Living in Interesting Times

 

Fascist headquarters in Rome: Hope and Change

How you would have reacted had you been a German in the 1930s? As Hitler rose to power? Would you have been one of the good guys? Even at personal risk?

No need to wonder. We are in a comparable time. Have you even noticed? Will you be proud of your role when, one day, your grandchildren ask?

We have a much larger Holocaust, of the unborn. Seventy million a year and counting.

We have the moral relativism that backstopped the Nazis. As with the Nazis, we have decided that morality is purely cultural and subject to choice. All we think about now is power and the triumph of the will. If I say I’m a woman, I am a woman. You must submit.

We have learned to see one another as ethnicities, rather than fellow humans. As “whites,” or “indigenous,” or “people of colour,” or even as the “gay community.” We have embraced the concept of corporate ethnic guilt, of blood libel. Moreover, if morality is purely a matter of cultural convention, all other ethnicities are immoral. 

We have established the same close collusion between government and large corporations that defined Nazism as an economic system. Big businesses are increasingly protected from competition by regulation, their profits guaranteed. In return, they enforce government policies. They have become, in effect, an arm of government.

We have seen totalitarian measures and the suspension of liberties: in the Covid and vaccine crisis; in the draconian response to the trucker protest in Canada; in the crackdown on “hate speech” and “misinformation” online. Governments keep pushing this envelope.

We have seen the police and courts subverted to political ends, as enabled the rise of Hitler in the Weimar Republic. We see eager prosecution and severe penalties for those on one side of the political aisle, while overlooking or barely punishing offenses on the other side.

And we have seen the Reichstag fire, in the reaction to the January 6 riot. Trudeau tried it in Canada as well, claiming the Freedom Convoy was subversive and the product of “foreign influence.” 

We have also seen the antisemitism, expanding rapidly, increasing in intensity, since October 7th. Now it is even okay again to kill Jews. Hamas did, and everyone on the left supports Hamas. The Jews are always the canaries in the mine. They are the first targets when morality breaks down.

All that is yet missing is the Fuhrer principle, the impulse to hand dictatorial power to a supposed “genius,” bypassing conventions and established systems.

Those on the left are actually accusing Trump and Musk of this. They are calling them Fascists or Nazis. 

Musk’s concentration of powers of all kinds has to be worrying, on Lord Acton’s principle that all power corrupts. And Trump is not good on keeping to social conventions.

But there is a critical element of Nazi leadership that they lack. The Fascist dictator is a narcissist, not a real genius. He only plays one in his own mind, and seeks to impose that illusion on others. This is why he seeks power. You expect him therefore to emerge from nowhere, without significant prior accomplishments. Like AOC, Bernie Sanders, Jacinta Ardern, or Justin Trudeau. Like Muammar Ghaddafi, or Stalin, or Saddam, or Putin.

Trump and Musk are, instead, actual known geniuses. They had achieved distinction before entering politics. 

It takes strong leaders, after all, to combat Nazism: a Churchill, a DeGaulle, a Tito.

And so the course for good men is clear.

What will you tell your grandchildren? Assuming they have not been aborted?

Musk's Nazi Salute

 

Heil General Public? Heil Republican voters?

About Elon Musk’s “Roman salute.”

Obviously, given the fact that in the popular mind “Nazi” is currently a synonym for pure evil, and Nazism is solely about obtaining power, the last thing a real Nazi would do is anything that would formally associate them with the Nazis of history. The last thing an actual Nazi would do is to give a Nazi salute in public.

Instead, Nazis would insist publicly that they are the anti-Nazis, and our protection against the Nazis. Just as the historical Nazis of Weimar Germany snuck into power by presenting themselves as the strongest protection against those horrible Bolsheviks.

The real Nazis would call themselves something like “Antifascists”—“Antifa,’ perhaps, for short.

The fact that Musk made a gesture that looked alarmingly like a Nazi salute obviously without thinking what it might look like to some is a testament that the man does not have a Nazi thought in his head. 

If it was a dog whistle to Nazis, pay attention to which dogs are barking.

Kamala Chameleon and the Big Lie

 

Look! The Moon is Green!

Kamala Harris has by come commentators been nicknamed “Kamala Chameleon,” because she seems to tell every interest group whatever they want to hear. She is against fracking; she is for fracking. She is against a border wall; she is for a border wall. She wants to confiscate guns; she is for the Second Amendment. 

This, since she herself raised the comparison, is something else she and the Democrats have in common with Hitler. This is why historians have trouble classifying Nazi ideology, have trouble defining what Nazism actually was. As William L. Shirer observed in following Hitler’s rise, he would simply promise every crowd whatever he thought they most wanted to hear.

This makes sense, because Nazism’s core value was simply power, ultimately power in the hands of one man. Like the modern left, it saw all of human society as a power struggle. The goal was (and is) to get more power for yourself, not to advance anyone else’s interests. So you make whatever promises will achieve this. Once in power, you then do as you like.

Another way in which the modern Democrats echo the Nazis is in their embrace of the propaganda technique of the “big lie”: that if you keep repeating something often enough, it comes to be, or be accepted as, truth. This is the fundamental ideology of postmodernism. It is why they can assert that men become women, and vice versa, by saying so, and it must then be illegal for anyone to say otherwise. They use the big lie on the hustings again and again, asserting the Russian collusion hoax, the fine people hoax, the Vance sofa hoax, the Liz Cheney firing squad hoax, the drink bleach hoax, and a dozen others, knowing they are debunked.

Were the Nazis on the Left or on the Right?

 

Notorious right-winger

There is a battle online currently between people asserting that the Nazi Party was left-wing, and people asserting it was right-wing. The latter is, of course, the more conventional position.

The argument that it was left-wing, however, is obvious: the name of the party was the “National Socialist German Workers’ Party.” They claimed to be socialist. Surely the ball is in the court of those who say they were not.

The response on the left is apparently that they were lying. It was a trick to sucker in the working class.

This shows much disrespect for the working class. It also violates the current leftist principle that we must accept everyone’s self-identification. If an apparent man says they are a woman, we must accept this. If they want to be called indigenous and not Indian, we must accept indigenous as correct.

Marxists object that Nazis were not socialists, because socialism means collective control of the means of production, and the Nazis did not nationalize industries.

But ownership is not control.

What they did was change the legal definition of property, so that, while private individuals might technically own things, they did not control them. Everything was subject to the needs of the state. Control was in the hands of the state, including the ability to set wages, prices, levels of production, and dividends—removing the free market and the profit motive. It was socialism in all but a legalistic, technical sense, and then only if you accept only one of several definitions of socialism.

It is standard practice on the left, of course, to exclude any political tendency that differs from their own from their definition of socialism. Maoists insisted that the USSR was not socialist. The Stalinists insisted that Trotskyites were not true socialists. The Bernsteinists insisted that the Bolsheviks were not true socialists. Especially whenever socialism fails to produce desired results, the claim will always be that it was not true socialism.

Another counter-argument is that the Nazis were on the right because they were “nationalists.” This was not socialism, this was “national socialism.”

But if nationalism makes one right-wing, and internationalism makes one left-wing, then the British Empire was left-wing, while Mahatma Gandhi was a right-winger. The IRA was a right-wing organization; in Canada the NDP is right-wing; Washington and Jefferson were right-wingers, and George the Third was the leftist; and Kim Jong Un is on the far right. This defies the common understanding, and amounts to an idiosycratic use of the terms. Nationalism is perfectly orthodox as a part of some leftist ideology.

