manner. Reiss describes Putzi - "little squirt" in Bavarian dialect - as Hitler's Harvard educated Press Secretary, creative cheerleader and organiser of Hitler's Flying Circus ......

"the fastest political tour in history, using trains, planes and automobiles to shuttle the führer around the country (...) a three-engine Lufthansa D 2001 and three long, black Mercedes saloons (...) raced together across Germany, with Hitler in the lead car, the top down, a leather flight helmet keeping his hair in place. (...) Hitler thrived on the crazy hours and the speed of it all. It was a political blitzkrieg. But the real how was in the air, when the candidate would descend on German cities (...). The sympathetic German papers took to calling these the Freedom Flights, and they contributed mightily to the growing myth of Hitler as Germany's 'dashing' savior - its redeeming angel from the skies, descending on all parts if the fatherland. (...)."

Churchill must have caught Hanfstaegnl in 1932 during one of the Flying Circus' political road tours. Unbeknownst to Churchill the entertainer's full name was Ernst Sedgwick Hanfstaengl, "mother a Sedgwick from the old New England family. (Two of his grandfathers had been Civil War generals; one of them, a German immigrant 48er, was a pallbearer at Abraham Lincoln's funeral.) (...) His father was one of the most prominent men in Munich in the late nineteenth century, and the Hanfstaengls had visitors such as Mark Twain, Richard Strauss, and Fridtjof Nanson, the famous arctic explorer and passport inventor, to their lavish villa. How on earth had this white-shoe boy gotten involved with a bunch of lower class, anti-Semite beer-hall politicians?"

"Putzi was the Nazi movement's only Harvard man. Though a figure of fun among the hard-core Nazis - Putzi played 'Sam' to Hitler's Bogart, entertaining him at the end of the day with his piano playing - he was instrumental in making Nazism salonfähig (...) Hitler used Hanfstaengl's affable nature and white-shoe pedigree to forge many of his important links to German and American rich people (...) Putzi was the connection to old American, British and German families."

In 1922 Putzi talks to a young American military attaché in Germany, Captain Truman-Smith, because "all the revolutionary nonsense down in Bavaria had the embassy concerned". "Putzi wrote in his 1957 memoir 'Unheard Witness' how Truman-Smith provides him with a Press ticket to a meeting with "the most remarkable fellow I've ever come across", Adolf Hitler. Truman-Smith requests him to have a look and report back. He heard Hitler speak at the Kindlkeller about Kemal Ataturk and the example of Mussolini, and ... joined the movement."

An inventive cheerleader for the Harvard football team, Putzi transferred that position to Hitler's Nazi entourage. (...) According to Putzi's memoir, he and Hitler were together at the house of the Nazi's semiofficial photographer, Heinrich Hoffmann, in Munich at the time:

I started playing some of the football marches I had picked up at Harvard. I explained to Hitler all the business about cheerleaders and marches, counter-marches and deliberate whipping up of hysterical enthusiasm. I told him about the thousands of spectators being made to roar Harvard, Harvard, Harvard, rah, rah, rah!" in unison and of the hypnotic effect of this sort of thing. I played him some of the Sousa marches and then my own Falarah [Putzi's contribution to the Harvard cheerleading repertoire], to show how it could be done by adapting German tunes, and gave them all that boyant beat so characteristic of American brass-band music. I had Hitler fairly shouting with enthusiasm. "That is it, Hanfstaengl, that is what we need for the movement, marvelous, and he pranced up and down the room like a drum majorette.

After that he had the SA band practicing the same thing. I even wrote a dozen marches or so myself over the course of the years, including the one that was played by the brown-shirt columns as they marched through the Brandenburger Tor on the day he took over power (...) that is the origin of it and I suppose I must take my share of the blame."

That summer (of 1932) saw daily gun battles between Nazis and Communists on the streets of Berlin. Christopher Isherwood, living in Berlin at the time, thought there was something false and ritualistic about the street fighting, as though both parties were in it mainly for publicity purposes."

(...) There was no doubt that both sides (...) had an interest in breaking down public order and scaring everyone away from the center parties (...) a second round of national elections proved the extremists' violence making strategies effective: both Nazis and Communists gained at the expense of moderate parties (...)."

