I think this article summaries perfectly the anthropological consequences of our (quasi)religious beliefs which serve as our culture’s foundation. As such it also clearly delineates that history, whenever it will reemerge, will come to judge us as the singularly most evil people to ever exist. More so than the Akaddians who dressed their walls with the skins of their enemies, or the Aztecs that created pyramids of skulls to their gods. What we have done to ourselves is the permeation of suicidal nihilism into every fibre of our existence, and there will be an ocean of evidence to show it.
In so many ways we've become abominations. Yet so many of us resist that, and rise above it, because it isn't in our nature to be what They are trying to turn us into it.
Unfortunately the foundational myth causes many good people to accept bad things. It is to society what childhood experiences are to the individual - the base-level driving force of our subcouncious mind.
Really? I’m genuinely interested, if very skeptical. The problem of our society, as Guenon points out, is scale. Can any other culture point to the literal mountain sized pile of bodies that we’ve been able to achieve? And I’m not talking about talking about communism or war, but just us, post-1945. Just in 2022 we had over 200,000 deaths of despair in the USA alone.
We’re also the civilisation which has most developed feminism, which among other things is responsible for development by a rabid, and frankly demonic desire in women to kill their own children. In some circles it is a mark of status.
Another point: child transgenderism. That fact that is tolerated in of self speaks volumes.
Well, if you want scale, absolute numbers, then it's difficult to find a good match, but only because of the population explosion of the last ~150 years. Otherwise, I'll quote Middle East of around 1500 BCE and later, about 700-500 BCE. It is recorded in the Bible that peoples living in those areas ate their children, and sacrificed them to their gods. The Bible records Judean kings did this too, so we can consider the account generally true. Additionally, some of the prophets (Jeremiah, Ezekiel) from the late stage of this period describe a thorougly barbarous society where sin and evil are simply ways of life, with no lived alternative. Related to this were the late bronze age civilizations of the same area (let's say a bit before 1000 BCE). Apparently, they were separated into two classes with the upper class holding the lower class in total subjugation, including regularly taking some of them for ritual sacrifices. When the "Sea Peoples" tore through the rotten civilization around 1000 BCE, the remaining Middle Easterners didn't rebuild their civilization, because why would they?
Please do not project your self-loathing onto others. Since the conversion of Constantine Christianity has been the driver of, and explanation for, the rise and triumph of Western civilization, the greatest civilization in human history. This is true in the areas of rule of law, rights of the individual as opposed to the collective, scientific-technological achievement, medical science, dominance over other cultures albeit misused, material prosperity of its people. With the decline of Christianity, along with the rise of secularism, materialism, hedonism, and neopaganism, the decline and fall of Western civilization is foreordained.
How about the right of the prostitute not to be stoned to death, when he said "let those who are without sin throw the first stone"? How about the right not to be judged by assholes when he said, "Worry about the log in your own eye before you worry about the sliver in someone else's eye"? What about the right to be judged on your own terms rather than how much money and social standing you have, when he talked about the big-shot going to heaven was like a camel getting through the eye of a needle?
Rights mean nothing if you can't defend them. Jesus isn't talking about "rights."
He was describing good vs. evil and in no way was he demanding laws to compel people to behave in a particular way. In a word, he wasn't whining or complaining.
Or according to the Torah, criminality must be established by the testimony of two witnesses, not confidential informants, or circumstantial evidence. If a virgin was raped, the perpetrator had to marry her and never divorce her. One guilty of unintentional manslaughter could flee to one of ten cities of refuge for life, and thus escape capital punishment.
Abuse of power is a ubiquitous human failing. Yes, the West has abused its power in a number of ways. The real question is what was the source of the unparalleled power of the West?
Most excellent essay and about time. I know I have said this in comments before, but I was innoculated from the WW2 worship seen among loathsome boomer GOP types (eg, neocon clowns like VD Hanson, Glenn Reynolds and other regime propagandists) by my dad, a veteran of the Italian front (a medic). Around the time of Saving Private Ryan I was sort of obsessive with the war. I mentioned this to my dad. He looked at me with a mixture of sadness and contempt. He told me that I’d never understand the war, he barely did but it wasn’t the “bullshit you’re getting told in school or that Ambrose shit.” He loathed Stephen Ambrose and the band of brothers thing. He did like Bill Mauldin, so Mauldin is one of the few sources on the U.S. experience I trust. And Paul Fussel. The Americans were no more than mercenaries for FDr’s demonic ambition in that war. Ditto the Yanks who died for Lincoln and muh eternal Union.
My father also innoculated me. He had bookshelves full of WWI and II histories, all of which he'd read. Easily had the equivalent of a graduate degree in military history. One day I remarked that our troops must have hated the Germans. No, he said, not at all. They respected them. They fought bravely and they fought very well.
That insight into the warrior’s mind - that one can fight and kill without hating those one fights - put things into perspective for me. And it always sat rather awkwardly with Hollywood portrayals of the war. My father was no fan of Hollywood, either.
This piece covers a vast amount of ground social confine my comments to a few observations.
One, Eliade was the polar opposite of Nietzsche. Nietzsche like all the principal Enlightenment philosohers was suspicious of received opinions and encouraged readers to a similar position. Eliade, in contrast, sought re-enchantment, both politically and academically. I can't imagine a worse (or more squalid) inclination for anyone involved in the pursuit of knowledge.
Two, the Iron Guard's spiritual pretensions notwithstanding their real-world conduct inspired disgust and contempt. Himmler received reports from his officers complaining vigoroudly about the behaviour of the Iron Guard towards civilians in the occupied Ukraine. Enough said.