The modern North American understanding of the political distinction between “left” and “right,” although somewhat ahistorical, is that “left” means increasing the powers and responsibilities of the state and the collective, while “right” means reducing the size and scope of government in favour of the individual. On this scale, even if considered right-wing in their time and place, when “right” and “left” might have had different meanings, Nazism and Fascism stand on the extreme left in our terms.

Another common way to understand the distinction between left and right is that the right is conservative, that is, primarily concerned with conserving, keeping matters much a they have been. The left wants change. “Hope and change.” You know the thing.

By this standard, again, the Nazis were far left. They did not stand for preserving the Weimar Republic, the then-current sysem of government, nor yet for replacing it with the earlier form, the monarchy, that preceded it. They wanted a radical reimagining of society, of the entire world, of conventional morality, even the development of a new human species. They were “futurists.” “Tomorrow belongs to me.”

But the most telling argument that the Nazis were on the political left is that it is the established wisdom that they were on the far right. Here, as everywhere, the rule of thumb is that anything “everyone knows” is true is probably false.

Christmas in the Third Reich

 

The Daily Mail has more on this.

Renazification

 

Help me out here, gang.

Is it just me, or is Canada rapidly turning into not just a Fascist, but a Nazi hellhole?

A Nazi Christmas

 

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/nazis-fought-original-war-christmas-180961513/

The Second Coming

 

Courtesy of the "Toronto Relationship Clinic"

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,    

Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

 

Current academic articles based on “critical race theory” keep cascading across my desk. They always accuse the US of being a racist society, based on “white supremacy.”

It is not obvious what they mean by this. I think many are confused. 

It is true, of course, that the US once had race-based slavery, and did not abolish it until 1865. But then again, most of the world used to have slavery, it was abolished, and in the US it was abolished over a hundred and fifty years ago. 

It is also true that discriminatory laws based on race were revived and then persisted in the US South until 1965, a hundred years later. But that too is over fifty years ago. Most now alive would have no memory.

What makes the US “white supremacist” today? Merriam-Webster defines “White supremacy” as “the belief that the white race is inherently superior to other races and that white people should have control over people of other races.” Oxford defines it as: “The belief that white people constitute a superior race and should therefore dominate society, typically to the exclusion or detriment of other racial and ethnic groups, in particular black or Jewish people.”

According to the US Constitution, and American statute law, to act on any such belief in America today would be illegal. The US is almost uniquely a non-racial nation. To be German or Japanese or French is an ethnic, a racial, designation. To be American is not. It is the one country in the world least based on any kind of racial supremacy. In America, by its very founding document, all men are created equal.

There is no constituency to speak of in modern America for such an opinion as “white supremacy.” I doubt any reader of this piece has ever heard or read such an opinion expressed by anyone in the past forty years, in public or in private. I have not. And I read a lot.

So how can the US be said to be based, today, on “white supremacy”?

By a redefinition of the term. “White supremacy” as the term is used by the critical race theorists means any situation in which it is tolerated that people with white skin are statistically doing better on some metric than are people with darker-toned skin. This must be ended, by main force, or the system is “white supremacist.” Pale-skinned people of primarily European ancestry do better than “blacks” on measures of average income and average educational attainment. So long as this is true, apparently, the USA is and will be “white supremacist.”

Yet we have a logical problem. If you factor in all racial groups, instead of an arbitrary two, it turns out that the USA is “Asian supremacist.” Asian Americans do better than either European or African Americans on both those metrics. And, given that the Oxford definition expressly excludes Jews from the category “white,” American is probably even more “Jew supremacist.”

The essential premise of critical race theory is exactly the same premise as Nazi race theory. There and then, it was the Jews running everything; for the Jews in prewar Germany were wealthier and better educated than the average German. So they were supposedly in control of everything, and were to blame for all the sufferings of the Germans. Here and now, it is the “whites” running everything, and responsible for all bad things. Increasingly we hear calls for similar remedies as well.

No cause for panic, of course—many will say. After all, the Jews were only six percent of the German population in 1930. “Whites” in the US are the majority. They really do hold power, so long as the US is a democracy, and so have little to fear, however violent and vile the rhetoric becomes.

Except, to begin with, the rules are changing. The innovation of “intersectionality” allows things to be parsed so that the ethnicity can be expanded or contracted as seems useful. “White” can be read to exclude “Hispanics,” Jews, Arabs, Muslims, Sicilians, or whatever group might be convenient. And you can discount women, homosexuals, and so forth. The remaining core might be entirely vulnerable in a democracy, depending on how the lines are drawn. Only a bigger and better Holocaust.

But it might not go that direction. Instead, there are growing signs that the gun turrets are swinging to Asians and Jews. Street attacks on Jews and Asians seem to be growing. The logic of critical race theory points inexorably in this direction.

It is amazing how history repeats; it is amazing how people seem incapable of learning from history. 

History Begins to Rhyme

 

The original "black  bloc."

Is the US--and the world--going Fascist? The parallels are uncanny.

The Nazis wedged themselves into power in Germany largely because the establishment was distracted with fear of the Bolsheviks. Similarly, the modern left misdirects attention to a mostly fictional threat of insurrection from “white supremacists.” And throws their support behind Antifa and BLM.

In general, law enforcement and the judiciary—the establishment--are playing favourites instead of following the rules, going soft on Antifa or Black Lives Matter or Hunter Biden, throwing the book at rightist groups like the Proud Boys, or Donald Trump. This resembles the favoritism shown in Weimar Germany towards the Nazis, allowed to rule the streets, while Bolsheviks and other socialists were dealt with harshly.

The reaction by so many in government to the invasion of the capitol building by a mob on January 6 even looks strikingly like the Nazis’ exploitation of the Reichstag fire. Whether or not it was a “false flag” operation.

Old Joe Biden looks like a reassuring but easily controlled figurehead. This is a strategy the Nazis found effective in their last run: Hindenberg, Petain. Not sure why this should be a Nazi strategy in particular, but it has been. Perhaps nostalgia is a part of the Nazi appeal. Similarly, they resurrected the aged Peron for an encore in Argentina. 

The censorship and blacklisting of dissenting views is now blatant. 

The last US election looks fixed.

We see emerging a seamless coalition between government and big corporations, eliminating the free market. This is more or less the definition of Fascism in economic terms.

We also, if it needs to be said, see an ongoing holocaust, unrestricted abortion. I suspect it is guilt over this that is fueling the whole move to Fascism. But racism and discrimination is also being aggressively fomented against another targeted minority, straight “cisgender” white males. Who are accused of all the same things the Jews were accused of in the 1930s. There is even growing antisemitism.

And so it goes.

The last time it touched down, this all happened mostly in three medium-strength powers. Nevertheless, it took a lot to end it then. 

This time, it looks much stronger. Both China and the US look as though they are moving to Fascism. 

Are we all doomed? It took many years of struggle to achieve freedom and democracy. It may not be so easy to ever get it back if it is lost.

It may take another war, worse than the last. Just because both the US and China are Nazi, does not mean they will ally. Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia were virtually the same system, but fought to the death. In earlier years, Mussolini stood against Hitler’s annexation of Austria. There is no honour among Nazis. To the contrary, the logic of their beliefs will compel them to sooner or later fight one another. Nazism requires a hated enemy.

