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
To Whom Shall We Go?
A response to Faith and Doubt During Holy Week by Thomas Del Vasto
by J. Nelson Rushton
Note: This is the first in a series of posts in response to the OP. It contains only the introduction and the first section.
Introduction
When I first began seriously attending a Christian church, two opposing thoughts impressed themselves upon me with great and equal force: first, this is clearly the truest thing I have ever seen, and, second, this is clearly not true. I believed then, and I believe now, that both of those thoughts have their merits -- and it took a long time, and a determined, humble search for me to come to terms with their conjunction. Incidentally, whenever I have veered toward actually leaving the church, the verse that always came into focus and sobered me (or beguiled me, as atheists will allege) was the same one Thomas Del Vasto mentions, John 6:68: To whom shall we go?
This essay is the product of my journey to reconcile faith and reason. It is arranged as follows:
- Section 1 discusses the nature of science and of the scientific revolution.
- Section 2 discusses the Enlightenment, with particular focus on its precepts of scientism and humanism.
- Section 3 is a rebuttal of scientism.
- Section 4 is a rebuttal of humanism.
- Section 5, inspired by Thomas Sowell's A Conflict of Visions, argues that our fundamental intuitions have a certain structure, and that, together, they constitute what I call a worldview (or what Sowell called a vision). Following Sowell, I argue that competing worldviews play a dominant role in the public conversation on ethics and governance -- and that worldviews are, by their nature, substantially immune to revision by logical debate.
- Section 6 argues that shared worldviews are spread out and passed down largely by telling stories, including religious stories. Stories -- allegedly factual, purely mythological, or somewhere in between -- are the pillars of cultural founding and survival, and the weapons of cultural warfare.
- Section 7 argues that the worldview of the Enlightenment has more in common with traditional religions than its adherents typically admit, or, indeed, are aware of. In addition to resembling a religion in its key elements, I argue that Enlightenmentism is an arid and feeble faith, engendering what C. S. Lewis called the abolition of man.
- Section 8 argues that religious mythology can hold truth, in an appropriately broad sense, without being factual -- in particular as the vessel of a life sustaining worldview. I argue that spiritual mythology is the sole source of certain important truths that cannot be evinced, or even fully articulated, in other modes of language. Thus, one's chosen faith is worthy, not only of study, but of reverence and devotion.
- Section 9 discusses the worldview embodied in universal theism, and Christianity in particular.
- Section 10 discusses the plausibility of the facially factual claims of theism and Christianity, and the role these claims play in faith.
1. Science and the Scientific Revolution
Science
I will define science as the effort to reveal the laws of nature to the faculties of objective reason. This definition, however, raises more questions than it answers: What is nature, and what does it mean to be a law thereof? What is reason? And what makes reasoning objective? Let's dive in.
By nature, I mean the totality of facts and causal laws of the material world that are not the product of human invention or decision. For example, whether or not it rains tomorrow is for nature to decide; whether I bring an umbrella to work is for me to decide. This raises the delicate question of whether human decisions -- or at least what appear to be human decisions -- are actually part of nature, as the field of psychology, for example, sometimes treats them. We will return to this question later.
By laws of nature, I mean principles and patterns that persistently govern the way nature behaves -- such as Newton's laws of gravity and motion, the law of conservation of momentum, and Kepler's laws of orbital motion. Such laws are the subject matter of science.
While laws of nature are the subject of science, not all inquiries into the laws of nature can be considered scientific. First, for an investigation to qualify as scientific, its methods must be reasonable. For example, a project to discern the laws of chemistry by consulting a Ouija board(TM) would not be a scientific investigation, because it would not be reasonable. I define reason as the reliance on evidence of sorts that tend reliably to reveal truth. Unless I am badly mistaken, Ouija boards do not count.
Not even every reasonable inquiry into the laws of nature counts as being scientific. For example, if an astronomy student asks his professor what stars are made of, and the professor replies that stars are made mostly of hydrogen and helium, it is perfectly reasonable for the student to believe his professor. Astronomy professors tend to be a reliable source of truth about astronomy, especially when they speak dispositively. Of course they are not infallible -- but neither are the statistical methods used in medicine and the social sciences, or the experimental methods used in the physical sciences. Expert opinion, under some circumstances at least, can be a perfectly good reason to believe.
