I am not going to post an announcement saying Nazi sympathizers or Holocaust deniers are not welcome here. Such a notice is not needed: Nazis are not welcome anywhere in the civilized world, and should assume so. I am an American. Nazis are the enemies of America and everything for which she stands. We owe you no courtesy. We owe you nothing but a swift trial and a slow hanging.
I am still surprised and disappointed that anyone, anywhere in the world, in this day and age, would think it is an acceptable idea either to embrace Nazism, or to come here to my journal and preach it. Let this be a confirmation of the old saying that there is no idea so childish, so outworn, and so ugly that some intellectual somewhere will not think to support it.
Since, as a matter of hygiene, I thought it only common decency to remove the comments of the Nazi sympathizers you, dear reader, will not in this place see and ponder their words, but they were the same old thing we always see: stupid people pretending to be smarter than us, creatures of unimpressive moral and intellectual attainments pretending that they are our betters. The combination of fishy evasiveness, hoggish ignorance, and serpentine venom, all delivered with cockish crows of pride merely added a layer of absurdity to the ugliness.
I assume they were teenagers, because no grown-up talks they way they talked. They were arguing with lawyers and historians here, but they had neither evidence nor logic: both boys seemed to think their arguments were too strong to be answerable, when they were in truth too weak to merit rebuttal. When Mr. Barbieri mentioned that grandfather’s brother was murdered in Dachau in the Holocaust the Nazi-lover claimed not to have happened, the only reply the child could answer back was “Nyah! Did Not!”. This was his notion of a sound debating technique. That little exchange I have also erased, out of respect for Mr. Barbieri’s family.
For the same reason that it is pointless to argue with a madman, it is pointless to argue with the morally corrupt: in both cases, the reasoning facility cannot be engaged, in the case of a madman because he cannot, in the case of the damned because they will not, use reason. I call it childish because it is: jeering, swaggering, cowardly, bullying. I spoke words of forgiveness and reconciliation to them, and was answered with scorn, as one would expect.
As for the outworn nature of the ideas, let me simply say that, to the degree that history has the power to pass a verdict on an idea, history has condemned Nazism to humiliation. For those of you attracted to the romance of barbarism, the snappy uniforms, the stupid excuse to hate Jews, or what-not, let me remind you what the rest of us think of the Nazis: We think of you as the bad guys who got melted at the end of RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK, and we cheered. We think the most evil accomplishment of Hitler was the creation of The Red Skull, arch-foe of Captain America. We regard you as cartoon characters. Colonel Klink and Sergeant Schultz: that is the role history has assigned you, Ratzi. So much for your plans to rule the world.
As for the ugliness of the idea, let me remind you why the Nazis are the enemies of Americans, and of all civilized peoples. In their economics, their law, their religion, their racism, their dishonesty, their brutality they are the mere opposite everything America means.
The Nazis were socialists. The name Nazi is short for ‘Nationalistic Socialism’. And their socialist economics are the opposite of our free enterprise system, but so incoherent is Nazi economic theory that the communists look like paragons of logic by contrast. At least the Reds had some sort of theory, not merely a slogan about economic autarchy and living-room. The Commies at least pretend to be concerned for the working class and the poor, and they at least pay lip service to the idea that communism will produce a utopian future. The Nazis glorified barbarism.
As an admirer of the Roman Empire, the so-called First Reich, and the traditional Roman virtues of stoicism, law and order, obedience, and family loyalty, I am personally offended that the Third Reich used Roman salutes and Roman titles (“Dictator”) and Roman Eagles, and demeaned them. These gangsters did not represent Roman-like law and order. The Germans were a naturally orderly people: this lawfulness was merely exploited. These Nazis established parallel chains of command in every bureaucracy, blurred or abolished defined legal boundaries of jurisdiction, and Hitler played one group off against the other, so that they routinely stole from and undermined each other’s efforts, sometimes with bloodshed. Imagine the CIA having shootouts with the FBI or local state troopers and you get the picture. Hitler wrote to party members urging them to assassinate any party bosses that were weak. These Nazis were not an orderly people: they unleashed a system that was the worst aspects of anarchy and the worst aspects of totalitarianism with the benefits of neither. Americans are both more respectful of law, and more respectful of individual liberty, than this weird and satanic mix of totalitarian anarchy.
