NelsonRushton
Doctorate in mathematics from the University of Georgia, specializing in probability theory. Masters in AI from the University of Georgia. 15 years as a computer science professor at Texas Tech. Now I work as a logician for an AI startup. Married with one son. He's an awesome little dude.
I identify as an Evangelical Christian, but many Evangelicals would say that I am a deist mystic, and that I am going to Hell. Spiritually, the difference between me and Jordan Peterson is that I believe in miracles. The difference between me and Thomas Paine (an actual deist mystic) is that I believe the Bible is a message to us from the Holy Spirit -- and the difference between me and Billy Graham is that I think there is noise in the signal.
User ID: 2940
Kendi clearly retracts “Europeans are simply a different breed of human,”, but this is in the context discussing the crazy idea that white people are literally aliens from another planet. In the book, he recounts his friend Clarence pushing back against that:
“Answer me this: If Whites are aliens, why is it that Whites and Blacks can reproduce? Humans can’t reproduce with animals on this planet, but Black people can reproduce with alien from another planet? Come on, man, let’s get real.
and then, in the next paragraph, says he was wrong to think whites are a "different breed of humans". Ok, Kendi believes white people are homo sapiens; that's a relief. The rest of the paragraph could be read as backtracking substantial parts of the 2003 article, but it doesn't do that explicitly. Maybe he retracts it more strongly somewhere else, but if this is all there is, my guess is that he doesn't really want to distance himself from it, but has realized he was talking like a Nazi and wants to manufacture plausible deniability. If I had once said what he said, and wanted to retract it, I'd be pretty clear about it. Is this quote the best there is, to your knowledge?
NelsonRushton
1d ago
I am not sure. The unifying theme of the posts is in the main theater of the culture war, but some of the essays don't have any visible connection to it as stand-alone posts. Any input would be welcome.
I edited the post, specifically the section called "Conflict and Conquests", to address this.
Basically I think you are comparing the Hebrews to perfect angels based on their mythology, whereas I am comparing them to Nazis and pagans based on their laws.
As you said,
The Ancient Israelite “rendering” of their superiority is significantly better and more prosocial than Nazi Germany, and much more sophisticated. But IMO it is still identity politics.
What we disagree about is that I think that difference is exactly what is important, and that it is so large as to be rightly considered categorical, regardless of anecdotal counterexamples.
This part, however, I think is self-evidently incorrect:
It’s not quite correct to say that ancient Jews did not attribute victories to themselves. The God is themselves, it is their own priestly class who sacrifices to God, it is the organization of their whole peoplehood. “Israel is rewarded for her faithfulness” is functionally identical to “we deserve this land for our righteousness”, it is just cloaked in religious language so that the priestly class and hierarchies are justified. [emphasis added]
NelsonRushton
2d ago
I read Ch 10 of How to be an Antiracist and did not find what I expected, from this post, to find there. I don't see him walk back the contents of his 2003 Famua article; he says you shouldn't hate white people for being white, but he was already expressing that position in 2003. Can you quote him on retracting and/or apologizing for the 2003 article I quoted?
Aryan or not (and I'm skeptical of that pictographic source), Hitler considered the Russian people, aside from their aristocracy, to be congenitally inferior to Germans. Do you dispute this?
For example, in Mein Kampf he wrote,
I was convinced that even if it should sacrifice the German element the Danubian State could not continue to exist. Even at the price of a long and slow Slaviz-ation of the Austrian Germans the State would secure no guarantee of a really durable Empire; because it was very questionable if and how far the Slavs possessed the necessary capacity for constructive politics. [emphasis added]
The organization of a Russian state formation was not the result of the political abilities of the Slavs in Russia, but only a wonderful example of the state-forming efficacy of the German element in an inferior race. [emphasis added]
NelsonRushton
2d ago
You can't understand Nazism without getting to grips with the special place that anti-semitism has in Nazi ideology.
I think I understand that tolerably. The question remains what is the rationale for this antisemitism? My only assumption is that it rests on the alleged threat the Jews pose to Germany. Am I missing something? If it doesn't rest on that, what does it rest on?
NelsonRushton
2d ago
The argument doesn't depend on Hitler wanting to exterminate the French. The Jews had no plans to exterminate the Germans; they were just a threat of some sort. Hitler's axiom is that threats to your national safety can be preempted by genocide. Germany was a threat of far greater magnitude to the Allies in 1919 than the Jews ever were to Germany, so by Nazi logic the allies were entitled to exterminate the Germans in 1919.
The Allies planned initially to treat the German nation harshly post-war in the Morgenthau plan but then moderated their stance in peacetime when they concluded it would be unhelpful.
It would only be unhelpful if it didn't go far enough.
NelsonRushton
2d ago
Thanks. I changed this to:
if you want a litmus test for likely Marxists, current or former member of the Communist party is a pretty good one, and yet there was no systematic effort by the Nazis to exterminate them, of the sort that was directed against Jews.
Upwards of 20% of the KDP (communist party of Germany) in Germany were killed by the Nazis so I think this is fair to say.
NelsonRushton
3d ago
Well, darn. I tried to piece the contents of that book together from snippets without reading it, because I don't want to buy it on principle and I couldn't find the full text online. Now I have to spend Saturday at the book store reading it in an easy chair.
Thanks for the info. I will make appropriate edits when I have time.
This sounds contradictory - were the pagans and Hebrews meant to be the other way around in the latter?
Yes that was a typo. Thanks for pointing it out.
More generally, if I read this as a book, I think certain parts of it would strike me as failure to maintain the professional detachment
I think it's funny that you expect books to have a tone of "professional detachment". Plato didn't.
