Note: This post was originally a “sticky” feature, and was on top for several days. Scroll down for more recent posts, including a video of a French mayor evicting immigrant squatters, “Immigration, Altruism and National Suicide”, “Welcome to the Hippie State”, “What!? Already? Who Killed the Unicorn?”, and the tent city in Saudi Arabia that could house three million people.
The following feature by Rembrandt Clancy is the first of a two-part series. It includes his translation of an important article by Hans-Peter Raddatz, plus extensive translator’s notes and additional translated material.
Readers who are interested and/or trained in philosophy and theology will want to examine this essay closely. It helps explain the post-modern mess that the West finds itself in today, following the strands of ideological self-destruction that weave their way through the Enlightenment, the French Revolution, Marxism, Bolshevism, National Socialism, and Secular Humanism. The Islamization of Europe may be viewed as the fulfillment of a dream that was shared by Adolf Hitler, but which began long before he arrived on the scene.
Rembrandt Clancy deserves our gratitude for undertaking and completing this ambitious project.
Dr. Hans Peter Raddatz is a specialist in Middle Eastern and Oriental studies and a financial analyst. In numerous books he has concerned himself with the fundamentals of globalisation, Islam and the Islamisation of the West. He translated Bat Ye’or’s Europe, Globalization, and the Coming of the Universal Caliphate into German and wrote a commentary on it (Gates of Vienna).
Note: The superscripted numerals in square brackets refer to additional quotations and definitions which amplify the material.
Globalisation as War Against Man
Part 1: The Genesis of Euro-Islamic Racism
by Hans-Peter Raddatz
German Language Source:
Die Neue Ordnung
Vol. 68, Nr.6 December 2014
Translation by Rembrandt Clancy
1. Enlightenment Prelude
The barbaric events in the East and the silence of the “elites” in the West suggest the necessity for a fairly close analysis of the underlying motive factors driving both situations. Such, however, should not remain on a surface level, but look into the causes which make it possible for the modern age to accept without feeling the mass murder of Christians and Yazidis in Syria and Iraq. No less a reason than this, so one might think, do the European security forces have for curbing the radicalisation of Muslim immigrants, who no longer attack “only” public establishments, — above all churches, synagogues and social welfare offices, — but also people, primarily indigenous juveniles.
Of course we know that since 2005, the EU, the OIC and the Islamic UN have been implementing a detailed politico-media programme for the Islamisation of Europe, which has been fuelling the ongoing abolition of democracy in the EU countries and increasing the infiltration of its institutions. However, a new dimension of official toleration for Islam’s hostility toward citizens and Christians is becoming recognisable; it is assuming an ontological character and cannot be explained as mere propaganda. For a half century, the “dialogue with Islam” has been making the persistent demand “not to strive for what separates, but to seek commonality”, therefore we should take the “dialogue with Islam” at its word and identify the commonality which the EU elites bring to it: that without a popular mandate, they are opening the continent up to Islam and making its teachings into guiding principles for European culture.
Since massive immigration and the extensive mosque-building in Europe are not the manifestation of a Zeitgeist, but are rather a matter of a long-term transformation in world-view, two perspectives offer themselves to begin with as suitable approaches to this phenomenon: first, there are the “dialogue” outcomes, which appear particularly precious to the participants; and second, the politico-religious familial resemblance between Islam and Europe which has been unfolding since the Enlightenment. During this time the European elites have become fascinated by their own robust conception of the culture of Islamic despots, whose violence was to vanish behind their putative cultural achievements.
Nor has there been an inclination to admit the ambivalent stance of the arch-Enlightener Voltaire toward Islam and its messenger,[1] much less acknowledge the open collaboration between Hitler and the Muslim Brotherhood, who, after the “Führer’s” campaign in the East and the ignominious end of the war, allowed many SS members, in their flight from the allies, to escape to the Near East and facilitated the construction of clandestine networks. It was very difficult for leftist opponents of the regime to criticise this, for even the Soviet Union hastened to set up points of liaison in the East; and in so doing, Stalin, just before his death, invited Amin al-Husseini (d. 1973), the Mufti of Jerusalem and friend of Hitler, to Moscow.[2]
General de Gaulle followed up by rescuing Husseini, still an active Muslim Brother, from the US war crimes tribunal, and appointed him co-ordinator of a Franco-Islamic political alliance. That Husseini’s pupil and the father of terrorism, Yassir Arafat, marched armed and under standing ovation into the UN General Assembly in 1974 and later received the Nobel Peace Prize, can hardly come as a surprise, given this background of elitist high esotericism.
In order to conceal all this over the long term, and for the purpose of effecting participation in the benefices accruing to the developing “intercultural dialogue”, there came surely enough just at the right moment the patent of anti-fascism, that esoteric panpharmacon against all disagreeable civil, democratic and ecclesiastical vicissitudes. According to this narrative, it was not Mohammed who had taught jihad, the Islamic holy war, to the Muslims who are in reality peaceful, but fascism, — a version of events which has been in circulation almost uncontested until today.
Such notions have roots which we shall recapitulate briefly. In 1797 Napoleon, the Enlightenment’s field commander and enemy of the Church, insisted on conducting a campaign in the East. It took him by way of Alexandria and Cairo to Syria. To win over the Muslims, he displayed his knowledge of the Koran and feigned a temporary profession of faith, proving that he too was an expert at the Islamic technique of deception (taqiyya). His intention to bring Muslims Western science foundered on the mistrust of the Koranic scholars, and especially came to grief at the hands of Lord Nelson, who traced Napoleon’s fleet to Aboukir and blew it up with the exception of two frigates.
Napoleon, who was no dreamer, is nevertheless a singular case of that strange fascination for the East, which takes possession of many occidental leaders. Even the author of this article has been in position to observe it in many Westerners active in Islamic countries. In the nimbus of almost unlimited power, the atheistic Frenchman believed himself inspired by Islam to be the founder of a religion, who, with a Koran in hand composed by himself,[3] intended to drive the British out of India and unite the entire Orient with the true Europe, the French Europe.
2. Hitler and the Racial Dialogue
What came of it is well known: the Turks and insufficient provisions stopped the eastward dream in Syria, and the British stopped the European nightmare at Waterloo. However, an obsessive fixation with the East appeared to have been irreversibly set in motion; at first, it spread quickly to the British, and later afflicted the other great powers, Russia and Germany. After Lessing’s ‘Nathan the Wise’ [Nathan der Weise] and Goethe’s ‘West-Eastern Diwan’ [West-östlicher Diwan], the literature and philosophy of the Romantics, with their whisperings of Eastern mysticism, added even more of a charge to the colonial competition of the 19th century. In Germany’s case, it found fatal expression when Hitler laid claim to English racism as the prototype for Germany’s Aryanism and professed the Crown colony of India as a model for “Lebensraum” in the East: “What India is for England, the territories to the East will be for us”[4] (Sarkisyanz, Emanuel. Hitlers englische Vorbilder [“Hitler’s English Inspirers”], 12 — Ketsch 1967).
All of this had its parallel in the technology of power, the Koran, which later caused the “Führer” to regret not having read it more carefully. Not only did he think Mohammedanism would have allowed him to win the war, but it could have filled him “with enthusiasm for paradise” (Picker, Hitlers Tischgespräche [“Hitler’s Table Talk”], p. 110 — Berlin 1999).
In this sense, it is fundamentally contrary to the truth, according to Hitler, to impute terrorism to the Mohammedans, who focus solely on “hope of bliss”, Mohammedan terrorism being rather a “Jewish doctrine spread by Christianity” (ibid., p. 258).
Here the anti-Judeo-Christian will to power of Islam could be combined with a master race [Herrenrasse] — in this case, the Aryan — to form a flexible race ideology: productive, which is to say, race-hygienic expansionist policies could be pursued, according to the “Führer”, by the adoption of the English idea of a class of master rulers [Herrenmenschentum][5], but with respect pre-eminently for Confucius, Buddha and Mohammed, who together offered “an undeniably broad spiritual basis for the religiously minded” (ibid., p. 508).[6] Therefore, it is not advisable to interfere in the daily routine of these people; rather, it is wise — following the centuries-long, well-proven Anglo-model — to train into their elites, “the leading local inhabitants [Einheimischen]”, a thinking and behaviour which “makes them forget that they work under foreign rule” (ibid., pp. 622ff).
Besides a wealth of additional instructions, this selection of references suffices to expose the current so-called cultural dialogue as a racist monologue with strong Nazi elements. It prescribes for public debate the permanent “eye to the Right” [7] [Blick nach rechts], because otherwise its Hitlerian foundation would come to light all too blatantly, for its essential dogmas follow the “Führer’s” credo almost to the letter.
It must be stressed first of all, that English racial imperialism departs from the foundational concept of ethnicity. It passes over into a notion of remote, almost godlike dominance, which demarcates the elites as a separate “race”, as a human-species sui generis. It distinguishes itself ontologically from the mass of all other people, who only appear to be human beings by virtue of their Gestalt, but like Jews, “Negroes” and women, they are not really people. For this elite race, legitimation is superfluous, because it is destined to rule; it rules because it is superior, wealthy and English. As is becoming apparent, Islam’s ideology of dominance feeds on the same ontologically racist[1] impulse, albeit veiled in pseudo-religiosity.
Such was the motivation behind the central stipulation of the Germans — even before Hitler — to emulate the English prototype with an Eastern, Anglo-Aryan, Germanic paradigm of rule. Carl Peters (d. 1918), co-founder of German Imperialism and Social Darwinism, went to the heart of the matter:
“I was fed up with being counted among the pariahs and wanted to belong to a master-race”.[8]
As a man of letters, [Ernst Freiherr] von Wolzogen (d. 1934) half seriously and half satirically came up with something better:
“Learn from the Englishmen … how as an obedient Herrenmensch”[5] one translates the will to power into action. (Sarkisyanz, loc. cit., p. 6)
With the expression “obedient Herrenmensch”, Wolzogen had coined a logo which applies to all forces in the service of power, being true of the entire Janus-faced species of philosophers, professors and profiteers of all time who fashion the message of power from “above” and convey it to the masses “below”.
Parallels to the Nazi-related “intercultural dialogue” begin with the ontologically racist guarantee in the Koran that the believers belong to “the noblest nation that has ever been raised up for mankind” and therefore this nation is not only justified but obliged “to enjoin justice and forbid evil”. (3/111 [Sura 3:110, Koran. Trans., N. J. Dawood]).
Settling these people in Europe through unending immigration within “authentic” cultural colonies, supporting them with massive social security benefits and networking them with subsidised mosque building, belongs to red-brown politics; that is, it is post-socialist and multivölkish. With its avant garde, “obedient Herrenmenschen”, it implements a selective, anti-democratic coercive tolerance. It is as much hostile to the citizens as it is to science, because it both dismantles accumulated civil liberties and forces the sciences into line [gleichschalten[9]] with its Weltanschauung, above all the sciences of Near Eastern Studies and Ethnology, which yield all too damaging findings on the racial-imperial history of Islam.
At the same time the simpler players, who do not see via their own ideology and act only reflexively, frequently take on a manner of speech which is closely adapted to the jargon of the “Führer”. Thus on one occasion, the cadre functionary, Albogha, an activist with Turkish religious affairs, castigated the German Orientalist, Tilman Nagel, who, — as an “old-established” scientist (following Hitler; that means a scientist among the “local inhabitants”), — took upon himself the anti-sharia right to interpret the authoritative texts of Islam (Nagel, Angst vor Allah?, [“Fear of Allah?”], p. 381f., Annotation 2). With this, Albogha himself was apparently unaware that he himself violated the “dialogue” dogma requiring the distinction between Islam and Islamism.
Nevertheless, Albogha finds himself in the best of company, for the English model rulers also know how to treasure the advantages of the Koran when it comes to the technology of power. Former Prime Minister Tony Blair announced on the website of the Labour Party (3 March 2006):
“The most remarkable thing about reading the Koran … is to understand how progressive it is … It is practical and way ahead of its time in attitudes to marriage, women and governance” [For original speech, cf. The Foreign Policy Centre].
That the Koran’s “practical orientation” has dire consequences for the Muslim woman, as well as for European non-Muslims in the Islamic expansion, looms on the horizon with the beginnings of civil war in the cities, emphatically placed against the background of the killing routines in the “Islamic State”. By deeming in line with the dialogue that this violence has “nothing to do with Islam”, and that it is only its “misuse”, its activists prove suitable to the practice of Islamo-racism.
Consequently, criticism running counter to the system, or even resistance, signals the extremely serious psychological deviance of Islamophobia, which requires political correction through therapeutic indoctrination. If the dissidents insist on the old-cultural democracy and science, they appear as “agitators and racists” in the eyes of the dialogue players, whose tunnel-vision grants them no thinking room — as has often been said, “there is no alternative”,[10] — but it forces them to project their own radical state of mind onto everything which does not correspond to their template of “permitted and forbidden”. In order to preclude any doubt about the matter, they circulate the mantra that “Islam is not the problem”, which automatically brands non-Muslims with ontological guilt.
Being that “Islamophobic” resistance against the Islamocentric diktat is the problem, the “dialogue” acts as a quasi-Islamic institution, which reactivates Hitlerian racism. For just as the Jews at that time incurred guilt for not being Aryan, so the servants of Islam today are developing an increasing animosity toward the civil population who are becoming all the more guilty, because they comply much too slowly with the demands for conformity masked as tolerance. With the notion of a “phobia”, the psyche asserts itself as a substitute for logic, for if in the absence of an obsession with the enemy, a real culpability were to arise, and thereby freedom of speech, then the dialogue activists would be speaking of culpophobia.
3. Islamisation in the Cultural Monologue
The “dialogue” proves to be a monologue of the ‘no alternative’ type, command-speech preparatory to violence, which with endlessly repeated stereotyped routines unobtrusively conveys itself into the action system of the German dictator which was thought to have been of the past. After Blair had made the Europeans take to heart their deficit in a sufficient reading of the Koran, a charismatic competition developed for the prize in obedient master-rulership [Herrentums]. It penetrated all institutions and in the meantime also split the Vatican into factions of doves and hawks. That the former promoted “reading the Koran properly” appears to be a natural consequence.
Playing a leading role are “scientists”, who guard against drawing the stigma of racism which attaches to the “local inhabitants” [Einheimischen], or one might call them the “old-established” or perhaps even “aboriginals” [Ureinwohners]. Angelika Neuwirth operates differently. She understands the Koran as “written notes and not just the result of a process of annunciation”; she sees it as “an open and unbiased drama”, nothing less than “a unifying European inheritance”. Thus as a standard bearer she can allow, in an Islamically correct manner, the Koran to become indigenous to Europe; for, “from an historical perspective we live … not in a Judeo-Christian, but in a Judeo-Christian-Islamic Europe” (cited in Nagel, loc. cit., 31 Note 24).
Having been trained in such a way, and now also training others in the same way, the author belongs to the “leading local inhabitants [Einheimischen]” and fulfils Hitler’s condition of causing herself and others to forget “that they labour under foreign dominance”. We know that the Koran, its tradition and the sharia constitute a millennium of practical knowledge for Muslims, and we do not impute to Frau Neuwirth any conscious fraudulent intention regarding Islam as an alternative project for the West, because for her there remains “no alternative” but self-oblivion [Selbstvergessenheit]. Nevertheless, she renders a valuable contribution, because her invention of the expression “unifying inheritance” makes the affinity between the Euro-Islamic fusion and Hitler’s plea for Mohammed as an “undeniably broad spiritual basis” more comprehensible.
However, when she arrives at the conclusion of a “Judeo-Christian-Islamic Europe”, she is describing a situation corresponding systemically to the initial situation of Islam in the East, which cannot be encompassed by her idea of “written notes”. For at that time too, there prevailed a Judeo-Christian-Islamic constellation, which in the following 1,400 years, gradually shed its Judeo-Christian elements. Today, with the help of the “Islamic State”, it is freeing itself from the remnants of foreign faith and will soon have fulfilled the Koranic vision of unadulterated Islam.