Scoff when Nazi apologists claim no orders have been found in Hitler’s handwriting ordering the “Final Solution” to the Jewish problem. It was not the Fuhrer’s habit to issue written orders on any topic. He gave his orders verbally, sometime contradicting himself, so that the underlings could bear the blame when the orders led to disaster, as they often did.
The Nazi notions of religion were equally confused, and so unchristian and so inhuman that the Vikings from whom they looted their ideas look good by contrast. The Nazis managed somehow to blaspheme both Christian ideals (as when they called their Fuhrer a Christ, or substituted a doctrine of Blood and Land for the Eucharist of Wine and Bread) and to blaspheme Norse mythology. Odin who upholds the oaths of men would not have been merciful to these crooks and liars. The Einherjar were meant to fight giants, not pull a screaming baby out of the arms of unarmed Jewish mothers standing in line for the death-train, to boot the child to death before her eyes, and then to laugh at her grief (a true event: see Paul Johnson’s ‘History of the Jews’).
The Nazi’s stupid theories of eugenics are the opposite of the American ideal of the Melding Pot, and Enlightenment ideals of individualism and liberty.
The Nazi’s stupid lies they tell about history is the opposite of the basic honest streak in Americans, which allow us to tolerate criticism (in my opinion, some times too much criticism). But Einstein did not flee from American Racial Purity Laws to the welcoming arms of Germany, did he?
Nazi brutality is a sharp contrast to our civility, we who offer the rights and dignities of the Geneva convention even to non-signatories.
Nazi buffoonish boastfulness is a sharp contrast to our humility—how often have you heard an American criticizing America in the harshest terms, not letting us forget the shames that accompany our history? No such critics of Germany voiced their opinions in the Third Reich, I assure you.
Nazi whining, their little-girlish cowardice is a sharp contrast to the understated bravery of those who stormed the beaches on D Day. The German soldiers were brave enough, for the Germans have always been a brave folk. But the Nazis? Did Hitler die with the courage of Nathan Hale, or did he commit suicide after poisoning his dog? Did Himmler have the boldness of Mucius Scaevola? No, the Nazis combine the worst aspects of militarism and cowardice: they glorify strength without chivalry, military pomp without military courtesy. It is not the citizen-soldier, the militiaman, the retiring Cincinnatus they adore; Nazis love blood and iron.
The whining tone of the two Nazis apologists who cropped up here on my journal was simply astonishing to contemplate. One would think they never heard criticism before. Did they expect courtesy from us, when they break into a conversation about a beloved sword & sorcery novelist and change the topic to preach their irrational filth?
The Nazis in history were not any manlier than these two. It is no sign of fortitude or courage that the Germans were whipped into a frenzy to attack a group of unarmed Jews found among their own citizens. With no offense to my Jewish friends, I must say that the Jews of that era were the most meekly law-abiding tribe of all mankind, and the one least likely to retaliate or to resist cruelty. Centuries of Christian oppression had beaten the fight out of the Jew. When ordered onto the death-trains, meekly they went. Bold Viking warriors fighting giants these Nazis were not: they picked on unarmed pawnbrokers, peddlers, and shopkeepers. The only tribe with as little ability to fight back were the Romani, the gypsies; and, lo and behold, they were also the victims of organized mass-slaughter at Nazi hands.
The Nazi, as I said, glorified barbarism, but they did not have the simplicity or decency that can be found in a savage, noble or otherwise: because a highly-civilized race turning its back on the culture of Wagner and Beethoven and Leibniz and Luther and embracing a comic-book notion of Vikingism is a sign of deep and fetid decay and depravity. Real tribesmen respect things like family bonds and the taboos of the tribe. Play-pretend savages just want to have an excuse to commit crimes.