After the elections of November 1932 "even the pretense of fighting between the Nazis and Communists was dropped. It was time to deliver the coup de grâce to the bourgeois center - the German democracy (...) Communists and Nazis stood arm in arm, one shouting 'Red Front,' the other 'Heil Hitler!" (...) rows of low-rent housing hung with alternating rows of fluttering swastika and hammer-and-sickle flags."

We forget the methods and purposes of terrorism and violence at our peril. Here's the news from Athens a few weekens ago.

- More excerpts from "The Orientalist" by Tom Reiss on the history of the two Socialist movements in future postings.

The German Revolution

The present is a review of an episode in "The Orientalist" by Tom Reiss, a thoroughly and uniquely researched work that accounts hitherto less known historical and personal facts. Set during the interbellum, it chronicles a fascinating and remarkable story, encompassing four empires, three continents, three religions, two revolutions and two world wars. Earlier posts were "History Class: of agit-prop, revolution and terror!"

xox

On Monday, 11th November 1918, delegates from the new Social Democratic government of Germany officially signed the armistice, ending Germany's part in the Great War 1914-1918. The Kaiser moved to comfortable exile in The Netherlands.

But mob rule reigned Germany. Leftist leader Emil Eichhorn, self-appointed chief of the People's Revolutionary Berlin Police Department - personally freed 650 prisoners from police headquarters at the head of a mob. Others seized newspaper offices, government buildings, stores, and telegraph offices.

The demobilising army agreed not to oppose the government, in exchange for a free hand in quelling the revolutionary unrest. The government took the responsibility and the blame for the humiliating surrender, while simultaneously delegating political power - the state's monopoly of force - to Rightist officers.

As the army demobilised in Berlin, all moral constraint melted away. Here's an account of artist George Grosz: "The city was dark, cold and full of rumours. The streets were wild ravines haunted by murderers and cocaine peddlers ... People denied all knowledge but whispered about secret manoeuvres by the Black Reichswehr or a newly formed Red Army." Bursts of machine-gun fire and hand-grenade explosions were common. Grosz: "Inhabitants (...) went up on the roof to shoot pigeons and people. Their sense of proportion (...) got misplaced."

Three hundred people perished each day from influenza alone. Demobilised soldiers started selling their weapons on the streets. Those who held on to their arms followed their unit commanders into Mafia-style, loosely connected militias, known as the Freikorps (Free Corps), a proto type of the later Waffen SS, but originally consisting of volunteers in the Wars of Liberation against Napoleon in 1813-1815.

It was more than just the Red menace which motivated the Freikorps, their originators being the ancestors of all guerilla fighters and revolutionary insurgents of the next century. An even earlier connection identified them with the Teutonic Knights. They were anxious to proof themselves worthy of the medieval battles in the East against Poles and Tartars.

The Western powers restricted the German military, but motivated by fear of the Soviet revolutionary threat, refrained from disarming and restraining the Freikorps. In 1919 the Freikorps spontaneously and without orders moved against Poland, Lithuania and Latvia - the same countries the Nazis re-invaded in 1941.

Despite their symbolism and ancestry the Freikorps did not succeed in turning the tide of the Whites against the Reds and descended on a city in chaos, armed to the teeth, wreaking havoc on the new republic.

The revolutionary neighbourhoods were attacked without restraint. The front was brought to civilian society. This maintained the fantasy that the war had not really ended. Unarmed civilians had become the enemy. It "was a lesson in local brutality and cold-bloodedness that prepared many of them for work as storm troopers or concentration-camp guards in the years to come."

A footnote provides an important psycho-pathological context: "Many returning soldiers, no matter their political disposition, would display signs of sociopathy. Homicides and rapes became commonplace in postwar Berlin, brutal acts committed by men with no previous criminal record (...)"

"The panic evoked in Germany by the fate of Russia drove so deep into the psyche of ordinary Germans that they could not see that the forces of the new Right were equally hostile to bourgeois values like law, order and moral restraint. The Freikorps ethic, every bit as revolutionary as that of the Bolsheviks, masqueraded behind a false aura of conservatism and pacification.

Real conservatives believed in the value of traditions, but the Freikorps believed exactly the opposite - for them, the Great War had proved that the morality and social structure of peacetime were corrupt and meaningless. The politics behind the war had been a fraud, but the fighting had been real, and in this reality, the 'New Man' of the Right-wing revolution was born."