With the “Judeo-Christian-Islamic Europe” a Western renaissance is emerging, which is purely Islamic by way of origin, but massively contaminated heterodoxically; and a new round of the historical cycle of jihad can be expected. For the struggle must not end after all “until idolatry is no more and Allah’s religion reigns supreme” (8/40 [Sura 8:39, trans., M. J. Dawood]), and if the Koran is a unifying European inheritance, the pro-Islamic giants of the past, on whose shoulders the “dialogue” stands today, should also be respected.
As is becoming apparent, to these giants belong the German dictator, whose Table Talks may be a verbal “record” of the Koranic path of success, but they cannot be understood as an open and unbiased drama any more so than Mohammed perceived his annunciation as such. Frau Neuwirth overlooks — probably unintentionally — a central meta-prescription in the Koran, which makes all other rules unchangeable for all time:
“It is not for true believers — men or women — to take their choice in their affairs if Allah and His apostle decree otherwise.” (33/37 [Sura 33:36. Trans. N. J. Dawood])
This statement, combined with numerous instructions for jihad, could certainly inspire Napoleon in his Koranically planned conquest of India and even fill the “Führer” “with enthusiasm for paradise”.
While formulated less sacredly than profanely, this precept obligates men and compensates them at the same time, by orienting them to what in the Koran is the prepotent, elitist ontological goal [Seinsziel] of raising them above all races, classes and other masses and ennobling them to the “best nation”, to the meta-race of Islamic Herrenmenschen. Since Allah creates the world continually anew,[11] he manifestly exercises an irresistible force of attraction on the elites in general and on leaders of extremist political systems in particular. Their kindred spirit presses them to use Islamic control-efficiency, but the Koran has an effect which is as absolute as it is Janus-faced: whoever harnesses it for his own interests, is already pulling Allah’s cart.
The Eastern Christians were subject to the Koranic institution of the dhimma, the Islamic “protection contract”, which obligated them to pay the “subjugation tax” (Sura 9:29) and which always made for painful experiences. Not all Muslims held to the letter of the “protection”, nor did all prelates resist the temptation to collaborate with Muslim rulers at the expense of their communities (cf. Bat Ye’or, Niedergang der orientalischen Christen unter dem Islam [“The Decline of Eastern Christianity under Islam”] 136f — Gräfelfing, 2002.) — a perennial dilemma up until today, which goes back, like many others, to the ‘messenger’.
According to him, Christianity is a “foolish variety of unbelief”, sheer stupidity. Its followers do not understand the world and therefore they themselves dig the grave which Allah planned for them. Because they insult the truth of Islam with their fraudulent book, they can make no claim to legal certainty. At no time, therefore, should they be certain that war and death can ever end for them (Nagel, Tilman. Muhammad: Leben und Legende. [“Mohammed: Life and Legend”] p. 445ff — München 2008).
Since then, little has changed. Whoever compares the media reports concerning the cruel measures of the “Islamic State” with the Christian chronicles on the expansion of Islam in the 7th and 8th centuries (Bostom, Legacy of Jihad, New York: Amherst. 2005, 383ff), will ascertain from the astonishing parallels that time in Islam revolves in fixed patterns. These chronicles show that “Throne and Altar” repeatedly fell prey to the temptation of making common cause with Allah’s elites. For example, the Metropolitan of Constantinople assumed that role, when he was persuaded to forbid, as “war against God”, resistance to the Ottomans. And likewise today, the leaders of the dove faction in the Vatican, and bishops who are of like mind, believe “that God is returning to Europe along with the Muslims”.[12] Such notions signal nothing less than an abandonment by one’s own God[13], and follows the ruling “dialogue” requirement of showing no tolerance for Revelation, which is therefore called Christocentric narrowness.
4. Islamocentric Christianity
With the Second Vatican Council, the search for commonalities with Islam was renewed:
“The Church regards with esteem also the Moslems. They adore the one God…”(Nostra Aetate [14]).
From this, neo-Theology[14] drew the conclusion that the Christian faith is to be declared “unusable” for the new unitary religion, because it does not correspond to “the continuing living encounter with other religions”[15] ([Heinrich Ott, Ein neues Paradigma in der Religionstheologie. [“A new Paradigm in Interreligious Theology.”] In:] Bernhardt, Reinhold. Horizontüberschreitung: Die Pluralistische Theologie der Religionen. [“Transgressing the Horizon: Pluralistic Theology of Religions.”] 35, Gütersloh 1991). By imprinting this pattern on all believers, the neo-Theology not only approached the alternative of the Koran, but also came closer to Hitler’s commitment to “Confucius, Buddha and Mohammed”.[14] This orientation appeared ever more plausible as an “undeniably broad spiritual basis for the religious-minded”, particularly as the “dialogue” took up the impulse of the Council and understood
“the Islamic doctrine, not narrowly out of the limited context of the life of the Prophet, but out of the message of the Koran and its general moral principles”[16] [Troll, Christian W. Der Blick des Koran auf andere Religionen”, “The View of the Koran on Other Religions: Reasons for a Common Future”, In:] Kerber, ed., Wie tolerant ist der Islam? [“How Tolerant is Islam?”, 1991], p.62).
The further the “dialogue” progressed, the more wide-ranging became the adoption of Islamic “moral principles”, which rest on a circularly networked system, allowing Hitler to come into view as the natural source of ideas for this form of dialogue and its “anti-fascist” avant garde: in Islam there is allegedly 1) in general no compulsion in religious practice (Sura 2:256) with a view to, 2) suppressing and gradually wiping out unbelief, especially of Jews and Christians (Suras 2 and 22); and 3), there is no jihad as a permanent duty “until Allah’s religion reigns supreme” (Sura 8:40).
In the modern, red-brown-coloured train to totalitarianism, this context mutates into the congenial “dialogue” of deception being made up; first, of freedom of religion for Islam; second, tolerance of Islam; and third, jihad as striving in the practice of faith. The closed, loop-like processual character of this system permits comparison with such bio-physical processes as, for example, photosynthesis: in nature, the sun keeps photosynthesis working as reliably as unbelief fuels Islamic jihad, and as much as the Koran becomes a magnet for elite interests. That is what gives the Hitlerian pattern its quality of being made to measure: it warns against the cardinal error of a willingness to recognise in the Muslim “hope for bliss” any kind of tendency toward violence, an idea which is spread rather in the “doctrine” of the Judeo-Christian civilisation, the metaphysics of the common arch-enemy of Europe and Islam.
Alternatively, Pope John Paul II brought the “God of infinite majesty” into the discussion, which took up gnostic ideas[17] and immersed the many religions in cosmic spirit-spheres of divine revelation (logoi spermatikoi [‘seeds of reason’].[18] cf. Dörmann, Johannes. Der theologische Weg Johannes Pauls II: zum Weltgebetstag der Religionen in Assisi, [“The Theological Way of John Paul II: On the World Day of Prayer in Assisi”] Bd. 1— Senden, 1990, 53ff.). This was owing to his philosophical formation in Phenomenology which enabled him, according to his own testimony, to overcome Thomistic philosophy with his intuitive inner experience[21] and reconcile the conscious mind with the unconscious (Karol Wojtyla, Person und Tat [“ The Acting Person “], 9ff., 91ff. — Freiburg 1981)[19].
In the historical long-term carousel of self-similar ideas, what he called “experiential intuition”[20] had its prototype in the “two-fold truth”[21] of Averroes (d. 1198) and in the “intellective cognition”[22] of the universal genius, Roger Bacon (d. 1292). Both come down to the “two modes of being in respect of thinking”, which since antiquity has pertained to the problem of power in relation to thinking man, and which the Church Father Gregory of Nyssa explored an additional 800 years before Bacon. Gregory held thinking for an art which speculated with the deceptive, with non-being or even with the harmful, so as to discern for the glory of God, nature on the one hand and morality on the other (Kobusch, Theo. Sein und Sprache: Historische Gurndlegung Einer Ontologie Der Sprache [“Being and Speech: Historical Basis of an Ontology of Language”], 79, 80 — Leiden, 1987).
Given this basis on which creative man began to emerge, it appears clear that both thinkers were silenced by their respective power elites. Averroes stood at the pillory in Cordoba and fled to North Africa; Bacon, despite the best connections with powerful clergy, went to prison for an unknown period of time. This constellation is important to our theme, because the heretics of that period are applauded today as constituting an important common ancestry for both cultures; yet the subsequent period gave rise to completely different cultures — for Europe, its dynamic of economy, science and research; for Islam, the political sacralisation of the law and its messenger, Mohammed.
For this reason, John Paul II stands in a tradition in which he not only guided the Christian Revelation closer to the other religions as the “truth about the Good” (Wojtyla loc. cit., 131), but he also brought the clerical leadership still closer to the economic privilege of interpretation. The papal facility for experiencing and modern existential theology’s living-out of inwardly felt experience form a religio-political tandem, which turns out to be an instrument against the “old” metaphysics and a two-sided integration of the Church into the cultural dialogue which is as much global as it is standardised to money.
The Vatican II Council formula which refers to Muslims as those who “adore the one God”[14], has proved throughout all this to be a mantra immune to any argument, which also did not stop the Muslims from demonstratively using the historical religious meeting at Assisi[23] in 1986 as a mission for the radical otherness of their deity. Because for Muslims, there can only be a question of the “one God” once the Jews and Christians have relinquished their errant claim to having the true religion:
“Guide us … not [to the path] of those who have incurred Your wrath, nor of those who have gone astray” (2/136 [Sura 1:6f, N. J. Dawood])…
Allah is One, the Eternal God. He begot none, nor was He begotten. None is equal to Him (2/112 [112:1-4, transl. N. J. Dawood])
Because the universal tolerance toward religions had the effect of bringing about a more enduring submission to its “general moral principles”, the conformity-inducing power of this trend functioned all the more effectively, the more dominant these principles became. The “unusability” of Christianity was, and is, a moralised function of the power process, which turns against Logocentrism[24] as much fundamentally as it does aggressively, a theme which comes up for discussion in the second part of this article.
The Logos in the old-cultural sense embraces word, thinking and being as an inseparable unity, in which Jesus Himself is the Logos and stands not only in opposition to the modern age, but also to Islam. Those who would break down this unity must destroy the principle of grace, which establishes and preserves the humanum an sich, namely, that mysterious, inaccessible truth [das Unverfugbare] which distinguishes itself from the animal as the sign of instinctuality and from the machine as the sign of reflexivity, and in the extremist systems is occupied by radical leitmotifs.
By connecting belief in class and race with the mass belief in Islam, technology and money, the global modern age is developing into a rigorous system of war, whose elites imagine themselves legitimised by all possible divinities within the intercultural framework — with exception of the Jesuanic principle, which places in their path the First Stone,[25] the symbol of the practice of power burdened by guilt. The clerical dove faction having verbally neutralised this principle, and by its elimination in the Koran, the modern productivity and efficiency ideology is deploying a murderous energy, which consumes human potential and human capital in an unfettered utilitarian ideology, disciplined by the increasing scale of “intercultural” Islamic terror — PLO, Hamas, Al-Qaida and the “Islamic State”.
5. Without the Trinity there is no Thought[26]
The protagonists of the dialogue diktat, by treating the connection between Islam and violence as “incitement and hatred”, practice a denial to which Hitler’s race ideology is the singularly authentic godfather. In view of its importance, we once more repeat Hitler’s maxim, according to which it is fundamentally contrary to the truth to impute terrorism to the Mohammedans, who focus solely on “hope of bliss”, Mohammedan terrorism being rather “a Jewish doctrine spread by Christianity”.
The heralds of the dialogue act as the direct emissaries of the “Führer” whenever the mention of Islamic violence triggers among them two chained reflexes,[27] which have meanwhile become hardwired: the first is the cliché according to which violence has “nothing to do with Islam” or it must be regarded only as “the misuse of Islam”; the second is the prayer wheel-like evocation of the crusades and inquisition, which have long since been outgrown by time. And indeed, they find no one who can extract sense from them; but they appear to the dialogue activists just as sensible and battle-mandatory as likewise for the Muslims when they orient themselves toward Mohammed and his example of jihad in the course of daily prayer.
Both forms are the result of a stably manipulated “thinking”, which is already to be found in Gregory of Nyssa’s analyses where a fundamental split is indicated. He emphasises Epinoia, the divinely conferred capability and freedom of man — which has been very specially formed from the Trinity — to name things, to divide them into facets, to planfully assemble them anew and to repeat this activity ad infinitum, in order to discern the world and to further develop oneself within it.
Even God, the ingenerate and unbegotten, according to Gregory, can be named; however, one cannot know (Agennesie) Him; but as the Triune origin of the Son and Holy Ghost, He opens up free intellectual speculation. Only if this spirit is absent, he writes, can one consent to Eunomius’ (d. circa 393) opinion, that Epinoia [thinking] is a matter of empty rhetoric, nonsense and lunacy. But inasmuch as God creates reason, then the works of man’s reason are also God’s works; which therefore, if they in fact appear as empty rhetoric, nonsense or even lunacy, they cannot come from the differentiated reason and the free thought-form of the Triune God (Kobusch, op. cit., 57f).
The literal commitment of Muslims with the text of the Koran and the reflex-speech of their monological assistants correspond today to Eunomius’ understanding of language, for he recognised no meaning in differentiated thinking, but only empty verbal husks. Eunomius is considered to be one of the original fathers of Arianism,[28] whose sympathy with tyrant Procopius brought him a severe exile. A later author comments on the Bishop as follows:
“On the one hand, it is evident to everyone that the individual differentiations in the realm of that which has come into being represent real differences and not differentiations which only occur in thought.”
On the other hand, the attribution of properties to the divine realm is to be seen as differentiations only in thought, for example,
“… [the property] of “‘unbegotten’ belongs to the father, ‘being begotten’ belongs to the Son, and ekpeurosis [conflagration] belongs to the Holy Ghost. Moreover, in the Godhead there is no difference in respect of will, potential or thinking to engender among us the real distinction from each other.” (Kobusch, op. cit., 58f [59].).[29]
We have before us here in easily recognisable form the basic problem of totalitarian thinking. It derives — not in a merely plausible way, but especially so — from the absence of differentiated thinking; and it imagines itself divine, because it permits no differentiation of will, potential or thinking. Presently this context gains decisive plausibility owing to what the Koran represents repeatedly as the unmistakable, solitary position of Allah, who, as divinity, is neither begotten nor does He beget. Accordingly, this divinity dissociates itself sharply from the Christians as “falsifiers of Scripture” and from Jesus, who as “son of Mary” and forerunner of Mohammed, was not crucified, but in a mysterious way was exalted by Allah (Sura 5:17, 5:72f., 5:116).
Here one more note must be added about the Holy Ghost as ekpeurosis or ekpyrosis [conflagration]. This term relates to a Christian smoothening of a primaeval cycle of apocalyptic purification, which is expressed biblically by the Flood.[31] As is hardly to be expected otherwise, the creator of the Koran employs the counter principles of fire, burning and heat, which endow hell with a multitude of variations and carries out the eschatological annihilation of the unbelievers. In accordance with Islamic system logic, the ekpyrosis assumes the form of a permanent apocalypse, which manifests itself in the presence of unbelief, which is co-created along with Allah’s continuous creation,[30] and struggles against the former through a corresponding continuous jihad.
Of no small importance is the modern version of the ekpyrotic “Great Year”[31] of antiquity, the 25,800 year cycle of the precession of the equinoxes, which is coming to an end in the “Age of Aquarius”, and which, between high and low forms of esotericism, provides a rich source for prophecies of catastrophe. Experience teaches that dating according to millennia varies, the current logophobic version being based on a 2,000 year cycle beginning with the turn of the Christian era, closing with the end of the Jesus-era, and with the 9/11 Big Bang leading into an Islamo-planetary age which we shall examine more closely in the second part of this article.
Such an era will not be brought about by traditional elites, but by a completely different “race” of the cosmically enlightened, who abolish human ignorance and who are not looking for the ultimate truth of the Eternal Spirit of Infinite Majesty, but have long since possessed it. Among their better known samplings rank the themes of climate, the euro and likewise Islam, none of which stand up to rational analysis, but with a gigantic industry of experts, they engender an increasingly anonymous super-elite. In fact their fortunes take on astronomical proportions, create ever new derivatives and find their current expression in the “rescue packages” of the financial crisis.