Three, King Carol was a pragmatist. His kingdom was one of very few places on earth exporting petroleum at the time and the destabilisation of Rumania by Berlin through its proxies was all about resources. The King sought to minimise the risks to his throne and his people. He failed. Most of the blame for this lies with people of Eliade's persuasion. Incidentally, it was the Iron Guard's backers in Berlin who stripped Rumania of territory which puts the nationalism and patriotism of the movement in perspective.
Four, Churchill was chosen for the job because there was a consensus at the top that he was the only man who could lead the empire at war. His rivals served in the cabinet alongside him without complaint. Churchill's only significant error, if it can be called that, was to have underestimated the ambitions of Washington. The US and Germany were the greatest enemies the UK faced in the 20th century. Churchill chose subordination to Washington over subordination to Berlin. In hindsight this was the only path he could gave taken, because Britain's fundamental national interest has always been to disrupt the unification of western Europe by a rival power. Churchill was faithful to this view, a perspective shared by practically every single person of influence in the UK at the time and in every century stretching back to the late middle ages.
Five, Darryl Cooper, like Tucker Carlson, is an American without any demonstrated understanding of the political conditions within late imperial Britain. He imagines that prme ministers were de facto presidents and that geopolitical decisions were made by one man alone. He appeared unaware of the deliberations within Westminster at the time. He never bothered to mention the foreign policy preferences of the British Labour Party, something that Churchill had to take into account because they were a part of the wartime cabinet.
Six, that Operation Barbarossa might have stopped the Soviets advancing towards the Atlantic is impossible to verify or falsify. By the early 30s Moscow had given up on worldwide revolution and was busy repairing relations with several European states (successfully in the case of Czechosolvakia and Yugoslavia, unsuccessfully in the case of the UK and Poland). By the time Hitler came to power the USSR had already assisted Germany in rebuilding it's own armed forces (above all the Luftwaffe). Stalin was many things, many of them unpleasant, but he was not a fool. The Red Army force structure was not geared for a war of conquest at any time in the 30s and as Rapallo showed the Soviets saw their interests best served by cooperation rather than conflict.
Regarding Churchill, well as I was at pains to point out: I don't think he was a villain; and he was certainly constrained by British foreign policy imperatives. Yet at the same time he's hardly above reproach. But then, no one is.
In the end what matters is what is happening now: our countries are being invaded at the hands of a ruling class who justify themselves largely on the basis of the war myth.
The view of Churchill by Americans is always stuck in 1940. If you are Irish though, it's 1919. Indians think about 1943 (the Bengal famine), Israelis about 1944 (the start of the Jewish revolt), Kenyans about 1952. (the Mau Mau rebellion). Churchill had a 50 year political career and did many things. It is unreasonable to judge his whole career by one moment-positive or negative.
Churchill was always a lightning rod for very strong feelings. My maternal grandfather (a keen boxer in his youth) once tokd me that he was frightened for his safety when he told people at his bridge club in London that Churchill was going to lose the election in 1945. His patients had related to him that their sons in the forces were writing home urging them to vote for Attlee. This sounded outrageous, even unbelievable, to Conservative voters who adored Churchill.
A large part of the unionised working classes also hated Churchill because of his support for strike-breaking. Few people today realise how large and how powerful the unions were in pre-Thatcher Britain. Their influence made it impossible for the UK to keep Italy on side in the '30s and played a huge role in political and military calculations in the middle and late '40s.
Ultimately he was a very complex man and his views were evolving even in old age. He was also the embodiment of the old ruling order. The Churchills were at the heart of the regime that established modern Britain in 1688, while his Spencer ancestors were part of the aristocracy centuries before that. Churchill's death in '65 marked a decisive break.
Frankly, I have always been irritated by Churchilians, but the way he is now being used as a straw man for revisionists is imbecilic and deeply unfair. The Buchananite element in the US are never honest about the true role of the US and are not sincere in their concerns for the British people. Very few acknowledge that the Germans had plans for the postwar era that have an eery similarity to those later adopted by the US and its allies in Europe. The counternarratives are way too simplistic.
You are dead right about what matters. The here and now and the future. The past is interesting but it is also, potentially, a trap. Energy needs to go on analysing what is happening, not arguing over who was once wrong about this or that.
To finish, replacement level migration a solution straight out of grossraumwissenschaften. I need to read up more on this.
I suspect a lot of revisionists are mainly looking for a way to kill the myth, since they intuit correctly that it is this which stands in the way of addressing the problems we grapple with. One result of that is an attraction to easy narratives.
Exactly. Easy narratives are best left to those who need them. The foundation of reliable accounts is available in fact. Arranging those facts in a sequence suggests possibilities and correlations, but causation stretches the best of us to our limits. It should hurt. Thinking always does. Sorry for belabouring the obvious, but dissenters have no advantages beyond our ability to grasp the reality of our situation. Enchantment by counter-narrative is a risk that I want no exposure to.
At the moment the victor's of WW2 are jostling to rearrange the pecking order. The losers (Uk, Europe, Japan and various pro-Axis states elsewhere) are responding, not very successfully so far.
USA trying to leverage its weakness (trade and capital deficits) into strengths via the bond market (petrodollar, Basel Accord, SWIFT).
My guess is that the big winner will be those multinationals that have hard currency reserves capable of withstanding the coming crisis. Minor winners will be plutocrats and the drug cartels. The Global South scavenge from the corpse of the West as US and Europe turn into global commons for entrepreneurs and welfare sinks for the planet.