Author of 'Storm of Steel' and 'Battle As Inner Experience' Ernst Jünger hailed the 'storm soldier': "the coming of a whole new race, smart, strong and filled with will, to save Europe from its liberal delusions". "For this New Man, as for the Red revolutionaries, the legal and moral foundations of society were mere bourgeois squeamishness. At the front, only the fundamental values of bravery, ruthlessness, and camaraderie mattered - and the fundamental precept of Freikorps ideology: all society is the front."

The more the Freikorps suppressed the revolution, the faster it spread. Bolshevik cells and councils (Soviets) sprang up in towns and cities across Germany. The Munich Soviet was led by a former mental patient who wrote threatening letters to the Pope and declared war on Switzerland for failing to provide a shipment of locomotives.

In April 1919 the Bolshevik triumvirate led by Lenin associates made an attempt to launch Red Terror. Bourgeois and local aristocrats (every locale was supposed to have one, in the absence of which the village headmaster was supposed to volunteer) were jailed, property was confiscated, opposition presses smashed and schools shut down - "though this was not a real Red Terror but more of Red Terror manqué. But in the event of insufficient ruthlessness on the part of the German Left, the German Right was only too happy to fill the void."

The Freikorps attacked Munich as if it were a foreign city. The Reds held the town for three days, at the end of which more than a thousand were shot, including seminary students.

The next year saw a coup by Dr Kapp and General Ludendorf. According to an anecdote Corporal Hitler came too late to join it. The ousted Social Democratic government being unable to turn out the Freikorps against the Freikorps, called for a general strike. This succeeded, sending the putschists fleeing to Sweden, upon which the Spartacists raised a 80,000 strong 'Red Army of the Ruhr' in order to seize the mining and heavy industry in that area. The reinstated Social Democratic government retaliated by setting the Freikorps loose on Berlin. The Reds in the Ruhr were crushed.

"Finally, the major disturbances ended, though street battles and small uprisings continued to break out in towns across the fatherland. In the spring of 1921" as the protagonist of "The Orientalist" crossed the border into Germany, the country had fallen into uneasy quiet ...

- More excerpts from Tom Reiss' "The Orientalist" on the history of the two Socialist movements in next posts.

- Up next: Both Sir Winston S. Churchill in "Memoirs of the Second World War" and Tom Reiss' in "The Orientalist" touch on one of the most colourful people of the interbellum, Hitler's Master of Ceremonies.

The Totalitarian Pseudo-Religions (III)

Continued from Part II:

A much better job was made of it on the right hand side of the totalitarian divide. It is imprecise custom to describe all varieties, Germanic Nazism and its Italian and Spanish counterparts, as Fascism. There are however important and specific differences.

The Spanish branch endeavoured to put itself on a par with the Catholic Church and fitted itself out with a sacred mission, which gave it much more push than the pseudo-religion Soviet style.

In Italy - although the former journalist Benito Mussolini proved his megalomaniac tendencies by introducing his own calender, marking the Fascist March on Rome in 1922 - the Italian variety originally didn't do race and pseudo-religion. Mussolini even criticized Hitler's racism. It was not until in1938 the Italo-German Pact of Steel came into effect that the Italian race laws were passed.

By contrast German Nazism did race, cultural political correctness and religion, and how! The pagan variety. Getting back to our hapless commentator of part I "since the original Nazis were self declared Christians, perhaps we should refer to them as Christos-Nazis": the Nazis weren't self-confessed Christians, it was the other way around: the Nazis mimicked religion, but not the Christian one, which - as we have seen - "bound man's ferocious side that prevented him from usurping God's throne". That - on the contrary - would be the last thing the Nazis stood for as far as the supremacy of Aryan man - the Overman - the Ubermensch was concerned.

The essence of Nazism lies in the extent to which it played the religious card in manipulating the German people. Unlike its mirror ideology communism, it succeeded in touching heart and soul at once. This gave it dynamic, the energy from hell and the cruelty that far exceeded the Italian and Spanish totalitarian varieties.

The writers of The Messianic Legacy speak of "the first mystic theocracy since ancient Rome ... the Fuhrer - not a politician or even a demagogue, but a shaman". It provided the German people with a tribal cosmology, a philosophy and an ideology at once. By the nightly Nuremberg mass displays of uniforms, flags, lights, symbols and hypnotising rhythms that caused a form of trance, manipulating heart, soul and nerve centre (the so-called Cathedrals of Light: see photo).