6. The Alternative World of the Gnostics[32]
The world of the Gnostics connects seamlessly with the Eunomian principle, which ignores all questions of social purpose, potential and will; extinguishes differentiated thinking with a thought fiat; and forces on mankind, not a world of his own making, but one of the powerful. Thus, a gnostic worldview is being brought to bear, one characteristic of both Islam and the modern political religion. Gnosis (Gk: knowledge, realisation) is an involved system of thought which the Church Fathers declared a heresy and which remained unexamined for a long time, because it allowed the human manipulation of divine power to become too obvious. Only with the modern age, with the transformation of man from a creature of God to a world-creator, did Gnosis, an ambivalent concept between an alternative and a counter-principle, gradually become emancipated from the established ruling structure of “Throne and Altar”.
Then, with progress in the transformation of the world through science and economics, its points of intersection with Gnosis broadened. Gnosis, rests above all on the idea that the existing world order must be destroyed and newly created, because it was defectively generated by a failed Demiurge who is identical with Yahweh, the Jewish God of creation. Having been exiled from the Light realm into the darkness, — into a realm the false polarity brought about by the Jesuanic redemption, — this world and its society appears to the modern Gnostic, along with his own body, as a twofold prison which must be doubly burst open; first, through politico-religious reconstruction, and then through dissolution of the social and sexual order.
Serving as prototypes for the modern Gnostic are the Archons,[33] planetary rulers who are enlightened by the good God, who enable the elect to return by way of the psyche to the Pleroma, the Light of salvation,[34] and who keep the Pneuma (breath) secure, while the Gnostic remains withdrawn from the dull masses because the latter are bound to matter (hyle). The connection of the entire, counterfeit pole [the dark side of the gnostic light-dark dualism] with the Jewish God leads to the adoption of a “metaphysical anti-Semitism” (Hans Jonas).[35] To reject this is to bring about an important basic error from the standpoint of an investigation of power. Although it is true that gnostic salvation denies the divine self-sacrifice and with it Jesus and the resurrection (Docetism), and although it is true that it shares with Judaism an opposition to human sacrifice (as an idea), nevertheless we have only an apparent paradox here (cf. Sonnenschmidt, Reinhard. Politische Gnosis [“Political Gnosis”], 10ff., 23f. — München 2001).
For the otherwise unknown and unnamed alternative “Redeemer”, redeems not through sacrifice, but through Gnosis, through the knowledge of the way back to the Light. And this knowledge rests not on God’s sacrifice, but on the sacrifice of the counterfeit world and the sacrifice of men who stand “in the Path” of this type of salvation, — with the Christ-event being the primary image of the enemy for all subsequent systems of violence.
It is the Herrenmenschen, enlightened by the Pneuma, Allah or both, who bring about the sacrifice of the world; and in the struggle against “Logocentrism”, they will no longer leave the perfection of the world to the God of the Logos. For He offers to mankind the succession of His Incarnation[24] in Jesus, not in order to destroy the world, but to subdue it in individual, spiritual completeness [Vollendung]. Here is where power is compelled to take three limitations into account:
| 1. | The consciousness of guilt with respect to man (“the throwing of the first stone”[25]), | |
| 2. | the life-giving dignity of woman, and | |
| 3. | the social control of the money function. |
Since guilt, sex and money are a priori conditions for the power divide between leader and led (today tolerance stands in for guilt), Jesus plays an insurmountable political role which brought about the turn of an era and for power “as such” constitutes a world-historical vexation par excellence. From this there follows the singular stance of the Jesuanically rooted Christianity, which determines its supratemporal, socio-spiritual incompatibility with Islam.
By way of clarification, both Gnosticisation and the Islamisation mean the end of the existing world, while the Christian counter-concept aims at its fulfilment, because it rests on differentiated thinking, also known as the discerning of spirits.[36] It follows that Islam and modernity must abolish the millennial turn brought about by Jesus, which can be effected only through the reversal [Umkehrung], which is to say, the suppression of the “old” thinking and the destruction of the “Logocentric” world in the sense of a complete levelling down of all the “old” moral values.
This reversal necessitates the extinguishing from the consciousness and the practical life of man the three cardinal criteria belonging to the turn of the Christian era: guilt as it pertains to power, the valorisation of women and the devalorisation of money — a fundamental counter-trend to the Judeo-Christian civilisation, which, with globalisation, may well have entered its decisive phase. We can expect a magnitude of decadence in human existence impossible to represent with differentiated thinking, precisely because the latter is not compatible with its counter-concept of canalised deratiocination [Denkschwund].[37]
The dehumanising consequences of this discrepancy are recognisable precisely in the mass murders of the modern age. After the Holodomor against the Russians and the Kulaks [sic], the Holocaust against the Jews and the completion of the Islamic genocide against the Christians, and given the mass immigration into Europe, a totalitarian development is in preparation for which history knows no precedent.
Given the facts presented so far, a dependable increase in the totalitarian potential for violence can be expected. It is nourished from two sources: firstly, from the striking family resemblance between the culture dialogue and Hitler’s ideology; and secondly, from the money-driven rule of the Herrenmenschen, which engenders an inexorable, because systemic, increase in an imperial global racism against men of differentiated thinking, who belong to the civilly cultivated modern age formed by Christianity. With the attack on “Logocentrism” the existential dimension is becoming clear, pursuant to which the modern reconstruction of the world is being implemented and a de facto ‘non-thinking’ [Nicht-Denken][38] is being conditioned, the reduction of man to mechanical functions.
“I created mankind and the jinn in order that they might worship Me”, says the God of Islam in the Koran (Sura 51:56 [trans. N. J. Dawood]) and announces a universal formula for obedience, which not only has a formative influence on the Umma, the Islamic community, but as their followers believe, all other cultures must also obey it. Furthermore, the jinn are fiery, restless spirits, which Mohammed at one time adopted from old Arabian magical beliefs and imbued his belief in one God with it as an omnipresent power of uncertainty. As an expression of Islamic Ekpyrosis, that is, of the continuous apocalypse glowing red hot with fire, the jinn permeate the entirety of human life with good and evil and hold the faithful in a permanent fear of sinning, but they also maintain them in the security of being eschatologically superior to unbelief.
This leads to the issue of knowledge itself, to the forbidden question of the ‘how‘ (bi-la kayfa); that is, of how Allah holds the world together, symbolised in the Koran by the bizarre image of the Zaqqum, the tree of hell fire.[39] Concerning the role of the Zaqqum, there are many speculations; their substance being, that it is the stinking source of revoltingly bitter fruit in the shape of devils’ heads, the consumption of which is combined with boiling water (Hamim). This agonising feeding awaits those who, being unresigned to commands, have instead sought after knowledge of Allah and the world. For living in a self-conscious scepticism, the Zaqqum stands as a diabolical punishment, the magnitude of which permits renewed doubt about the declaration that there is no compulsion in religion (see above).
The image of boiling conjures the motif of apocalyptic heat, whereby the true function of Hell asserts itself with still more draconian punishments. It is not surprising in this respect that the Zaqqum is also a fire tree, seat of the Satanic fire spirits, who assail unbelievers and apostates in hell and prepare tortures of unspeakable cruelty for them. Now enter the apologetics of “dialogue”, as unfailing as it is sadistic, and points to a Christian hell with even worse instruments of torture.
One can concur at least partially, but of course there is lacking the distinction which allows Christianity to sublimate [sublimieren] its hell, whereas the dialogue activists are clearly committed to its continuation in Islam. Counterparts to the tree of knowledge and of life[40] combine in the Zaqqum to form the tree of death, which, with its roots in hell and branches in the world, is the comprehensive praxis-symbol of fear, violence and paranoia of the Islamic mentality. (cf. Price-Jones, The Closed Circle — London 1989; On the Zaqqum, cf. Radscheit, Matthias. Der Höllenbaum [“The Tree of Hell”] in: Nagel (Ed.), Der Koran und sein religiöses und kulturelles Umfeld [“The Koran and its Religious and Cultural Environment”], 97ff. — München 2010).
“Believers, guard yourselves and guard your kindred against the Fire which has fuel of men [man as fuel] and stones, whose keepers are fierce and mighty angels who never disobey Allah’s command and promptly do His bidding.” (Sura 66:6)
“Forewarn them of the day when Allah’s opponents will be gathered together and driven into Hell, so that when they reach it, their eyes, their ears and their very skins will testify to their misdeeds.” (Sura 41:19f)
“Those that deny Our revelations We will burn in Hell fire. No sooner will their skins be consumed than We shall give them other skins, so that they may truly taste Our scourge.” (Sura 4:56)
“Garments of fire have been prepared for the unbelievers. Scalding water shall be poured upon their heads….” (Sura 22:19])
“But the fire of Hell shall drag him down by the scalp.” (Sura 70:16f)
“Whenever, in their anguish, they try to escape from Hell, the angels will drag them back saying: ‘taste the torment of Hell-fire!’ (Sura 22:23, all Koran quotations are from the translation by N. J. Dawood])
Apart from “man as fuel” forming the pattern for the Holocaust, the “fierce and mighty angels who are not intractable to Allah’s command” correspond to the thugs and henchmen of all times. At more senior levels they act as “obedient Herrenmenschen”, as guarantors of every power, whose proliferation today enforces silence with regard to the mass murder in the East. The more totalitarian the system, the more predictable are its agents; so that flaying alive could follow the phase of beheading, the former being as much compatible with the Koran as the latter. The less this has nothing to do with Islam, the more it must have something to do with the European elites, for both place the inferior species of residual Christians and Israel at their disposal in the logophobic war against the Judeo-Christian culture.
Translator’s Notes
1. “Nor has there been an inclination to admit the ambivalent stance of the arch-Enlightener Voltaire toward Islam and its messenger”:
In 1741 Voltaire wrote a play critical of Mohammed entitled “Fanaticism, or Mahomet the Prophet”, but later changed his mind. In Multiculturalism and the Enlightenment, Fjordman quotes Ibn Warraq who suggests that Voltaire was motivated by anti-Christian animus (his cry of écrasez l’infâme still echoes today):
Voltaire seems to have regretted what he had written of Muhammad in his play Mahomet (1741), where the Prophet is presented as an impostor who enslaved men’s souls: “Assuredly, I have made him out to be more evil than he was.” In his Essai sur les Moeurs, 1756, he shows himself to be prejudiced in Islam’s favor at the expense of Christianity. … The superficial rationality [of Islam] was appealing: no priests, no miracles, no mysteries. To this was added other false beliefs such as Islam’s absolute tolerance of other religions, in contrast to Christian intolerance. [cf. Orientalism: Debunking Edward Said by Ibn Warraq]
Fjordman, quoting from Ibn Warraq’s “Why I am not a Muslim” (pdf), brings another Enlightenment figure into the same anti-Christian context, the historian Edward Gibbon:
‘Gibbon, like Voltaire, painted Islam in as favorable a light as possible to better contrast it with Christianity. The English historian emphasized Muhammad’s humanity as a means of indirectly criticizing the Christian doctrine of the divinity of Christ. Gibbon’s anticlericalism led him to underline Islam’s supposed freedom from that accursed class, the priesthood. Indeed, the familiar pattern is re-emerging — Islam is being used as a weapon against Christianity. Gibbon’s deistic view of Islam as a rational, priest-free religion, with Muhammad as a wise and tolerant lawgiver, enormously influenced the way all Europeans perceived their sister religion for years to come. Indeed, it established myths that are still accepted totally uncritically by scholars and laymen alike. Both Voltaire and Gibbon subscribed to the myth of Muslim tolerance, which to them meant Turkish tolerance.’ [For Gibbon’s discussion of Islam and Mohammed, cf. Chapter 50 of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire]
Fjordman finds another motive behind the Enlightenment’s favouring of Islam. It is cultural relativism and its mythological correlate, the noble savage. Once again, Fjordman employs the words of Ibn Warraq:
“[t]he need and desire to see an alien culture as in some ways superior is as great as the need to see it as inferior”.
Fjordman identifies the Roman historian Tacitus (c. 56-117) as the first to admire the noble savage in his Germania. Tacitus “contrasted the virtues of the Germans with the vices of contemporary Rome”. According to Fjordman, “it worked well as a morality tale”. Certainly the “moral” aspect is a foreground feature, but as Fjordman notes, there is an invidious comparison, “[t]he need and desire to see an alien culture as in some ways superior” to his own. Most likely the following passage from the Germania is what Fjordman had in mind. One notes in it the aura of utopia:
“…and they [the Germans] live uncorrupted by the temptations of public shows or the excitements of banquets. Clandestine love letters are unknown to men and women alike. Adultery is extremely rare, considering the size of the population. … No one in Germany finds vice amusing, or calls it ‘up-to-date’ to seduce and be seduced.” (Tacitus. Germania. Trans. H. Mattingly. Middlesex: Penguin 1970. Section 19)
This fascination with the noble savage may relate to Tacitus’ “cosmopolitanism”, a major trait of a disorienting late civilisation, according to Oswald Spengler:
Nowhere is the stage of transition more clearly visible than in Tacitus, whose entire history is dominated by the confusion and dislocation of his world-picture. First of all, as a true Roman, he brings in the power of the old city-deities; then, as an intelligent cosmopolitan, he regards this very belief in their intervention as a superstition; and finally, as a Stoic (by that time the spiritual outlook of the Stoa had become Magian), he speaks of the power of the seven planets that rule the fortunes of men. (Spengler, Oswald. The Decline of the West. vol. 2. Perspectives on World History, trans. Charles Francis Atkinson. New York: Knopf, 1979, p. 238)
If Tacitus embraced Magian thought, there is irony in it, for by “Magian” Spengler refers to the “Springtime” of a “culture” stifled and held in check by the old Graeco-Roman late civilisation. The Magian culture, according to Spengler, consisted of a group of religions which was later to find its puritanical phase in Islam (cf. note 37).
Napoleon too spoke of freeing himself “from the obstacle of an irksome civilization”, which could only have been his own (cf. note 3).
For Dr Raddatz, fascination of the elites with the noble savage is an example of “ontological racism” which, in negative terms, “departs from the foundational concept of ethnicity”. He speaks of the phenomenon in the context of the noble savage in the introductory section of Part 2 of this essay as an
“… expanded version of racism, which increasingly privileges the immigrating “noble savage”, especially the Islamic type, and is existentially marginalising the “native”, especially Christian connoted population, as well as reactivating anti-Semitism, which with the slogan “Jews to the gas chamber” unleashes no indignation.” (Hans-Peter Raddatz, Globalisation Part 2)
2. “…for even the Soviet Union hastened to set up points of liaison in the East; with Stalin, (just before his death), inviting to Moscow Amin al-Husseini (d. 1973), the Mufti of Jerusalem and friend of Hitler.”:
Four such “points of liaison” were Cairo, Riyadh, Tétouan in northern (Spanish) Morocco and Jerusalem, according to the following brief, Cold War era time piece in Der Spiegel (January 1953). The “Islamophobic” content of this piece is hardly imaginable in today’s magazine by the same name. But it allows a glimpse into the larger perspective behind Stalin’s attempt to establish a rapprochement with Islamic regimes in the Near East, and with Islam itself. In particular, the article includes reference to the “fanatically anti-Semitic” Amin el-Husseini, Grand Mufti of Jerusalem “who was once on such friendly terms with Hitler”, as being in receipt of Stalin’s invitation to Moscow. All emphasis has been added to the article which is translated here in full:
Stalin’s Gift
Der Spiegel
14 January 1953Note: There is a print version of this article (in pdf format). The photo shows Egypt’s General Muhammad Naguib (1901-1984) during his very short period of office “spoon[ing] caviar” with the Russian ambassador, Kozyrew.
In 1953, there will be twice as many Uzbek, Azerbaijani and Tajik students as last year squatting at the feet of the Mullahs who lecture on the doctrine of Mohammed at the famous Islamic University of Cairo. The Mullahs have Papa Stalin to thank for the considerable increase in smoothly shorn, Slavic-Mongolian, spherical student-heads. He made them the present of redoubling the exit permits for Mohammedan priest-students from the Soviet Union on the occasion of Mohammed’s birthday (1 December).
At the same time, Stalin gave permission:
- for the “Mawlid” festival (the celebrations on the occasion of Mohammed’s birthday) to be commemorated in the Soviet Union with a traditional splendour which up to now, however, has not been permitted in Russia;
- for believers in Allah, who have Russian identity cards, for travel to Mecca even outside the period of the main pilgrimage.