Hitler's Identity Politics, Part II
(c) Feb 19, 2025, By J. Nelson Rushton
Note:
This post is an installment of a book I am writing, under the working title They See not, which I am serializing as a series of posts on The Motte. The book is planned to be about the nature and common characteristics of populist tyrannical movements, with special focus on the woke ideology, and about how to combat such movements. The first four posts in the series were:
- Introduction: Past peak Woke? Don't count on it.
- Say then, my friend... Plato on Democracy and Tyranny
- Victim Identity Politics and Wokenesss
- Hitler's Identity Politics, Part I
The current chapter is entitled Hitler's Identity Politics, Part II.
1 Introduction
The Nazi worldview, as definitively expressed in Hitler's Mein Kampf, has certain similarities with the pagan worldview, certain similarities with the Judeo-Christian worldview, and certain similarities with the woke worldview.
Like a pagan, Hitler is righteously proud of the conquests of other peoples by his people, and he credits these conquests to the greatness of his folk and their leaders. Hitler's glorification of Bismarck and the German military command in Vol 1 Ch 10 of Mein Kampf, for example, echoes the tribute to Shield Sheafson's mægen in the opening stanza of Beowulf.
However, unlike the pagans, but ironically following in the Hebrew tradition, Nazism also posits a transcendent, universal moral order. This seems an odd conjunction, and it is an odd conjunction, but the Nazi rationale is as follows: (1) the fabric of Nature has a fixed moral compass, and (2) as it happens, that compass inexorably points toward the triumph of the German Volk and Reich [people and state].
This Nazi picture of the world entails a theory of social justice rife with double-standards, and this is where it comes to resemble wokeness. In the Nazi view, those people and nations who stand in the way of German imperialism, or who make convenient targets of opportunity for German imperialism, are stripped of their would-be human rights by the Law of Nature. On the other hand, when the shoe is on the other foot and Germany is defeated (in World War I) and imposed upon (by the Versailles treaty), Hitler wails with righteous indignation that would make Ibram Kendi and Ta-Nehisi Coates look like trifling wanna-be's in the arena of victim politics.
2 The Competing Mythologies of Nazism and Judaism
This section compares the grand narrative of Mein Kampf with that of the Hebrew Bible in terms of (1) a vision of transcendent purpose, (2) their respective views of conflict and conquest, and (3) where they place credit and blame for national victories and national catastrophes. It may seem strange on its face to compare the Bible with Mein Kampf, but I believe the comparison bears discussing. Both books are manifestos of sorts, and both lay out ideas that nations have felt were worth fighting over.
My interest here is not in questions of who were the Hebrews, or who were the interwar Germans, or who was better than whom. I am less interested in comparing groups of people than in comparing ideologies -- that is, in the effect the Hebrew Bible had on the Hebrews and their cultural descendants, and the effect that Nazism had on the Germans of the Weimar Republic and their cultural descendants. Before they became Jews, the Hebrews were bronze age barbarians; before they became Nazis, the Germans were Western Christians like me. I doubt that any ideology is going to come along and make people like me act like the Hebrews in the book of Joshua; moreover, if there is an ideology that could do that, it isn't in the Bible -- because I've already bought into that one and I am still not interested in launching wars of aggression in the Holy Land or anywhere else. On the other hand, an ideology did come along and turn people like me into genocidal Nazis. So evidently these two ideologies have very different effects on their adherents.
I submit that key features of the Nazi ideology include the following:
- a grand vision of a transcendent, singular purpose, but
- with that purpose pointing toward the supremacy of certain kinds of people over others, and
- the favored group anointed so that they generally take credit, but not blame
Transcendent Purpose
Mongol General: What is best in life?
Conan: To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentations of their women.
-- Conan the Barbarian
The pagan worldview is one of shameless conquest of the weak by the strong. The conquest is naturally shameless because in the pagan view, Heaven, like Earth, is a theater of war between separate sovereigns. For example, the Romans presumed their gods favored them in battle (so long as the Romans had been properly pious), but they also presumed that their enemies' gods favored their own worshipers. Thus, the best the Romans could hope for from those foreign gods, as they prayed for in the evocatio, was that they would sit things out.
The Greek view was similar. Homer's Iliad depicts forces of Heaven engaged on both sides of the war:
Ares urged the Trojans on, while bright-eyed Athena kept rousing the Greeks.
-- Homer's Iliad, Book IV
In the Judeo-Christian view, by contrast, Heaven takes only one side. As Abraham Lincoln wrote,
In great contests each party claims to act in accordance with the will of God. Both may be, and one must be wrong. God can not be for, and against the same thing at the same time.
-- Lincoln: "Meditations on the Divine Will".
While Hitler's Mein Kampf espouses an ethos of shameless conquest, Mein Kampf is decidedly not a pagan book. Ironically following in the Hebrew tradition, Mein Kampf extolls a vision of a singular, transcendent Higher Purpose. The first section of Vol I, Ch X contains Hitler's founding myth of the German Reich. In this section, Hitler mentions Nature as a singular, grand force in almost every paragraph. Moreover, Hitler casts Nature as a personified force: one which has goals, and which takes action to achieve those goals. For example, he writes,
Only unusual circumstances can change this [mating of each animal with its own kind], primarily the compulsion of captivity or any other cause that makes it impossible to mate within the same species. But then Nature begins to resist this with all possible means, and her most visible protest consists either in refusing further capacity for propagation to bastards or in limiting the fertility of later offspring; in most cases, however, she takes away the power of resistance to disease or hostile attacks.