Hitler's rhetorical gifts were non-existent as far as content was concerned: it was simplistic and infantile, renowned for its banality, but it had mantra quality. His intonation had a poisoned energy, like "a jungle war drum". Once combined with the contagiousness of the mass hysterics and the tension of the thousands of people closely packed in an enclosure, the result may well be called altered consciousness, practically: a mystical experience.

Hermann Rauschning, an early and intimate aide of Hitler's got cold feet in 1935 and fled to America where he wrote two books in warning the world for the impending menace. It soon became apparent that Hitler knew exactly what he was doing. He's quoted as saying: "During the mass event thought is suspended. As this is the consciousness I need as a sounding board for my speeches, I order people to attend ... intellectuals, the bourgeoisie and the workers. I mix people. I talk to them as a mass", a collective soul of Overmen.

This collective soul - the 'Volk', or Germanic tribal spirit, was said to lose power and energy through the presence on its soil of the Undermen. That prevented their greatness from rising to sheer cosmic levels, their rightful destiny as a people. In 'Mein Kampf' Hitler writes in detail how to play the will of people: "we need a hierachical Order of a secular priesthood."

Parts of the secular religion were provided by the composer Richard Wagner, who in the nineteenth century had "glorified the uniquely sacred quality of the Germanic blood, believing with all his heart in the theatre as a temple of the Germanic art, where mystical rites would set the German soul free".

Tom Reiss in The Orientalist describes how in a fact of extreme irony Theodor Herzl got the idea of a modern Jewish state (Zion, Israel) while listening to Wagner's opera Tannhaeuser. A story that is witness to the fact that the romantic, mystical way of thinking, linking race and culture (Blut, blood) to the ancestral soil (Boden) was not exclusively a German one, but was also typical of the time [1].

The philosopher Friedrich Nietsche we have already mentioned as provider of the required basic mind-set..

Occultism and secret societies were also rife in the Third Reich: new Templars, Germanic Orders, the Thule Society, and the Freicorps (proto SS), the latter inspired by the medieval Teutonic knights and essential to the National Socialist cause.

Christian calender occasions were replaced by pagan celebrations: Jule Tide, the semination of the flag (Blutfahne), harvest and fertility rites, solstices, and the Indo-Germanic celebration of the return of the sun god: the Sol Invictus cult (Hitler as Sol Invictus: see photo).

The Orientalist provides us with a hilarious anti climax to the carefully constructed pseudo-religious National Socialist building: a prankish claim by one Putzi Hanfstaengl - the ultimate American version of the public school tie. He was a member of the core group responsible for the early Nazi Party political campaign - Hitler's Flying Circus - and head of foreign press relations. Reiss: "Among his many creative contributions to the early Nazi movement was turning the Harvard football song - 'Fight Harvard! Fight! Fight! Fight!' - into the model for the chant 'Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil!' of the Nazi mass meetings".

Reality may out-weird fiction many times over.

The Totalitarian Pseudo-Religions (II)

Continued from Part I

Enlightenment inspired, first communism and after it Nazism, sought to release man from the grip of Christianity that had kept the human spirit captive in the endeavour to save man from himself, to bind and tame human nature's creative, ferocious, chaotic, predatory side, to save his very soul. The Nietzschean ideal wanted it released, to lift man up and usurp the position of the Christian God that had kept it within bounds, denying man his own greatness, or so he thought.

The essence of this ideal is captured by Henri de Lubac in his great work "The Drama of Atheist Humanism", quoting the reflections of Rainer Maria Rilke, recorded after enthusiastically reading the work of the new prophet, Friedrich Nietzsche:

""He whom men worship as the Messiah turns the whole world into an infirmary. He calls the weak, the unfortunate, the disabled his children and his loved ones. What about the strong? How are we ourselves to climb if we lend our strength to the unfortunate and the oppressed, to idle rogues with no wits and no energy? Let them fall, let them die, alone and wretched. Be hard, be terrible, be pitiless! You must thrust yourselves forward, forward! A few men, but great ones, will build a world with their strong, muscular, masterful arms on the corpses of the weak, the sick and the infirm!"
Others have repeated the cry: "The gods are dead, long live the Overman (Ubermensch)!", celebrate the new Nietzschean ideal in terms that none can afford to ignore as a clue to some of the dominant facts of contemporary history: Nietzsche predicts an early return to the ideal, but to an entirely different and new ideal. To understand this ideal there will be a category of free minds, fortified by war, solitude and danger. They will know the wind, the glaciers, the Alpine snows; they will be able to plumb the deepest gulfs without wavering. Endowed with a kind of sublime perversity, they will deliver us from loving our neighbours and from the desire of nothingness, that the earth may recover its purpose and men their hopes".