I have also seen the theory that, with the rise of a middle class, liberal democracy becomes inevitable. We have seen evidence in East Asia over the past few decades: once the GDP per capita hits about $10,000 US per annum, the system morphs into something more liberal. A prosperous middle class has the resources to resist an oppressive government, and the desire to do so. This theory, if correct, suggests that any movement to Nazism is temporary, pulling against the tide of history. It might work for a time, given the crisis and economic chaos produced by COVID; as it worked for a time in Germany and Italy under the strain of the Great Depression. But once prosperity returns, it cannot hold on. No government exists for long without at least the tacit consent of the governed. All it takes is for the common soldiers and the police to stop following orders…

But what if the concentration of power in a few big tech firms is killing the middle class? Many have actually been saying just this. A few on top, and everyone else on GAI? Now the existence of independent merchants or service providers or business owners of any kind seems dependent on the mercies of Amazon, Google, PayPal, or a few others. Amazon can refuse to carry your products or your storefront; Google can delete you from search results; PayPal can refuse to process payments...

Yet I think the inherent logic of the Internet is decentralizing. We have allowed power to be concentrated in a few silos so that people can put locks on the door, but this is artificial. Once America Online was the only visual interface to the Internet, and held close to a monopoly. Where are they now? MicroSoft used to have a near-monopoly on the Internet and even personal computing with the dominant browser and the dominant operating system. Now both monopolies got busted, by the market itself and the evolving technology. The tech companies will keep trying to build their silos—Apple’s introduction of the concept of apps was a blatant example. 

But this is like whack-a-mole. The monopolies work for a little while, until the public realizes their options. Because of the nature of the beast, putting a printing press in every home, a video camera in every pocket, it is not going to be possible over the long term to control and restrict the flow of either information or commerce. Trying to do so is going to require ever more extreme measures.

And that is perhaps what we are seeing now. Those holding power now are paranoid, and are acting as though they are desperate. CNN, the New York Times, Twitter, publishing companies, seem actually to be acting in ways that destroy their own brands. The online investment firm Robin Hood just did the same. Desperation could explain the overreaction to the capitol invasion, and the seemingly childish attempt to impeach Trump after leaving office. Or AOC claiming Ted Cruz is trying to murder her. It looks hysterical.

It could get very messy; but I suspect we are seeing the mad thrashing of a dying beast.

Come to the Cabaret!

 

Carl Benjamin (Sargon of Akkad) in a recent livestream hit upon several themes I too have been stressing, here and elsewhere:

1. That the current situation in the USA looks dangerously like the Weimar Republic

2. That the source of all our current civil strife is the loss of moral values.

3. That “scientific language” (I say scientism) has encouraged this loss of values.

He also makes reference to the transcendentals, the Good, the True, and the Beautiful, as the source of all values.

I’d almost think he had been reading my notes; or that I had been reading his. But the explanation is that the problem has become obvious.

The Weimar Republic was a time of the dissolution of values. Think of the “Roaring Twenties”: Germany was their world epicentre. All established mores or assumptions were suddenly open to question. The chief lure, then as now, was free sex. Josephine Baker danced naked in Berlin and was declared an “erotic goddess.”

Why was Germany the centre? The war had swept away much of the political establishment, the old aristocracy. If the political order was open to question, what else might be? The aristocracy had also been the arbiters of culture, manners, style. Germany, as the loser in the war, must have felt this effect most powerfully, with perhaps the exception of Russia. And then there is the local legacy of Nietzsche, with his notion that God is dead and we are now free to do whatever we will. Add to this a strong local dose of incipient scientism, A Prussian and German infatuation with science that Kipling decried in “The Recessional” as “heathen heart that puts her trust/In reeking tube and iron shard.”

Mix it all together, and you get—Hitler and the triumph of the will.

The USA today does not have cataclysmic war as a motivator, but our scientism and our questioning of traditional values began to grow again after the Second World War, with the “Sexual Revolution,” and has grown steadily since. It has perhaps been accelerated recently by “future shock”: the rapid advance of computer technology has tended to upset many established assumptions. Rapid “globalization” and mass immigration has added culture shock.

This, back in the Weimar Republic and now in America, segued naturally into fighting by rival factions both in the streets and in the corridors of power. Society operates on a series of gentlemen’s agreements. When all values are questioned, it is adrift and subject to the winds. There are no longer any honest brokers or umpires: you can no longer trust the experts, the government, the police or the courts to be disinterested or apolitical. Everyone is out for self-interest or their preferred “narrative,” their chosen delusion. There are no more shared values to settle disputes. The rule becomes “might makes right.”

The advantage then goes to the most ruthless, the most prepared for violence, the least principled. In Weimar Germany, that was the Nazis. In the US currently, it looks as though it is the “progressive left,” Antifa, BLM and “the Squad.” To be frank, the parallels between Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Hitler are striking.

Worn down by the strife, the bulk of the population will meekly allow this worst element to take power, in vain and cowardly hopes of settling things down: by allowing the strongest force to ride roughshod on any dissent.

Scientism contributes by stripping out moral values. Science has no ethical dimension: it denies morality. This has generated both Marxism and Nazism, both claiming to be strictly scientific approaches to society and government. The modern left similarly wraps itself in the mantle of “follow the science.”

The rise of Hitler to power over the moral chaos of Weimar was prompted most directly by the Great Depression. COVID and its aftermath may be a comparable economic shock, leaving a lot of discontented and unemployed young available for organization into paramilitaries and for mayhem in the streets. As we have already seen, last summer.

Last time, it took a Churchill, emerging almost at the last possible minute, to save civilization. Trump might still be such a figure; but now it looks as though he is about to be sent, as Churchill was more than once, into exile.

But Nazi Germany was a far smaller player, on the world stage, than would be a Nazi America. And Churchill was able to operate in freedom outside the reach of that Nazi government. If America falls, who can stand against her?

Not China. We already have, in effect, a Nazi China. The program of the Chinese Communist Party today is identical to that of the German Nazi Party in all but name: mass elimination of minority races, a seamless integration of government and industry, lack of human rights, corporatism, sacrifice of the individual citizen to the state, expansionism abroad.

What happens if we suddenly have a Pact of Steel between China and a USA?

Who indeed can stand against this?

Was Hitler only the opening act?

Democracy Dies in the Washington Post

 

History repeats itself in detail.

Auf Wiedersehen, Mein Herr Trump

 

I was watching videos of Liza Minelli singing the title song from Cabaret; Christopher Isherwood had come up in a work connection. Then it occurred to me to also recap “Tomorrow Belongs to Me.”

We are, after all, living through a similar time. The analogies with the Weimar Republic are overwhelming.

First a period of libertinage; “there is no right and wrong.” Then some organized group emerging, and asserting power for the sake of power.

My sister observes, “beautiful, if you’re not Jewish.”

The two songs are not just ominous for Jews. Most of the people the Nazis outright murdered were not Jewish; and this does not include the tally from the war, not just of combatants but of civilians. Millions died in places like Leningrad or Silesia of starvation. Millions were seized as slave labour. And, had the Nazis won that war, uncounted millions more would have died. The Germans themselves suffered as much as anyone; those young people we hear singing might all be dead within ten years.