...You will never find a fox who in his inner attitude might, for example, show humanitarian tendencies toward geese, as similarly there is no cat with a friendly inclination toward mice. Therefore, here, too, the struggle among themselves arises less from inner aversion than from hunger and love. In both cases, Nature looks on calmly, with satisfaction, in fact.
-- Mein Kampf Vol I, Ch XI
For Hitler -- as for a Hebrew but not for a pagan -- Heaven takes one side in every conflict. In Hitler's view it is the side of the strong,
The whole of nature is a mighty struggle between strength and weakness, an eternal victory of the strong over the weak [Speech in Munich, 1923]
and Hitler tells us precisely who the strong happen to be:
It is universally admitted that the German victories, which had been steadily won during four years of warfare against the whole world, were due to superior leadership, apart of course from the heroism of the troops. And the organization was solely due to the German military leadership. That organization and leadership of the German Army was the most mighty thing that the world has ever seen.
-- Mein Kampf, Vol 1 Ch 10 [emphasis added]
So, the Nazi worldview holds that there is a moral compass woven into the fabric of the universe -- but instead of pointing North, it always points to Nazi.
Conflict and Conquest
The Hebrew vision, in contrast with the Nazi vision, is not one of eternal victory by the strong over the weak, nor of themselves over anyone else. It is a vision of progress toward peace. The envisioned peace is not ruled by the strongest tribe, nor by the Hebrews themselves, but ruled impartially by God:
But in the last days it shall come to pass, that the mountain of the house of the Lord shall be established in the top of the mountains, and it shall be exalted above the hills; and people shall flow unto it.
And many nations shall come, and say, Come, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, and to the house of the God of Jacob; and he will teach us of his ways, and we will walk in his paths: for the law shall go forth of Zion, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.
And He shall judge among many people, and rebuke strong nations afar off; and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks: nation shall not lift up a sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.
But they shall sit every man under his vine and under his fig tree; and none shall make them afraid: for the mouth of the Lord of hosts hath spoken it.
For all people will walk every one in the name of his god, and we will walk in the name of the Lord our God for ever and ever.
[Micah 4:1-5, KJV]
The Biblical vision of a Messianic age of peace on earth stands in stark contrast, of course, to the Hebrews' narrative of their own national founding. When confronting their neighboring tribes, the Israelites are commanded by God, through Moses, to make them an offer they can't refuse, largely in the mold of pagans like of Pompey or Shield Sheafson:
When thou comest nigh unto a city to fight against it, then proclaim peace unto it. And it shall be, if it make thee answer of peace, and open unto thee, then it shall be, that all the people that is found therein shall be tributaries unto thee, and they shall serve thee. And if it will make no peace with thee, but will make war against thee, then thou shalt besiege it: And when the Lord thy God hath delivered it into thine hands, thou shalt smite every male thereof with the edge of the sword: But the women, and the little ones, and the cattle, and all that is in the city, even all the spoil thereof, shalt thou take unto thyself; and thou shalt eat the spoil of thine enemies, which the Lord thy God hath given thee. [Deuteronomy 20: 10-14]
Moreover, in case of the previous residents of the Holy Land, the Israelites are to make no offer and give no quarter, even to women and children -- more reminiscent more of Genghis Kahn, or perhaps of Hitler himself, than of Shield or Pompey:
But of the cities of these people, which the Lord thy God doth give thee for an inheritance, thou shalt save alive nothing that breatheth: But thou shalt utterly destroy them; namely, the Hittites, and the Amorites, the Canaanites, and the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites; as the Lord thy God hath commanded thee: That they teach you not to do after all their abominations, which they have done unto their gods; so should ye sin against the Lord your God. [Deuteronomy 20: 16-18]
Lo!
The Biblical stories of conquest and slaughter by the Hebrews are gruesome even for the ancient world. One key thing about them, however, is that they probably never happened. The rough consensus of secular historians is that the tales of ruthless conquest in Numbers, Deuteronomy, and Joshua are legends and fables. The fact that that is the story the Israelites chose to tell about themselves tells us something about their culture -- but exactly what it tells us is subject to debate, and that debate should be constrained, first and foremost, by the facts of history. We know a lot about what the Nazis did, and it is reasonable to look for explanations for their what they did in their founding mythos. We know a little about what the Hebrews did, and it is reasonable to look for explanations for what they did in their founding mythos. What is not reasonable -- though it seems to be fairly popular -- is to speculate about the cultural impacts of those narratives without looking primarily at what their believers have done.
Unfortunately, we don't have copious records of what the ancient Hebrews did. However, if they had been conquistadors like the Assyrians or the Persians, we would know; ergo they weren't. The Hebrews may well have tried to subjugate their neighbors and failed in the endeavor. They probably would have if they could have. Why do I believe that? Because that is what everyone would have if they could have in the bronze age. We have no reason to think the Hebrews were different in this respect, Biblical or historical. But precisely because that was typical for the age, that tells us nothing about the effects of the Bible on Hebrew culture and morals, except that it didn't miraculously turn them into pacifists overnight. Surprise! The Bible didn't even turn the Hebrews into non-pagans overnight, and the Bible itself is clear about that.
What we do have records of, and very good records, is Hebrew law. Now if God came down from Heaven and cast a spell on the Hebrews to turn them all into superhuman moral geniuses, then we should expect them to have suddenly implemented a system of laws whose wisdom and insight meets or exceeds those of the most enlightened societies of today. That didn't happen (Surprise!). But the relevant control group against which to measure the ancient Hebrews is not the Kingdom of Heaven, or even the modern West; it is their contemporary neighbors. By that standard, I submit that Hebrew law was a deeply important and substantially unique departure in the direction of modern morality. I will make that argument at length in future posts, but here I will restrict the discussion to how the Biblical view of conflict and conquest differs from the Nazi vision.