Enchantment by narrative is definitely a pitfall that we need to avoid, yet at the same time the man on the street requires a great myth by means of which to bring order to his world. One of our tasks is to provide that myth; which must also be true, lest we become no better than the (ig)Noble Liars we struggle against.
But providing the myth is not optional. It is a strategic necessity.
Regarding Barbarossa, there's the Suvorov hypothesis - that Stalin was, in fact, preparing an invasion, which German intelligence caught wind of just in time. If true, it would explain the abrupt pivot from the Western to the Eastern front, and the hasty invasion of Russia, without appropriate equipment. That last part always struck me as strange, as Germans are usually quite careful and systematic. The only other explanation is “Hitler was crazy”, and I'm always very suspicious of explanations that take that form.
There are a vast number of unanswered questions over the war. Fully agree with the inadequacy of explaining politics as a function of individual shortcomings. Hitler was charismatic in a weird, very theatrical and vulgar way. This distracts attention from institutional and geopolitical factors, many of which remain supersensitive. He went truly crazy late in the war as Parkinsons and the drugs kicked in, but he was too useful for those around him to just kill him, the smart ones were too busy intriguing with the US on their postwar plans. The lurid and cruel aspects of the regime ensure that people never get around to focussing on the critical stuff: trade, finance, property rights and transnational cooperation. The legacy on these from midcentury remains highly relevant today.
Neither Hitler nor Stalin had any illusions about the other. But Stalin wasn't ready since the Red Army was still reeling from the purges. Turns out that Hitler wasn't ready either but he just didn't know it. For one thing most of the German trucks were stolen from the French and rapidly broke down. Surprise.
Barbarossa was a BRILLIAN operational success. It achieved ALL of it's aims, probably even surpassed them. Gemany was expecting the Soviets would be unable to continue the fight after suffering such a devastating loss. They lost their entire prewar military in a few months, for crying out loud! There's even a recording of Hitler talking with some Finnish (I think) generals where he explains what his General Staff was expecting, how many divisions the Soviets had and how many they would raise. And then he said how many they already destroyed by the time of the conversation.
The problem, though, was that Russia doesn't plan on the operational level. Since the days of Catherine the Great, they plan on the strategic level. The General Staff is an organ of the state which has to figure out the top-level strategic defence of the realm. It has unfettered hands to do this. It has been doing this faithfully for literal centuries. During WW2, by the time Germans were approaching Moscow, and defeating the army defending the approaches to Moscow, their problem was becoming apparent: there wasn't supposed to be an army defending the approaches to Moscow! The Prussian generals did everything right. It's somewhere else in Nazi Germany that the failure happened. Who was running the foreign intel? Why didn't that somebody know who was sitting on the Russian General Staff?
One thing in favour of that hypothesis is the Winter War, the aim of which was to push through Finland to the Baltic Sea, from the Arctic to Poland.
And if possible, to push on through Sweden and Norway to take and hold the Atlantic coast in the North.
For many reasons, this was impossible to carry out.
Counter to this is how woefully unprepared the Red Army invading Finland was, initially. For one, they lacked winter gear or snow-coloured uniforms, because Stalin had been promised a war of a week or two at most, which speaks against there being a plan for capturing Sweden and Norway.
Tangentially:
During the Cold War, the Soviet plan was a rapid push onto the Atlantic in the north, knocking out northern Germany and Denmark and southern Sweden with tactical nuclear strikes. The idea was to cordon off the north Atlantic; imagine a line from Greenland and Iceland down to Denmark, under Soviet control.
And the caveat de jure: no power going to war has /one/ plan. Some american put it correctly: "Planning, not plans".
The Iron Guard were certainly pretty hardcore. I'm very far from an expert on the subject, but I have read that even the Nazis thought they went too far. Beyond that I won't opine on the matter as I simply know too little to have strong opinions on it.
As for Eliade, certainly he did not see the world at all as Nietzsche did. That is neither a bad thing nor a good thing. From what I've read of his work, however, I don't think he simply took people's word for anything. He was a careful scholar first and foremost.
The trouble with the Euro Old Right is that they face so much criticism(a fair bit of which is facile) that people neglect key issues.
For me, these issues are not necessarily about right or wrong but about realism and effectiveness. The reactionaries helped bring about the very conditions that they most feared. A lot of them were fuckwits. Others dupes. The essential lesson IMHO is how we are unconsciously repeating their failures.
Narrative and counternarrative less interesting for me than the mechanisms of function at work and the schematics of geopolitics.
I read somewhere (sorry no cite) that on one occasion the SS actually opened fire on an Iron Guard unit for "unnecessary" cruelty to Jews. A similar story exists about the Ustase so it may be a garble or a complete myth.
WWII is the foundational myth of the American Empire, as much as the Punic wars were the foundational myth for the Roman Empire; it both supports it's creation and its continuing existence. As you point out,, as an article of faith it is blasphemy to dispute, and anyone who disputes it is cast out as a heretic and schismatic (Bye, Tucker)
I have argued, and been lambasted on, for insisting that refusing to review history means we can never understand why we are here, and we have to accept other people's interpretations. With false foundations we can never find truth, and never will. Our past is what we guide our aim for the future, and with bad aim we will always miss, even when we hit the target by accident.
to bring it to the personal level, if the familial myth is that you cannot criticize your mom because she gave birth to you, and was a brilliant woman, and her struggle to find sobriety through AA and her church is a testament to how she wanted so deeply to be a better person. Aside from the actual damage she did to everyone around her, it also makes it impossible to understand why she was so angry and self destructive, if it was from trauma, abuse of her own, or was it inheritance? How can you plan the future without that knowledge? Without being able to view these questions we are condemned to the same cycle of negligence and modelling and self doubt.