But that’s what makes the songs so powerful: because we know how it all turned out. We know where Elsie and Sally’s attitude to life is going to lead, and we know where the young Nazis’ dream led. True beauty is not pretty or pleasant. It must include the sublime. High art must always have an element of sheer terror.

Compare Cohen’s “Dance Me to the End of Love.” The reference is to the bands the Nazis had playing as they herded people into the gas chambers.

What makes the cherry blossoms so beautiful is knowing that in a week they will all have rotted.

But I digress. The poignancy is especially powerful now because we are now seeing the Nazis rise; in America, a far more consequential nation than Germany in 1933. And not only in America, either.

The parallels are astounding, and everyone is sleepwalking through it all.

No, it is not that Trump is Hitler. He is more Churchillian, conservative, gruff, passionately hated by many for his bombast, with many public vices. Hitler, by contrast, was a radical, an obscure figure, the opposite of a conservative, and had no visible vices. Incorruptible, vegetarian, apparently celibate. He was not hated so much as not taken seriously. Who could be seriously frightened by a little Austrian tramp with a moustache like Charlie Chaplin?

Biden is not Hitler either: he is a Hindenberg, or a Petain, a doddering old figurehead behind whose reassuring familiarity the consequential business of conquering and controlling the government apparatus can be done without interference.

Not, I suspect, by Kamala Harris. She not as Hitler either. She is too corrupt to be dangerous. She is perhaps a Goering or a von Papen, someone prepared to hire out her reputation to Hitler’s cause, for some emolument or chance for graft. Biden can be handled, and she can be bought.

By whom? 

The Hitler will emerge from relative obscurity; he usually does. As Hitler did. Probably someone no one saw coming, some faceless bureaucrat with no particular record like Putin, or some lower-ranking officer like Gaddhafi. Someone obscure enough that no one thought to defend against them. He or she is probably already in position and pulling strings. Someone engineered the nomination for Biden. Something has been going on behind the scenes in the FBI. Jeffrey Epstein didn’t kill himself.

Antifa and BLM are, of course, the military wing, the stormtroopers, sowing the discord in the streets. Germans in 1933 figured that the way to stop the chaos was to vote for their political masters. Many Americans in 2020 seem to be making the same calculation, and backing the Democrats to stop the rioting. The instincts of the average man seem always to run to appeasement.

We live in interesting times.

The Gathering Storm

Self-actualization: Mussolini's face on the Fascist Party headquarters, surrounded by the word "Si"--"Yes." 

Is there anything more pernicious, more sinister, than the popular interpretation of Godwin’s Law: that if you compare anyone or anything else to Hitler or the Nazis, you have lost the argument? It is the perfect way to usher in the next Hitler; it almost looks calculated. 

The idea that Hitler and Nazism was a unique phenomenon is obviously wrong. We have seen the same script acted again and again: Stalin and the Holomodor, Mao and the Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution, Pol Pot and the Killing Fields, Rwanda, Bosnia, the Armenian genocide under the Young Turks.

Rather than being a one-off, that we managed with brave determination to purge from the Earth, the philosophy we call Nazism has actually been steadily gaining adherents and influence over the years, without significant interruptions. Marcuse was big in the 1960s; same philosophy. Nazism is the doctrine we now usually call “postmodernism.” You can trace it back through “modernism” to Darwin and Nietzsche. I am only too familiar with it from graduate school. Even then, in the 1970s, it was pervasive. I remember checking myself at one point and thinking—“wait a minute. Isn’t that just what Mussolini said?” And then brushing off the thought. Couldn’t be. Fascism was something uniquely horrible, right?

It is at base simply the doctrine that there is no truth, no right or wrong, and all that matters is the imposition of one’s will. Nazism and Fascism never had any more to them than that. And, Nietzsche advised us, this is what is left when you turn away from God.

This necessarily proceeds to mass murder: you will want to murder anyone you think might be able to murder you.

We see the stormtroopers in the streets of the USA today, calling themselves “Antifa” or “Black Lives Matter.” We see how easily they bend the majority to their will, just as the brownshirts and blackshirts did. The majority seems to be on their side.

How will it end? If you accept the premise that a foetus is a human being, we already have a Holocaust underway, far worse than Hitler’s. Nazism did immense havoc when it took government in a second-tier power, Germany. It is already in power in China. What will happen if it takes power in the USA?

Will it be in power if Biden is voted in? We do not know who is behind him; might it be a situation like that of the aged Hindenberg, or Petain--a reassuringly familiar old face, a trembling hand easy to guide? Why did the Democratic Party establishment so suddenly and solidly unite behind him, when other candidates still looked viable?

It is Trump, of course, that everyone is casting as Hitler. They did the same with Churchill.

Can it be stopped? Perhaps only by God. Perhaps that is what the pandemic is for. It is, at least, exposing what has been hiding in dark corners.

Ernst Zundel

Ernst Zundel

A few years ago, everyone in Canada new Ernst Zundel. He was our leading “neo-Nazi.” He was regularly in and out of prison for denying the Holocaust. 

Zundel’s profession was graphic design. A Jewish friend of mine had some dealings with him, or perhaps some dealings with someone who had some dealings. And he reported something that made us both uneasy. Zundel had turned down a job from someone who asked him to doctor a photo of some factory to hide evidence of pollution. Because it was unethical.

He was a man of principle.

My friend assumed that Hitler must have been a man of principle too. But if so, how can we be sure that our principles are right, and theirs are wrong? Had Hitler won the war, would we look on Churchill as the monster?

I find that conclusion not just morally unacceptable, but logically. You cannot fudge morality; as Kant demonstrated, it is indisputable. It is the one indisputable thing: do unto others, as it is most commonly put.

Hitler had no principles. Hitler and the Nazis were all and only about the urge for power and the law of the jungle. Scholars and historians still argue about just what the Nazi program was; even the Nazis did not know. Were they socialists, as they claimed, “radical moderates,” or were they on the right? William L. Shirer, who was there, observed that Hitler said different things to different audiences. He said whatever he thought they wanted to hear. There was no principle involved but power, and whatever achieved power. The triumph of the will.

Zundel was the polar opposite. And the same has to be true of anyone claiming to be a neo-Nazi today. It is not what anyone wants to hear. They have to be doing it on principle, if perhaps misguided principle, because it only does them harm personally and ensures no one will ever consent to giving them any position of power. A modern neo-Nazi is the opposite of a Nazi.

Accordingly, all our measures against neo-Nazis are misdirected. We are targeting the wrong people. We are only persecuting people of unshakeable principle, the very people least likely to ever become real Nazis. Zundel was no doubt right: he was simply asking questions.

Indeed, the application of the hate laws to his case was obviously illegitimate. The charge was that, by expressing doubt that the Holocaust actually happened, he was fomenting hatred against an identifiable group. Isn’t that the opposite of what he was doing? He was denying an accusation against Germans that could inspire hatred. For comparison, would it really be a hate crime against Christians to deny that the Jews killed Christ? Why is sauce for the goose here poison for the gander?

The real Nazis, if they are real Nazis, are certain to instead call themselves “Antifa.” It is the properly cynical power play. And they will want to prevent people from asking questions.

Friend Xerxes reports approvingly, “In Rwanda, it is now a crime to deny the genocide. It is illegal to deny the Holomodor in Ukraine. Sixteen European countries have laws prohibiting denial of the Holocaust.”