However, in the case described here, the student's inquiry (by asking his professor) is not a scientific investigation in the strict sense. This is not because his methods are unreasonable; it is because they do not rest on objective evidence. Objective evidence is impersonal evidence -- that is, it is evidence that is independent of any person's feelings, opinions, or perspectives. In particular, objective evidence cannot rest for its persuasive force on any person's perceived rank, expertise, or authority. Objective evidence is evidence that lets the reader see for himself that a proposition is true.
The insistence on objective evidence is the distinguishing hallmark of scientific thought. This is why, when a mathematician publishes a theorem, it is accompanied by a proof that can be independently verified by properly educated readers. It is why, when a scientist publishes an experimental finding, it is accompanied by a description of the experiment, precise enough that it can be repeated by skeptical colleagues. It is why students of physics and chemistry are expected to perform laboratory experiments, to verify long-known textbook laws for themselves. A scientist's job is not to tell you what is true; it is to give you a roadmap to where you can see for yourself what is true. The principle of independent reason is enshrined in the motto of the Royal Society -- the world's oldest existing academy of sciences -- as nullius in verba (Latin: nothing on the word; in context, take no one's word).
In summary, I define *science *as the effort to reveal the laws of nature to the faculties of objective reason, where
- nature is the totality of facts and causal laws of the material world that are not the product of human invention or decision,
- laws of nature are principles and patterns that persistently govern the way nature behaves,
- reason is the reliance on evidence of sorts that tend reliably to reveal truth, and
- reasoning is objective if it is independent of any person's feelings, opinions, or perspectives -- and, in particular, does not rest for its persuasive force on the speaker's perceived rank, expertise, or authority.
C’est ça (that's that).
The Scientific Revolution
Science, in the sense defined in the previous section, originated with the classical Greeks. However, as far as the physical sciences are concerned, they were not very good at it.
The Greeks were very good at mathematics, and they made many mathematical discoveries that are still part of the curriculum today. More importantly, the classical Greek method of giving evidence for mathematical propositions -- formal deductive inference from self-evident axioms, or what is now called mathematical proof -- is still the primary form of evidence accepted in the field of mathematics. I believe it is fair to say that in its critical mass, the modern approach to mathematics is largely a legacy bequeathed to us by the classical Greeks.
In the physical sciences, on the other hand, relatively little of what we see in modern science textbooks was discovered by the Greeks, and much of what they wrote on the subject was incorrect or incoherent. More importantly, the methods by which Greeks investigated the physical sciences are now obsolete. The method of giving evidence for universal causal laws by testing them experimentally -- or what is today sometimes called the "scientific method" -- is remarkably scarce in classical Greek writing.
The Greeks did engage in scientific inquiry, at least by my definition: they investigated the laws of nature, and they agreed among themselves that only objective evidence was to be accepted on the subject. So, if not by the so-called scientific method, what mode of reasoning did the Greeks employ in the physical sciences? The following passage from Aristotle's Physics is typical:
The void can bear no ratio to the full, and therefore neither can movement through the one to movement through the other, but if a thing moves through the thickest medium such and such a distance in such and such a time, it moves through the void with a speed beyond any ratio. For let Z be void, equal in magnitude to B and to D. Then if A is to traverse and move through it in a certain time, H, a time less than E, however, the void will bear this ratio to the full. But in a time equal to H, A will traverse the part O of A. And it will surely also traverse in that time any substance Z which exceeds air in thickness in the ratio which the time E bears to the time H. For if the body Z be as much thinner than D as E exceeds H, A, if it moves through Z, will traverse it in a time inverse to the speed of the movement, i.e. in a time equal to H. If, then, there is no body in Z, A will traverse Z still more quickly.
But we supposed that its traverse of Z when Z was void occupied the time H. So that it will traverse Z in an equal time whether Z be full or void. But this is impossible. It is plain, then, that if there is a time in which it will move through any part of the void, this impossible result will follow: it will be found to traverse a certain distance, whether this be full or void, in an equal time; for there will be some body which is in the same ratio to the other body as the time is to the time. [Aristotle: Physics, Book IV, Section 8]
Here, Aristotle is arguing against the existence of a void, as Democritus is supposed to have posited. Motion requires a medium, Aristotle argues, and the void is not a medium in the proper sense; thus, since motion does occur, there is no void.