A final note, all history is revisionist, that is the point of the study of history. without revision, all history can be is a retelling of grandfather tales, and it loses nuance and understanding as it is transmitted.
"Let’s start with an awkward and contentious statement of what I would nonetheless say is a statement of fact: Adolf Hitler was the scapegoat of the 20th century.
This is not meant to imply that Hitler was innocent. Only that he was turned into a symbol of ultimate evil, independently of any rational or sober understanding of WW2 history or the man himself.1
Since the 20th century was the first period in history in which a communications system engulfed the entire planet, that makes Adolf Hitler the scapegoat of all time.
When God was killed, the Devil’s incarnation became inevitable, and imminent. Nietzsche was both the pallbearer and midwife in this “transference.”2
re: "This is perfectly suited to progressivism: since the past is always better than the present, and the future guaranteed to be better still, it follows that the creation myth must begin with something purely horrible, from which the only possible direction is upwards." -- you meant 'since the present is always better than the past' here, no? Or do I misunderstand?
There's a very strong element of nostalgia for a pure state pre-dating [insert the Devil of your -ism here]. Look at feminists, who often argue that mankind lived in pacifistic, vegan, matriarchal no-tech societies which were overturned by the coming of the Kurgan and their phallocratic meat-eater war-like way.
(I forget the name of the feminist historian/arceologist which spawned this mythology.)
"Before nnnn, people of race xxxx lived in peace and harmony with Nature" is a very common sentiment among the Greens too.
As are some marxists prone to speak of some Glorious Past where all produced what was needed together, before the invention of money.
It just has to be long ago enough for no positive proof to be in existence, and exotic enough geography-wise - it wouldn't work to speak of the neighbouring group that way, but some "ethnic minority" on the other side of the planet, with no way of contradicting you works perfectly as an Avatar or Paragon of Vartue, for liberals and progressives.
Rousseauism certainly exists in tension with the main thrust of progressive historical narratives. Though both cooperate when it's time to tear everything down.
"I'm sure I'll take you with pleasure!" the Queen said. "Two pence a week, and jam every other day."
Alice couldn't help laughing, as she said, "I don't want you to hire me – and I don't care for jam."
"It's very good jam," said the Queen.
"Well, I don't want any to-day, at any rate."
"You couldn't have it if you did want it," the Queen said. "The rule is, jam to-morrow and jam yesterday – but never jam to-day."
"It must come sometimes to 'jam to-day'," Alice objected.
"No, it can't," said the Queen. "It's jam every other day: to-day isn't any other day, you know."
"I don't understand you," said Alice. "It's dreadfully confusing!"
Sounds a lot like present-day liberalism to me.
Could prolly do a write-up about how that sentiment also describes public transportation, as opposed to having your own car. You could have gone earlier, or you can go later, but without a car you can never go when you want.
(Am waiting for the bus into town, and the deer ked* are being a pest as per usual.)
Plenty of beserkers aroung the world but I was looking for one not tainted by any European ideas. Pre-Columbian AmerIndios are another good example. One of the more interesting books I have read described the period around the Mexican war as a collision between three expanding empires-American, Mexican and Comanche with the Spanish, French and British empires lurking not far away. Texas was essentially bankrupt and was flirting with all the Euros as well as the US to get them out of trouble. While the US pretty decisively won against Mexico, it took another 3 decades to defeat the Comanches.
it's true that Christ got hit and put on a secondary place in favour of the Jews after ww2
his spiritual role being more one of a generical crime-observer - along with specs that belongs to his specific role that I dont know - got relatively under-considered there...
That's odd
It's as if the General of Earthling's suffering could not assume his role and that the Victims themselves have been carried on to enjoy such position
Hmmm surely as he's the original guy it's just a matter of not yet having his voice done
Man, this was an INCREDIBLE piece! I re-stacked it with a long-ish comment of my own, but just wanted to go out of my way to say how much I appreciate the EFFORT you put into this. As a fellow blogger who also tends to “go long,” and who edits, re-edits, writes and re-writes, I know a fellow hard-working HUMAN writer when I see one. Keep up the thought-provoking and soul-stirring work, my friend!
I think this article summaries perfectly the anthropological consequences of our (quasi)religious beliefs which serve as our culture’s foundation. As such it also clearly delineates that history, whenever it will reemerge, will come to judge us as the singularly most evil people to ever exist. More so than the Akaddians who dressed their walls with the skins of their enemies, or the Aztecs that created pyramids of skulls to their gods. What we have done to ourselves is the permeation of suicidal nihilism into every fibre of our existence, and there will be an ocean of evidence to show it.
May God have mercy on us all.
In so many ways we've become abominations. Yet so many of us resist that, and rise above it, because it isn't in our nature to be what They are trying to turn us into it.
Unfortunately the foundational myth causes many good people to accept bad things. It is to society what childhood experiences are to the individual - the base-level driving force of our subcouncious mind.
> singularly most evil people to ever exist
For real? o.O I can probably dig up quite a few examples to the contrary, and I don't mean communists.
Really? I’m genuinely interested, if very skeptical. The problem of our society, as Guenon points out, is scale. Can any other culture point to the literal mountain sized pile of bodies that we’ve been able to achieve? And I’m not talking about talking about communism or war, but just us, post-1945. Just in 2022 we had over 200,000 deaths of despair in the USA alone.