This was the law that sent Zundel to prison in Canada, then in Germany. And there is an obvious problem here. Consider this: it is illegal in France to deny the Armenian genocide. It is illegal in Turkey to say it happened.

We cannot trust governments to legislate truth. Governments are the ones who commit the genocides. Then they try, with such laws, to scapegoat the common people. The only guarantee of truth is free discussion.

Early Warning Signs of Fascism

A left-tilting friend has posted on Facebook a familiar poster of “Early Warning Signs of Fascism,” as a warning against Donald Trump.

Our obvious first question ought to be, who says these are the first signs of fascism, and how credible is their opinion? As it is a poster, it offers no evidence or argument; just assertions. Nobody who has been taught how to think, or figured it out for themselves, should take this at face value.

Nobody seems to give a source; they seem to just see it in print, and so assume it must be true.

Such people would make ideal acolytes in an actual fascist state. A similar poster might list “Twelve Harms Done by the Jews.”

Some attribute it to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. The USHMM denies this; they once sold the poster in their gift shop, but, interestingly, without explanation, have pulled it.

Scopes tracks it down to Laurence Britt, a businessman and amateur historian.

As an appeal to authority, this is pretty weak.

Among academics, there is really little agreement on what constitutes “fascism.” “Fascist” positions and policies are all over the map, and seem to show no core ideology.

Let’s look at Mr. Britt’s list.

1. Powerful and continuing nationalism.

On this at least, I think there could be general agreement. This is one reason fascism is so incoherent: the perceived interest of one nation will not be the same as the national interest of another state, so that fascisms in different countries can hold opposite views on any given issue. German fascism was, historically, in opposition to Austrian fascism, and for a time with Italian fascism. Similarly, on almost any given point of policy, different national fascist parties can be opposed.

But is Trump’s administration fascist by this measure? While it is nationalistic in comparison with other recent American regimes, it surely does not stand out as nationalistic in either world or historic terms. To the contrary; the US, and the West in general, have been moving in the opposite direction, towards “globalism.” Trump looks like a relatively mild popular reaction against this, but bringing the US closer to alignment with the world and historical norm. The same could be said of various “nationalist” movements in Europe.

This nationalism fails the stated test of being either powerful or continuous.

Nominally communist or socialist regimes are currently the most nationalistic: North Korea, China.

2. Disdain for human rights.

This seems fair as a description of fascism. Mussolini was openly opposed to liberal democracy as decadent, and to the doctrine of individual rights and individualism. The very symbol of the fasces emphasizes the group over the individual. Hitler’s Nazis obviously honoured no right to life.

Yet does this describe the Trump administration? What human rights has it opposed? Rather, Trump has been fairly vocal in supporting the right to life, the right to bear arms, freedom of conscience, and freedom of speech.

In world terms, the US is probably here too the one country furthest from fascism. Within the US, the current left is plainly more fascist than the right: they follow the fascists in emphasizing the group over individual rights. For an obvious example, they currently embrace the slogan “black lives matter,” and are violently opposed to the slogan “all lives matter.”

3. Identification of enemies as a unifying cause.

This is not obviously a core fascist characteristic; rather, it is a universal law of politics and social life. You can rally support to yourself by uniting the public against some scapegoat or imagined enemy. Animal Farm or Lord of the Flies offer literary examples.

And, at the same time, in many circumstances clear identification of the enemy can be a necessary and a deeply moral act. This is what Churchill did, in pinpointing Hitler as the enemy; and again in warning of an iron curtain falling on Europe. It is what the police do when they identify a murderer, and put up warnings in the post office.

Trump seems conspicuous in not playing this enemies game. He may berate this opponent or that, this group or that, and, the next time the matter comes up, make a point of praising them. Rather than rallying rage against an imaginary enemy or a scapegoat, he seems to do this as a negotiating tactic.

The classic current example of a group seeking to unite on the basis of a purely imaginary common enemy is “Antifa.” It is embedded in their name.

4. Supremacy of the military.

This is not true of Hitler’s Germany. The Nazis built up the armed forces, but this is not the same thing. They were also in ongoing conflict with the officer class. All soldiers were required to take a personal oath to Hitler. That’s subjugation, not supremacy. The military also exerted no authority over the civilian population.

Trump’s relationship to the military seems to be about the same as that of any other president. Funding of the military has gone up in real terms, held steady in GDP terms, and is broadly in line with historic trends.

5. Rampant sexism.

This is anachronistic. The term “sexism” was coined only in the Sixties. Relations between the sexes were not the hot button issue then they are today.

But the fascist record is not broadly one of opposition to what today would be called feminism. The very first point of the Manifesto of Piazza Sansepolcro, often considered the founding event of Italian fascism, was “vote and eligibility for women.” Mussolini wanted to require that a minimum proportion of the Italian legislature be women. His government prohibited firing women because of pregnancy or maternity leave. G.A. Chiurco wrote, in 1935, "The fascist state can't conceive the woman locked in her house."

The Nazi record in Germany was different. They tended to emphasize the importance of motherhood, for sustaining the race. But they were also comfortable with women, like Leni Riefenstahl or Hanna Reitsch, in high public positions, running concentration camps, and in the military.

6. Controlled mass media.

This seems misplaced on a list of “early warning signs.” Fascists did not have the means to control the media before the came to power. They were active and enthusiastic journalists; Mussolini himself was a journalist. But this does not amount to control.

Fascist regimes certainly took control of mass media as a standard practice once they came to power.

Already in power, Trump has made no moves to control the media.

While the “legacy media” does seem to move in lockstep, this seems to be a case of a cadre, similar to the early fascists, of active and enthusiastic journalists. Significantly, they actually seem to be united against Trump.

7. Obsession with national security.

As a description of the Italian Fascist or the German Nazi regimes, this seems off point. Their concern was not with defending their borders, with security, but with invading other countries. The charge of “obsession with national security” could more reasonably be levelled against Churchill or De Gaulle.

Is Trump interested in invading other countries? It seems the reverse; he seems to be making efforts to pull troops back from foreign involvements.

8. Religion and government intertwined.

This again does not seem to be the proper phrasing. After all, religion and government are constitutionally intertwined in the United Kingdom, modern Germany, or in the Scandinavian countries, without these being considered fascist countries. It would be better to say “religion subservient to government.” As Mussolini put his essential creed: “everything within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state.” It is a matter of who gets to call the shots.

There is no sign of Trump trying to make religion knuckle under to the demands of the state in America. The obvious example of this in the world today is China.

But it is also a broad tendency on the American left, not strong on recognizing conscience rights.

9. Corporate power protected.

As phrased, this is false. In fact, Fascist Italy nationalized more industry than any other nation but the Soviet Union. While Nazism or fascism left other corporations standing, and even protected their markets and profits from competition, they removed all power from their ownership or management. Corporations allowed to remain in business were treated like arms of the state, obliged to do what the government required. This was the fascist understanding of socialism.

Trump could be accused of doing this in a small way by invoking the Defense Production Act; but this is recognized as legitimate in any democracy in a state of national emergency—just as the French army commandeered the taxis of Paris for the Battle of the Marne.

More generally, Trump has been aggressive in reducing government regulations on business. This increases the decision-making power of corporate ownership or management, and, at the same time, reduces their protection from competition. It is the opposite of the fascist programme.

The classic contemporary example of a regime operating on this fascist basis is China.