Aristotle's argument does not make much sense to me, but perhaps I am missing something. In any case, whichever side of the argument one comes down on, he would not need to leave his office chair to complete the analysis. The only observation Aristotle relies on, and the only prediction he makes, is that objects move -- which is something everyone on both sides of the argument already knew. What is conspicuously missing from Aristotle's analysis, at least from a modern standpoint, is any mention of observations made under conditions deliberately designed to test the theory, aka experimentation. This is typical of Greek writing on science.
The Greek reluctance to perform experiments sometimes led to errors that would be difficult, if not impossible, to make under modern rules of evidence. For example, immediately after the passage quoted above, Aristotle writes,
We see that bodies which have a greater impulse either of weight or of lightness, if they are alike in other respects, move faster over an equal space, and in the ratio which their magnitudes bear to each other. [Aristotle: Physics, Book IV, Section 8]
In other words, Aristotle asserts that objects fall at speeds proportional to their weight. On this theory, for example, a ten pound rock would fall twice as fast as a five pound rock under the influence of gravity. Unlike the passage quoted previously, this one does make a nontrivial prediction -- but it is a prediction that can be falsified simply by dropping two objects of unequal weight from chest height. You would probably not need to leave the room you are in to perform the experiment, and probably neither would Aristotle on the day that he wrote it. Nevertheless, evidently, for some strange reason (or at least reasons strange to us), he did not bother to perform the experiment.
The Greeks' findings and methods, sans experiments, would be canonized, and practically sanctified, by thinkers from the middle ages through the end of the Renaissance. As Stillman Drake wrote,
What was lacking in physics, from the time that Aristotle coined that word to name the science of nature, was the idea that actual measurement could contribute anything of real value to any science. The object of science, as set by Aristotle, was to find out the hidden causes of events in nature. Measurement could not reveal underlying causes of the kind required by philosophers, so measurement had no place in physics. [Stillman Drake, in his translator's preface to Galileo's Two New Sciences]
So, it would be almost two thousand years before a notable author invited his readers to put Aristotle's predictions to an experimental test. It was Galileo Galilei who made the invitation, as follows:
Aristotle says, “A hundred-pound iron ball falling from the height of a hundred braccia hits the ground before one of just one pound has descended a single braccio.” I say that they arrive at the same time. You find, on making the experiment, that the larger anticipates the smaller by two inches. [Galileo (1638): Two New Sciences]
This is not exactly modern scientific rigor, but it is in the ballpark of modern scientific rigor, in a way that the writing of Aristotle and other Greek writers was not. This is the kind of thinking, starting perhaps with Copernicus in the mid 1500s, that ushered in what is now called the scientific revolution. Along with this change in methods came an unprecedented cascade of new and deep discoveries in the physical sciences.
Because the Greeks so rarely wrote about experiments, and because we now know that experiments are essential to progress in the physical sciences, the mainstream view today is that the Greeks were not really doing science in the first place. Inquiry into the laws of nature before the mid 1500s is usually said to fall under the heading of natural philosophy -- an activity distinct from science, defined by inquiry into the laws of nature, exercising objective reason, but without recorded experiments. My view is that this fails to put the Greek contribution to science in its proper place. Experimentation is a technique, while objective reason is an ethos -- or a tao, in Eastern terms. I hold it was the Greeks who bequeathed us the tao of science, even if they didn't make a great deal of progress, and even if they did not discover the techniques we now use.
Ironically, it may have been the Greeks' smashing success in mathematics that handicapped them in the physical sciences. Readers familiar with Euclid's Elements will immediately recognize the style of Aristotle's prose in the passage arguing against the existence of a void: when he wanted to get serious, Aristotle wrote in the style of mathematics, viz., formal deduction from (allegedly) self-evident axioms. This is, after all, the style of inquiry and evidence that marked the greatest of Greek intellectual achievements. Give a boy a hammer, and all the world's a nail! The problem with this particular hammer is that the laws of the physical sciences are not self-evident, and cannot be logically derived from anything that is self-evident. An analogy might help explain that situation, and is given in the following paragraphs.