We’re also the civilisation which has most developed feminism, which among other things is responsible for development by a rabid, and frankly demonic desire in women to kill their own children. In some circles it is a mark of status.
Another point: child transgenderism. That fact that is tolerated in of self speaks volumes.
I could go on, but you get my point.
Well, if you want scale, absolute numbers, then it's difficult to find a good match, but only because of the population explosion of the last ~150 years. Otherwise, I'll quote Middle East of around 1500 BCE and later, about 700-500 BCE. It is recorded in the Bible that peoples living in those areas ate their children, and sacrificed them to their gods. The Bible records Judean kings did this too, so we can consider the account generally true. Additionally, some of the prophets (Jeremiah, Ezekiel) from the late stage of this period describe a thorougly barbarous society where sin and evil are simply ways of life, with no lived alternative. Related to this were the late bronze age civilizations of the same area (let's say a bit before 1000 BCE). Apparently, they were separated into two classes with the upper class holding the lower class in total subjugation, including regularly taking some of them for ritual sacrifices. When the "Sea Peoples" tore through the rotten civilization around 1000 BCE, the remaining Middle Easterners didn't rebuild their civilization, because why would they?
Please do not project your self-loathing onto others. Since the conversion of Constantine Christianity has been the driver of, and explanation for, the rise and triumph of Western civilization, the greatest civilization in human history. This is true in the areas of rule of law, rights of the individual as opposed to the collective, scientific-technological achievement, medical science, dominance over other cultures albeit misused, material prosperity of its people. With the decline of Christianity, along with the rise of secularism, materialism, hedonism, and neopaganism, the decline and fall of Western civilization is foreordained.
"rights of the individual as opposed to the collective"
Where in the Bible does anyone, including Jesus, talk about "rights?"
Bible != Christianity
How about the right of the prostitute not to be stoned to death, when he said "let those who are without sin throw the first stone"? How about the right not to be judged by assholes when he said, "Worry about the log in your own eye before you worry about the sliver in someone else's eye"? What about the right to be judged on your own terms rather than how much money and social standing you have, when he talked about the big-shot going to heaven was like a camel getting through the eye of a needle?
Rights mean nothing if you can't defend them. Jesus isn't talking about "rights."
He was describing good vs. evil and in no way was he demanding laws to compel people to behave in a particular way. In a word, he wasn't whining or complaining.
Or according to the Torah, criminality must be established by the testimony of two witnesses, not confidential informants, or circumstantial evidence. If a virgin was raped, the perpetrator had to marry her and never divorce her. One guilty of unintentional manslaughter could flee to one of ten cities of refuge for life, and thus escape capital punishment.
Abuse of power is a ubiquitous human failing. Yes, the West has abused its power in a number of ways. The real question is what was the source of the unparalleled power of the West?
Well, I think there was something called Alexander the Great and the Roman Empire.
Discovering the New World before some other civilization did.
Most excellent essay and about time. I know I have said this in comments before, but I was innoculated from the WW2 worship seen among loathsome boomer GOP types (eg, neocon clowns like VD Hanson, Glenn Reynolds and other regime propagandists) by my dad, a veteran of the Italian front (a medic). Around the time of Saving Private Ryan I was sort of obsessive with the war. I mentioned this to my dad. He looked at me with a mixture of sadness and contempt. He told me that I’d never understand the war, he barely did but it wasn’t the “bullshit you’re getting told in school or that Ambrose shit.” He loathed Stephen Ambrose and the band of brothers thing. He did like Bill Mauldin, so Mauldin is one of the few sources on the U.S. experience I trust. And Paul Fussel. The Americans were no more than mercenaries for FDr’s demonic ambition in that war. Ditto the Yanks who died for Lincoln and muh eternal Union.
My father also innoculated me. He had bookshelves full of WWI and II histories, all of which he'd read. Easily had the equivalent of a graduate degree in military history. One day I remarked that our troops must have hated the Germans. No, he said, not at all. They respected them. They fought bravely and they fought very well.
That insight into the warrior’s mind - that one can fight and kill without hating those one fights - put things into perspective for me. And it always sat rather awkwardly with Hollywood portrayals of the war. My father was no fan of Hollywood, either.
Hate is reserved for the propagandists and politicians, to stir up support...
Fussell’s book “The Great War and Modern Memory” is an absolute classic.
This piece covers a vast amount of ground social confine my comments to a few observations.
One, Eliade was the polar opposite of Nietzsche. Nietzsche like all the principal Enlightenment philosohers was suspicious of received opinions and encouraged readers to a similar position. Eliade, in contrast, sought re-enchantment, both politically and academically. I can't imagine a worse (or more squalid) inclination for anyone involved in the pursuit of knowledge.
Two, the Iron Guard's spiritual pretensions notwithstanding their real-world conduct inspired disgust and contempt. Himmler received reports from his officers complaining vigoroudly about the behaviour of the Iron Guard towards civilians in the occupied Ukraine. Enough said.
Three, King Carol was a pragmatist. His kingdom was one of very few places on earth exporting petroleum at the time and the destabilisation of Rumania by Berlin through its proxies was all about resources. The King sought to minimise the risks to his throne and his people. He failed. Most of the blame for this lies with people of Eliade's persuasion. Incidentally, it was the Iron Guard's backers in Berlin who stripped Rumania of territory which puts the nationalism and patriotism of the movement in perspective.