On 17 December [1952], Stalin undertook an additional step toward Mohammedan friendship (not reported in the world press until now): he had enquiries made in Ibn Saud’s desert capital of Riyadh regarding any objection to the establishment of a Soviet air route from Tiflis (in the Caucasus) to Mecca. The route would be at the disposal of Islamic pilgrims from Russia.
Ibn Saud arranged for an evasive reply in deference to the US dollars which have been flowing richly up to now. The pilgrim air line — if it comes to pass — would be the first Russian air route to fly to foreign countries beyond the Iron Curtain outside the Kremlin’s sphere of control.
In the Near East headquarters of the British Intelligence Service MI 5 on the island of Cyprus, they are racking their brains as to the motivations for Stalin’s sudden friendliness toward Islam. Above all, the British really no longer believe that Egypt’s new strong man, General Naguib, did no more than spoon caviar with Excellency Semjon Kozyrew (the Russian ambassador) at the Soviet Embassy in Cairo on the 35th anniversary of the Russian October Revolution.
Also included in the jigsaw puzzle of information — from which the British intelligence officers are putting together the picture of a still to be implemented, experimental Islamic-Soviet rapprochement — is what El Foqui, president of the Mosque of Tétouan (Spanish Morocco), recently let slip: the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Amin el Husseini, who was once on such friendly terms with Hitler, has received Stalin’s invitation to Moscow.
Since the Prague trial against the Jewish intellectual elite of Czech Communism (Slansky), there are a good many points of contact between the fanatically anti-Semitic Grand Mufti and the Kremlin.
The trial referenced in the last paragraph became known as the “the Slansky trial”* of November 20-27, 1952. It was named after one of its fourteen defendants, Rudolf Slansky. Eleven of the defendants were hanged.
* Helaine Blumenthal wrote a Dissertation (2009, in English) on the trial called “Communism on Trial: The Slansky Affair and Anti-Semitism in Post-WWII Europe”. In her Abstract she writes:
“The Purge Trials forced many Jews to reexamine their positions vis-à-vis Zionism, Communism, and the Left as a traditionally popular choice for Jews.”
3. “the atheistic Frenchman believed himself inspired by Islam, to be the founder of a religion, who, with a Koran in hand composed by himself…”:
In the early 1800s Napoleon wrote to Madame de Rémusat (1780—1821):
In Egypt, I found myself freed from the obstacle of an irksome civilization. I was full of dreams. I saw myself founding a religion, marching into Asia, riding an elephant, a turban on my head and in my hand a new Koran that I would have composed to suit my needs. In my understanding I would have combined the experience of two worlds, exploiting for my own profit the theater of all history… The time I spent in Egypt was the most beautiful of my life because it was most ideal. [Quoted from: Bell, David A. The first Total War: Napoleon’s Europe and the Birth of Warfare as We know it. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2007. p. 212]
4. “What India is for England, the territories to the East will be for us”: This sentence is found in “Hitler’s Table Talk”:
“What India is for England, the territories to the East will be for us. If I could only convey to the German people what this space means for the future.” (Picker, Henry. Hitlers Tischgespräche im Führerhauptquartier [“Hitler’s Table Talk” 8th and 9th of September 1941 evening and 10 September 1941 midday, evening and night, Wolfsschanze]. Berlin: Propzläen Verlag.)
5. Herrenmenschentum (lit., master humanity, having the quality of belonging to a class of mankind with the inherent right to rule): This term is intimately associated with Herrenrasse, or “master race”, especially in the historical sense of the “rule of the Aryan race”. But Herrenmenschentum is nevertheless suitable to Dr. Raddatz’ concept of “ontological racism”, because its generality permits “depart[ure] from the foundational concept of ethnicity”, yet it retains the positive essence of racism, the claim of belonging to “a human species sui generis” with inherent (ontological) superiority, a self-legitimising consciousness of a destiny to rule.
The Islamic claim to be of the “noblest nation that has ever been raised up for mankind” (Sura 3:110) is an example of “ontological racism” in this article. The Aryan race was to be a new world order. For Dr. Raddatz, the current “new world order”, which includes Islam, carries the same ontology, which is an
“… expanded version of racism, which increasingly privileges the immigrating “noble savage”, especially the Islamic type, and is existentially marginalising the “native”, especially the Christian-connoted population, as well as reactivating anti-Semitism, which with the slogan “Jews to the gas chamber” unleashes no indignation.” (Hans-Peter Raddatz, Globalisation Part 2)
6. “an undeniably broad spiritual basis for the religious-minded”: Below is the immediate context for this quotation taken from the Table Talk. Note that Hitler adds the dimension of hatred for his own culture, as did Napoleon (see note 3), a staple in socialist ideology today, and central to H-P. Raddatz’ concept of “ontological racism”:
As a reasonable German, one is left downright speechless that German people could have been brought by Jewish vermin and priestly prattle to a mien like that of the howling Turkish Dervishes and the Negroes whom we laugh to scorn. In this regard, it makes one particularly angry that — while in other more expansive parts of the globe religious doctrine such as that of Confucius, Buddha and Mohammed would have offered an undeniably broad spiritual basis for the religious-minded — German people should have fallen for theological explanations which are devoid of every honest depth. (Picker, Henry. Hitlers Tischgespräche im Führerhauptquartier [Hitler’s Table Talk]. Berlin: Propzläen Verlag, 2003, 5 June 1942 Wolfsschanze)
There is an English translation of Hitler’s Table Talk 1941-1944 available in PDF format.
7. Blick nach rechts: The “eye to the Right” is a common, pejorative, socio-political watchword applied as a warning to potential opponents of the dominant “left”-oriented Zeitgeist. Expressions such as “right-wing populist” and “neo-Nazis” are part of this staging, and the punishment for non-conformity. Dr. Raddatz treats it as a device for political distraction for the dialogue, “otherwise its Hitlerian foundation would come to light all too blatantly”. By implication, the spirit behind the Nazi ideology was not defeated by the war, if “eye to the Right” is merely its current sociably acceptable phenotype, but with the same “ontological racism”.
The “eye to the right” can also be considered a current expression of the historical street-conflict between International and National socialists (between the so-called “Left and “Right”) in the 1920s and 1930s in Germany. For a treatment of the commonalities and shared origin of the two brothers in socialism see Michael Mannheimer’s Speech in Würzburg at Gates of Vienna.
“Blick nach Rechts” also refers to a specific “information portal” on the Internet called BNR.de: Blick nach rechts which is linked to the Social Democratic Party of Germany. Its aim is to offer “information about right-wing extremism” (Source, German Wikipedia).
8. Carl Peters: “I was fed up with being counted among the pariahs and wanted to belong to a master race.”: This sentence can be found in Hannah Arendt’s “Imperialism: Part Two of The Origins of Totalitarianism” (p. 69), where she herself takes it from another source, Paul Ritter’s Preface in Kolonien im deutschen Schrifttum, 1936.
For the motives of such individuals as Carl Peters, Hannah Arendt turns to Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, where characters of Peter’s type are described as adapting themselves to the model of the Herrenmenschen. One thinks of Europeans who join ISIS. Arendt places Peters, who left Germany for German East Africa, in a class of misfits whose decision to leave their European homelands was not up to them; they “had not stepped out of society but had been spat out by it”. “Their only choice was a negative one”. Not even fit for the workers’ movements, and being made up of the best of the “superfluous men”, they “established a kind of countersociety”:
Like Mr. Kurtz in Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness,” they were “hollow to the core,” “reckless without hardihood, greedy without audacity and cruel without courage.” They believed in nothing and “could get (themselves) to believe anything — anything.” Expelled from a world with accepted values, they had been thrown back upon themselves and still had nothing to fall back upon except, here and there a streak of talent which made them as dangerous as Kurtz if they were ever allowed to return to their homelands. For the only talent that could possibly burgeon in their hollow souls was the gift of fascination which makes a “splendid leader of an extreme party.” The more gifted were walking incarnations of resentment like the German Carl Peters (possibly a model for Kurtz [in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness], who openly admitted that he “was fed up with being counted among the pariahs and wanted to belong to a master race.” But gifted or not, they were all “game for anything from pitch and toss to wilful murder” and to them their fellow-men were “no more one way or another than that fly there.” Thus they brought with them, or they learned quickly, the code of manners which befitted the coming type of murderer to whom the only unforgivable sin is to lose his temper. (Imperialism, p. 69)
9. gleichschalten (lit., gleich = same; schalten = to switch, hence to switch on or off while remaining in the same mode). Its central meaning is “to standardise”. It is a verb with a history dating back to the Hitler years. In “the period of National Socialist rule” its main significance was to force or “conform public bodies and institutions into an organisational form in line with the National Socialist Weltanschauung” (Duden).
Today it is “mostly a pejorative” term meaning “to subject thinking and behaviour, through the use of coercive measures, to the policies and Weltanschauung of the ruling powers” (Duden).
A frequent application of the verb among counter-jihadists and critics of the current neo-socialist (multi-cultural) Zeitgeist, is found in the adjectival form, “gleichgeschaltete Presse”. In line with the definitions above, this expression suggests that the entire press, as an institution, is by and large coerced into a standardised line on issues relating to the dominant Weltanschauung, often evident when a politically correct “news”-commentary shows virtually identical wording across different press outlets.
10. “no-alternative”: This phrase has become a designation for what is understood as the dictatorial politics of the block-party system in Germany under Angela Merkel. Specifically, it is an allusion to her repeated statement that there is “no alternative” to the euro as a common currency. “If the euro fails, Europe will fail”. Angela Merkel has been nicknamed TINA as an acronym for the English “ There is no alternative “ (German language article).
11. “…Allah creates the world continually anew”:
The counter-concept to continuous creation is the six-day creation. Prof. Dr. Tilman Nagel elaborates Allah’s continuous creation from the starting point of an image in the Koran, “Allah’s footstool”, which he says is derived from an early Byzantine rendering of Christ Pantocrator. Allah’s footstool is His connecting link to the cosmos. The image is found in Koran Sura 2:255, also called the Throne Verse:
“His footstool [Arabic kursi] is as vast as the heavens and the earth, …”
We take some excerpts from Prof. Nagel’s paper “What is Salafism” (cf. Gates of Vienna). He explains the origin of the footstool as follows:
The image originates from early Byzantine art in which the motif of Christ as the Pantocrator [the omnipotent] gained currency: He is seated on a throne, at his feet one sees a footstool or a globe, representing the world which he governs.
The interested reader can find an example of this Byzantine motif in “Christ in Majesty between Sts. Peter and Paul” at the Cappella Palatina, Palermo, but it is from the 12th century.
Prof. Nagel continues:
In order to make clear what is understood by this image, I take a step forward 250 years from Mohammed to al-Bukhari (d. 870), the writer of the most highly respected collection of Hadith. He adds to the Hadith an extensive section which he entitles “Beginning of the divine Act of Creation”. He understands by this, however, not the six-day-work which the Christians know from the Old Testament. “Beginning” means “first phase”, which will be followed, immediately before the Last Judgement, by the phase of the repetition of the creation of all creatures for the purpose of sentencing.
[He conceives Creation, then renews it: that is easier for him. (Sura 30:27. Trans., N. J. Dawood)]
Allah’s creative actions not only serve to preserve the cosmos compassed by the footstool, but they also guide it in every instant according to His sovereign will, and indeed in all details. Since the ever-emerging created world [Die geschaffen werdende Welt] is fundamentally directly related to Allah, it is at every instant of its existence in a salvific condition [ist…im Heil]. Al-Bukhari verifies this core doctrine of the Koran in that he produces, besides the aforementioned verse, Hadith which depict the ascending and descending of angels through the seven heavens which are layered one above of the other.
The ascent and descent through the planetary spheres is a motif of the gnostic type (cf. notes 32, 33, and 34). It unites what is above (Allah) with what is below; hence the world is “at every instant of its existence in a salvific condition”, which is to say, continuously created (for navigation of the planetary spheres cf. Sahih Bukhari, Hadith Volume 4, Book 54, Number 446).
“Both when we regard heaven and earth, and when we consider Paradise and Hell, Allah created nothing more powerful than His Word: ‘Allah — there is no God but Him, the living, (self-subsisting) Eternal…’“ (Al-Buchari: Chalq afíal al-íibad, 14, Nr. 50.)
This statement which al-Bukhari quoted from an early Sunni theologian, encapsulates the meaning which the Throne verse has for Muslims: it is the most concise synopsis of the Koranic message of the salvation-determinacy [Heilsbestimmtheit]* of all things which are continually being created by Allah, a message, the content of which is very remote from Jewish or Christian bodies of thought. For the God of the six-day-works rests on the seventh day and allows his creatures the opportunity to subdue creation on their own responsibility.
* Heilsbestimmtheit: There are two meanings of ‘salvation-determinacy’ in Prof. Nagel’s article which are important for the concept of “Allah’s continuing creation”:
| 1) | It is a cosmic determinism. All causation is attributed to Allah, and not to natural law. “Everything is determined, from the composition of the cosmos, […] right down to the slightest trifle of daily life.” Since by implication mankind is not free, his action cannot influence the divine order, for that would limit the power of Allah. | |
| 2) | Salvation-determinacy is an existential condition. The cosmos is in a state of salvation (“im Heil”). It is saved because the Creator’s “ever-emerging created world is fundamentally directly related to Allah”. It is the centre of a cosmic drama involving man: Allah grants Satan the power to tempt mankind “to forget the salvation-determinacy of creation, and lure him out of Islam, out of the true path of existence” into the world of idolatry (taghut). The rituals of the sharia are the path (din) which helps mankind “to remain conscious of its own salvation-determinacy (Heilsbestimmtheit) including that of the cosmos”. |
12. “God is returning to Europe along with the Muslims”: This is a statement made in November of 2008 by French Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran, President of the Vatican’s “Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue”.
“It’s thanks to the Muslims,” he said in a speech printed in Friday’s L’Osservatore Romano, the official daily of the Vatican. “Muslims, having become a significant minority in Europe, were the ones who demanded space for God in society.” (Reuters)
[…]
“We live in multicultural and multireligious societies, that’s obvious,” he told a meeting of Catholic theologians in Naples. “There is no civilisation that is religiously pure.”
In a more recent interview on video, Cardinal Tauran reflects on “dialogue” and points out that the recent Islamic atrocities have nothing to do with the true Islam. The Islamic attacks “decrease the credibility of interreligious dialogue” and some “misuse” religion “as a tool for violence”. He does not think ISIS would go so far as to attack the Vatican.
13. “an abandonment by one’s own God”: Abandonment by God is a time-spanning experience in Western literature (St. John of the Cross, Dark Night of the Soul). The type of abandonment here, however, is not felt consciously as an inner experience, as a torment of the soul at the outset of a spiritual journey, but forms a vacuum filled by ideological commitment as we witness in a video with Cardinal Tauran speaking of the dialogue. Abandonment, (lack of race, blood and Destiny) underlies Oswald Spengler’s distinction between culture and civilisation. Jacques Ellul addresses our contemporary experience of abandonment in his Hope in Time of Abandonment.
14. Nostra Aetate (In our Time — October 1965): Decree on Non-Christian Religions
Nostra Aetate is a short decree of the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965). The highly politicised environment in which this interreligious document was created anticipates the prominence of its political profile over the last half century, even outside the new post-Conciliar Church. Joseph Ratzinger noted the frame of reference of the document:
It was originally … intended to be a clarification of the relationship between the Church and Judaism, which proved necessary owing to the dramatic events during the period of Nazi rule. A new contemplation of the relationship of Christians to the Jewish people had to be a theme of the Council. (Ratzinger, Joseph. Glaube Wahrheit Toleranz: Das Christentjum und die Weltreligionen. Freiburg: Herder. 2005, p. 14)
Then the scope of the document was broadened to include Islam, remarkably enough at the insistence of bishops in the Middle East:
The Christians of the East, who could not see the historical experiences of the West as their own, held that such a clarification would only be supportable if at the same time a word about Islam were combined with it. (ibid. p. 14-15)
The first paragraph of Nostra Aetate specifies this commonality as its mission statement, as if a new political party of the Masonic type, had taken control of the visible Church, turning it into “the religion in which all men agree” (emphasis added):
In her [the Church’s] task of promoting unity and love among men, indeed among nations, she considers above all in this declaration what men have in common and what draws them to fellowship. (1)
In reference to Nostra Aetate in section 4, H-P Raddatz says of this commonality, that “[b]y imprinting this pattern on all believers, the neo-Theology not only approached the alternative of the Koran, but also came closer to Hitler’s commitment to ‘Confucius, Buddha and Mohammed’.”