When I was in 8th grade, I imagined (and hoped) that perhaps there was a single equation for everything. I also imagined that if you solved the equation-for-everything, it would reduce to 0 = 0. That was my naive way of postulating that the laws of nature constituted a tautology -- that is, a statement that can be known to be true by purely logical thought, independent of observation. If the laws of nature are indeed a tautology, then to know them by pure logical thought is a noble and heady proposition. Unfortunately, in the light of modern logic, we know that the laws of nature are not tautologies. The proof of this is simple: there exist logically consistent possible worlds that are different from the one we inhabit. For example, there is a logically possible world consisting of a single particle bouncing back and forth within the interval [0,1] at a constant speed of one unit of space per unit time. For all logic can tell, the universe could have been that. Fortunately, for some reason or perhaps for no reason, the universe is not that.
Consequently, our knowledge of the laws of nature must come, at least in part, from observations. In practice, it seems it must come from carefully designed, often expensive observations. The universe is a certain way, and it could have been a different way, and we can only tell the way it is by looking at, and looking at it closely, in ways that are carefully designed to probe the corners of its design. Clever as they were, somehow the Greeks missed that -- and somehow, the scientists of the 1600s, such as Galileo, Kepler, and Newton, did not.
The scientific revolution culminated with the publication of Newton's Principia Mathematica. It would be difficult to overstate the impact of Newton's work, both technical and cultural. By the mid 17th century, it was known that objects in free fall near the Earth move according to Galileo's law of falling bodies, and objects in the heavens move according to Kepler's laws of orbital motion. These are both profound discoveries, but before Newton, the two theories Galileo and Kepler were irreducible and independent. That is, we had one theory for motion in the heavens, and another theory for motion near the Earth. Coincidentally, there is an analogous situation in modern physics, where our best theory of change on a small scale is quantum mechanics, our best theory of change on a large scale is general relativity, and the laws of these two theories are distinct and incompatible. In the 17th Century, as now, the holy grail of physics was a grand unified theory: a single theory that would yield, as mathematical consequences, the seemingly separate laws that seem to apply in different places. In Principia, Newton proposed a single theory of gravity and motion, and showed that Kepler's law of planetary motion and Galileo's law of falling bodies could both be derived from it as mathematical consequences. Thus, what is now known as "Newtonian mechanics", including Newton's own work and a few elaborations that followed in its wake, constituted the grand unified theory of its time.
As mentioned above, Newtonian mechanics had a tremendous, perhaps even transformative, impact on the intellectual life of the West. The story begins with the classical Greek thinker Democritus, who hypothesized that fundamentally, the universe consists of atoms in the void -- little balls bouncing around against each other and through space. Nobel Laureate Richard Feynman said of this idea,
If, in some cataclysm, all of scientific knowledge were to be destroyed, and only one sentence passed on to the next generation of creatures, what statement would contain the most information in the fewest words? I believe it is the atomic hypothesis (or the atomic fact, or whatever you wish to call it) that all things are made of atoms — little particles that move around in perpetual motion. [Richard Feynman (1964): The Feynman Lectures on Physics]
Now if the universe fundamentally consists of little balls moving through space, this raises a question: by what law do things move through space? We often ask what makes something (or someone) tick -- in other words, what are the principles that govern its (or his or her) behavior? The phrase calls to mind the workings of an old fashioned watch. Every second or so, the watch's second-hand moves clockwise by 6 degrees, and makes a quiet but distinctive tick. During that second, also, the minute hand moves one tenth of the degree, and the hour hand approximately 1/120'th of a degree. Inside the watch, hidden from view during normal operation, is the elaborate, and to the uninitiated, arcane, mechanism that makes all of this happen. That mechanism is what makes the watch tick: the hidden workings that govern its transition from one state to the next.
If the universe consists of objects moving through space, and Newtonian mechanics governs how objects move through space, then, in a fairly serious sense, to know it is to know what makes the universe tick. Of course there is more to know, but the laws of motion and gravity are the linchpin, or the central gear, that sets the stage for filling in the remaining details. They are our biggest glimpse under the hood of the universe, at what makes it tick. Could anything be more awesome than that?
(remaining sections to come)
NelsonRushton
1mo ago
Just a note to the OP: I am working on a high-effort response to this but it will not be ready for a few days.
I have wrestled with the problem of theodicy, particularly, since I was a young child who did not know the word existed.
I used to think that the problem of suffering was a meritorious argument against theism, but over the years it has grown to have less and less force for me. These days it has almost none. The new atheists make some very good points, and my faith has been shaped and constrained by the valid ones, but IMO the alleged problem of suffering isn't one of them. There is a hidden premise in the "problem of suffering" argument that God, if he exists, should be expected to act toward us like I, with my human understanding, would act toward my children, in this world, if I were omnipotent. It is a natural premise, at least until you say it out loud, but I don't believe it is self evident, or even particularly plausible.