10. Labour power suppressed.

The fascist treatment of labour or the corporations was parallel; one cannot have been “protected,” and the other “suppressed.” The Nazis made protecting and advancing the rights and interests of the workers one of its main policy objectives; but the unions, like the corporations, became organs of government. Workers were expected to do what the government ordered.

There is no parallel with the Trump administration; except that Trump, like the fascists, claims to make the interests of working people his primary concern. The modern parallel is again the Chinese regime, in terms of unions becoming arms of the state.

11. Disdain for intellectuals and the arts.

This is the biggest howler on the list. Fascism began as an artistic and intellectual movement, which then moved into politics. Gabriele d’Annunzio, poet, journalist, and playwright, set up the first fascist regime, with himself as Duce, in Fiume. Fascism as an intellectual movement had clear antecedents in Nietzsche, Darwin, and Marx. It was more or less the application of the currently fashionable intellectual trends to practical politics. William L. Shirer, in Germany at the time, noted that the Nazi party was especially strong and popular on university campuses.

A significant number of prominent intellectuals and artists of the day supported the fascists: Ezra Pound, Martin Heidegger, Luigi Pirandello, Knut Hamsun, Thomas Wolfe. Hitler, of course, considered himself an artist; Mussolini wrote and published short stories.

Trump’s opinion on intellectualism and the arts is less clear. He has a reputation as a vulgarian. He does oppose tearing down statues.

12. Obsession with crime and punishment.

The Nazis, and Mussolini’s blackshirts, were characterized in their earlier days not by any appeal to law and order, but by criminal activities and brawling in the streets. Rather than a government of settled laws, fascism embraced the “leadership principle.” It gave license to some to freely do things that would have been crimes in most other countries. Rather than calling for social peace and order, it called for “Mein Kampf” and the greeting “Seig Heil.”

Concern with crime, and with public order, is a characteristic instead of traditional conservatism. Which, Shirer noted, was the one group consistently opposed to fascism.

Trump does not seem to be in favour of rioting or gang violence. This puts him in opposition to fascism. The obvious modern advocates and practitioners of Storm Trooper tactics are groups like Antifa and Black Lives Matter.

Trump is also no hard-liner on crime and punishment. He often boasts of his “prison reform,” which moves in the opposite direction.

13. Rampant cronyism and corruption

This is also misplaced. Fascism came to power in Italy or in Germany largely on a promise to stamp out cronyism and corruption. Mussolini promised to “make the trains run on time.” Hitler ran on an image of personal incorruptibility. The new ideal of the national good and the good of the whole was supposed to end the perceived rampant cronyism and corruption of the times.

Fascism turned out not to be effective in this regard, and fascist officials, given the opportunity, were indeed often corrupt; but it seems more accurate to say that it failed to prevent cronyism and corruption than that it caused it.

Is Trump guilty of rampant cronyism or corruption? Charges of cronyism and corruption are levelled against most administrations; notably against Joe Biden, the certain Democratic nominee to run against him.

14. Fraudulent elections.

Fraudulent elections are significantly more common than are regimes we would generally call fascist. They are also the norm in communist or most Third-World regimes. And Hitler first came to power in what seems to have been a reasonably fair election.

Voter fraud and fraudulent elections are an eternal problem, but not one associated especially with either fascism or Donald Trump. “Russian collusion” turned out to be an unsubstantiated allegation.

The Republicans routinely charge Democrats of election fraud; the Democrats routinely charge Republicans. No doubt sometimes they are right.

Conclusion: Donald Trump has nothing to do with fascism. The case is stronger for the modern American left, and especially strong for seeing the current government of China as, essentially, fascist.

A Time for Choosing

Black is the new brown: Stormtroopers enforcing early cancel culture.

Have you ever wondered how you would have behaved had you lived in Weimar Germany, as the Nazis rose to power? Would you have been one of the true believers, falling into line? Or would you have fought at any cost for human decency?

No need to wonder. You are there.

The parallels between Weimar Germany in its death throes and the USA today are obvious. The only difference is the name the Nazis use. Now they call themselves, disingenuously enough, “Antifa” or “Black Lives Matter.”

But the critical elements are the same:

1. The Nazis/Antifa believe that power is the only issue and the only goal. There is no truth but power; there is no morality but power. There are no common values to appeal to. This has long been explicit in postmodernism, and was bound to lead here. Hitler made it plain in Mein Kampf: the objective of the state or the movement or the individual is to get whatever advantage it can for itself. One large arm of Antifa enshrines it in their name: BAMN, “By Any Means Necessary.”

2. Since everything is about power, it is all only a matter of who gets to be on top. There is no equality; there is no fairness. There is no question of compromise, dialogue, or shared interests. Black lives matter. All lives do not matter. Say so, and you may get shot.

3. The action has moved into the streets; it is now moved, inevitably, to a test of strength and resolve. In this atmosphere of chaos, the general populace will immediately crave order, and will gravitate to whichever faction looks stronger in hopes of getting it. We are seeing this everywhere. This is how you make good Germans. This is the strategy we can expect from most people, allowing the worst to take command. For now, BLM and Antifa look stronger. It may be that a strong man on the right may emerge, instead of Antifa or BLM taking over. It makes no difference: it would be a choice between Hitler and Stalin. In fact, the situation automatically favours whichever side is least principled, and the worst will rise to the top, whichever side it is.

4. As in Weimar Germany, it has become a matter of race and of searching for scapegoats. Hitler fixed on the Jews and the Freemasons, and so forth. BLM and Antifa and their acolytes have fixed on “whites,” Republicans, and so forth. The selection is more or less automatic: if the only value is power, you target whomever you suspect of being powerful or potentially rivals for power for elimination. Similarly dire consequences for the targeted are only too likely.

5. As in Weimar Germany, we see the authorities tacitly favouring one side in the battle in the streets. The bias in favour of power that infects the streets has already infected the elite. In both Weimar Germany and contemporary America, it had its main power base in the universities and in the bureaucracy. Those sophisticated sorts who had read Nietzsche and considered themselves supermen; those sophisticates who have read the French postmodernists and consider themselves much cleverer than the common rabble who believe in morality.

6. In Weimar Germany, the authorities generally looked the other way when Nazis acted illegally. When Hitler attempted a putsch, he got a comfortable prison term with writing materials. We see this today in the grossly preferential treatment of leftists both in the popular culture and in the law courts. Witness the prosecution of General Flynn, how figures on the right are not permitted to speak. This may in part be explained by the influence of the postmodern assumptions on the bureaucratic and academic class that feeds the bureaucracy at all levels.

7. Any authorities who are not themselves Nazis seem paralyzed. “The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity,” as Yeats described the 1930s. This is ordinary human denial in the face of evil. We do not want to accept the presence of evil, because we know we are ourselves sometimes guilty. Given an essentially unprincipled new movement, one which has embraced evil. this allows them free rein, as it did at Munich. We watch Mitt Romney march with Black Lives Matter. Everybody, even right-wing commentators, is giving them far too much credit.

And so it goes.

Except that the Nazism of the 1930s infected only one power, and only one of the great powers. Hitler appeared and rose when Germany was intrinsically weak, militarily and economically. Even so, thanks to appeasement, he got shockingly far.

Imagine what the Nazis could do if they arose in the world’s most powerful country, or even in a number of countries simultaneously.