In the Nazi story, as we saw above, the Reich was born in battle. In the Hebrews' account, their nation is born when God forms a covenant with Abraham (notably in direct contrast to Hitler's disdain for origins based on mere talk).
Now the Lord had said unto Abram, Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father's house, unto a land that I will shew thee: And I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great; and thou shalt be a blessing: And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee: and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed. [Genesis 12:1-3]
Having been brought up in the Judeo-Christian tradition, it is easy for us to overlook something in this passage, that to the pagan mind would have been quite puzzling: what's the point of blessing the families of the Earth? except maybe with the end of a spear, a la Pompey or Shield Sheafson?
To the point, the Nazis had no interest in being a blessing to all of the families of the Earth. Hitler's long-term vision, noted above, is eternal victory of the strong (viz., the German Volk and Reich) over the weak (viz., whomever is convenient to attack and exploit). In the short run, he has his sights set on the seizure of foreign lands, through wars of aggression, for the purpose of Lebensraum ("living space") for the German people. If there are others currently in that "living space" -- such as there were in the lands of the Soviet Union which he intended to seize and occupy -- Hitler held it is only right that they be killed or displaced to make room for better people.
Note that a pagan would not need a pretext for conquest, but a Nazi -- on the view of a transcendent moral order -- does. In service of this pretext, Hitler uniquely dignifies and uniquely and humanizes the Aryan race:
Every manifestation of human culture, every product of art, science and technical skill, which we see before our eyes to-day, is almost exclusively the product of the Aryan creative power. This very fact fully justifies the conclusion that it was the Aryan alone who founded a superior type of humanity; therefore he represents the archetype of what we understand by the term: MAN. He is the Prometheus of mankind, from whose shining brow the divine spark of genius has at all times flashed forth, always kindling anew that fire which, in the form of knowledge, illuminated the dark night by drawing aside the veil of mystery and thus showing man how to rise and become master over all the other beings on the earth.
-- Mein Kampf Vol 1 Ch XI
By contrast, he expresses relative disdain for the Slavic people of Russia and Eastern Europe, whom he intends to attack and kill or displace. Hitler's disdain for the Slavs takes on special significance in the context of an "eternal victory of the strong over the weak", and of Hitler's imminent plans for war:
Even in Pan-German circles one heard the opinion expressed that the Austrian Germans might very well succeed in Germanizing the Austrian Slavs, if only the Government would be ready to cooperate. Those people did not understand that a policy of Germanization can be carried out only as regards human beings. What they mostly meant by Germanization was a process of forcing other people to speak the German language. But it is almost inconceivable how such a mistake could be made as to think that a Nigger or a Chinaman will become a German because he has learned the German language and is willing to speak German for the future, and even to cast his vote for a German political party. Our bourgeois nationalists could never clearly see that such a process of Germanization is in reality de-Germanization; for even if all the outstanding and visible differences between the various peoples could be bridged over and finally wiped out by the use of a common language, that would produce a process of bastardization which in this case would not signify Germanization but the annihilation of the German element.
-- Mein Kampf Vol 2 Ch II
And of course Hitler spews venomous hatred toward the Jews, whom he would like to extirpate from the Earth.
I am afraid many readers will have trouble stepping outside the Judeo-Christian moral waters in which they swim, whether they profess belief in God or not. So, at the risk of being redundant, I repeat that a pagan wouldn't need a pretext for conquest or slaughter; a pagan conqueror would not need to disparage his victims, and a pagan conqueror would have no need for Hitler's view that might makes right. For a true barbarian, might makes might, might is enough, and "right" need not enter the picture.
The Hebrew Bible has many verses that give Jews special status in their own country, which celebrate their victories (real or imagined) over foreigners, and which warn against mixing in marriage with foreigners. But none of that makes it unique. What makes it unique is that it contains verses that point toward equal human rights under Natural Law, with repeated emphasis on equal rights for non-Jews. For example,
- One law shall be to him that is homeborn, and unto the stranger (gentile) that sojourneth among you. [Exodus 12:49]
- Thou shalt neither vex a stranger (gentile) , nor oppress him: for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt. [Exodus 22:21]
- Also thou shalt not oppress a stranger (gentile): for ye know the heart of a stranger, seeing ye were strangers in the land of Egypt. [Exodus 23:9]
- Ye shall therefore keep my statutes and my judgments, and shall not commit any of these abominations; neither any of your own nation, nor any stranger (gentile) that sojourneth among you: [Leviticus 18:26]
- And if a stranger (gentile) sojourn with thee in your land, ye shall not vex him. [Leviticus 19:33]
- But the stranger (gentile) that dwelleth with you shall be unto you as one born among you, and thou shalt love him as thyself; for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the LORD your God. [Leviticus 19:34]
- Ye shall have one manner of law, as well for the stranger (gentile), as for one of your own country: for I am the LORD your God. [Leviticus 24:2
Neither pagans nor Nazis entertain this idea of equal treatment under law for mere human beings dwelling among them, even as an aspiration.
The Hebrews are commanded to conquer the Holy Land and kill its inhabitants. That is bronze age business as usual. What is not business as usual is that they are specifically commanded not to attack their other neighbors, nor to take so much as a cup of water from them without paying for it, even though they have the power to do so. For example,
And command thou the people, saying, Ye are to pass through the coast of your brethren the children of Esau, which dwell in Seir; and they shall be afraid of you: take ye good heed unto yourselves therefore: Meddle not with them; for I will not give you of their land, no, not so much as a foot breadth; because I have given mount Seir unto Esau for a possession. Ye shall buy meat of them for money, that ye may eat; and ye shall also buy water of them for money, that ye may drink. [Deuteronomy 2: 4-6]
Pompey would just be befuddled by this, and so would Hitler.