My own son, at age 8, has no real idea why I compel him to do math homework for half an hour a day. Sometimes he must think I'm doing it just to torment him. The fact is that I understand a few things he is not capable of understanding about where this whole thing is going and under what conditions. On a good day he trusts me on that. On a bad day, when he is not in the mood to trust me on that, then he might perceive his math homework to be needless suffering inflicted on him, or at least allowed to beset him, by his father. On those days, what he needs chiefly is not for me to explain myself better; I don't need to win an argument with an 8 year old about whether I have the authority to make him do homework, or about whether or why it's in his best interest . What he needs at that moment, first of all, is a little straightening out about who's in charge here. Once he fully understands that, then we can talk about the pros and cons of math homework -- or of playing with matches without an adult present, or of playing with razor blades, or of watching his choice of videos on YouTube (all actual cases). Maybe he'll understand my reasoning, and maybe he won't, but his understanding is not a prerequisite for my authority [cf. Job 38].
I believe the force of the argument-from-suffering comes largely from an attitude of entitlement, on behalf of ourselves and others, which simply fades away with growing faith and fear of God. In any case, anyone who expects to have an easy life because they have faith in God simply hasn't read the book. Consider the suffering of Saint Paul:
Are they ministers of Christ? (I speak as a fool) I am more; in labours more abundant, in stripes above measure, in prisons more frequent, in deaths oft. Of the Jews five times received I forty stripes save one. Thrice was I beaten with rods, once was I stoned, thrice I suffered shipwreck, a night and a day I have been in the deep; In journeyings often, in perils of waters, in perils of robbers, in perils by mine own countrymen, in perils by the heathen, in perils in the city, in perils in the wilderness, in perils in the sea, in perils among false brethren; In weariness and painfulness, in watchings often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold and nakedness. Beside those things that are without, that which cometh upon me daily, the care of all the churches. Who is weak, and I am not weak? who is offended, and I burn not? [2 Corinthians 11:23-29, KJV]
So prosperity gospel, or whatever you want to call it, is not how it worked for Paul. It is not how it worked for James, or Peter, or any of the apostles. It is not how it worked for David, or Moses, or Daniel, or Job. It is certainly not how it worked for for Jesus in his life as a man.
In the beginning, God created the Heavens and the Earth; and the Heavens were awesome, and the Earth sucked. We're on the Earth. What do you expect? More to the point, what exactly do you think you are entitled to? When I see every breath I take as a blessing I don't deserve, the "problem" of how allegedly terrible it all is just evaporates.
NelsonRushton
1yr ago
Note: this is my edit of the above post based on feedback after some reflection.
Hitler's Identity Politics
1. Introduction: Cargo-Cult Political Science
Of all the villains of the 20'th century, no one symbolizes evil in the Western consciousness like Adolf Hitler. This is a little odd, because Chinese communist leader Mao Zedong murdered more of his own people than Hitler did, and caused the deaths of tens of millions more through ideology-driven malfeasance. The number of Chinese citizens killed by Mao's regime is comparable to the total number of deaths in World War II and the Holocaust -- both civilian and military, on all sides, from all causes. Bolshevik revolutionary leader Vladimir Lenin murdered about as many of his own people as Hitler did, and, unlike Hitler, founded a regime that transformed his country into Mordor for generations. Lenin's successor Stalin probably also murdered more of his own people than either Lenin or Hitler.
Yet Lenin, Stalin, and Mao are not seen as radioactively evil in the way that Hitler is. A statue of Vladimir Lenin, sans head, stood in the Mandalay Bay Hotel in Las Vegas for years. A statue of Lenin stands in Seattle at the corner of 35th St. and Fremont as of this writing, and that one has the head on -- and another statue of Lenin stands in San Antonio at the 300 block of West Commerce Street (also with head). It is not unusual to hear people quote the allegedly wise sayings of Lenin and Mao, even while being aware of their crimes. People say things like, As Mao Zedong said, women hold up half the sky. Joe Biden repeated that quote in 2021 in a commencement address at the US Coast Guard Academy, though he did not mention Mao and was probably not aware of the source of the quote (he may not have been aware he was at the Coast Guard Academy). For comparison -- in a case that should have been viewed similarly -- Donald Trump once unknowingly quoted Adolf Hitler. However, for some reason, corporate media amplified and attacked Trump's gaffe an order of magnitude more than Biden's. You can compare the news coverage of those two events by looking at the results of this google search in terms of news coverage compared to this one.
