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THE ORIGIN OF THE FASCIST
MENTALITY - (5)
Fascism: The
Return of Paganism
At the beginning of this chapter, we
identified fascism as a system of violence that emerged in pagan societies.
The basic reason for this violent tendency in fascism comes from the
philosophy of "worshipping strength," that might is right. The strong
have the right to rise to the top and crush the weak. Fascists greatly
admire the strong, but hate and despise the weak. The fundamental principles
of this perverted philosophy are waging war, shedding blood, ruthlessness
and cruelty.
Against this perverted mentality that
emerged in Sparta, in the arenas of the Roman Empire, and in the pagan
barbarian tribes from the North of Europe, there is the beautiful morality
God has revealed to us by means of religion. As revealed to man throughout
history by prophets and holy books, such as the Torah, the Gospel and
the Koran, what matters is not" strength," but "truth." Human beings
must be judged by whether or not they conform to what God has revealed
as the truth, not by their strength. The strong are charged with being
gentle and compassionate to the weak, not crushing and oppressing them.
A human being's duty is to protect the weak and be merciful and peace-loving,
not to be cruel and ruthless.
Modern fascism, with its roots in the
19th century, is a product of ideologies that desire to oppose those
rules of morality revealed to man by religion, and to replace them with
a racist, blood-thirsty and cruel culture of paganism. The neo-Pagan
tendency, which began with the French Revolution, was given shape by
Friedrich Nietzsche, and carried forward to Nazi ideology. Evolutionists
such as Charles Darwin, Francis Galton and Ernst Haeckel strove to give
so-called scientific support to this rising paganism, by denying the
existence of God, and attempting to demonstrate that all of life consists
of a "struggle for survival", thus justifying racism.
The American historian, Gene Edward Veith,
sums up these developments in his book Modern Fascism: Liquidating the
Judeo-Christian Worldview this way: "Fascism is the modern world's nostalgia
for paganism.... It is a sophisticated culture's revolt against God."30
Nazism clearly revealed that fact. The
Nazis defended paganism, both during the early stages, and also when
they came to power in 1933. They tore German society away from Christianity,
and tried to turn it to pagan beliefs.
Even in the 1920s, Alfred Rosenberg,
the Nazis' foremost ideologue, was already claiming that Christianity
would be unable to generate sufficient spiritual energy under the Third
Reich that was to be set up under Hitler's leadership, and that the
German people would have to return to the old pagan religion. According
to Rosenberg, when the Nazis came to power they would have to replace
all the Christian symbols in churches with swastikas, copies of Mein
Kampf, and swords symbolizing German invincibility. Hitler was influenced
by these views of Rosenberg, although he refrained from implementing
the so-called German religion because he was afraid of what society's
reaction might be.31
However, important neo-pagan practices
were experimented with during the Nazi era. Not long after Hitler came
to power, Christian holidays and festivals were replaced by pagan ones.
"Mother Earth" or "Father Sky" were called on at wedding ceremonies.
In 1935, Christian prayers in schools were stopped, and then all lessons
concerning Christianity were banned.
As made clear in the book The Pink Swastika,
which discusses the Nazis' pagan ideologies (and homosexual tendencies),
"the revival of Hellenic paganism became a fundamental aspect of the
Nazi identity."32
The same book stresses the fact that
there was a homosexual tendency in that pagan movement which formed
the basis of Nazi identity. It also gives an interesting example of
the Nazis' links to Greek pagan culture:
Who were these "intellectuals" who popularized
Nietzschean fascism in Germany? Stefan George, one of Germany's most
popular poets of the time, was a pederast, and "a guiding example" to
the Community of the Special�. "George and his disciples" writes Oosterhuis
and Kennedy "revivified Holderlin's concept Griechendeutschen (Hellenic
Germans)... His [Stephen George's] last book, Das neue Reich (The New
Kingdom) published in 1928, "prophesied an era in which Germany would
become a new Greece". In 1933, when Hitler came to power, he offered
George a position as President of the Nazi Academy of Letters.33
Under Nazi rule, many policies were implemented
that were aimed at establishing a re-awakening of pagan culture. Schoolchildren
were taught the so-called "Glorious pre-Christian German history," and
various rites and ceremonies, legacies of pagan culture, were held all
over Germany. All Nazi meetings were in the form of traditional pagan
ceremonies. There was almost no difference between Nazi rallies, held
under the shadow of flaming torches, where slogans full of hate and
hostility were shouted and Wagner's pagan music played, and the perverted
ceremonies carried out thousands of years ago at pagan temples and altars.
To re-awaken paganism, the Nazis also
used the arts. Ancient Greek concepts and symbols began to predominate
under Nazi rule, and many statues similar to Greek one were made portraying
strong men and women of the Aryan race. Hitler dreamed that a "superior
race" would be formed through eugenics, and a cruel and oppressive "world
kingdom" would be established based on the Spartan model. The expression
"The Third Reich" is a testament to this dream. (Hitler attempted to
found the third and greatest German kingdom after two others which had
existed previously). Because of this dream, 55 million people lost their
lives in the Second World War, the bloodiest conflict that the world
had ever seen. The genocides Nazis carried out against various ethnic
groups such as the Jews, Gypsies, and Poles, as well as prisoners of
war from other nations, were of a savagery unprecedented in history.
In the next chapter, we will see under
what conditions fascism came to power, and how it proceeded once it
had done so.
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