In summary, Mein Kampf and the Hebrew Bible are both narratives of a transcendent purpose, but the consistent purposeful vision of Mein Kampf is domination by the strong of the weak, forever, the strong being Deutschland (uber alles). The Hebrew Bible has sprinkles of jingoism and chauvinism as well, and to expect otherwise would be ridiculous; but it also contains sprinkles of other things, that are mostly if not wholly missing from the pagan worldview and the Nazi worldview: equal treatment of mere human beings under law at home, and a far future vision of peace on Earth abroad. In the sweep of history, the fact that so many people even view these as good things is relatively new in the world -- but Germany consciously relapsed from those aspirations under the Nazi rule.
Credit and Blame
When the Germans win, Hitler credits this to the greatness of the German people and their leaders:
The Second REICH was founded in circumstances of such dazzling splendour that the whole nation had become entranced and exalted by it. Following an unparalleled series of victories, that Empire was handed over as the guerdon of immortal heroism to the children and grandchildren of the heroes.
It is universally admitted that the German victories, which had been steadily won during four years of warfare against the whole world, were due to superior leadership, apart of course from the heroism of the troops.
-- Mein Kampf, Vol 1, Ch X
By contrast, in the Hebrew Bible, it is not the Hebrews who are said to be mighty, but their enemies:
Hear, O Israel: Thou art to pass over Jordan this day, to go in to possess nations greater and mightier than thyself, cities great and fenced up to heaven, A people great and tall, the children of the Anakims, whom thou knowest, and of whom thou hast heard say, Who can stand before the children of Anak!
[Deuteronomy 9:2, KJV]
Whereas the Nazi narrative credits their victories to the German Volk and Reich, the Hebrew story credits the victories to God:
Understand therefore this day, that the Lord thy God is he which goeth over before thee; as a consuming fire he shall destroy them, and he shall bring them down before thy face: so shalt thou drive them out, and destroy them quickly, as the Lord hath said unto thee.
[Deuteronomy 9:3, KJV]
Lest the Hebrews dare to think they earned God's favor because they are such good people, their Bible makes it clear that they did not and are not:
Speak not thou in thine heart, after that the Lord thy God hath cast them out from before thee, saying, For my righteousness the Lord hath brought me in to possess this land: but for the wickedness of these nations the Lord doth drive them out from before thee.
Not for thy righteousness, or for the uprightness of thine heart, dost thou go to possess their land: but for the wickedness of these nations the Lord thy God doth drive them out from before thee, and that he may perform the word which the Lord sware unto thy fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Understand therefore, that the Lord thy God giveth thee not this good land to possess it for thy righteousness; for thou art a stiffnecked people. [Deuteronomy 9: 4-6, KJV].
So the Nazi and Jewish views of who gets credit for their national victories are quite opposite. But so are their accounts of who gets the blame for their national defeats. On those occasions where the Hebrews are defeated or oppressed, the Hebrew bible -- particularly in the books of Isaiah, Ezekiel, and Jeremiah -- places the blame squarely and somberly on the Hebrews themselves. In a twisted sense, this is the one point of agreement between the two ideologies: Nazi mythology places the blame for the German national catastrophes on the Hebrews as well. I could quote Hitler ad nauseam on this, but I don't think the fact is in dispute, and I don't care to repeat Hitler's words on the subject.
Ѻ
To summarize, the Nazi ideology is distinguished by
- a grand vision of a transcendent, singular purpose, but
- with that purpose pointing toward the supremacy of certain kinds of people over others, and
- the favored group annointed so that they generally take credit, but not blame
3 Hitler and Plato
In Vol 1, Chapter 10 of Mein Kampf, Hitler describes the moral and economic decay of Germany that he believes led to its defeat in World War I. Echoing the narrative of Plato's Republic, Hitler describes a state which has regressed, in his view at least, from timarchy (military rule), to oligarchy (unrestrained greed and rule of the wealthy), to libertine, Marxist-leaning populism. The parallels between Mein Kampf and Plato's Republic Book VIII are too close to be ascribed to chance -- though Hitler doesn't mention Plato, and I do not know whether Hitler had read Plato's Republic, or whether he and Plato witnessed similar turns of events two thousand years apart, or both.
Like Plato, Hitler views the transition from timarchy to oligarchy to be driven by moral decay, and in particular by a cultural shift in what is held in esteem. He writes,
Thereby the ideal [martial] virtues for all practical purposes had taken a position second to the value of money, for it was clear that once a beginning had been made in this direction, the aristocracy of the sword would in a short time inevitably be overshadowed by the financial aristocracy. Financial operations succeed more easily than battles. It was no longer inviting for the real hero or statesman to be brought into relations with some old bank Jew: the man of true merit could no longer have an interest in the bestowal of cheap decorations; he declined them with thanks.
-- Mein Kampf, Vol 1 Ch X
Both Plato and Hitler write that after the descent from timarchy to oligarchy, the greedy predation of the oligarchs gives birth to a class of ruined men, who then form a cohort of non-working poor. As Plato puts it,
The men of business, stooping as they walk, and pretending not even to see those whom they have already ruined, insert their sting --that is, their money --into some one else who is not on his guard against them, and recover the parent sum many times over multiplied into a family of children: and so they make drone and pauper to abound in the State.