And so, instead of the ever transcending greatness in humility, as man measures himself against the demanding directions issued by God through Revelation, man became the measure of himself, of which we oversee the result today.

Over the years a few books have been written that sought to posit something quite different, but that in passing provide us with some wonderful insights into the origins and workings of the two totalitarian pseudo-religions: communism and Nazism. One of the works, we have already introduced elsewhere: Tom Reiss' The Orientalist, gives us pages of minute details of the times and the people involved, and who - in some cases - lived through both versions of the man induced hell.

Another work - perhaps remarkably so - is The Messianic Legacy, the second 1982 tome of the Holy Blood and Holy Grail trilogy, written by former BBC journalists, Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh and Henry Lincoln. They set out to make the case of the original story that was later plagiarised, vulgarised, simplified and commercialised by Dan Brown in The Da Vinci Code. Of course much later, the whole hoax of the Priory of Sion and the goings-on in Rennes-Le-Château were exposed as an elaborate fabrication by Pierre Plantard c.s. But that was after a whole industry of gullible esoterics had set up shop.

But that aside, the BBC authors must be recommended for making an excellent job of their homework. This fortunately leaves us, in the second tome of the trilogy, with an erudite description how religion and myth subconsciously influence heart and mind, and how the other New Prophets of the Enlightenment, Bakunin and Adolf Hitler for communism and Nazism respectively, willfully used religious trappings and paraphernalia to get the masses on their side. The authors term these constructs surrogate secular religions.

Bakunin for over twenty years, belonged to the rank and file of Free Masonry and - as we have seen - Joseph Stalin (alias the pockmarked one: see foto) for some obscure reason best known to himself, finished his education in a Tiblisi seminary. Not only did he rub shoulders with The Orientalist protagonist's revolutionary mother, he was also a regular house guest of the well known esoterist G.I. Gurdjieff. From both these sources he got to know humanity's religious impulse up close, and learned how to harness and manipulate it.

The Messianic Legacy describes the pseudo-religious oath sworn on the occasion of Lenin's death and how the body was preserved, displayed and adored in later years, reminiscent of Christian saints.

The value attached to the membership of the Communist Party - particularly during the thirties of the last century, was specifically religious in nature.

Membership of the Pioneers from the age of nine had all the hallmarks of a rite of passage and was on par with the Catholic's first communion. The red handkerchief - symbolizing the blood of the revolutionary martyrs - was perceived as a relic, crucifix or charm. Nobody was allowed to touch it.

The book posits however, that ultimately the Marxist-Leninist ideology was never very much more than just that. It flopped because a religion must appeal to the heart as well as the soul at the same time, give succor in times of distress and provide answers to life's cosmic questions. Communism as a pseudo-religion always remained materialist, abstract and ultimately emotionally sterile.

To be continued, Part III: A much better job was made of it on the right side of the totalitarian divide. It is customary to describe all varieties, Germanic Nazism and its Italian and Spanish counterparts, as ...

Treason (IV): a Vast Left-Wing Conspiracy?

Earlier instalments: Part I, Part II, and Part III

Criticism of the E.U. isn't encouraged by liberal politicians: such would only place the organization in an unfavourable light and create an atmosphere against it. If we do, we mustn't be surprised about the return of a majority of No votes against the adoption of the E.U. Constitution - as was the case in The Netherlands and France. The German chairman is at present looking for Clintonian options around this problem, to get it ratified nevertheless - such is the worth of E.U. legality. Invasive, E.U.-wide policies can hence become a reality by a simple majority vote: no more Maggies about "I want my money back!".

Gradually it becomes apparent how the clever saboteur operates. A clue is provided by Pim Fortuyn's green animal rights assassin. This activist (no doubt government sponsored on the grounds of something or other beneficial to society) made an entire region of Holland a living hell for poultry farmers: law book in the one hand - note book in the other, checking every single piece of fine print against the reality on the ground, and prosecuting any discrepancy, however minor, upto the European Court of Law, if necessary.
It is therefore very important to keep a close eye on the legislators. The more they produce, the more there is to prosecute. Big, bureaucracy producing government is the enemy!