Last time, the primary scapegoats were the Jews, only about 6% of the German population. This time, it is “white males,” 30% of the US population. Not to mention the ongoing holocaust of the unborn—and the certainty that white women will be next. Last time it was Freemasons, only a fraction of the German population, surely. This time it is Republicans, essentially half the population.

The Nazis may have bitten off more than they can chew, leading to their rapid collapse. Let us hope so. Because, if not, the potential for carnage and general destruction is exponentially higher.

Which side are you on?

Family Values and Fascism

First family. Wait till you meet the kids.

A friend avers that the sanctity of the family is next only to the sanctity of God himself. 

A common view, these days, among those on the right, and among Christians.

I urgently need to disagree.

Logically, family here is equivalent to nation: either is a useful social unit, based on shared genetics and shared experiences. The difference is only in scale.

Now what does it sound like if you speak of the “sanctity of the nation”? If you guessed Fascism, you guessed right. This was the core idea of Nazi Germany or Imperial Japan. It is not just incompatible with Christianity; it is antithetical to it.

So too with “the sanctity of the family.” It automatically denies the brotherhood of man, and goes ugly places. Crimes as awful as those of Nazi Germany, if on a smaller scale.

No question that family is desirable and useful, just as is a national government. Both give us the warm fuzzies. Exactly for this reason, there is a danger of idolatry, of overvaluing it. Money is useful too; so is sex. But there is immediately a problem if you think of money or sex as sacred.

For my marriage ceremony, we were free to choose our own Bible reading. Not coincidentally, it is extremely hard to find a good Bible reading, unambiguously praising marriage.

How about St. Paul?

“But I say to the unmarried and to widows, it is good for them if they remain even as I am. But if they don't have self-control, let them marry. For it's better to marry than to burn.”

There’s damning with faint praise, surely.

Take This Simple Nazi Test

A classic narcissist lie.

In listing the signs you are dealing with a bad person, one of Jesus’s “goats,” I left out one obvious indication.

8. They will want often to shut down conversation.

This is a sure sign of a guilty conscience: someone wants to stop others talking if they know they are in the wrong.

Which brings up, in turn, the reflection that we are obviously now in the midst of an upsurge of evil. Hence the growing wave of censorship.

We are also, tellingly enough, seeing an upsurge in antisemitism, postmodern relativism, anti-religious sentiment, and ecofascism. It all suggests a lot of people with a guilty conscience, and determined not to repent.

I trace it all back to the “sexual revolution,” and more specifically to legalized abortion.

And I see a chilling parallel.

Back when Victoria died, at the turn of the 19th century, there was a similar period of libertinage, the “Edwardian Era.” This earlier sexual revolution extended into the 20s, and was especially a hallmark of Weimar Germany.

And where did that lead us?

Where did that lead Germany?

Into brazen, undisguised evil on the mass level. Nazism was a popular melding of anti-semitism, ecofascism, moral relativism, and anti-religious sentiment. And murderous on an industrial scale.

Is that where this ends?

Or are we already there?

You might have wondered, if you are an honest sort, where you really would have stood had you been alive in Nazi Germany. Would you really have been a Schindler? Or would you have been a “good German” and just gone along? Or even a Nazi?

There is an easy test.

What is your stance on abortion?

Rhinoceros Spotted in the Wild

Ben Shapiro

I have perhaps stumbled on another example of left-wing psychosis.

I say perhaps, because it seems incredible. I first thought stupidity might be the explanation, but the author seems to have published at least one book.

His heading reads “No, Ben Shapiro, Science isn’t White.”

I guess it works as click bait. I clicked.

But of course, Ben Shapiro has not said that science is white. The piece actually links to the video clip it is discussing: the reader can see for themselves that Shapiro said nothing like this. So the intent must not have been to deceive, either.

If not stupidity, and not deceit, then the only possible remaining explanation seems to be hysterical delusion.

What Shapiro said is that, in its origins, “experimental science is unique to the West.”

Notice that “the West” is not a race; it is a place. It is Cole, the present author, not Shapiro, who is thinking in racial terms.

Shapiro goes on to explain why he thinks the West developed experimental science: a combination of Greek empiricism with the Hebrew proposition that God created and could be known through the physical world.

Nothing about race. Shapiro is talking about ideas. It is only too obviously Cole who is the racist. By inference, he is insisting that ideas, philosophies, and cultures are genetic. This is Nazi race theory.

More remarkably, he ignores the essence of Shapiro’s argument, as if he had not made it. Shapiro begins by distinguishing between science and technology. Of course, all cultures have invented things. This is not experimental science, which is a method of inquiry.

To which Cole responds, “Oh yeah? Well how about all the things the Muslim world invented?”

Assuming Cole is not deaf, or stupid, or lying, this can only be accounted for by delusion, in the usual psychological sense. He is “out of touch with reality”: he is not hearing the words spoken to him, and cannot distinguish the world he senses outside himself from his own thoughts.

What remains is how to account for this. 

It becomes clearer if we substitute “Judeo-Christian culture” for “the West” here. Shapiro himself is clearly using them as synonymous.

Cole is somehow emotionally invested, then, in belittling Judeo-Christian culture.

Judeo-Christian culture is also often referred to, accurately, as “ethical monotheism.” These are the two features that clearly distinguish it from other cultures: that it asserts worship of only one God, and that he gives ethics divine sanction.

And it seems to me it is the ethical side of that equation that most likely bothers Cole. Ethics implies guilt.

To be sure, Islam, which Cole appears here to defend, is also ethical monotheism. But Cole’s agenda is probably not to defend Islam. “Juan Cole” does not look like a Muslim name, and those who convert to Islam generally take Muslim names. His own belief system is cultural relativism, which would be anathema to Islam. Islam is only his means to an end: to the underlying assertion that ethics are relative.

If ethics are relative, then there is really no right or wrong. So we all have a right to do what we want.

Better yet, if all ideas are simply a matter of genetics, which is indeed clearly his underlying argument here, then not only is there no real right or wrong; we also have no free will. We cannot be held responsible for anything that we do.

Sounds liberating if you are conscious of having done wrong, in terms of traditional Judeo-Christian ethics. But it is not just that this leads to Nazism: this actually is Nazism, straight up. It is the core Nazi premise.

And there is no question that such insanity can spread. It is spreading. Mass hysteria is actually much more common than individual hysteria. Nazism was an example.

The San Diego Synagogue Shootings

Anti-semitic cartoon, 1896.

It had to happen sooner or later. It is unwise to come to any conclusions based on first reports—the 48-hour rule is a good one—but it looks as though the Passover attack on a synagogue near San Diego in California was by a genuine white nationalist, white supremacist Nazi who at least identifies as Christian.

Mind, since the left has been declaring loudly that this was happening for years without it being true, I think it is proper to blame them for it now. Speak of the Devil, and he will appear. Someone was bound to be listening. And it seems odd that this killer’s manifesto, making all of his motives plain, was immediately available and linked to on the Internet, whereas the Christchurch killer’s manifesto, making it plain that he was neither a “white supremacist” nor a right-winger, was quickly and generally suppressed.

This killer also takes pains to point out that his actions are no “false flag.” Odd that he would; but then, he is doing exactly what those he claims to oppose would most want him to do, and what most advances their interests against those he claims to be his own. He is, by his acts, throwing white nationalism, white supremacy, and Christianity into disrepute, surely. He is confirming a claim on the left that he himself insists is false. How is that supposed to work? Perhaps he protests too much?