If this is the case, then so did Nostra Aetate come closer to Hitler with its commitment to Hinduism, “Buddhism in its various forms” and Islam. In the vague language characteristic of many Vatican II documents, we are told that Hinduism and Buddhism contain “a ray of that Truth [sic] which enlightens all men”, without guidance as to how this “Truth” is to be discerned and differentiated in respect of what the document calls the “the fullness of religious life” in “the way the truth and the life” (John 14:6). The main point here is not the Truth itself, but the use of borderless concepts to move the reader in the direction of “universal tolerance toward religions” which has “the effect of bringing about more enduring submission to its ‘general moral principles’“ or as Nostra Aetate says, “what men have in common”:
The Church, therefore, exhorts her sons, that through dialogue and collaboration with the followers of other religions, carried out with prudence and love and in witness to the Christian faith and life, they recognize, preserve and promote the good things, spiritual and moral, as well as the socio-cultural values found among these men. (2)
Following immediately upon this statement on Hinduism and Buddhism, the authors turn their attention to Islam in the beginning of section 3, where the ecumenical search for commonality speaks of the “one God” (unicus Deus), culminating in what is either an apparent acceptance of the Islamic God-image, Allah as an acceptable Christian affirmation; or else, it is an attempt to fuse the Christian and Islamic God-images, a conjunction of opposites of good and evil, which could only mean an abandonment of the Trinity, for it is also this glaring omission which creates the movement toward Islam:
The Church regards with esteem also the Moslems. They adore the one God [unicus Deus], living and subsisting in Himself; merciful and all- powerful, the Creator of heaven and earth,(5) who has spoken to men; they take pains to submit wholeheartedly to even His inscrutable decrees….
But the “one God” of Islam is not the Triune God, nor the Incarnate God, for both are rejected in the Koran (Sura 4:171). Also, the second Person of the Trinity is the Word, He is Himself the Truth, whereas Allah is the great deceiver (Sura 3:54; 8:30; 7:99; 27:50). On the other hand, the God-image described here would suffice as Allah alone, for it bears favourable comparison with the undifferentiated “living, [self-subsisting] Eternal One” of Sura 2:255. Either way, in Dr. Raddatz’ terms, it comes closer to Hitler’s commitment to Mohammed.
The Neo-Theology: H-P Raddatz’ use of this term embraces Nostra Aetate (beginning of Section 4). Neo-Theology is a movement going back to at least the early twentieth century. One of its cardinal characteristics is rejection of Scholasticism, the Aristotelian based reasoning of Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274), in favour of “an attempt to bring the doctrines of the Church into line with the times in which we live”. This quotation comes from David Greenstock’s Thomism and the New Theology (1950), a classic work on neo-Theology. The Church used the language of Thomas Aquinas for the expression of its Metaphysics, and also for central concepts such as transubstantiation in the Eucharist and Original Sin. Neo-Theology favours modern philosophies (i.e. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin SJ), through which they more easily express their idea that, against a background of evolutionism, doctrine (truth) is changeable. The watchword is: “A doctrine which is no longer current is no longer true” (Garrigou-Lagrange, Where is the New Theology Leading us?).
15. “Christian faith is to be declared ‘unusable’… because it does not correspond to ‘the continuing living encounter with other religions’”: Here is a fuller version of the quotation as rendered by Stefan Schütze. He evaluates religious ideas according to the immediate foreground experience they arouse, their subjectivity, and not the objective content, that is, whether the religion speaks to the truth about the essence of man or whether it does not:
The traditional view, the claim to sole validity of Christianity, is “unusable, because it no longer corresponds to the evidence of the experienced and always experienceable encounter with other religions and their adherents. In view of the experienced piety of another religion and of the claim to a real transcendental experience contained therein, any such claim to sole validity can be regarded only as a product of dogmatic arbitrariness which is no longer oriented toward real phenomena.” (Heinrich Ott, Ein neues Paradigma in der Religionstheologie. “A new Paradigm in Interreligious Theology.” In: Schütze, Stefan. Heute glaubwürdig von Gott reden: “Gott”, “Mensch” und “Welt” im 21. Jahrhundert. [“Speaking Believably about God Today: ‘God’, ‘Man’ and ‘World’ in the 21st Century”] Hamburg: disserta Verlag, 2014, p. 42)
16. “[T]he ‘dialogue’ took up the impulse of the Council and understood ‘the Islamic doctrine, not narrowly out of the limited context of the life of the Prophet, but out of the message of the Koran and its general moral principles’” [Emphasis added]:
For German readers, the above quotation can be found at Zenit, in the second part of Christian W. Troll’s article “Toleranz und Wahrheitsanspruch im Christentum und Islam”.
Fr. Christian W. Troll was a Jesuit and a professor of Islamic Studies in New Delhi. In “Bible and Qur’an in Dialogue” we have the benefit of an elaboration on Fr. Troll’s view of the religious and ethical prerogatives of the Koran, to which he attributes, at least in part, divine inspiration:
Muhammad and the Qur’an merit the utmost attention on the part of the Christian believer and theologian, since Muhammad and the Scripture which he has proclaimed in the name of God are doubtlessly marked by genuine religious experience and in consequence by religious and ethical teachings that in part must be considered the fruit of the Holy Spirit.
17. “Pope John Paul II brought the “God of infinite majesty” into the discussion, which took up gnostic ideas”: At issue here is how spiritual knowledge is acquired, through intuition or reason. In this section, John Paul II is said to have opposed his “intuitive inner experience” (Gnosticism) to the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas. Rejection of the traditional Thomism is a characteristic of neo-Theology (cf. note 14). Intuitive inner experience tends to subjectivism, due to its apparent private nature, while the approach to Thomas Aquinas is intellective; that is, objective due to its systematic specificity, being that it is based on Aristotelian reasoning.
Kurt Rudolph, a German scholar, and foremost interpreter of Gnosticism, describes the basic idea of gnosis, or of the acquisition of spiritual knowledge:
There is first of all the idea of “gnosis” itself, a word which derives from Greek and means “knowledge” or “understanding”. … [The Gnostics] were not aiming at any ideal philosophical knowledge nor any knowledge of an intellectual or theoretical kind, but a knowledge which had at the same time a liberating and redeeming effect. The content of this knowledge or understanding is primarily religious in so far as it circles around the background of man, the world and God, but also because it rests not upon one’s own investigation but on heavenly mediation. It is a knowledge given by revelation, which has been made available only to the elect who are capable of receiving it, and therefore has an esoteric character. … The ignorant man in contrast is one who is a prey to forgetfulness and annihilation; he has no firm foundation. But not only ignorance stands in contrast to the knowledge of the gnostic, so also does faith, since it knows nothing concerning itself and remains attached to what is immediately in the foreground. It is just this opposition of “faith” and “knowledge” which was one of the central themes in the debates of the Church with the gnostic heresy. It was not only a question of the rights and the claim of faith as the only valid means of salvation, but also of the problem of the two-fold truth which became matter for discussion with the entry of the esoteric gnostics into the early Church. (Rudolph, Kurt. Gnosis: The Nature and History of Gnosticism. Trans. Robert McLaclan Wilson. San Francisco: Harper, 1983, p. 55-56.).
18. logoi spermatikoi [‘seeds of reason’; Latin: rationes seminales]: This concept of fallen spark or seed (sperma) of the Divine is one of the basic ideas of Gnosticism, for it connects what is below with what is above. A 1966 conference in Messina articulated the central gnostic myth:
“the idea of the presence in man of a divine ‘spark’ …, which has proceeded from the divine world and has fallen into this world of destiny, birth and death and which must be reawakened through its own divine counterpart in order to be finally restored.” (Kurt Rudolf, Gnosis: The Nature and History of Gnosticism, 1984, p. 57.)
We do not have access to Dr. Raddatz’ original source on John Paul II, but the ideas he attributes to him appear to suggest that every religion has a divine spark, a seed of divine revelation, an element of truth which is to be redeemed and perhaps restored to the “God of Infinite Majesty”. Ecumenism is then the means of redeeming each spark from its embrace in its respective religion.
Fr. Christian W. Troll (cf. note 16) finds the Holy Ghost in the “ethical” teachings of Islam:
“Muhammad and the Scripture which he has proclaimed in the name of God are doubtlessly marked by genuine religious experience and in consequence by religious and ethical teachings that in part must be considered the fruit of the Holy Spirit.”
19. “The Acting Person” by Karol Wojtyla (later, John Paul II): Considered to be one of Wojtyla’s major works and written in originally in Polish, The Acting Person was published just after its author became Pope. It has been translated into other languages, German included, “with various degrees of reliability” but “the most serious problems were with the English translation and edition of the work” (Weigel, George, “ Witness to Hope: the Biography of Pope John Paul II “. 2001, p. 174 available in pdf format) p. 174, footnote).
Weigel offers documentation that the editor of the English version, Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, changed the emphasis of “The Acting Person” in the direction of “her own philosophical predilections [which was phenomenology], to the point where the reader is, on occasion, not really in contact with Wojtyla’s own thought” (Weigel, ibid. footnote, p. 174).
The German edition (1981) is called Person und Tat (“Person and Act”), a rendering which more closely represents the Polish title, Osoba I czyn:
Person and Act: a title that retains the tension between subjective consciousness and objective reality in which Wojtyla is trying to work. “The Acting Person” places most of the stress on the subjective, or phenomenological, side of Wojtyla’s analysis—which is the criticism most frequently leveled against Dr. Tymieniecka’s reworking of the text. Every other language edition of Osoba y czyn retains the tension in the Polish original: thus the German Person und Tat, the Italian Persona e atto, the Spanish Persona y acción, and the French Personne et acte.” (p. 175)
20. “experiential intuition” (erkennende Intuition): This phrase can also be translated as “knowing intuition”. We render it as “experiential intuition” for reason of internal consistency with Dr. Raddatz’ following references to the subject. “Experience” also carries the meaning of “recognition”, which is part of gnosis.
“Phenomenological intuition” would also be a possible translation in this context. In Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka’s editorial introduction to Karol Wojtyla’s “The Acting Person”, the translator
“…said that the author was tracing ‘the inspiration of phenomenological intuition back through Brentano all the way to Aristotle’”. (Quoted from: CatholicCulture.org, “Was John Paul II a Thomist or a Phenomenologist?”: Emphasis added)
For the controversy over the English translation of “The Acting Person” compared with the German title of Karol Wojtyla’s book, see note 19.
21. two-fold truth: This is the idea, often attributed to Averroes (Averroism), that one can hold two contradictory propositions and both of them are true.
That John Paul II would “overcome Thomistic philosophy” (Aristotelian-based reasoning) with “experiential intuition” suggests that these two different epistemological modes of apprehension, thinking and intuition, may lead to two different truths, hence a “twofold truth”. The main point here, considering it is a question of a pope, is that it would be a departure from Catholic teaching for there to be two different truths (relativism) whether they result from two different methods of acquiring knowledge or two different assumptions (see Bacon below). With Christianity, there is only one Truth, the Logos.
The notion of a “two-fold” truth is discernable in late antiquity with the gnostic dualism between gnosis (intuition-revelation) on the one hand and faith or reason on the other hand (Rudolf, Kurt. op. cit. p. 56).
In concrete terms, religion and philosophy can be understood to reach two different truths:
“Averroism became associated with… what was known as the ‘twofold truth’, according to which it is possible to admit the conflict and continue to profess a religious faith without abandoning or abridging one’s commitment to philosophy.” (Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplements)
22. “intellective cognition” (see “twofold truth” note 21):
With Bacon’s duality of potential intellect and agent intellect, we have “two modes of being in respect of thinking” which could give rise to a twofold truth, one philosophical and the other religious (cf. note 21):
Thus, experience-based knowledge according to Bacon was twofold: philosophical and divine. The philosophical was rooted in external senses and the divine was rooted in divine inspiration occurring internally. [The ‘Opus maius’ of Roger Bacon, Vol. 2., ed. John Henry Bridges (Oxford, 1900). Reprint: Frankfurt: Minerva, 1964, 169-172. Quoted from: Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy]
23. the historical religious meeting at Assisi: The reference here is to the first “World Day of Prayer for Peace”, an interreligious prayer meeting held at Assisi in 1986 called by John Paul II. The assembly became known as a concrete expression of ecumenical dialogue. The Remnant, in a traditional Catholic context, offers a considerable number of facts about the meeting; for example it asks:
“Is the Roman Catholic Church changing? Or is it being changed, and if so, who is it being changed by?” [emphasis original]
John Vennari suggests an answer in his recent article, “ Catholic Churchmen Dance to Enviro-Pagan Puppet Masters “ (May 8, 2015). The writer draws attention to what he believes was an even more important meeting at Assisi only one month prior to the so-called World Day of Prayer for Peace. This assembly was called by HRH Prince Philip, then head of the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), in hope of “forg[ing] a new and powerful alliance … between the forces of religion and the forces of conservation …”. It was held at the Basilica in Assisi and consisted of representatives of five major religions, including Islam, “an undeniably broad spiritual basis for the religious-minded” (Hitler’s “Table Talk”). Prince Philip recalls:
“Everyone was called to prayer by a Muslim muezzin”. (ibid.)
Vennari’s well-documented article points to an historical continuity between this September (1986) meeting at Assisi and Pope Francis’ current support for so-called global warming, the ecology movement and his upcoming “Ecology Encyclical”. This trend is “one of the great drawbacks of the Vatican II emphasis on dialogue with the world”, writes Vennari; the Catholic Church has been “co-opted by an “anti-human agenda”.
For Dr. Raddatz, this “congenial dialogue of deception” is “the modern, red-brown coloured train to totalitarianism” which generates new “general moral principles”. It appears to be a ‘new’ religion under an old name, or “the religion in which all men agree”. In the present article, H-P Raddatz writes:
The conformity-inducing power of this trend [toward “adoring the one God”] had an effect which was all the stronger, because the universal tolerance for religions had the effect of bringing about a more enduring submission to its “general moral principles”, the more dominant these became. (Globalisation as War Against Man, Part I)
24. Logocentrism (lit., centred on the Logos): As used here, the term has a number of inseparable meanings, including “word, thinking and being” and in this article is distinguished from the H-P Raddatz’ counter-concepts of reflexivity, instinctuality and automaticity, which signal cultural degeneration. The Logos, having been anticipated in reasoned argument in Hellenistic philosophy (Philo Judaeus), continued to contribute to Christian philosophical tradition after the consolidation of the Gospels. Its most important feature is established in the Incarnation, where men become sons of God, and not servants (as in Islam), because the “God of the Logos” is the Father who “offers to mankind the succession of His Incarnation” (H-P Raddatz) in His Son, who is the Word and is also co-eternally consubstantial with the Father (homoousia).
25. “the First Stone, the symbol of the practice of power burdened with guilt”:
The reference here is to John 8:7, “He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her” (Douay-Rheims). Of course, this is the story of the woman taken in adultery. The entire scene and the conversational aftermath takes place in the temple, the essential confrontation being between Jesus and the Law, these constituting one of the many oppositional pairs in this Gospel, for Jesus is the Light “which shineth in the darkness: and the darkness did not comprehend it” (1:5); whereas the Law is of the devil, for “Moses in the law commanded us to stone such a one” (8:5) and the stoners “are of your father the devil: and the desires of your father you will do” (John 8:44). From this historical point on, according to H-P. Raddatz, power can never again be exercised with a good conscience, for out of this confrontation a new era of consciousness is born as H-P. Raddatz elaborates in another source:
For He [Jesus]… recommended to the rulers, to cast the “first stone”, above all at women, only if they believe themselves to be without guilt. By wiping away the guilt of the world by his death on the cross, He created a new bond with God, broke power’s claim to innocence and opened the age from the unconsciousness of the cyclic into the conscious process of history.”