A further example of judicial terrorism is found in the following quote from an American commentator on The Brussels Journal: "It seems we share this trend of the breakdown in trust, especially as some of our own institutions are cleverly used against us; for example, six imams are suing an airline after they started praying and acting like they were going to hijack the plane, and so were thrown off the flight. Not only is the airline being sued, but so are the passengers that reported the suspicious behavior. The meaning of this couldn't be more clear: if you report a Muslim who's acting suspiciously on an airplane, you face a lawsuit. This is leading to an increasing feeling of powerlessness (but, at least we can still own guns)."

The Swedes cloaked their multicultural aspirations in an official Act of Parliament: a horror story of culture assassination of the first order. See here how the state has turned into an enemy of the very population it is supposed to protect. One wonders how we ever got ourselves into such a mess? On the other hand, it's not as if nobody was ever forewarned. It's what you get when you cut yourself off, by the root.

Then why do we accept this treason of the people, by our own elected governments? I think, because we are still prosperous nations. Also we are comparatively free within the constraints of the law: after all, I can still write this, whereas bloggers in Egypt go to jail for insulting Islam, and the head of state. Others have suggested it is, because we are at heart such law abiding citizens? In that case we'd be advised to refer ourselves back to Karl's early work on the revolution, in re of victory, sentimentality, the bourgeoisie, and all that.

And, strange as it may seem: anything becomes normality at some point. Just as Londoners during World War II got used to being bombarded night after night, and Iraqis adjust to IEDs and exploding chlorine trucks, so our minds are set to accept big government, their intrusion into our lives and the 'normality' of political correctness: to express ourselves and act in accordance with the prevailing ideology that is fed by the Unholy Alliance of urban jihadies and the Left, their shared glorification of victim-hood and constructed social identities, their shared love of the collective and 'irrational logic'.

All of the above may make us liable to accept the treason cloaked as political correctness, but circumstances change. Something dramatic may happen. Tensions are rising, so much is apparent. And it looks like the Left is doing some fundamentalism of their own, harking back to the early works of socialism, as it was supposed to be before it was hijacked by Uncle Joe c.s., who are blamed for the Soviet mess - not the ideology, not the inspirators, nor the earlier apostles. Heaven knows what that may produce!

Or can we just not imagine there's a Vast Left-Wing Conspiracy happening in this place and time - against us and by our own representatives? The generations born in the free world after World War II have known only democracy and steadily increasing prosperity. It's next to impossible to imagine other circumstances. That mind-set, combined with the lack of proper history education, and the postmodern arrogance with regard to all that came before us, makes it hard to see the signs and patterns that Wladimir Bukovsky does recognize, and that sometimes emerge when we read books like The Orientalist, about which I hope to write more soon.

Let me deny the reverse of Hildebeast's product of sleepless, paranoid night sweats: no, I don't think there's a Vast Left-Wing Conspiracy, no Protocols of KGB Elders, but I do believe there is a Vast Totalitarian Pattern becoming apparent!

Note: Just had the afterthought that since treason as a crime seems to have been abolished, or suspended, or whatever it is they've done to it, these heathens currently in charge of our parliaments and governments in all likelyhood haven't the foggiest idea they're committing it, or what the concept is in the first place. Conversely, they'll also have no inkling of the meaning of loyalty.

Update: In this post I answered the question - if we're experiencing today a renewed onslaught of Marxism, or Neo Communism, or whatever you want to call it, negatively. I've changed my mind ... I've discovered the trick ... Eurika! How do I know? Because it's logical but above all, it's dead Boring! The peoples of the West are today living in a crypto, semi totalitarian situation in which taxation, and >>>

Conned by The Left, again! (II)

In recent days there have finally been some queries about the weird Unholy Alliance of Convenience of radical Muslims, radical Enlighteners and radical environmentalists. Sometimes they aren't even that visibly radical, but go by epithets as Greens, Socialists, Social Democrats, Liberals, Christian Democrats, etc. Even compared with the situation quite recently, one or two years ago, presently re-visiting some European countries, is almost a surreal experience. I can attest to this happening in the Netherlands. The situation in the United Kingdom is pictured in this article in Opinion Journal (Wall Street Journal), "An Upside-Down World, The British far left makes common cause with Muslim reactionaries" by Nick Cohen.