-- The Republic, Book VIII
Hitler tells a similar story of exploitation and inequality:
For the first time labor had sunk to the level of an object of speculation for unscrupulous Jewish business men; the alienation of property from the wage-worker was increased ad infinitum. The stock exchange began to triumph and prepared slowly but surely to take the life of the nation into its guardianship and control.
Now the abrupt alternation between rich and poor became really apparent. Abundance and poverty lived so close together that the saddest consequences could and inevitably did arise. Poverty and frequent unemployment began to play havoc with people, leaving behind them a memory of discontent and embitterment. The consequence of this seemed to be political class division.
-- Mein Kampf, Vol 1 Ch X
For Hitler as for Plato, the oligarchic state soon degenerates into one of class division, moral libertineness, anti-nationalism, anti-meritocracy, multiculturalism, and general half-heartedness in all attempts to keep order. It then further degenerates toward leftist populism of some form (communism for Hitler, and dimokratia for Plato).
There is one point, however, where Hitler and Plato part ways. For Plato it is all about values; for Hitler, it is all about race. Hitler's final assessment of the root of his country's problems is this:
The deepest and ultimate reason for the decline of the old Reich lay in its failure to recognize the racial problem and its importance for the historical development of peoples. For events in the lives of peoples are not expressions of chance, but processes related to the self-preservation and propagation of the species and the race and subject to the laws of Nature, even if people are not conscious of the inner reason for their actions.
-- Mein Kampf, Vol 1 Ch X
On this score Hitler diverges from Plato, and more closely resembles another noted thinker of the Western canon.
4 Hitler and Ibram Kendi
A colleague of mine at a certain university (which will go unnamed) once described certain bureaucrats of that university's administration as Nazis. What he meant was that they were ruthless, tribal authoritarians -- which they were -- but something about the metaphor struck me as wrong. It took me a few seconds to put my finger on where the comparison broke down, after which I blurted out in protest, "Nazis were effective".
There are many disparaging charges that could be rightly leveled at Hitler, but pipsqueak is not among them. Ibram X. Kendi -- author of the woke manifesto How to be an Antiracist -- is, by contrast, a poster child of pipsqueak. For that reason among others, it feels strange to analogize Hitler to Kendi. Nevertheless, the calculus of ideological similarity puts these two on the same plane in several key respects.
For starters, both Hitler and Kendi hate capitalism. Hitler writes, for example,
In the midsummer of 1918 a feeling of sultry oppression hung over the front. At home they were quarrelling. About what? We heard a great deal among various units at the front. The War was now a hopeless affair, and only the foolhardy could think of victory. It was not the people but the capitalists and the Monarchy who were interested in carrying on. Such were the ideas that came from home and were discussed at the front.
The fools among our bourgeois politicians do not mock at us on this point any more; for even those politicians now see--if they would speak the truth--that international stock-exchange capital was not only the chief instigating factor in bringing on the War but that now when the War is over it turns the peace into a hell.
-- Mein Kampf, Vol 1 Ch VII
and for Kendi:
To love [white-on-black] racism is to love capitalism. To love capitalism is to love [white-on-black] racism.
-- Ibram Kendi: How to be an Anti-Racist
The working class in the United States has never been united; it’s always been divided along the lines of race. … Racism and capitalism emerged at the same time, in 15th-century western Europe, and they’ve reinforced each other from the beginning. -- Ibram Kendi: Interview with The Guardian; Aug 14, 2019
There is some nuance to Hitler's views from the standpoint of terminology: he is both fanatically anti-capitalist and fanatically anti-Marxist. For many readers, "capitalism" and "Marxism" are ideological polar opposites, but Hitler's ideological emphasis is different from that of most readers. For him, both Marxism and capitalism are tools of an international Jewish conspiracy to exploit the Aryan people, with national socialism standing in direct opposition to both. What Marxism and capitalism have in common for Hitler, besides their association with Jewry, is their materialist, individualistic, and anti-nationalist character. In any case he uses "Jewish", "capitalist", and "Marxist" all as slurs, often together in reference to some tripartite conspiratorial hydra:
The so-called liberal press was actively engaged in digging the grave of the German people and the German Reich. We can pass by the lying Marxist sheets in silence; to them lying is just as vitally necessary as catching mice for a cat; their function is only to break the people's national and patriotic backbone and make them ripe for the slave's yoke of international capital and its masters, the Jews.
...Before the War the internationalization of the German economic structure had already begun by the roundabout way of share issues. It is true that a section of the German industrialists made a determined attempt to avert the danger, but in the end they gave way before the united attacks of money-grabbing capitalism, which was assisted in this fight by its faithful henchmen in the Marxist movement.
-- Mein Kampf, Vol 1, Ch X
Both Hitler and Kendi identify predatory capitalist oligarchy as the immutable genetic characteristic of a certain race. Hitler of course identifies it with the Jews:
We can pass by the lying Marxist sheets in silence; to them lying is just as vitally necessary as catching mice for a cat; their function is only to break the people's national and patriotic backbone and make them ripe for the slave's yoke of international capital and its masters, the Jews. -- Mein Kampf, Vol 1 Ch 10
Kendi has a different race in mind:
I don’t hate white folk because I’m a Christian. How can you hate a group of people for being who they are? Similarly, how can you hate a turtle because it won’t keep up? That would be like parents hating their children because they are different. All of our children aren’t the same. Europeans are completely different from Asians who are completely different from Hispanics and so on and so forth. Europeans are simply a different breed of human. They are socialized to be aggressive people. They are taught to live by the credo, “survival of the fittest.” They are raised to be racist.