[…]
Moving into the foreground at the same time is the belief of mankind, who along with his belief in miracles, can also be a miracle in himself, because with the resistance against throwing the “first stone”, the capability of ordering and criticising the world is activated. The turn of the era becomes ever more clear, because Jesus awakens the individual consciousness, by which subjective time emerges, which paradoxically creates autonomous mankind and at the same time can limit power. (Hans-Peter Raddatz. Macht und Gegenmacht des Christentums — Epochen kpamf gegen das trinitarische Gottesbild, Section 2)
Motivated by the extinguishing of this ontological guilt, the only obstruction to unrestrained exercise of power, the elites of the modern age strive to eliminate Christianity. It means a regression of the modern age to the pre-Christian “unconscious cyclic” pattern of “reflexivity”.
26. Without the Trinity there is no Thought (see also note 28 on Arianism): The Trinity is understood here not primarily metaphysically, or what it is in itself, but as a God-image, one might say as representational “behaviour” over time. From this perspective it can be studied in relation to its implications for consciousness and hence for the structure of society. That
is why anyone who wants to understand how Europe came to be, and how its changes have been caused, cannot afford to treat heresy as unimportant. The ecclesiastics who fought so furiously over the details of definition in the Eastern councils had far more historical sense and were far more in touch with reality than the French sceptics, familiar to English readers through their disciple Gibbon.*
[…]
The point is that the doctrine (and its denial) were formative of the nature of men, and the nature so formed determined the future of the society made up of those men. (Hilaire Belloc. The Great Heresies, 1938).
* Gibbon: “…the profane of every age have derided the furious contests which the difference of a single diphthong excited between the Homoousians [of the same substance] and the Homoiousians [of similar substance].” (Gibbon, Edward. History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Vol. 2. Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1875, p. 322).
Other writers have noted the implications of changes in the God image. C. G. Jung studied second century Gnosticism partly as a projection of a redemption drama onto metaphysics and the cosmos. He makes the following point about the relation of the God image to human consciousness:
These utterances [by Meister Eckhart] on the nature of the Deity express transformations of the God-image which run parallel with changes in human consciousness, though one would be at a loss to say which is the cause of the other. The God-image is not something invented, it is an experience that comes upon man spontaneously — as anyone can see for himself unless he is blinded to the truth by theories and prejudices. The unconscious God-image can therefore alter the state of consciousness, just as the latter can modify the God-image once it has become conscious. This, obviously, has nothing to do with the “prime truth,” [metaphysics] the unknown God — at least, nothing that could be verified [“author’s emphasis”]. (Jung, C. G. Aion: Researches into the Phenomenology of the Self (Collected Works Vol. 9 Part 2). Princeton, N.J.: Bollingen. 1951, par. 303)
Vladimir Solovyev (1853-1900), a Russian Orthodox religious thinker still studied today, suggested that the Trinitarian God-image emerged in Philosophy separately and independently from its revelation in the sphere of religion. Here he describes how it is worked upon after “it has become conscious”:
This doctrine [of the three Divine Persons or hypostases] was developed by the Neoplatonics independently of Christianity;… the most important representative of Neoplatonism, Plotinus, lived in the second century A.D., yet knew very little about Christianity…. If the essence of the divine life was defined by the thinkers of Alexandria in a purely apperceptive way on the basis of the theoretical idea of Divinity, in Christianity the same all-one divine life appeared as a fact, as a historical reality, in the living individuality of a historical personality… [A]s soon as the Christians themselves felt the need of making this divine life which had been revealed to them, an object of thought, that is, of explaining it on the basis of its internal foundation in Divinity itself —— as soon as the Christians felt the need of understanding as a universal idea that which they had experience as a particular fact — they naturally turned toward the intellectual definitions of the Greek and Graeco-Jewish thinkers, who had already perceived the theoretical truth of those principles, the manifestations of which (they) the Christians, experienced as a living actuality. (“Vladimir Solovyev’s Lectures Concerning Godmanhood”. In: Peter Zouboff, Godmanhood as The Main Idea of the Philosophy of Vladimir Solovyev. Poughkeepsie: Harmon, 1944, p. 139-141)
The Trinity itself gives rise to a differentiated consciousness, according to Solovyev, namely, the ability to reason, to discriminate intellectually and to engage in self-conscious reflection (hence individual responsibility). For Solovyev, the Trinity corresponds to the structure of human reflective consciousness. In the quotation which follows, when Solovyev refers to the “integral subject”, our “spirit” or “essence”, the context suggests unconsciousness (eternal); that is, a “primordial” and “indivisible” substrate of ego consciousness. The latter is the age of the Father, corresponding pre-culturally to a collectivist condition (cf. the quotation on Islam at the end):
…[w]e have our primordial indivisible or integral subject [after the image of the Father]; in it,… is already contained the whole proper content of our spirit, our essence or idea, which determines our individual character;… which is deeper and more primary than our conscious life,… as yet unrevealed or un-incarnated idea [an unconscious condition]. In the second place, we have our differentiated conscious life [after the image of the Son, the Logos] — the manifestation or expression of our spirit; here our content or essence exists actually in the multitude of diverse manifestations, to which it communicates a definite character, manifesting in them its own peculiarity [unreflective waking consciousness]. In the third place, finally,… we can reflect upon, or return into, ourselves [after the image of the Holy Spirit] from these manifestations or disclosures and assert ourselves actually, as a single subject, as a definite I, the oneness of which is, thus, not only not lost by its self-differentiation in the multitude of states and acts of conscious life, but, on the contrary, is established in an increased degree [after the image of three Persons in one God]; this return to oneself, this reflection upon oneself or assertion of oneself in one’s manifestation, is precisely what is called self-consciousness…. (ibid. p. 148-149)
For Solovyev, Islam by contrast appears in modified form as a much older, primitive experiment in the establishment of human unity, but projected as an external force. The forces of unity present in material nature, like gravity, also act from within man, according to Solovyev. They “appear outside of him and over him; and, gradually entering his consciousness… take possession of him as forces superior or divine” (ibid., note, p. 201). Islam is in the earliest “epoch” of theogony, the “astral”:
[T]he dominant god of this epoch appears to the consciousness alienated from the divine sphere as a being immeasurably high, incommensurate with man, and therefore alien to him, incomprehensible, and terrible; in its infinite supremacy it demands unconditional subordination, does not admit anything by the side of itself, is exclusive and despotic — it is the god of unconditional seclusion and inertness, who is hostile to movement progress and to live creation — it is Chronos, who devours his own children, it is Moloch, who burns the children of men; a thousand years later, we recognize this despot of the skies in a somewhat modified form as the Allah of the Moslems. Possessed by that “divine” force, human consciousness strives to eliminate all free movement of human forces, the diversity of living forms, all cultural progress. (ibid. 202)
27. “chained reflexes” derive from association theory, stimulus-response psychology (S-R theory) or Pavlovian, physiologically based classical conditioning of the early twentieth century. A chained reflex, strictly speaking, is a series of conditioned reflexes linked in temporal contiguity, whereby the response of one reflex is the stimulus for the next one in the chain.
This reference belongs to H-P Raddatz’ theme of deratiocination, the diminution of thinking (Denkschwund), the counter-concept of which is “reflexivity”. Thinking “distinguishes itself from the animal as the sign of instinctuality and from the machine as the sign of reflexivity” (Globalisation: section 5).
For an example of the particular reflex mentioned here, see the video interview of Cardinal Tauran, President of the Vatican’s “Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue”.
28. “Eunomius is considered to be one of the original fathers of Arianism”:
Arianism is considered the first great crisis of the Church in “which a large part of the Church hierarchy was implicated” (Bishop Athanasius Schneider), hence covering large geographical areas. Much of the population would still have been pagan. It was contemporaneous with two other important events: the toleration of Constantine who became a nominal Christian (emperor from 306-337) and the great monastic movement.
Arius (c. 250 — 336) denied that the Son of God, the second person of the Trinity, in His pre-incarnate form as Logos was co-eternal with the Father (John 1:1-18), hence He was not of one substance with the Father. Arianism was condemned at the Council of Nicaea (325) which consolidated the Trinitarian tradition in the Nicene Creed. Arianism persisted for a time beyond Arius’ death. (The New International Dictionary of the Christian Church. ed. J. D. Douglas. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1978 p. 67).
Eunomius (d. 395): Eunomius belonged to the Anomoean school, which advocated a more extreme form of Arianism. He preached that the Son was completely unlike the Father. Just as Arius’ heresy was answered by St. Athanasius, so Eunomius was answered by Basil the Great and Gregory of Nyssa in his Contra Eunomium (ibid p. 355).
“The Arians achieved great popularity after the Council of Nicaea, especially following the death of Constantine in 337… (ibid. p. 67)
Hilaire Belloc, with an eye to Islam, suggests a reason why Arianism is more than just quibbling over an iota, the difference between homoousios (of the same substance) and Homoiousios (of similar substance). People who reduced these “heresies” to quibbling are committing “the common error of thinking in words instead of ideas”:
A man who thinks, for instance, that Arianism is a mere discussion of words, does not see that an Arian world would have been much more like a Mohammedan world than what the European world actually became. He is much less in touch with reality than was Athanasius* when he affirmed the point of doctrine to be all important. That local council in Paris [360-361], which tipped the scale in favour of the Trinitarian tradition, was of as much effect as a decisive battle, and not to understand that is to be a poor historian.
It is no answer to such a thesis to say that both the orthodox and the heretic were suffering from illusion, that they were discussing matters which had no real existence and were not worth the trouble of debate. The point is that the doctrine (and its denial) were formative of the nature of men, and the nature so formed determined the future of the society made up of those men. (Hilaire Belloc. The Great Heresies. 1938)
*Athanasius (c. 296-373) is considered the one figure most successful in combatting the Arian heresy.
These movements of the fourth century were not only heresies, but can be likened to religions in their own right since they spread over large geographical areas, including the same areas which Islam was later to conquer within the period of a century.
At most Islam was a new religion only to the same extent as Lutheranism was one. Actually, it was the prolongation of the great early religions. Equally, its expansion was not (as is even now imagined) a “migration of peoples” proceeding from the Arabian Peninsula, but an onslaught of enthusiastic believers, which like an avalanche bore along with it Christians, Jews, and Mazdaists and set them at once in its front rank as fanatical Moslems. … The enemy of yesterday became the front-rank comrade of tomorrow. Most of the “Arabs” who in 717 attacked Constantinople for the first time, had been born Christians. (Spengler, Oswald. The Decline of the West. vol. 2. Perspectives on World History, trans. Charles Francis Atkinson. New York: Knopf, 1979, p. 304).
29. “A later author wrote a commentary on the Bishop [Eunomius]” and the following quotations:
Eunomius lived in the 4th century and is regarded as a radical Arian (cf. note 29). H-P Raddatz’ source, Theo Kobusch, quoting from the original seventh century source (“Doctrina Patrum” from the florilegia collection), attributes the following statement to Eunomius, which is perhaps the most cogent one for purposes of this article:
“Eunomius proclaims the total impotence and worthlessness of human consciousness” (Kobusch, Theo. Sein und Sprache. p. 53.)
Eunomius’ thought was mechanistic. He taught that the “being” of “the thought” exists only in its being brought forth by the human voice. With the dying away of the voice, the thought itself dies away (ibid. p. 53). This is a quasi-nominalist idea which emerges again in the twentieth century Behaviourism of B. F. Skinner, who denied inner experience and consciousness.
Eunomius appears to present a double standard for analysing the spiritual and material worlds, but his thinking is nevertheless consistent. Its movement is in the direction of materialism. H-P Raddatz’ quotations representing Eunomius’ position can be paraphrased as follows:
In the created world, real individual differentiations are admissible (because they are observable). In the spiritual world, the opposite is the case: to apply the same thought differentiations to the metaphysical realm is inadmissible, because the latter is unknowable. Therefore, differentiations applied to the Godhead cannot be real, but are only thoughts without referents, verbal husks, hence they have no effect on differentiations among humans in the created world.
Theo Kobusch elaborates, showing that for Eunomius, this unreality applies to thinking itself. Conclusions derived from human thinking have no existence or being of any kind:
“Out of that which is spoken while thinking, the thinking part exists only through its being brought forth, like the designating words which are nothing; the spoken part exists through one’s own individual thinking. And out of this thinking, one thing gains existence through enlargement, as with giants; another is extant through diminishment, like pygmies; and others again are extant through adding on, like polycephaly or through combination like the dimorphous animals.”
It requires no greater effort to see that Eunomius by means of this Stoic-Epicurean catalogue of examples wishes to discredit human thinking as such; for the latter is able, on its own account, to form merely words without meaning, or form such words which denote nothing real. But these words fade away, as soon as they are spoken, or are no longer thought. (Kobusch op. cit. p. 53)
30. Allah’s continuing creation (cf. note 11):
He conceives Creation, then renews it: that is easier for him. (Sura 30:27. Trans., N. J. Dawood)
31. “Ekpyrosis [conflagration] … This term relates to a Christian smoothening (Glättung) of a primaeval cycle of apocalyptic purification, which is expressed biblically by the Flood”:
Ekpyrosis means an apocalyptic destruction and regeneration through fire, and the Old Testament Flood represents a similar purification by water. “Smoothening” of the cycles appears to suggest the loss of their deterministic character at the turn of the Christian era, for
…a new bond with God, broke power’s claim to innocence and opened the age from the unconsciousness of the cyclic into the conscious process of history …”. (Hans-Peter Raddatz. Macht und Gegenmacht des Christentums — Epochen kpamf gegen das trinitarische Gottesbild, Section 2)
Ekpyrosis in its historical context refers to a collective myth of the destruction and regeneration of the world. Its mention here anticipates section 6; the programme of the “modern Gnostic” is discussed, the elites who destroy the world in order to reshape it. The Stoics entertained a “Great Year”, corresponding the precession of the equinoxes, which constituted one complete cycle of destruction and regeneration through fire. Since the cycle of the Great Year is divided into twelve 2000 year segments corresponding to the twelve signs of the Zodiac, modern esotericism, according to H-P Raddatz, is inclined to treat the segments themselves as major units of destruction and regeneration. Thus the Christian era to be reversed corresponds to the zodiacal sign of the Fishes, ending with the “9/11 big bang”.
The reference of ekpyrosis as a property of the Holy Ghost forms an association with the third Person of the Trinity appearing in the form of tongues of fire at Pentecost following the death of Jesus (Acts 2:3). As “the spirit of Truth” (John 14:17), the Holy Ghost is regenerative, and the Paraclete who abides forever (John 14:16).
In Islam, by contrast (as developed in Section 6), the phases of regeneration and destruction within the cycle are superimposed one upon the other; they are simultaneous. While Allah creates the universes continuously in every detail (cf. note 11), including creation of the unbelievers, there is simultaneously a corresponding purification through “permanent apocalypse”, jihad. The fire of this apocalypse, an Ekpyrosis, is symbolised by the Zaqqum tree of fire (cf. section 6 and note 39).
32. “The Alternative World of the Gnostics”:
The main question arising in this section is: “What does second century Gnosticism have to do with the ‘modern political religion’ of the European elites?”
A definition: According to Hans Jonas, Gnosticism was a complex mixture of myth, abstract concepts and “sectarian doctrines”, which, in general terms, describe the drama of a spark of Light (pneuma), which has fallen from its original divine unity of self- subsistent Light only to become trapped in man, a prisoner in the world of matter (hyle) and darkness, which is a counterfeit world presided over by evil Archons, whose names are often pejorative “synonyms” for “Old Testament names for God”.
The Archons rule over the seven planetary spheres. The elect find redemption by means of gnosis (knowledge of the Light, Father etc.), a special non-intellective “supranatural” knowledge, often itself transformative, which allows those who have received the Call to achieve revelation and return the imprisoned divine spark of Light to the original Pleroma (fullness). (Hans Jonas. The Gnostic Religion. Boston: Beacon. 1958, pp. 34-44)
“[T]he existing world order must be destroyed and newly created”: While the Gnostics of the second century anticipated the eventual destruction of the lower, material world, upon which they placed a negative value, they were not inclined to abolish it themselves, but rather to escape it. This is not surprising, since it was a Demiurge or the Archons who had created the world and trapped them in it. Since the Gnostic of “the modern political religion” has been transformed by science and technology from a “creature of God to a world creator”, he seeks to destroy the world himself for the purpose of creating a new one. It is as if the projection of redemption onto metaphysics and the cosmos in the highly spiritualised 2nd century has shifted after 2,000 years to a projection of redemption, as an earthly utopia, unto the body politic of a modern world which is deeply steeped in materialism. The social order now becomes an externalised prima materia for the experiment in transformation.