"Not weird at all", says Dr Pat. "In fact, if you look at the underlying two ideologies, it makes perfect metaphysical, epistemological and ethical sense." I can heartily recommend reading Dr Pat's post entirely, but in the meantime let me borrow her chart for a moment:


It makes perfect sense. Since a far-left green party in The Netherlands declared some months ago, that it now too had embraced Liberalism, an ideology that till then to them had been Anathema and The Principal Free Market Enemy, I should have been forewarned. Indeed I was, but I didn't get the big picture, as per chart, which shows how Classical Liberalism has been perverted into a kind of Postmodern thinking, much akin to the collective, social étatism, accompanied by messianic zeal, that is characteristic of political Islam.

A quote from Dr Pat's post: Radical Islam's has "been successful precisely because they are in philosophical and ethical step with the political left ..."; "The identity politics of today's left is based on two quasi-religious and pseudo-intellectual tenets that conveniently enable and promote the Islamist agenda ... multiculturalism and political correctness ... exists to undermine Western culture at the expense of other cultures";

and

"Both intellectual strategies have been widely used by leftist intellectuals unable to abandon the socialist ideology ... In fact these two doctrines have been slowly and relentlessly absorbed at all levels of Western culture in the last several decades, clearing the way for a constant and steady undermining of Western values ... The process has accelerated since the end of the Cold War, and it is so insidious that most people don't even realize that objective reality and truth, as well as reason and logic have been replaced with the subjectivism and relativism of postmodern rhetoric".

We have seen in the first post about Tom Reiss' great historical work, "The Orientalist" that the engine of the Russian Revolution's philosophy of choice was Nihilism. It is no wonder Stuart Sim reacted to Paul Cliteur's accusation, as if stung by a giant Marxist bee: it reveals the mentality underlying all that nice left-leaning squasi-intellectual postmodern drivel. Sim may not see himself as a nihilist, but he probably has some problem looking objectively into the mirror. A nihilistic mind-set doesn't need to follow from a conscious decision. It is relativism, taken one step further, like an atheist world view leads to cynicism.

In the following flow chart Dr Pat shows us how the strategy to rescue Socialism has worked out over the years. It makes powerful reading:


The canon fodder of the Unholy Alliance of Convenience are the traditional Leftist masses, the dupes. They can be found amongst other places, on the Feminist Bloggers Network and write touching stuff like: "Sometimes people say "relativism" means there "is no center" but they are gravely mistaken, "relativism" means there are infinitely many centers. Each of us is our own center, and to say there is none is beyond misleading." What did I tell you about relativism producing all these pompous, egocentric, little Masters of their own empty and hollow Universes?

Dr Pat also helps answer a few of the other minor queries that still remained to be solved: the obsession with the trivial and the rise of the irrational.

The fashionable admiration for the irrational, i.e. superstitions and quack-isms, tree-hugging, paganism, earth motherism and mantics of all sorts and expressions - from tea leaves to bird entrails - is visible in Pat's first chart as Anti-Realism in the grid Postmodern Metaphysics.

Voilà, all mysteries solved, but one: the answer to the obsession with the trivial, the insignificant and the irrelevant. If a total irritant in my personal opinion, it is at the same time also the most intriguing of all the forces and cross currents presently at work: it may be a sort of subconscious, if inadequate Romanticism, or a form of escapism, an antidote to the bizarre reality of today's world: jihadism, the threat of terrorist attacks and the brewing Global War. I'd really like to know what you think!

If the last puts you down a bit, I'll promiss to come back with better news in the next couple of days.

To be continued with more surpising connections between radical Islam and the Postmoderns.

History Class: of agit-prop, revolution and terror!

I think we need a bit of a breather from all the pseudo-intellectual ranting. Only this morning I saw some fallen Christian write that "relativism is indisputable" - whereas we have seen - it hasn't got a leg to stand on. Which brings me to another one of post fin-de-siècle's mysteries: is it me or is irrationality on the rise, especially among classes that are supposed to be the strongholds of reason? These are interesting times, in so far that at this moment there is hardly anyone alive (I think), who has seen the last time in human history, that there was so much confusion about.