While I believe that Mao was a man consumed by evil, I also believe that when he said women hold up half the sky, he identified an important truth and put it in a memorable way. Is it OK to quote Mao on the merits of that saying, in spite of the fact that he also killed tens of millions of people? Some people think it is and some think it isn't, and I don't know -- but I do know that nobody, outside of a skinhead rally, begins a paragraph with As Adolf Hitler once noted.... This is even though Hitler was a more cogent writer and speaker than Lenin, Stalin, or Mao -- and, like any other tyrant, some of what Hitler said had merit. I also know that there aren't any statues of Hitler in Las Vegas, or Seattle, or San Antonio, with or without the head -- and that no one with any sense would put one up because it would make them a social and economic pariah.
So why is Hitler demonized in a way that Lenin, Stalin, and Mao are not? I submit it is part of a wider phenomenon: there is a great deal of what might be called "cargo-cult science" surrounding Hitler. The phrase cargo cult science comes from Richard Feynman's 1974 Caltech commencement address, where he related the following story:
In the South Seas there is a "cargo cult" of people. During the war, they saw airplanes land with lots of good materials, and they want the same thing to happen now. So they've arranged to imitate things like runways, to put fires [like landing lights] along the sides of the runways, to make a wooden hut [like a control tower] for a man to sit in, with two wooden pieces on his head like headphones, and bars of bamboo sticking out like antennas. He's the controller, and they wait for the airplanes to land.
The point of Feynman's story is that when you look at something to see what makes it tick, the features that matter are not always the ones that meet the eye most easily. For example, in broad strokes, Hitler was a right wing national socialist. Many people seem to hold that since Hitler was on the political right, the more right-wing you are, the more like Hitler you must be. And many hold that, since Hitler was a nationalist, the more nationalistic you are, the more like Hitler you must be. But for some reason, vanishingly few people hold that the more socialist you are, the more like Hitler you must be -- even though the National Socialist platform has about much for Bernie Sanders to love as it has for John Birch to love. At the end of the day, saying that Hitler was principally defined by his right-wingism, or his nationalism, or his socialism, just because he was a right wing national socialist, is no more logical per se than saying that what made Hitler "literally Hitler" was his distinctive style of moustache. Accepting any of these uncritically, from the nationalism to the socialism to the funny moustache, amounts to cargo cult (political) science.
Beyond the question of what made Hitler and his ideology so evil, there is widespread uncritical acceptance of the proposition that Hitler was evil in the first place -- and superlatively evil, in a way that even Lenin, Stalin, and Mao were supposedly not. As a kid growing up in America in the 70's and 80's, I unquestioningly accepted that Hitler was evil. It did not have to be explained to me what made Hitler count as being evil; duh, he started World War II and murdered six million Jews. Of course anyone who launches a war of conquest is evil. Like Hitler. Or James K. Polk. No, wait a minute; that can't be right. But of course anyone who orchestrates a genocide is evil. Like Hitler. Or Moses. No, wait a minute; that can't be right either. Weights and weights, measures and measures.
Branding Hitler as evil without being able to sensibly say why, or applying that label using standards that we don't apply when the shoe is on another foot, is dangerous for two reasons. First, it makes it more likely that we might be following in Hitler's footsteps without realizing it. Second, it increases the risk that our children will reject our assessment of Hitler when they see that we have made up our minds for no good reason. That could make them more vulnerable to jumping on the bandwagon if another Hitler comes along. For those reasons, it is important to understand what made Hitler Hitler in deeper than cargo-cult fashion -- so that we can better recognize whatever that thing is in other contexts, most importantly within our own hearts. Or do you believe that, whatever made Hitler Hitler, it can't happen here, or that you don't have any of it in you?