However, even the old Gnostics with their eschatological expectations appear to have sometimes anticipated, in their eschatological fantasies, a new system of fraternal harmony similar to our modern delusional systems of social engineering which strive for a utopia of absolute equality, where all distinctions are to eliminated, even gender. However, the elimination of antinomies, the very prerequisite for cognition, can only mean a return to an unconscious condition. Kurt Rudolf writes:
We have mentioned the “brotherly ethic” which eschews distinctions of any kind in the community of the “perfect” and to that extent contains a new scale of values running counter to the old ethic. … Valentinian Tripartite Tractate describes the final condition of a return from multiplicity, changeableness and inequality to the place of original unity “where there is no male or female, no slave and free, nor circumcision and uncircumcision, neither angel nor man… and the nature of the one who is (actually) a slave is conditioned anew and he will take a place with a free man!” (Rudolph, Kurt. Gnosis: The Nature and History of Gnosticism. Trans. Robert McLaclan Wilson. San Francisco: Harper, 1983, p. 267-268)
33. “Archons, … who are enlightened by the good God…”: This reference is to hybris of the elites, who, in their “ontological racism”, are the “elect” by virtue of identifying with divine or semi-divine beings, the creator Archons of the gnostic myth (cf. note 32).
Hans Jonas gives some background to this mythologem of the Archons (see below), who appear sometimes as figures of paradox. Being rulers of the darkness and ignorance in the material world, they are depicted as terrible, sinister and ignorant, bent on preventing escape from this world. But by implication they are also enlightened in the limited sense of recognising the Light in the elect, who must demonstrate their credentials as they pass by the Archonic planetary gate-keepers on their way back to the world of Light, the Pleroma (fullness).
Therefore the Archons are classic guardians of the threshold, similar to the sleeping dragon, Fafner, in Wager’s gnostic-like opera Siegfried, where Fafner turns out to be wise after all (Act II, Scene ii). Siegfried overcomes Fafner with the magic sword Notung, and having tasted the monster’s blood the hero gains knowledge of the path to the Ring which has fallen from its origin into the wrong hands (Siegfried is part of a redemption experiment which ends in apocalyptic failure in Götterdämmerung, the last drama in Wagner’s Ring Cycle).
Like Fafner the dragon, the “ignorant” planetary Archons preside over a series of spheres which themselves constitute “the true path”. They keep those who are without proper qualifications from reaching the treasure hard to attain. Gnosis, by analogy with Siegfried’s magic sword, the pieces of which only the hero can forge together, is what the elect must acquire in order to overcome the planetary Archons. Hans Jonas quotes the Church Father Epiphanius (310-403 AD), who records what the elect must do as they pass through the spheres:
“The lord revealed to me what the soul must say when ascending into heaven, and how she must answer each of the upper powers: ‘I have come to know myself, and I have collected myself from everywhere, and I have not sown children to the Archon but have uprooted his roots and have collected the dispersed members, and I know thee who thou art: for I am of those from above.’ And thus she is released.” (Epiph. Haer. 26. 13) [Hans Jonas. The Gnostic Religion. Boston: Beacon. 1958, p. 168]
Hence the Archons carry an implicit wisdom or enlightenment, which keeps those without Gnosis from entering the Pleroma, for as Hans Jonas remarks, “It is obvious that these formulas have the force of passwords.” Jonas continues:
What then is the interest of the Archons in opposing the exodus of the soul from the world? The gnostic answer is thus recounted by Epiphanius:
“They [the Gnostics] say that the soul is the food of the Archons and Powers without which they cannot live, because she is of the dew from above and gives them strength. When she has become imbued with knowledge … she ascends to heaven and gives a defence before each power and thus mounts beyond them to the upper Mother and Father of the All whence she came down into the world. (Epiph. Haer. 40.2) [ibid. p. 169]
34. “… the elect… return by way of the psyche to the Pleroma, the light of salvation”: This line is an allusion to the gnostic notion of a pneuma or “spark”, a part of the divine Pneuma, which having “fallen” into the world of matter, becomes trapped in the psyche (passions etc.). For the Gnostics, according to Hans Jonas, the psyche manifests itself macrocosmically as the planetary spheres presided over by the Archons, and microcosmically as the instincts:
“[T]hese [psychical forces] are the appetites and passions of natural man, each of which stems from and corresponds to one of the cosmic [planetary] spheres [seats of the Archons] and all of which together make up the astral soul of man, his “psyche”. (Jonas Hans. The Gnostic Religion. Boston: Beacon. 1958, p. 44)
To reunite the trapped spark or pneuma with the divine Pleroma, the ones who have received the Call, the elect, must first make the return journey upward through the successive spheres of the planets, through which the pneuma originally made its descent into matter (hyle).
Through his body and his soul man is a part of the world and subjected to the heimarmene [universal Fate, or “tyrannical world-rule” of the Archons]. Enclosed in the soul is the spirit, or “pneuma” (called also the “spark”), a portion of the divine substance from beyond which has fallen into the world; and the Archons created man for the express purpose of keeping it captive there. Thus, as in the macrocosm man is enclosed by the seven [planetary] spheres [governed by Archons], so in the human microcosm again the pneuma is enclosed by the seven soul-vestments originating from them. In its unredeemed state the pneuma thus immersed in soul and flesh is unconscious of itself, benumbed, asleep, or intoxicated by the poison of the world: in brief, it is “ignorant.” Its awakening and liberation is effected through “knowledge”. (Hans Jonas. ibid. p. 44)
35. “leads to [führt zu] the adoption of a metaphysical anti-Semitism”: Hans Jonas reports that Gershom Scholem, a well-known student of Jewish mysticism, personally communicated this expression to him in a conversation:
“[The] nature of the relation of Gnosticism to Judaism — in itself an undeniable fact — is defined by the anti-Jewish animus with which it is saturated. ‘The greatest case of metaphysical anti-Semitism’ exclaimed Scholem once when we talked about these matters soon after the appearance of my first volume on Gnosis”
(qtd. in Wasserstrom Steven M. “Hans Jonas in Marburg, 1928”. The legacy of Hans Jonas: Judaism and the Phenomenon of Life. ed. Hava Tirosh-Samuelson and Christian Wiese. 2005. p. 40, note 7. Original source: “Response by Hans Jonas” in The Bible in Modern Scholarship: Papers read at the 100th Meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature, December 28-30, 1964, ed. J. Philip Hyatt. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1965, 279-93.)
H-P. Raddatz’ limiting expression “leads to” is important here, for this modern phrase, “metaphysical anti-Semitism”, as applied to second-century Gnosticism may appear problematic, and even mischievous for some who understand, for example, a similar phenomenon in the Gospel of John. There, just as Gnostics connected “the entire, counterfeit pole [the dark side of the gnostic light-dark dualism] with the Jewish God”, so Jesus in the Gospel of John likewise turns the world upside down. He similarly places those called “the Jews” in the dark pole of the light-dark polarity, which is a leitmotif of the Gospel. For Jesus, who “is the light of the world” and whose followers “walketh not in darkness” (8:12), identifies the Jews with the devil, who is a liar (8:44) and father to those same Jews: “You are of your father the devil: and the desires of your father you will do” (John 8:44), which means they are of this world: “You are from beneath: I am from above. You are of this world: I am not of this world (8:23). Yet all the participants in the drama are ethnic Jews. Those called “the Jews” emphasise their biological credentials as “the seed (semen) of Abraham” (8:33), but Jesus, also an ethnic Jew, denies them that lineage by virtue of their “works” (8:39). One might say, therefore, that this connection of the Johannine Jews with the dark pole “leads to” anti-Semitism, and also “leads to” the suppression of Christianity as hate speech, or at least “leads to” the “dialogue” declaring it “unusable”.
The most important understanding of “metaphysical anti-Semitism” is framed by “ontological racism”, “the sacrifice of men who stand ‘in the Path’ of this type of salvation”. This idea is made explicit in another publication, wherein the author, in a similar context, appears to use the term “metaphysical anti-Semitism” as a synonym for “ontological racism”:
Here, an all-embracing racism becomes explicit, which ties in with the roots of socialism and National Socialism. By this racism being directed against no less than an entire people, namely, the hated majority, middle class society, it swings into metaphysical anti-Semitism. The non-Muslim becomes the Jew of the postmodern era (Emphasis added). (Raddatz, Hans-Peter. Allahs Schleier. München: Herbig. 2004, p. 433. In: rhizom)
36. discerning of spirits (discretio spirituum): This expression appears in 1 Corinthians 12: 10. It is just one term in a list, but the context suggests a self-reflective awareness of a broad range of differences among individuals who are at the same time of one spirit.
In another article, Dr. Raddatz elaborates his understanding of the expression:
“When the God-man says He is the way, the truth and the life [John 14:6], He is Himself the epochal message, which opens up the progress of the individual spirit; that is, with irreversible time he opens consciousness to past and future and activates ontological difference, which is also called discerning the spirits. It consists in the capability, mediated by thinking, of being a part of the whole without being taken up in the whole; theologically it consists in the innovation by which God calls one by one’s own name and conscience, which separates knowledge of good and evil, guilt and atonement from blind faith. Following therefrom is the radical image of the “First Stone”, which the rulers may cast only if they are free from guilt, and which challenges their power in the elite-mass divide to a new responsibility in a consciously humane order.” (Hans-Peter Raddatz. Erbsünde der Moderne [Original Sin of Modernity: Part 2] in Die Neue Ordnung Nr. 3/2013 Juni p. 228-9)
37. “We can expect a magnitude of decadence in human existence impossible to represent with differentiated thinking, precisely because the latter is not compatible with its counter-concept of canalised deratiocination” [Denkschwund]:
This of course is the “reversal” (Umkehrung), a regression to a previous cultural condition preceding the “Jesus-era”. Oswald Spengler finds precisely such undifferentiated thinking in a group of religions which he identifies as the collective precursor to Islam, the “springtime” of the Magian culture. Their “birth, unfolding, and inward confirmation occupy the period 0-500” (Spengler, Oswald. The Decline of the West. vol. 2. Perspectives on World History, trans. Charles Francis Atkinson. New York: Knopf, 1979, p. 248).
These cultures manifest the “impossibility of a thinking, believing, and knowing Ego” (see below). The Magian culture is a group of religions united by a common “idea”, and Spengler unites them with his metaphor of the “world-cavern”, for which “it is difficult for Western man to pick upon any word in his vocabulary that can convey anything more than a hint of the meaning of Magian “space” (ibid. p. 233). Or in the words of H-P. Raddatz, “impossible to represent with differentiated thinking”.
The “Magian” religions include early Christians, Jews, Persians, Manichaeans, Mazdaists, Zoroastrians, and later, the Monophysites, Nestorians Monothelites and the Iconoclasts.
These Magian religions belong to what Spengler calls a pseudomorphosis, under which he proceeds to
“designate those cases in which an older alien Culture lies so massively over the land that a young Culture, born in this land, cannot get its breath and fails not only to achieve pure and specific expression-forms, but even to develop fully its own self-consciousness” (ibid. p. 189).
Spengler describes the state of consciousness, specifically in respect of Islam, comparing it with Western culture, which he calls “Faustian”:
The Faustian [Western] primal sacrament of Contrition presupposes the strong and free will that can overcome itself. But it is precisely the impossibility of an Ego as a free power in the face of the divine that constitutes “Islam.” Every attempt to meet the operations of God with a personal purpose or even a personal opinion is “masiga,” — that is, not an evil willing, but an evidence that the powers of darkness and evil have taken possession of a man and expelled the divine from him. The Magian waking-consciousness is merely the theatre of a battle between these two powers and not, so to say, a power in itself. Moreover, in this kind of world-happening there is no place for individual causes and effects, let alone any universally effective dynamic concatenation thereof, and consequently there is no necessary connexion between sin and punishment, no claim to reward, no old-Israelitish “righteousness.”… In the entire world-cavern there is but one Cause, which lies immediately behind all visible workings, and this is the Godhead, which, as itself, acts without causes. Even to speculate upon causes in connexion with God is sinful. (Spengler, op. cit. p. 240. Emphasis original)
The “I”, for the Magian culture is occupied by a “We”, a consensus without responsibility:
Whereas the Faustian [Western] man is an “I” that in the last resort draws its own conclusions about the Infinite;… the Magian man, with his spiritual kind of being, is only a part of a pneumatic “We” that, descending from above, is one and the same in all believers. As body and soul he belongs to himself alone, but something else, something alien and higher, dwells in him, making him with all his glimpses and convictions just a member of a consensus which, as the emanation of God, excludes error, but excludes also all possibility of the self-asserting Ego. Truth is for him something other than for us. All our epistemological methods, resting upon the individual judgment, are for him madness and infatuation, and its scientific results a work of the Evil One, who has confused and deceived the spirit as to its true dispositions and purposes. Herein lies the ultimate, for us unapproachable, secret of Magian thought in its cavern -world — the impossibility of a thinking, believing, and knowing Ego is the presupposition inherent in all the fundamentals of all these religions…. whereas the Faustian willing “I” in its wide world feels itself confronted by deity, also Faustian, also willing, effective everywhere; the Magian deity is the indefinite, enigmatic Power on high that pours out its Wrath or its Grace, descends itself into the dark or raises the soul into the light as it sees fit. The idea of individual wills is simply meaningless, for “will” and “thought” in man are not prime, but already effects of the deity upon him. Out of this unshakable root-feeling,… there emerges of necessity the idea of the Divine Mediator, of one who transforms this state from a torment into a bliss. All Magian religious are by this idea bound together, and separated from those of all other Cultures. (Spengler, op. cit. p. 235-236. Emphasis original)
38. “non-thinking” [Nicht-Denken] (cf. also note 37): Given the context, this is a negative or privative concept, as are terms such as “unconscious”. It points to a state without conscious reflection, which is “impossible to represent with differentiated thinking, precisely because the latter is not compatible with its counter-concept of deliberately directed deratiocination [Denkschwund — lit., disappearance of thinking]”.
39. the Zaqqum, the tree of hell fire:
The fruit of the Zaqqum-tree shall be the sinner’s food. Like dregs of oil, like scalding water, it shall simmer in his belly. A voice will cry: ‘Seize him and drag him into the depth of Hell. Then pour out boiling water over his head, saying: “Taste this, illustrious and honourable man! This is the punishment which you doubted.”’ (Sura 44:43-48, N. J. Dawood)
Is this not a better welcome than the Zaqqum-tree? We have made this tree a scourge for the wrongdoers. It grows in the nethermost part of Hell, bearing fruit like devils’ heads: on it they shall feed, and with it they shall cram their bellies, together with draughts of scalding water. Then to Hell they shall return. (Sura 37:62-68 N. J. Dawood)
‘…As for you sinners who deny the truth, you shall eat the fruit of the Zaqqum-tree and fill your bellies with it. You shall drink boiling water: yet you shall drink it as the thirsty camel drinks.’ (Sura 56:52-54, N. J. Dawood).
40. “the tree of knowledge and of life” [Baum der Erkenntnis und des Lebens]: This phrase is an apparent conflation of two trees in the Garden of Eden:
And the Lord brought forth of the ground all manner of trees, fair to behold, and pleasant to eat of: the tree of life also in the midst of paradise: and the tree of knowledge of good and evil. (Genesis 2:9, Douay-Rheims)
The tree of life governs everlasting life:
And he said: Behold Adam is become as one of us, knowing good and evil: now therefore, lest perhaps he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever. … And he cast out Adam; and placed before the paradise of pleasure Cherubim, and a flaming sword, turning every way, to keep the way of the tree of life. (Genesis 3:22-24, Douay-Rheims)
Previous posts featuring the work of Hans-Peter Raddatz:
Thank you Mr. Clancy. That is the most impressive outline of how we got to this point in the war for Europe. I makes it clear that Western civilization has been betrayed by contemporary Fascists and the European Union is in for a Civil war. We here in the United States will watch it develop and endure 17 more months of Islamification before we come to our senses.