Which provides me with a convenient bridge to one of the most interesting books written in recent years. Published in 2005 I'm surprised it didn't get more attention before now; but then, it is reality based! I read it a year ago when I was preparing the ground in Athens for my impending emigration. Bought, in a draughty airport bookshop - a place mostly associated with the lighter digestible material - "The Orientalist" by Tom Reiss provides some valuable understandings and profound insights into a world that is now gone, but that is impacting us until this day.

The book has a few lessons too, if we are willing to internalize them. I am at present re-reading it and propose - whenever I hit a passage worth sharing - to jot down some notes in this blog. For those interested in another perspective on history, or a holiday from ethnocentricity, this is it. Multicultis: off your lazy bums and to the bookshop with you! (Or hit the Library button on your left hand side.)

It tells the story of the author of what can be termed, Azerbaijan's national novel: Ali and Nino, the tale of a Muslim boy and a Christian girl, set in the oil capital Baku. The author of this national treasure, Lev Nussimbaum, was born there in a railway carriage, in the midst of the failed revolution of 1905 as the son of Jewish parents: father an oil magnet, mother a revolutionary, would be suicide and an associate of the Georgian Koba Djukashvili, in later years known by his nom-de-guerre, Joseph Stalin.

The latter, having been thrown out of seminary (one can only guess why, or the reason for entering in the first place), operated in those years in Baku where - due to the vast oil wealth - there was a lot of expropriation to do. Reading his exploits, one is reminded of the early years of Saddam Hussein in Iraq: setting out as a thuggish enforcer of the imperial secret police, the Okhrana, he soon developed into a revolutionary in his own right: terrorist attacks, intimidation, extortion and kidnappings were the order of the day.

Russia was of course fertile breeding ground for the revolution, that had been in the making since 1881, when the liberal and progressive Czar Alexander II was killed in a terrorist attack by a group called The People's Will. But it took until 1917 to come to full fruition.

Feudalism like we knew it in Europe, with a hierarchy of aristocratic nobility from the king or emperor downwards, was non-existent in Russia. There was the Czar and there was serfdom, only abolished in 1861 (!) by said Alexander II, and nothing in between. To put this in perspective, when Parisians were shouting à la Lanterne!, in Russia Czarina Catharine the Great was granting basic rights to the nobility.

My grandfather used to say, that one's social class is betrayed by whom you look down at. He meant, that the queen doesn't look down on the cleaning lady (they are probably on first name terms), but the doorman does. Accordingly, while Russia's new middle-class was acting this out by turning serfs into slaves, another social mechanism kicked in: the well-educated children and grand-children of the new middle-class turned against it. They became the self-appointed advocates for the exploited and downtrodden, turning themselves into the engine of the revolution, as the downtrodden themselves were rather loath to up the barricades.

We have seen the same happening in our own time with Mohamed Atta c.s. on 9/11, and before them the Bader Meinhoff Group and the Rote Armee Faction. All combined to a fatal potion: a mentality by which the end justifies the means, the glorification of violence as the exclusive means towards the realization of The People's Will (no pain, no glory), the prescribed philosophy for the Russian engine of the revolution: nihilism, Paul Cliteur's accusation of Stuart Sim, that sent the latter into the chandeliers.

The Russian agitatist-terrorist groups bore names that makes Al Qa'ida look a rather unimaginative crowd: Death for Death, The League of the Red Fuse, The Terrorist Individuals, The Anarchist Blackmailers, etc. Starting out as self-styled people's advocates, their actions soon became violence for its own sake. The assassinated Czar Alexander II was succeeded by his son Alexander III, whose first act was the re-call the modern oukazes of his father, and afterwards did little else but clamping down on the revolutionaries.

It may be argued - as some now do - that clamping down probably made matters worse: the revolutionaries even preferred a tightly closed lid so that when a hole was breached, steam would be let off proper, thus fuelling the revolutionary zeal. But without the proper controls and repressive measures The Black Hand would have agitated twice as hard for the lack of it, and so as to compensate for more steam. There doesn't seem to be a 'right' way, to react to terrorism. Clamping down quick, still seems to be cautious advice.

But the environment for terrorists and agitators to foster in the first place, is a police-state that is characterised by oppression, injustice and exploitation; not one subjected to the rule of law, democratic principles and the occasional well-deserved critique. The conclusion that a democratic process in the Middle East is long overdue, seems to be not that far fetched.