This corruption is to the moral faculty what gibbering insanity is to the reasoning faculty. The Nazis were the very thing that they decried in the Weimar Republic: they were decadent. That their decadence took the form of militarism, genocide, and bloodshed rather than the form of hedonism placed it on a lower moral plane, not an equal one, with the languid sybarites they claimed to replace.
But the Nazis were snappy dressers! Even in this, the Americans are their opposite, because our leaders dress in nothing fancier than suit and tie, and all classes dress like workingmen, in sturdy denim jeans.
In all these things Nazis are simply the opposite of Americans, and of all civilized people. Any group that whine and sobs about unarmed bankers are oppressing them is simply sunk too far into a delirium of evil to take seriously. They should and must be fought, both with words and with bullets, knives and fists: but we should laugh at them when we hang them, because they are ridiculous.
What, Nazi supermen? Are you too stupid to run your own banks? You cannot calculate interest, or rival the Rothchilds in their sharp dealings? In your vaunting theories of eugenics, you cannot see a superior people, smarter and more morally astute than you, living in your own midst? Wasn’t it a Jew who discovered the theory of Relativity? Wasn’t it a Jew who wrote down the Ten Commandments, and at a time when the most advanced moral theory of the polytheistic world was little more than a rule to obey blindly the god-kings and pharaohs the naked sword enthroned? If you were serious about eugenics, O Nazi wonder-men, you would have interbred with the Jews and improved your thickheaded Northern stock, wouldn’t you have? Some supermen you are. Any farmer who breeds dogs know more about eugenics than you: thoroughbreds win dogshows but crossbreeds win dogfights.
Christians are required to pray for and to forgive these people; let us pray for any Nazi’s soul when he is on the gallows, and to ask the Lord for mercy. The faithful Christian is reminded that the immortal soul of the man need not be stained forever by the darkness of the ideas, no matter how corrupt, in which a man mires himself: there is always hope.
We need to pray for them. No evil is so absolute that salvation is impossible for Omnipotence to accomplish, or for Omniscience to foresee. We need not fear these creatures, nor are we allowed to hate them, because no matter what harm they do to your body of flesh and blood, no matter what they steal and whom they kill and what lies they tell, they are powerless to harm the soul, which is immortal. Your body was destined to perish in any case, and your wealth, and your name and fame will not be recalled in ten thousand years, not on Earth: and so all these things that they can rob or mar or defame were as mortal as the flesh. Hatred mars the soul, and the soul is eternal.
Do not hate the Nazi, the man. It is Nazism, the idea, that is the enemy of Christ; the man who believes that idea is not the enemy. He is a victim of it, and must be loved and forgiven, even if only a saint has the strength to love and forgive so ugly and unwholesome a monster. Such saintliness is not beyond you, dear Christian.
Pray for the fallen man. But we need not to listen to a Nazi or an apologist for Nazism. There is nothing to say. That debate is over.
You may ask what impels such stern condemnation in me, since I seem to be willing to debate politely with, and enjoy the company of, atheists and homosexuals and socialists and materialists and Satanists and pagans?
Why do I take it personally?
Ah…. why indeed.
The Nazis went into mental hospitals during the war, and took German citizens, people the ministers of the state were honor bound to protect, and killed them*. The Nazis and their henchmen used starvation, injections, and experimental gassing, including the Zyklon gas later used in the Holocaust.
That is what Nazis do to retarded people.
My lovely blond little autistic son, who only talks at the mental level of a two-year old, just came in and handed me CAT IN THE HAT to read to him.
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*(See a report by Dr. Leo Alexander, observer at the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials, published in the New England Journal of Medicine. 231 (19491 pp. 39-47). See also Dr. Fredric Wertham, M.D (“A Sign for Cain” published 1966, Chapter 9)