Caucasians make up only 10 percent of the world’s population and that small percentage of people have recessive genes. Therefore they’re facing extinction. Whites have tried to level the playing field with the AIDS virus and cloning, but they know these deterrents will only get them so far. This is where the murder, psychological brainwashing and deception comes into play.
-- Ibram Kendi [as Ibram Rogers]: The Famuan. Sept 9, 2003
The similarity is quite remarkable. Whites for Kendi, like Jews for Hitler, are a race of (1) genetically disposed (2) deceivers and (3) capitalist (4) exploiters. They just can't help it.
It must be pointed out that Kendi's statements here are beyond the pale even for woke pundits, and most notable SJW's would not follow as far in Hitler's ideological footsteps as Kendi does. It must also be pointed out, however, that Kendi's comments were well known for years, and he was seldom if ever denounced for them by the woke left -- so, while unusual, these statements were not particularly unwelcome. If a right winger had said any such thing, about any group of people, you can be sure that woke cancel-culture would have unearthed the offense and kicked into high gear over it.
Like Hitler, Kendi sees his people as the heirs of a glorious past with glorious leaders:
Before colonization, some of the greatest and most powerful and wealthiest and most technologically and intellectually advanced empires in the world were in Africa, you know, from Ghana, Mali and Songhai. I remember over the weekend when, I think it was, Forbes magazine stated that Jeff Bezos was the richest men that ever lived, and a lot of people corrected them and said, “No, actually, Mansa Musa, who was the king of Mali, was reportedly even wealthier than Jeff Bezos.” But indeed, Mansa Musa gave away a lot of his wealth. He actually traveled on this massive pilgrimage to Egypt, and he gave away so much gold in Egypt, he literally destroyed the economy.
-- Ibram Kendi: interview with Democracy Now, Aug 31, 2020
And he holds that it remained glorious until the capitalist exploiter race stepped in and ruined it all with their underhanded backstabbing:
Racial disparities are not the result of Black people’s inferiority or White people’s superiority. They are the result of racist policies that have been enacted over centuries and continue to be enacted today....The Black community is not struggling because of its culture. The Black community is struggling because of the policies that have been enacted against it.
-- Ibram Kendi: How to be an Antiracist
Even Hitler doesn't blame the Jews entirely for the German defeat in WWI. He actually says the Germans brought it on themselves by.... wait for it... tolerating the Jews and their capitalist exploitation in their midst! Similarly, Kendi gives a nostra culpa [our fault] on behalf of his people, blacks. The problem with blacks, says Kendi, is that too many of them feel they are to blame, instead of whites, for their lagging outcomes:
The only thing wrong with Black people is that we think something is wrong with Black people. The problem is not the people; the problem is the [white] power and policy.
-- Ibram Kendi: How to be an Antiracist. [emphasis added]
5 Conclusion
Hitler claimed that the Jews had undermined the German war effort in World War I. In truth, there were probably a lot of people who contributed to Germany's loss in WWI and its subsequent economic collapse, and of course some of them were Jews. But in all likelihood, most of them were not Jews, and there was no massive program to exterminate those people, either as individuals or as members of any group they belonged to. On the other hand, around 30,000 Jews won medals for bravery fighting on the German side in the WWI -- and yet many of those very men, along with their families, perished in Nazi death camps under the pretext that they were somehow enemies of the Reich.
In particular, Hitler said he despised Jews because of their penchant for Marxism. It is true that Marxist leadership, in Germany and elsewhere, was populated disproportionately by Jews -- but if you want a litmus test for likely Marxists, current or former member of the Communist party is a pretty good one, and yet there was no systematic effort by the Nazis to exterminate them, of the sort that was directed against Jews (who merely might be Marxists). These obvious failures of the shoe-on-the-other-foot test, once we think to apply it, tell us that the stated reasons for the Nazi persecution of the Jews must have been quite different from the actual reasons. That is the nature of group guilt, aka social justice.
Hitler claimed that the Jews of Europe needed to be exterminated, war heroes and all, because they were a menace to his people. Alright then, Austria and Prussia had been a menace to their neighbors in Europe for hundreds of years, and their union in the German Empire was a greater menace after that. By Hitler's logic, the Allies would have been within their rights to implement a final solution to the German problem while they had Germany at their mercy following WWI. In hindsight that would have saved the allies a great deal of blood, toil, and tears. If the Treaty of Versailles were a Jewish conspiracy (as Hitler loudly charged), then Germany should have expected Old Testament justice out of the deal. But the Versailles treaty, while it caused significant hardship for the German people, was no Holocaust (not the same ballpark, not the same sport). And yet how did Hitler respond to it? Vae victis [woe to the vanquished] in the eternal triumph of the strong over the weak? No. What did we do to deserve this? Not really. He wailed that it was an unfair, unjust, absolute abomination against the Natural Order. Poor baby. That is the nature of double standards.
Group guilt and double standards: that is the nature victim identity politics.
NelsonRushton
6d ago
I agree it that it is much easier to be a Martyr if you aren't the head of a household. So it is reasonable to expect more heroism for God and country from single men than young married men, for example. On the other hand, I also think that does not excuse the behavior of German so-called Christians at large under Nazi rule, by more than a smidgeon.
NelsonRushton
8d ago
I upvoted this but I think the commonsense reason is even stronger: Hitler tried to murder all of the Jews of Europe and he nearly succeeded.
NelsonRushton
9d ago
I'm not about to start defining pagannes,
I don't think I am obliged to pay much attention to your claim that the Hebrews were pagans, when (1) it is against common sense, and (2) you decline to give a definition, along with what you feel are clear examples and non-examples, of pagan religions.