Four, Churchill was chosen for the job because there was a consensus at the top that he was the only man who could lead the empire at war. His rivals served in the cabinet alongside him without complaint. Churchill's only significant error, if it can be called that, was to have underestimated the ambitions of Washington. The US and Germany were the greatest enemies the UK faced in the 20th century. Churchill chose subordination to Washington over subordination to Berlin. In hindsight this was the only path he could gave taken, because Britain's fundamental national interest has always been to disrupt the unification of western Europe by a rival power. Churchill was faithful to this view, a perspective shared by practically every single person of influence in the UK at the time and in every century stretching back to the late middle ages.
Five, Darryl Cooper, like Tucker Carlson, is an American without any demonstrated understanding of the political conditions within late imperial Britain. He imagines that prme ministers were de facto presidents and that geopolitical decisions were made by one man alone. He appeared unaware of the deliberations within Westminster at the time. He never bothered to mention the foreign policy preferences of the British Labour Party, something that Churchill had to take into account because they were a part of the wartime cabinet.
Six, that Operation Barbarossa might have stopped the Soviets advancing towards the Atlantic is impossible to verify or falsify. By the early 30s Moscow had given up on worldwide revolution and was busy repairing relations with several European states (successfully in the case of Czechosolvakia and Yugoslavia, unsuccessfully in the case of the UK and Poland). By the time Hitler came to power the USSR had already assisted Germany in rebuilding it's own armed forces (above all the Luftwaffe). Stalin was many things, many of them unpleasant, but he was not a fool. The Red Army force structure was not geared for a war of conquest at any time in the 30s and as Rapallo showed the Soviets saw their interests best served by cooperation rather than conflict.
Regarding Churchill, well as I was at pains to point out: I don't think he was a villain; and he was certainly constrained by British foreign policy imperatives. Yet at the same time he's hardly above reproach. But then, no one is.
In the end what matters is what is happening now: our countries are being invaded at the hands of a ruling class who justify themselves largely on the basis of the war myth.
The view of Churchill by Americans is always stuck in 1940. If you are Irish though, it's 1919. Indians think about 1943 (the Bengal famine), Israelis about 1944 (the start of the Jewish revolt), Kenyans about 1952. (the Mau Mau rebellion). Churchill had a 50 year political career and did many things. It is unreasonable to judge his whole career by one moment-positive or negative.
Churchill was always a lightning rod for very strong feelings. My maternal grandfather (a keen boxer in his youth) once tokd me that he was frightened for his safety when he told people at his bridge club in London that Churchill was going to lose the election in 1945. His patients had related to him that their sons in the forces were writing home urging them to vote for Attlee. This sounded outrageous, even unbelievable, to Conservative voters who adored Churchill.
A large part of the unionised working classes also hated Churchill because of his support for strike-breaking. Few people today realise how large and how powerful the unions were in pre-Thatcher Britain. Their influence made it impossible for the UK to keep Italy on side in the '30s and played a huge role in political and military calculations in the middle and late '40s.
Ultimately he was a very complex man and his views were evolving even in old age. He was also the embodiment of the old ruling order. The Churchills were at the heart of the regime that established modern Britain in 1688, while his Spencer ancestors were part of the aristocracy centuries before that. Churchill's death in '65 marked a decisive break.
Frankly, I have always been irritated by Churchilians, but the way he is now being used as a straw man for revisionists is imbecilic and deeply unfair. The Buchananite element in the US are never honest about the true role of the US and are not sincere in their concerns for the British people. Very few acknowledge that the Germans had plans for the postwar era that have an eery similarity to those later adopted by the US and its allies in Europe. The counternarratives are way too simplistic.
You are dead right about what matters. The here and now and the future. The past is interesting but it is also, potentially, a trap. Energy needs to go on analysing what is happening, not arguing over who was once wrong about this or that.
To finish, replacement level migration a solution straight out of grossraumwissenschaften. I need to read up more on this.
I suspect a lot of revisionists are mainly looking for a way to kill the myth, since they intuit correctly that it is this which stands in the way of addressing the problems we grapple with. One result of that is an attraction to easy narratives.
An excellent place to start reassessing the global situation is with Powell.
He was a first class strategist, as you'd expect from a former brigadier in military intelligence. And unsentimental about the USA.
https://unherd.com/2020/09/would-enoch-powell-have-supported-brexit/
Exactly. Easy narratives are best left to those who need them. The foundation of reliable accounts is available in fact. Arranging those facts in a sequence suggests possibilities and correlations, but causation stretches the best of us to our limits. It should hurt. Thinking always does. Sorry for belabouring the obvious, but dissenters have no advantages beyond our ability to grasp the reality of our situation. Enchantment by counter-narrative is a risk that I want no exposure to.
At the moment the victor's of WW2 are jostling to rearrange the pecking order. The losers (Uk, Europe, Japan and various pro-Axis states elsewhere) are responding, not very successfully so far.
USA trying to leverage its weakness (trade and capital deficits) into strengths via the bond market (petrodollar, Basel Accord, SWIFT).
My guess is that the big winner will be those multinationals that have hard currency reserves capable of withstanding the coming crisis. Minor winners will be plutocrats and the drug cartels. The Global South scavenge from the corpse of the West as US and Europe turn into global commons for entrepreneurs and welfare sinks for the planet.
Enchantment by narrative is definitely a pitfall that we need to avoid, yet at the same time the man on the street requires a great myth by means of which to bring order to his world. One of our tasks is to provide that myth; which must also be true, lest we become no better than the (ig)Noble Liars we struggle against.
But providing the myth is not optional. It is a strategic necessity.
