Now y’all got me thinking again. This is never a good thing. My last (admittedly long) post was an attempt to treat seriously with a few sarcastic remarks I posted on another thread. I don’t want anyone to think that I take the matter of Nazism lightly. As a former neo-Nazi, I know all too well how easy it is to be sucked into movements that offer simple explanations for and simple solutions to complex problems. At the same time, I have perverse sense of humor. I can’t help being tickled by the fact that most of the analyses of Nazism I’ve read have been as reductionist and as silly as Nazism itself. I’m not asking anyone to take me on faith, nor even suggesting that I was a typical NN, but I parted ways with the scene when I was eighteen, and I’ve spent a sizeable chunk of the twenty-nine years between then and now trying to make sense of it As I like to believe that I’m at least semiliterate and passably intelligent, I think I’ve made some progress toward the aforementioned end. Hopefully, that counts for something. This brings us to context. Hopefully, the reading list I posted earlier will help the truly interested (and hopefully, disinterested) seeker to grok the “meat and potatoes” of National Socialism. All the titles I recommended are “myth-free,” and the authors, eschewing kindergarten determinism, reject the single-cause approach. In many cases, this makes for “heavy” reading, but in all cases, the authors are more concerned with examining the phenomenon than with proving a point. Consequently, their treatment of their subject matter is closer to that of Numa Denis Fustel de Coulanges than to that of Edward Gibbon. (More about that pompous arsehole in an upcoming rant.) Once we have a solid understanding of the *what*, it’s time to look at the *how* and *why.* If you’re in the habit of viewing history as a haphazard series of causeless, unconnected events, you’re screwed. If you’re a “single-causer,” you’re a little better off, but not much. If, on the other hand, you take history as a painting of sorts (as viewed by an artist), you’re on your way. In order to “get” the work, you have to zoom in and out, understanding how each brushstroke or patch of colour influences the whole. Have I mentioned that this ain’t easy? Consider it mentioned. If you’ll pardon me, I’m going to dig up an example from the distant past. In 1986, I was taking courses in Ancient History and Classical Literature. For the latter, I had to read the quick’n’dirty versions of the core myths of Ancient Greece (Bulfinch or Hamilton. I own copies of both, but I honestly can’t remember which we used), before moving on to the _Iliad_, the _Odyssey, the _Aeneid_, and the plays “Agamemnon,” “The Trojan Women,” and “Hecube.” My professor (who, in my opinion, was brilliant) then fast-forwarded to the Middle Ages and Renaissance, focusing on Dante’s _Inferno_, Chaucer’s _Troilus and Criseyde_, and Shakespeare’s _Troilus and Cressida_. One continuous thread, running from the 8th century BC until the seventeenth century AD. In this case, the Iliad was the sine qua non. My history professor, unfortunately, took a slightly different approach. This was not a matter of academic laziness on her part, mind you, but one of necessity: we had to cover everything from Sumer to the fall of Rome to the Ostrogoths in a single quarter. To her credit, she insisted that in order to understand Greek politics, we had to understand Greek thought. To this end, she had us read selected chapters of Plato’s _Republic_. Now I’m gonna shift gears again. Hold that thought. In order to understand Aristotle’s _Politics_, you must understand that in part, it was written as a rebuttal to Plato’s _Republic_. In order to understand the forces that compelled Plato to write his magnum opus, though, you need to be familiar with Thucydides’s _History of the Peloponnesian War_, and perhaps even Xenophon’s _Hellenica_. Ah, but there’s more! To appreciate the backdrop and backstory of the latter two, it doesn’t hurt to be grounded in Herodotus’s _The History_. Context, context, context. The same applies to understanding Nazism. One of the more glaring factors in its rise was the unprecedented and uncalled-for burden placed upon Germany by the Versailles Treaty. The Versailles Treaty, in turn, was the immediate consequence of World War I, which was itself a result of the ascendency of nationalism during the 19th century. Unless you’re content with the “War to End All Wars” myth, you’ll need some knowledge of European history from the Enlightenment onward. The French Revolution, the Holy Alliance, the Triple Alliance, the “Great Game” played by Britain and Russia in Central Asia, and so forth. You’ll also need to go back to the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries to observe the emergence of colonialism, during which Holland, Britain, Spain, France, and Portugal sought to carve up the world. Then you’ll have to fast-forward to the unification of Italy and Germany, and their attempts get a slice of the pie. Then we’ll have to flip back again, to the dissolution of the nebulous concept of “Christendom” as Papal authority waned in the ever-increasing glare of secular independence. (For excellent treatments of the subject, see Walter Ullmann’s _Medieval Political Thought_, and Brian Tierney’s _The Crisis of Church and State 1050-1300_). Is this getting complicated? Are we having fun yet? Isn’t it ever so much easier simply to dismiss the Nazis as very naughty men in scary, S&M-ish uniforms? But now we’ve gotta have us a gander at philosophy, economics, and shit that-just-plain-happens. This necessitates familiarizing ourselves with the rediscovery and promulgation of Aristotelian thought via Thomas