NelsonRushton
9d ago
Just a note that I haven't forgotten about this and you are probably right. I just need to do some reading to see what to change it to. Thanks for the comment.
I don't think the solution is to deport them all. The solution is what Germany used to do, which made immigration from their poor neighbors (e.g. Poland) roughly zero: make sure illegal aliens can't get a job, public education, welfare, or a place to live. They'll deport.
On the other hand, as long as life is better for illegal residents of the US than for legal citizens of Mexico, and I and my family live in Mexico or South of there, nothing is going to stop me from getting into the US. Wall? pshh. Under the wall, over the wall, through the wall, around the wall, bribe, fly, or swim, one way or another, I'm getting my family to higher ground.
NelsonRushton
10d ago
Press X to doubt.
The fact that it is doubtful is itself of first importance, because it is beyond doubt that, say, the Romans were pagans, if "pagan" means anything. On the other hand if "pagan" means anything, there must also be religious practices that are or were not pagan.
Most predicates outside math and the hard sciences are fuzzy, that is, matters of degrees -- and finding threads of truth to "x satisfies P" is always easy but also therefore always uninformative. The questions in this case are (1) is "pagan", as opposed to non-pagan, a meaningful (if of course rough) categorical distinction among religious practices? (2) if so what are its characteristics, and what are its alternatives and their characteristics? and (3) do the Hebrews fall inside or outside of the "pagan" cluster, by comparison with its paragons such as Rome and pre-Christian Scandanavia?
Are you saying yes, (something), and yes? If so I'd like to know what the something is. That is not the commonsense answer so you owe a good argument, beginning with an explicit answer to (2): what is it to be pagan, and what are the alternatives?
I've been accused of a lot of things -- but total ignorance of the Hebrew Bible, that's my new favorite.
NelsonRushton
10d ago
Either you believe in the 'post-war consensus' 1 2 and you have a pocket theory for why Hitler is justifiably considered the master of evil, or you don't believe in the 'post-war consensus' and you recognize the satanization of Hitler as a function of human psychology interacting with propaganda that is necessary to justify the overarching moral narratives of the winners of WWII and the cold war.
I don't agree with this bifurcation. The form is ((A & B) or (~A & C)), so obviously it isn't a tautology, and I am not interested in B or C. More specifically, I am not interested in whether or not Hitler is worse than Mao, and I am not (here) interested in why Hitler is so strongly demonized in popular culture. My interest in this post and the one that will follow is discuss, propaganda aside, what actually is distinctive about Hitler's ideology.
It is also just a plain fact that US intelligence shortly after WWII regarded Jews as a security threat to the United States.
This is the same org that recently said right wing extremism is the greatest threat to US national security. I never took them seriously as you seem to, but maybe I should have another look.
NelsonRushton
10d ago
Any reader can compare what is actually Isaiah with your tripe about Humble forbearance.
Funny, that was going to be my argument, too (except for the word "tripe").
I think Thomas Sowell is hands down the most notable right-leaning political thinker of our lifetime, and Conflict of Visions is Sowell's favorite Sowell book. I hope you'll read it if you haven't.
chapters 13 and 14, not 3 and 4.
OK I see, you are quoting Chapter 13 not Chapter 3. Looks like the Babylonians are in for some Old Testament justice.
This is something I will address at greater length in my next post (note that it was me who first brought up Moses in connection with Genocide), but long story short is this: if we compare Mein Kampf and Isaiah, one is self-righteous, entitled, and enraged, and the other his humble, repentant, and resolved. Jamming on the enemy in itself has nothing to do with identity politics.
There is also an important question of fact here. The moral axiom that connects Judeo-Christian foreign policy , so to speak, from the bronze age to the 20th century is this: like a police officer making an arrest, you are obligated to handle your enemies with the lightest touch you safely can -- but no lighter, and them's the breaks. As a matter of fact, in the bronze age, the lightest touch you can safely use, when bordering a near-peer ruthless belligerent, may be enslavement or genocide (what is your other option? "I guess that war is over; whew; you can all go home now; better luck next time wiping us out and raping our wives and daughters "). But I do not believe Jews per se were threat to Germany at all -- even if Marxism was a threat to Germany (which it was), and Jews were disproportionally Marxist (which they were). The 30,000 Jews who won medals for bravery in WWI were certainly not a threat to Germany -- but many of those very men, and their families, perished in Nazi death camps all the same.
Now how did Hitler think when the shoe was on the other foot, and his own tribe was being a pest and got their asses kicked? If the allied cause was a Jewish conspiracy like Hitler charged, then he should have expected Old Testament justice at Versailles. Austria and Prussia, and their union in the German Empire, had fought bloody wars of aggression against the allies with whom they sought terms at Versailles, and in some cases against their fathers and grandfathers. So by Hitler's own logic, the allies would have been within their rights to push for a final solution to the German Problem while they had the upper hand. But the Versailles treaty, hard as it was on Germany, was not the Holocaust (not the same ballpark, not the same sport) -- and yet what did Hitler say about it? Vae Victus? No. What did we do to deserve this? Not exactly. He said it was an unfair, unjust, absolute abomination. Poor baby.
And that's identity politics: group justice with double standards. It is holding that your people are entitled to prey on others whenever the opportunity presents itself, and whining in self-righteous indignation when the shoe is on the other foot. The Hebrews didn't do that, and neither did the pagans.
NelsonRushton
10d ago
Sources?
So, to be clear, this is the strongest retraction of the 2003 article he makes, to your knowledge?
You wrote:
My standards came from the expectations I had based your description:
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