If a leader were to come along talking about racial genocide, that would be a dead giveaway that he is peddling a Hitler-style tyranny. But we can't count on that, first and foremost because Hitler himself did not come along talking about racial genocide. Hitler did, however, come along talking about the importance of racial identity, about certain races being historical class exploiters, and about the evils of capitalism. He did proclaim that groups should have different rights and obligations on the basis of race, and he did peddle victim identity politics rooted in flagrant double-standards. Moreover, Hitler and his followers were militant, authoritarian, and censorious, both "on the streets" before they took office, and under the auspices of legal authority after they were in office. I submit these are the most telling characteristics of the National Socialist ideology, from which it could have been (and was by some people) identified as a menace in its early stages. These characteristics are typical of racial supremacist movements generally, and are also present in the woke movement.
2. National Socialism and "Nazism"
The word 'Nazi' has an interesting history. Hitler and the members of his party never called themselves Nazis; they called themselves National Socialists. The term 'Nazi' was originally used as a slur against members of the National Socialist party by their ideological opponents -- much like American opponents of communism refer to its adherents disparagingly as commies. The National Socialists, in turn, called their ideological opponents reds. So the term Nazi -- like the terms red and commie -- all began as all slurs applied to members of certain ideologies by their opponents.
This slur Nazi was picked up by the Allied press and During World War II, and newspapers routinely referred to National Socialists as Nazis -- at the same time referring to the Japanese as Japs. Both Nazi and Jap carried a sense of enmity and contempt. After the war, the press dropped Jap but kept Nazi. This is understandable on the grounds that National Socialism was an ideology which had been defeated, while Japan was a nation that was still intact and no longer at war with us. But that may not be the whole explanation. Disparaging terms for communists, such as red and commie, have barely ever been used by the American press, even during the cold war, the Korean War, and Vietnam War, and even by authors (such as myself) who firmly believe that communism is evil. The slur Nazi has stuck in the mind of the intelligentsia like no other slur --just like Hitler has been demonized like no other tyrant.
Were National Socialists really socialists?
It is a delicate exercise to define socialism. Self-identifying "socialists" often differ on the matter, and sometimes differ fiercely. The term has been self-applied by people with views as diverse as Joseph Stalin, Adolf Hitler, Bernie Sanders, George Orwell, and David Ben-Gurion. So I ask the reader's forgiveness if I can't come up with a definition that makes everyone happy. The Wikipedia definition of socialism is social ownership of the means of production [capital], as opposed to private ownership,... which can take various forms including public, community, collective, cooperative, or employee. That is the definition I will use.
By that definition, Lenin, Stalin, and Mao were clearly socialists, in the sense that their regimes directly managed the allocation of capital in their respective countries in a thoroughgoing way. It is safe to say micromanaged planned economies such as those of Lenin and Mao have been uniformly disastrous -- leading to third-world economic output in the best cases and famine in the worst cases. Food shortages are a typical result of Marxist revolutions, and occurred on the heels of such revolutions, for example, in Albania, Yugoslavia, Russia, Romania, China, Cuba, Cambodia, Vietnam, North Korea, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Ethiopia, Zimbabwe, Mongolia, Yugoslavia, Laos, and Angola. When you see children starving in an ad for charities engaged in famine relief, you are usually seeing the results of Marxism.
Under the National Socialist approach, by contrast, the government reserves the right to manage capital -- at will and without limit -- but only steps in when they feel it is necessary. Necessity typically arises when the business in question is deemed crucial to some national objective, and "word to the wise" from the regime fails to have the effect desired effect. This form of socialism is largely hands-off in practice, or at least appears to be -- because no one wants a visit from the secret police, and a raised eyebrow will do. This form of largely hands-off socialism, sometimes identified with Fascism, has typically dramatically better economic outcomes than socialism of Marxist, Leninist, or Maoist variety. In fact, Germany under National Socialism recovered from the Great Depression years before the rest of Europe and the United States. China has been moving toward a hands-off approach that might be fairly called "national socialism" (or fascism) since the reign of Deng Xiaoping (though they prefer to call it "socialism with Chinese characteristics), and China has gone from a third world country to an economic superpower as a consequence.
So under the Hitler-style economic model, whom does capital belong to? I submit an analogy that I believe is instructive. Suppose, for example, that there is a certain bicycle which is currently in your possession, but which you can only use in ways I approve of, and which I can take away from you at any moment I choose. Whose bicycle is it, really? It seems to be my bicycle, on roughly the same terms as if I had loaned it to you: do with it as you please, within limits set by me, unless and until I wish to repossess it. These are basically the same terms under which you manage capital under your possession in a National Socialist regime. Thus, I submit that if a borrowed bicycle still belongs to the man who loaned it, National Socialism is bona fide socialism per the Wikipedia definition.