Aquinas, to whom, in the long run, it passed from Jewish (Maimonides) and Muslim (Averroes) thinkers in Medieval Spain. Then we have to consider the intensification of class-tensions during the 18th and 19th centuries, which arose partly from the legacy of feudalism and partly from the emergence of the middle class, itself a consequence, in part, of the scarcity of labor that occurred during the Black Plague, four centuries earlier. And even the hostility between the urban, mercantile, and rural, agrarian societies has deeper roots. When, in the seventh century, Islamic expansion cut Europe off from the Mediterranean (including North Africa, which had once been the “bread basket” of the Roman Empire), Northern and Western Europe had no choice but to turn to intensive agriculture in order to survive. After conquering Spain, Gaul, Britain, and Western Germany, the Romans had done nothing to encourage local industries. Pioneers of outsourcing and offshoring, their dependence on imported manufactures and cheap labor effectively destroyed native Italian craftsmanship, which resulted in a very unstable, two-tiered society with wealthy merchants and moneylenders at the top, and impoverished peasants and unemployed dolers on the bottom. This, in turn, led to the dissolution of a shared sense of “Romanness” among the native Italian populace. And until the shit hit the fan, one turd at a time, no one gave a rat’s ass. First, the political center of gravity shifted east, to Constantinople. Then came the Germans, Alans, Huns, and other fun-loving folk from beyond the Rhine and Danube. Is anyone really surprised to hear that mobs of pissed off peasants and unemployed urbanites cast their lot in with the invaders? Who could blame them? They had nothing to lose, and everything to gain – in the short term. By the end of the eighth century, Italy was broken into pieces, with the Lombards and Franks vying for control in the north, Byzantium keeping a foothold in the “heel” and “toe” of the “boot,” and Sicily in Muslim hands until the eleventh century, when Robert Guiscard and his wacky, happy-go-lucky band of Norman adventurers decided to help themselves to a slice of territory. Things were no better north of the Alps. After the Roman withdrawal from Britain in the fifth century, the Island south of Hadrian’s and the Antonine proved easy pickings for Pictish/Caledonian raiders. Not to be outdone, pirates and colonists from Ireland and the Low Countries got into the act, laying the foundations of modern Scotland and England. Spain was languishing under the rule of Visigoths, Alans, and Suevi, until the invading Moors pushed them north, into what are now Castile, Aragon, and Leon. The ensuing, four-century-long Reconquista relegated Spain to a comparatively minor role in continental politics until the final conquest of Granada in the fifteenth century. By the eleventh century, this left the Germans brawling with the Italians, Slavs and Magyars, the English brawling with the Scots and Welsh, and the French brawling with pretty-much everybody – including each other. Without even realizing it, all parties concerned had moved irreversibly onto to the path leading to the creation of the modern nation-state. Which led to colonialism, nationalism, and World War I, which led to the Versailles Treaty, which led to…. Oops! We forgot religion! Anti-Semitism in Germany precedes Nazism by centuries. One of the reasons many Jews have such pretty-sounding names, incidentally, is because their ostensibly Christian overlords would saddle them with insulting or demeaning surnames. If they wanted something a little nicer, they had to pay for it. The relatively small pool of occupational surnames owes itself to the fact that Jews were barred from agriculture. This left them only trade, handicraft, and finance to fall back upon. That, and hiring themselves out as teachers and tutors to aristocrats and well-heeled burghers who wanted to educate their children without having to terminate their own bloodlines by turning them over to the church. An unforeseen and unintended consequence of the state of affairs was the Jewish passion for education. This, in turn, led to a form of natural/social selection I call “survival of the smartest.” If you doubt me, just Google it. To this day, Ashkenazi Jews, as a group, have the highest average IQs of any population on earth. Intelligent, educated, slightly ahead in the economic game, and yet still members of a despised minority, the clannish, mildly exclusionist nature of their faith and culture given positive survival-value by the shitty treatment afforded them by their neighbors. Hmmm. I’m smellin’ a whiff of trouble. Are you? This brings us to the Reformation. Although, as I’ve mentioned, anti-Semitism has deep roots in Germany, it was Martin Luther who really got the ball rolling. Arguably the most influential Protestant of his day (with Calvin coming in second, and Zwingli a distant third), Luther not only changed the Religious landscape of Germany and Scandinavia, he was a virulent anti-Semite, as well. By the time the smoke and dust of the Thirty Years’ War (1618-48) had settled, most of Germany-proper (with the exception of Bavaria) was Lutheran. This is to say that by the time the Armistice was signed in 1918 (the NSDAP was formed a year later), a significant chunk of the German populace had absorbed nearly three centuries of anti-Semitism as part of their cultural “background noise.” Yet another piece of the Nazi puzzle falls into place. Hooboy… It is now nearly 20:00, and I’m just getting warmed up. I’ll have to pick this up tomorrow. Take care, ~D
Posted on: Sun, 21 Sep 2014 00:08:50 +0000
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