Regarding Barbarossa, there's the Suvorov hypothesis - that Stalin was, in fact, preparing an invasion, which German intelligence caught wind of just in time. If true, it would explain the abrupt pivot from the Western to the Eastern front, and the hasty invasion of Russia, without appropriate equipment. That last part always struck me as strange, as Germans are usually quite careful and systematic. The only other explanation is “Hitler was crazy”, and I'm always very suspicious of explanations that take that form.
There are a vast number of unanswered questions over the war. Fully agree with the inadequacy of explaining politics as a function of individual shortcomings. Hitler was charismatic in a weird, very theatrical and vulgar way. This distracts attention from institutional and geopolitical factors, many of which remain supersensitive. He went truly crazy late in the war as Parkinsons and the drugs kicked in, but he was too useful for those around him to just kill him, the smart ones were too busy intriguing with the US on their postwar plans. The lurid and cruel aspects of the regime ensure that people never get around to focussing on the critical stuff: trade, finance, property rights and transnational cooperation. The legacy on these from midcentury remains highly relevant today.
Neither Hitler nor Stalin had any illusions about the other. But Stalin wasn't ready since the Red Army was still reeling from the purges. Turns out that Hitler wasn't ready either but he just didn't know it. For one thing most of the German trucks were stolen from the French and rapidly broke down. Surprise.
Barbarossa was a BRILLIAN operational success. It achieved ALL of it's aims, probably even surpassed them. Gemany was expecting the Soviets would be unable to continue the fight after suffering such a devastating loss. They lost their entire prewar military in a few months, for crying out loud! There's even a recording of Hitler talking with some Finnish (I think) generals where he explains what his General Staff was expecting, how many divisions the Soviets had and how many they would raise. And then he said how many they already destroyed by the time of the conversation.
The problem, though, was that Russia doesn't plan on the operational level. Since the days of Catherine the Great, they plan on the strategic level. The General Staff is an organ of the state which has to figure out the top-level strategic defence of the realm. It has unfettered hands to do this. It has been doing this faithfully for literal centuries. During WW2, by the time Germans were approaching Moscow, and defeating the army defending the approaches to Moscow, their problem was becoming apparent: there wasn't supposed to be an army defending the approaches to Moscow! The Prussian generals did everything right. It's somewhere else in Nazi Germany that the failure happened. Who was running the foreign intel? Why didn't that somebody know who was sitting on the Russian General Staff?
Piling on:
One thing in favour of that hypothesis is the Winter War, the aim of which was to push through Finland to the Baltic Sea, from the Arctic to Poland.
And if possible, to push on through Sweden and Norway to take and hold the Atlantic coast in the North.
For many reasons, this was impossible to carry out.
Counter to this is how woefully unprepared the Red Army invading Finland was, initially. For one, they lacked winter gear or snow-coloured uniforms, because Stalin had been promised a war of a week or two at most, which speaks against there being a plan for capturing Sweden and Norway.
Tangentially:
During the Cold War, the Soviet plan was a rapid push onto the Atlantic in the north, knocking out northern Germany and Denmark and southern Sweden with tactical nuclear strikes. The idea was to cordon off the north Atlantic; imagine a line from Greenland and Iceland down to Denmark, under Soviet control.
And the caveat de jure: no power going to war has /one/ plan. Some american put it correctly: "Planning, not plans".
A lot to respond to there.
The Iron Guard were certainly pretty hardcore. I'm very far from an expert on the subject, but I have read that even the Nazis thought they went too far. Beyond that I won't opine on the matter as I simply know too little to have strong opinions on it.
As for Eliade, certainly he did not see the world at all as Nietzsche did. That is neither a bad thing nor a good thing. From what I've read of his work, however, I don't think he simply took people's word for anything. He was a careful scholar first and foremost.
The trouble with the Euro Old Right is that they face so much criticism(a fair bit of which is facile) that people neglect key issues.
For me, these issues are not necessarily about right or wrong but about realism and effectiveness. The reactionaries helped bring about the very conditions that they most feared. A lot of them were fuckwits. Others dupes. The essential lesson IMHO is how we are unconsciously repeating their failures.
Narrative and counternarrative less interesting for me than the mechanisms of function at work and the schematics of geopolitics.
I read somewhere (sorry no cite) that on one occasion the SS actually opened fire on an Iron Guard unit for "unnecessary" cruelty to Jews. A similar story exists about the Ustase so it may be a garble or a complete myth.
We 🇺🇸just need to escape WW2 emergency government.
WWII is the foundational myth of the American Empire, as much as the Punic wars were the foundational myth for the Roman Empire; it both supports it's creation and its continuing existence. As you point out,, as an article of faith it is blasphemy to dispute, and anyone who disputes it is cast out as a heretic and schismatic (Bye, Tucker)
I have argued, and been lambasted on, for insisting that refusing to review history means we can never understand why we are here, and we have to accept other people's interpretations. With false foundations we can never find truth, and never will. Our past is what we guide our aim for the future, and with bad aim we will always miss, even when we hit the target by accident.
to bring it to the personal level, if the familial myth is that you cannot criticize your mom because she gave birth to you, and was a brilliant woman, and her struggle to find sobriety through AA and her church is a testament to how she wanted so deeply to be a better person. Aside from the actual damage she did to everyone around her, it also makes it impossible to understand why she was so angry and self destructive, if it was from trauma, abuse of her own, or was it inheritance? How can you plan the future without that knowledge? Without being able to view these questions we are condemned to the same cycle of negligence and modelling and self doubt.
A final note, all history is revisionist, that is the point of the study of history. without revision, all history can be is a retelling of grandfather tales, and it loses nuance and understanding as it is transmitted.