It may clarify the issue further to consider the one form of communal ownership that is not considered to be socialism by most definitions: stockholder ownership. Stockholder ownership is as "communal" as employee ownership or municipal ownership -- and in fact stockholder ownership is often called "public ownership" in the United States -- but there is a key feature that separates stockholder-ownership from the other kinds of communal ownership that are admitted under the heading of socialism: under stockholder ownership, just as in private ownership, capital belongs to the people who paid for it.
This kind of ownership -- the ownership of capital by those who bought and paid for it in a free market -- is precisely what socialists of all kinds stand against. Hitler writes, for example,
A grave economic symptom of decay was the slow disappearance of the right of private property, and the gradual transference of the entire economy to the ownership of stock companies.
Now 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.
The internationalization of the German economic life had been begun even before the War through the medium of stock issues To be sure, a part of German industry still attempted with resolution to ward off this fate. At length, however, it, too, fell a victim to the united attack of greedy finance capital which carried on this fight, with the special help of its most faithful comrade, the Marxist movement.
-- Mein Kampf, Vol 1 Book X
The above passage is characteristic of Hitler in that he sees stockholder capitalism and Marxism as twin evils, both characterized by materialism, anti-nationalism, and Jewish conspiracy -- and both fiercely opposed by National Socialism.
For the rest of this essay, I will refer to Hitler's philosophy as National Socialism rather than Nazism -- first because that was how Hitler and his followers referred to themselves, second because the term National Socialist is accurate, and third because it is more fit for serious writing -- as opposed to terms that originated as slurs, like red, commie, Jap, and Nazi.
3. Hitler and Plato
In Vol 1, Chapter 10 of Mein Kampf, Hitler describes the moral and economic decay of Germany leading up to World War I. Echoing the narrative of Plato's Republic in its broad strokes and in several key details, 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, left-leaning populism. The parallels between Mein Kampf and Plato's Republic 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 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 transition 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
And 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
Both Plato and Hitler write that the oligarchic state soon degenerates into one of class division, moral relativism, anti-nationalism, anti-meritocracy, multiculturalism, and general half-heartedness in attempts to keep order. It then further degenerates toward leftist populism (communism for Hitler, and dimokratia for Plato).
Plato and Hitler part ways, however, on the underlying cause of this degeneration. For Plato it is all about values; for Hitler, it is all about race. In this respect, Hitler bears a stronger resemblance to another noted author in the Western Canon, as we will discuss next.
Thanks for the info. I read Hanania's apology side by side with Kendi's, and I would not put Kendi's weak, semi-apology said in the same bucket of repentance and regret as Hanania's. Would you?
NelsonRushton
1yr ago
I am skeptical of the claim that Hoste's deemed-offensive writing was comparable to Kendi's. I noticed that you did not give a sample, and neither does the Wikipedia article on him. Maybe that's because it's too distasteful to repeat, and maybe because it's really not that bad and nobody wants to pull back the curtain on no-big-deal that they are calling "racist" and "alt-right".
Wikipedia says he "argued for forced sterilization of anyone with an IQ under 90", but they don't quote him. Did he really? Can you, by chance, point me to one or more particularly offensive samples of Hanania/Hoste's writing?
NelsonRushton
1yr ago
Imagine someone who had published an analogous article about blacks to what Kendi said about whites, that was part of a searchable public record. Now imagine they apologized by saying,
When I was in college, I hated black people -- and because of that, I fallaciously believed that they were a different breed of human, and that they were trying to destroy my people to save themselves from would-be extinction caused by their recessive genes.
Now imagine that was their apology and they left it at that. Would that be OK with you?
So, to be clear, this is the strongest retraction of the 2003 article he makes, to your knowledge?
You wrote:
setting up specific standards on the spot that he apparently should have passed for it to be a real retraction.
My standards came from the expectations I had based your description:
Kendi spends an entire chapter self-flagellating about these statements and his other similar youthful views.
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
1yr 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
1yr 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
1yr 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
1yr 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
1yr 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
1yr 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
1yr 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
1yr 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
1yr 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
1yr 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.
Thanks for the encouragement. When I get all the sections done I am going to put it on my substack: https://jnelsonrushton.substack.com/
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