Someone else, apparently familiar with 8chan, where it appeared, in linking to the manifesto, comments that it is full of “s***posting and is not to be taken literally.” 8chan is famous for spoofs and false flags. So who knows?

As a Christian, my challenge is this: assuming the manifesto is for real, how can I reconcile his actions and his expressed thoughts with his claiming to be a Christian? There are, presumably, three possibilities. Either 1. The killer is insane. 2. There is actually something in Christianity that warrants this; or 3. He is aware that he is simply doing evil, and is lying. I think 3 is by far the most plausible thesis.

I resist explanation 1. I may find his manifesto incoherent, but not in the obviously disordered way you would expect from the truly delusional. In any case, I do not buy insanity as an excuse for immorality. There is no connection, statistically speaking. That just comes from a prejudice against the insane.

He declares himself a Christian and quotes Bible verses. He claims to have been inspired by “Jesus Christ, the Apostle Paul, Martin Luther, Adolf Hitler, …, Ludwig van Beethoven, Moon Man, and Pink Guy.”

But how seriously can we take the faith of someone who lists Jesus as simply parallel among his influences not just with Adolf Hitler but with “Moon Man and Pink Guy”? Does a serious Christian think that way? It seems at least plausible that he is feigning Christianity in order to malign Christianity. He knows the lingo—his father was apparently a prominent member of a local Presbyterian congregation. But that might only have given him the ammunition; and perhaps a desire to rebel.

To begin with, surely, Christianity is antithetical to the racial ideology on which he has based his actions. It is not just that St. Paul wrote “There is no Jew nor Greek in Christ”: the basic concept of the “New Covenant,” aka Christianity, is that God was now offering to all nations, without ethnic distinction, the covenant that had formerly been offered exclusively to the Jews. Racism is therefore fundamentally opposite to the Christian message.

The Bible verses the killer then quotes to justify harming Jews are not attacking Jews at all, but those who claim to be Jews yet are not. Hypocrites, in other words. For example, quoting the actual verses he cites:

“They answered and said unto him, Abraham is our father. Jesus saith unto them, If ye were Abraham’s children, ye would do the works of Abraham […] Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it. And because I tell you the truth, ye believe me not” (John 8:37-45).

For the quote to make sense, it must be a good thing, in conformity with God’s will, to be a devout Jew. If you do truly follow Abraham’s example—as either a Jew or, latterly, a Muslim—you are in obedience to God.

“For ye, brethren, became followers of the churches of God which in Judaea are in Christ Jesus: for ye also have suffered like things of your own countrymen, even as they have of the Jews: Who both killed the Lord Jesus, and their own prophets, and have persecuted us; and they please not God, and are contrary to all men: Forbidding us to speak to the Gentiles that they might be saved, to fill up their sins away: for the wrath is come upon them to the uttermost” (1 Thessalonians 2:14-16).

Paul’s point is not that the Jews are especially guilty of persecuting Christians, but the reverse: that Christians everywhere are being persecuted, not by some other racial group, but by their own countrymen. Just as Jesus himself observed: a man’s (or a prophet’s) enemies will come from within his own home, his own family, and his own neighbours. It follows that racism is at best an error. The very error Paul is condemning here among the Jews of Judea.

“I know thy works, and tribulation, and poverty, (but thou art rich) and I know the blasphemy of them which say they are Jews, and are not, but are the synagogue of Satan” (Revelation 2:9).

This passage is necessarily saying that Judaism is a good thing, and not following its teachings is Satanic.

Even without the Bible passages, the thing is logically and theologically unambiguous: God made a covenant with the Jews. Does God keep his promises, or not? It necessarily follows, for any true Christian, that the covenant with the Jews is still in force, for any Jew who keeps it.

It is possible, I suppose, that the shooter is too stupid to see this, but it seems profoundly unlikely that he could have managed to consistently reverse the meanings of Bible passages by 180 degrees simply by misreading the Bible.

It seems to me too that the killer gives hints he knows he is in the wrong. He, as the Devil is said to commonly do, seems to condemn himself out of his own mouth. He accuses the Jews, for example, of spreading “blood libel,” without evidence, only a few paragraphs after spreading the ancient blood libel against the Jews: that they supposedly killed Christ. This is what the term commonly refers to. He is, in other words, scapegoating the Jews for his own sins; and at some level he must know this. It is one thing to be randomly wrong. But when what you say is exactly and fairly consistently 180 degrees from the truth, it tends to betray an underlying awareness of in what direction truth actually lies.

There is indeed an anti-Christian blood libel that has been going around for long years: that Christianity is anti-Semitic. I myself got fed that as if simple fact when studying religion in university. But this is surely not what the murderer is referring to here, because he believes that very libel himself, according to his own claims, and is doing his best to justify it.

Recent history has demonstrated this is an anti-Christian slander. With greater contact with the Muslim world, people in the West discover that Muslims are at least as prone to antisemitism as Christians ever were. And those who read history—or the Bible—know that antisemitism was familiar in the ancient world, among the Romans, who burned down Jerusalem and dispersed the Jews, among the Greeks, who converted the temple in Jerusalem to pagan worship, the Babylonians, who levelled the temple and dispersed the Jews, or the Egyptians, who enslaved the Jews, then tried to wipe them out. And on it goes.

The Romans under Titus haul away the treasures of Jerusalem.

Far from being anti-semitic, Christianity is at its core irreducibly and uniquely pro-semitic. The Hebrew scriptures are also the Christian scriptures. Christians reading them necessarily self-identify as Jews.

Rather than having anything to do with Christianity in particular, anti-semitism, here as everywhere, is simply a reliable expression and measure of human evil. I do not think it too simplistic to say that bad people are always anti-semitic, and good people invariably identify instead with the Jews.

For the real cause of anti-semitism, here and everywhere, is simply envy. It is the sin that dare not speak its name, and so the one always in need of scapegoats and alibis. The San Diego shooter simply envied the Jews, and used whatever cover he could find rather than admit it was because he felt they were better than him.

Their moral and historical status as God’s original chosen people might well be enough to provoke such envy: it is exactly the thing that caused Cain, in envy, to kill Abel. That makes such murderous envy only one generation removed from original sin. It is as wrong, of course, as wrong could be: it is automatically also an open rebellion against God himself.

Of course, many these days will not take that claim literally. That makes no difference. It is a scientific fact, as measurable by IQ tests, that Jews as an identifiable group are more intelligent than the rest of us. As a result of this, if not directly because of God’s favour, or for whatever reason, it is also a demonstrable fact that, demographically, wherever they settle, and despite frequent discrimination against them, Jews tend to become richer and better educated as a group than those around them. They become overrepresented at the top of the professions, and of business.

This makes them, wherever they go, inevitable targets for this deadly sin of envy, wherever and to whatever extent it is present: that is, whenever they are among bad people.

It must now be said that it has long been the left, not the right, that has endorsed and promoted the sin of envy: of looking on anyone richer then oneself as having stolen something, and deserving punishment. Socialism naturally segues, as with Nazism and Stalinism alike, into anti-semitism.

Certainly the present killer would not identify himself as a typical “Commifornian,” to use his term. But he is no doubt a product of that milieu, and has accepted some of its basic premises.

More than he has been influenced by anything in the Bible.