"Let’s start with an awkward and contentious statement of what I would nonetheless say is a statement of fact: Adolf Hitler was the scapegoat of the 20th century.
This is not meant to imply that Hitler was innocent. Only that he was turned into a symbol of ultimate evil, independently of any rational or sober understanding of WW2 history or the man himself.1
Since the 20th century was the first period in history in which a communications system engulfed the entire planet, that makes Adolf Hitler the scapegoat of all time.
When God was killed, the Devil’s incarnation became inevitable, and imminent. Nietzsche was both the pallbearer and midwife in this “transference.”2
Enter Adolfus? Ecce homo."
https://childrenofjob.substack.com/p/burdens-of-belief-the-foundational
Well said. That was insightful.
Epic essay. But I wouldn’t say that most of the WWII myth is true.
Yeah like I said ... Getting into revisionism would have taken way too much time.
It's because of all the foreigners in your countries that foreign history continues to haunt you.
re: "This is perfectly suited to progressivism: since the past is always better than the present, and the future guaranteed to be better still, it follows that the creation myth must begin with something purely horrible, from which the only possible direction is upwards." -- you meant 'since the present is always better than the past' here, no? Or do I misunderstand?
Fugg. Good catch, thank you.
I think both works.
There's a very strong element of nostalgia for a pure state pre-dating [insert the Devil of your -ism here]. Look at feminists, who often argue that mankind lived in pacifistic, vegan, matriarchal no-tech societies which were overturned by the coming of the Kurgan and their phallocratic meat-eater war-like way.
(I forget the name of the feminist historian/arceologist which spawned this mythology.)
"Before nnnn, people of race xxxx lived in peace and harmony with Nature" is a very common sentiment among the Greens too.
As are some marxists prone to speak of some Glorious Past where all produced what was needed together, before the invention of money.
It just has to be long ago enough for no positive proof to be in existence, and exotic enough geography-wise - it wouldn't work to speak of the neighbouring group that way, but some "ethnic minority" on the other side of the planet, with no way of contradicting you works perfectly as an Avatar or Paragon of Vartue, for liberals and progressives.
Rousseauism certainly exists in tension with the main thrust of progressive historical narratives. Though both cooperate when it's time to tear everything down.
Carrol kind of nailed it, intentionally or not:
"I'm sure I'll take you with pleasure!" the Queen said. "Two pence a week, and jam every other day."
Alice couldn't help laughing, as she said, "I don't want you to hire me – and I don't care for jam."
"It's very good jam," said the Queen.
"Well, I don't want any to-day, at any rate."
"You couldn't have it if you did want it," the Queen said. "The rule is, jam to-morrow and jam yesterday – but never jam to-day."
"It must come sometimes to 'jam to-day'," Alice objected.
"No, it can't," said the Queen. "It's jam every other day: to-day isn't any other day, you know."
"I don't understand you," said Alice. "It's dreadfully confusing!"
Sounds a lot like present-day liberalism to me.
Could prolly do a write-up about how that sentiment also describes public transportation, as opposed to having your own car. You could have gone earlier, or you can go later, but without a car you can never go when you want.
(Am waiting for the bus into town, and the deer ked* are being a pest as per usual.)
*https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lipoptena_cervi
The Maoris have entered the chat.
Good one!
Somehow though, I don't think maoris bring up Icelanders the way some people in EUrope bring up tribe this-or-that.
Probably it is due to the fermented shark they eat on Iceland.
Plenty of beserkers aroung the world but I was looking for one not tainted by any European ideas. Pre-Columbian AmerIndios are another good example. One of the more interesting books I have read described the period around the Mexican war as a collision between three expanding empires-American, Mexican and Comanche with the Spanish, French and British empires lurking not far away. Texas was essentially bankrupt and was flirting with all the Euros as well as the US to get them out of trouble. While the US pretty decisively won against Mexico, it took another 3 decades to defeat the Comanches.
Great post! The academic agent called it the boomer truth regime. “If you oppose degeneracy then you’re a nazi!” 😂
AA’s framing is absolutely cutting.
it's true that Christ got hit and put on a secondary place in favour of the Jews after ww2
his spiritual role being more one of a generical crime-observer - along with specs that belongs to his specific role that I dont know - got relatively under-considered there...
That's odd
It's as if the General of Earthling's suffering could not assume his role and that the Victims themselves have been carried on to enjoy such position
Hmmm surely as he's the original guy it's just a matter of not yet having his voice done
"The World War Two myth is a creation story that begins with Ragnarok"
The modern people would say: "upvote!"
I am fairly shy, so I would still say: Eh, when I reached this passage a big cheer popped up on my face! This is cool. Thank you.
There is an article by "Michael TOPPER" named "Does it has Gong-fu?"
I believe that your article has gong-fu... All the very best I will keep on reading!
Continuing to expose the Big Hoax and the banksters behind the wars and the lies is essential.
Man, this was an INCREDIBLE piece! I re-stacked it with a long-ish comment of my own, but just wanted to go out of my way to say how much I appreciate the EFFORT you put into this. As a fellow blogger who also tends to “go long,” and who edits, re-edits, writes and re-writes, I know a fellow hard-working HUMAN writer when I see one. Keep up the thought-provoking and soul-stirring work, my friend!
Thank you, my friend. Means a lot.
You’re welcome! You earned it and more. I’m grateful folks like you are around.
One typo: s/Revelations/Revelation/
I don't have an opinion on Churchill, but it's obviously true that WWII has become the unquestionable civic religion in the US.
Good catch!
I didn't want this article to stop.
It could easily have been a lot longer…