This is a brilliant and scholarly revelation. For some time I have felt there is a strong connection between the hatred by Islam and the equal hatred by Post-Modern Marxist liberalism for the core teaching of Christ’s Golden Rule, to ‘do unto others..etc’ But I had not been able to see the direct and historical link between the European elites and the thrall of Islam. And here it is explained.
I have also felt instinctively that only a return to the Apostolic Christ will save Judeo-Christian-Hellenist culture from destruction. This is what Islam and the European elites fear above all else and will do everything in their power to prevent.
This article represents the call for a Crusade – because that is what will be needed. The Apostolic God needs to be rediscovered as the ineffable Good, unlike the vengeful Allah and the spiteful, morally bankrupt, psychologically twisted victimology of Post-Modern Western culture, as embodied in the Merkels and Obamas of the world.
Unfortunately there is Pope Urban to call for a crusade.
“This article represents the call for a Crusade…”
Actually, the article makes no call for a crusade.
The article examines the two possibilities for a human: freedom or slavery. It shows that the attraction to slavery existed in Western society before Islam existed, and that society is in terrible danger because its own leaders, and its most powerful institutions, are heavily invested in promoting the slavery of the West.
What good does it do to initiate an external crusade when your own camp is rotting from within?
I am sorry, I couldn’t put my brain around this entire essay. First, I had to cook dinner. And then I came back and read some more. Then, I had to clean up from dinner and speak to my family members.
I then went back to the essay.
I think I get the jist; modern day Germany and the EU as a whole has been modeled by Islamic principals out of fear…
Do I have that right?
Alas, I became impatient with this overly intellectualized effort to explain our predicament.
I understand there are Westerners who’ve been interested in the Islamic world but in my 71 years on this planet I’ve yet to run across anyone who ever had the slightest interest in it. I personally can find something interesting in cereal boxes and the political views of Paris Hilton. However, I have never read anything at all about the Islamic world except one book by Bernard Lewis and, under duress, a zillion blog posts and comments about Muslim savagery, obscurantism, and inferiority in all but the killing arts. If there’s an Islamic symphony or comedy of manners out there I seem to have missed it.
The pinnacle of Islamic art is belly dancing from what I can see and if there are some architectural marvels here and there, well yay, but is there anything there that would inspire me to wear Muslim garb a la Prince Charles and Gen. Petraeus, let alone betray my countrymen by importing these savages by the millions? Answer: no.
Better to focus on the home-grown evil of our very own ultra leftists who make the party ideologists of the USSR look like fanatical seekers after truth.
And on pathological altruism that has sucked the cerebral cortex out of many a Western brain.
And on Saudi oil money. This has gelded many a diplomat, professor, and university President. And if the Soviets could recruit journalists and newspaper editors, so could the Saudis.
Exactly. Muslims were and are and always will be WOGs. (Small ‘g’ for the savages copycat twisted perverted version of the original.)
Yes, yes and yes.
I don’t think that belly dancing is Islamic. It was an Egyptian pass-time long before the Muslims showed up.
I stand corrected. It does seem un-Islamic, the sort of thing Saudis enjoy when they go to Marbella.
I found it rather confusing and meandering, which is not to cast doubt on the author’s argument, but just that I couldn’t logically follow it. For me, there was also a leap in logic in terms of why any Westerner with the rich history and tapestry of thought we have would view Islam as anything but a regressive abberation. I am still somewhat none-the-wiser as to why current leaders of the EU, the media and the elites would wish to ally with Islam and Islamicise the West. Surely they can’t all be driven by such an evil which is so evidently not in our interest? It’s naiveté I thought and a flight from reason.
The EU elites are the pawns of financial cartels, the World bank, the IMF, the bond market, the private banks and the central banks. They have NOTHING against Islam. In fact the opposite is the case.
They have been salivating to get back into Iran. They do business with all the Arab oil countries and bow to their demands. They have had plans to set up a Eurabia for many years now. They care about POWER and nothing more!
I just can’t see it. There’s a hugw logical leap for me as wide as a canyon. It’s not that I don’t despise those institutions, it’s that from my perspective, they’ve swallowed an ideology and they don’t perceive a threat from Islam. I know there’s sufficient evidence and quotes relating to wanting to diversify the EU in order to reduce homogeneity and nation state allegiance, but I’m not aware of any statements that Islam should become prominent or dominant in Europe. If you do, please let me see.
http://gatesofvienna.blogspot.com/2006/06/why-eu-needs-to-be-destroyed-and-soon.html
DiMu, what’s disheartening about that link is it is almost 10 years old and yet there was talk even then of a change in public opinion taking shape, yet that article could have been written just yesterday.
It really depicts how anaesthetised and apathetic the West has become.
Babs, you have my sympathy; I had to take a break!
DiMu, I couldn’t disagree more with you and the writer. In footnote 33, he calls Wagner’s “Ring” as “a redemption cycle which ends in apocalyptic failure”. I see it quite differently, and I suspect Wagner did too.
In the first part* of the tetralogy, “Das Rheingold”, there are no humans. Gradually the emphasis shifts; by the fourth part, “Gotterdammerung”, the Gods and other immortals are in Valhalla, but never seen, and are destroyed at the close. Yet in an epic in which several musical motives are contstantly transformed, expanded and reworked, one alone remains unchanged- the “redemption” theme**. This occurs only twice; in Part Two, “Die Walkure”, when Brunnhilde tells Sieglinde that she is carrying Siegmund’s child (the hero Siegfried), and at the end of Part Four,
“Gotterdammerung”, when Siegfried is dead and Brunnhide (now mortal) and the Gods and immortals dying.
Redemption, therefore, is freedom from the Gods (or at least from religion). Or, as Brian says in “Monty Python’s Life of…”: “I’m not the Messiah- you have to work it out for yourselves”.
*Before anyone writes in, I know that strictly speaking, Wagner regarded “Das Rheingold” as a prologue, and the remainder as Parts 1-3.
**Borrowed by Bernstein for “I Have a Love” in “West Side Story”.
I don’t doubt you are right about Wagner, but how does that vitiate all the points the writer made? It is a dense article and I have not done more than read it through to get the gist, so I’m sure I missed some details. Thanks for correcting me, but just because Wagner held a particular view doesn’t mean he was correct, despite his musical genius.
Babs? Are you the Babs who commented at Neptunus Lex?
Why, yes I am. I sure do miss Lex and often wonder what he would think of the current state of the world.
Wow! I will be re-reading and studying this dissertation, for that is what it is. I have noticed a consistent thread in the recounted events and statements. It appears that everyone of the protagonists, Napoleon, Stalin, Hitler et al knew and understood the created order of our reality but were dissatisfied with it. They sought to remake reality with rules that suited them and in the process raised the same challenge that was spoken in the Garden of Eden, “Hath God said?” Those who are presently in charge appear to be the ubermenschen of the rebellion that is intent upon seizing the world and making it into its own image and likeness. From their role models who have been portrayed in this notable dissertation I would say that they intend for the entire world to be their own private fiefdom for the dhimmi servant and a gulag for those who refuse the servant’s iron collar. This of course will leave Jehovah God (assuming this planet is His creation) no choice but to assert His sovereignty in the face of their presumptuous rebellion. I would say that we are in for some very interesting times.
Given this essay, world history and the character of its tyrants, I am left wondering whether Jack Tolkien saw something and was trying to warn us of it in his trilogy. Notice that those who went to the Blessed Realm (Gandalf and Frodo and Bilbo) were faithful, and who ceased to exist because they kept not their first estate (Sauron and Saruman). Selah.
re: “It appears that everyone of the protagonists, Napoleon, Stalin, Hitler et al knew and understood the created order of our reality but were dissatisfied with it.”
In the simplest of terms, this all boils down to a love of power/control which has no connection to God other than the desire to play the role of God to attain total control. Narcissistic conceit a condition inherent in man since Adam & Eve and passed onto Cain … through Muhammad, Napoleon, Stalin, Hitler et al.
The “love of power” turned on its head is an irrational fear of being controlled by others. I’ve often thought it’s an existential mystery – not a “problem” because problems can be solved. Mysteries, on the other hand, are the warp and woof of our daily lives, what we use to weave both the ultimate meaning of our lives and our concomitant attempts at mastery of ourselves. The deluded power-mad really believe that by controlling others they can finally master their own terrors.
The gap between our rhetoric (what we aspire to) and our reality (what we actually accomplish) is what determines our level of “happiness” <-- scare quotes for that word because it's so elusive. The surest way to lose a sense of contentment is to attempt directly to acquire and keep it. So, anon, it's not that they "loved" power and control. They unconditionally lusted after it, chased it, made power and control their summum bonum. This disordered 'love' was in fact an insatiable hatred of everything. No matter how much they destroyed or obliterated, that hunger simply grew...
Spot on!
“summum bonum”…that’s a keeper!
Yes, I agree whole heartedly….unconditional “lusting” rather than “loving” is a far more appropriate characterization.
Thank you.
Ravening wolves in sheep’s clothing.
“Those who are presently in charge appear to be the ubermenschen of the rebellion that is intent upon seizing the world and making it into its own image and likeness. ”
I think that is only half of the equation.
The real question is, why would rulers and elites, who have a near-monopoly on power as it is, hobnob with a movement that is quite likely to subvert their power as well as the integrity of every institution with which they are familiar?
The answer is in the article, and in particular, the notes to the article. As civilizations mature, they lose their sense of purpose and destiny. This is a dilemma of freedom: the direction of the individual has to be determined internally, rather than externally.
The leaders, more susceptible to the rootlessness and despair of lacking a purpose than the average citizens, idealize the simpler notion of a barbarian society, where the individual is lost in the collective purpose of hunting, fighting, or whatever. Why are the leaders more susceptible than the common man? Perhaps life is easier for them, and they have more time and leisure to reflect on the abstract. Anyway, the leaders focus on the totalitarian philosophies, which have the double advantage of giving them the ability to lose themselves in a collective purpose, and also provides them with a rationale to exert total control over the lesser beings.
Islam is the totalitarian creed par excellence to allow the leader to both submerge his consciousness of boredom and purposelessness, and to indulge his passion for exercising total control and authority over others.
This might be a way to begin to explain the incredible fact that leaders like Obama and Kerry are sponsoring the spread of Islam, when Islam will quite obviously completely destroy the way of life they have enjoyed since birth.
Whew! Tough reading. Whatever theory has infiltrated our elites’ brains certainly has one singular defect: the concepts of love or forgiveness are not found anywhere. People are too nice; love is too critical; people need forgiveness; there is too much beauty; we need music and dogs and laughter; both genders are too important; we have to be kind to animals as we use them; life has too much fun and mirth…for humanity to be swayed by such poison. Get it out of here. It is disgusting. We have to rid the earth of this horrible toxin, root and branch–soon. These ideas should have been dead and buried a thousand years ago and we should be fooling around in space or going skiing.
Awesome! Many thanks for the translation and for publication.
Can’t comment yet until I work my way through… should be done in a week.
It’s incredibly dense. Am now reading it in the German original, but finding it no more accessible.
Perhaps it would have been better if Raddatz had written a dozen separate articles and focused on only one topic each.
Am simply not used to digesting scholarly text on this level.
Suggestion: make a separate page with the notes, and read the notes exactly in conjunction with the text.
Just a suggestion.
Such a long and involved piece deserves
to be put as a Pfd file. I for one would
like to read it on my kindle at leisure,
not rushing along as I seem to be doing
a lot of these days.
As I said, just a suggestion, there must be
real reasons for not converting to other formats,
cost come firstly to mind.
St. Bruno,
You can easily cut and paste the text into a document, wordpad file (rtf) or notepad file (txt). You can also create a pdf file yourself.
The way to create a pdf file is to download a print-to-pdf plugin to your browser (look it up. I’m too lazy to look up the links myself). Then, select the entire article, and print to a pdf file. You can transfer the pdf to your kindle and read at your leisure.
I would offer a different version and more to the point. German Nazis converted to Islam when they were given refuge from the Allies after WW2. They adopted Hassan al Bannas Moslem Brotherhood plans to take Europe and founded the “European Project” through the Coal and Steel Pact that lay at the foundation of the then “Common Market”. The European Project is the same as the “Project” outlined by the MB Founder.
Then America and NATO was used to fight for sunni dominance in the Middel East and waste itself away into what we have today- a hollowed out entity unable to prevent being overwhelmed and taken by the Ummah as we see today as “Syrian Refugees” pour into Europe.
Unlike the author who seems to [insulting characterization redacted] the concept is as old as the hills and explained as I have above. It didn’t need page after page of academicspeak.
I think the author is trying to show how one’s concept of God affects one’s world view. He likens the Islamic monster, Allah, that demands obedience by instilling fear, depriving his people of thought with the modern rejection of God in favor of the Post-Modern mantra that there is no such thing as truth (except for verifiable science) and therefore there is no such thing as the truth of moral values, and therefore no need to think or evaluate.
Although on the face of it they are totally different systems of thought, they cause a similar effect – passivity towards authority. Under Post-Modernism we see the utter trashing of every Christian moral value and there is equally no need any more for people to think about what they are doing. They only need to obey their rulers.
So the Islamic and Post-Modern mind set lead to a serf mentality towards power, (albeit with jihad on the Muslim side to force everyone into line with Allah).
Then he talks about the Christian concept of God which is complex metaphysics and perhaps goes back to Pseudo-Dionysus, so if we’re not familiar with THAT subject, it’s no wonder we’re at sea. I am not an expert either, but it is the NATURE of the Christian God and the concept of the Good which the Christian God embodies which is significant. I think this comes from Plato as well as the Old and New Testaments and its perfect incarnation is in Christ. We are asked to be as Christ – to have very strong moral values which we contemplate and think about and evaluate life by.
This represents a terrible threat to both Islam and Post-Modern PC political ideology because when we view them through Christ’s eyes, we see they are an abomination. That is why both Islam and Post-Modern PC ideology detest Christians more than they detest each other.
I am a Theologist myself. Emmet Scott does a far better job of explaining the interaction between Christianity and Rome-Byzantium and Europe. Then there is the historicity of these faiths and their origins lost in the ante-antediluvian Period. I recommend
DrDavid Rohl and his various works on the subject. His findings would surprise you. And don’t dismiss the Gnostics eitheras this fellow appears to do.
Correction
Emmet Scott does a far better job of explaining the interaction between Christianity and Rome-Byzantium and Europe with Islam….Not called “Islam” at the time.
A final note, and BTW thanks for the info on the origins of the Club of Rome. Europe is being purposefully inundated by refugees from Syria and Iraq for a total of 1,000,000 by year’s end. The Elite intend to use them as tools to implement their vision of Europe and cow us into submission as the better part of them 20%+ will refuse to assimilate but pursue jihad in their new ‘home’ they have moved to. Of course they will be lonely as many of their relations will most likely be in Southern Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Yemen etc. These countries could have allowed the refugees to repatriate to where their relatives lived and where their language was spoken instead of slamming the door on them and forcing them to journey to countries where their best hope is to be a tolerated pariah. One can pray that the good people of Germany would have a change of heart and welcome these people with the same love that Jesus Christ has for us. The stark reality of the disconnect between Islam and Christianity will soon become apparent. Strangers whom they were commanded to waylay and slaughter took them in and showed them loving kindness as a family member should when a relative is displaced and homeless, but their fellowship, the “Umma” refused to care for them and consigned them to a future as a refugee. This dichotomy will not be lost on them and if we Christians rise to the occasion and do as our Lord commands (and follow the example He set) the result could be revival and the pulling of teeth out of the Islamic Lion’s mouth. Way cool deal! My fellowship has mission churches in Hereborg and Dusseldorf. I will be in touch with the pastoral staff on this. Islam wants to slaughter us out of hate, maybe we can love them to ….At least such behaviour will show up who the ungrateful cretins really are.
No, and I am not preaching, I am only delivering a wake up call to fellow members of this blog who also have Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour.
“This dichotomy will not be lost on them.” I anticipate, alas, that it will in fact be lost on a great many, perhaps most.
There’s plenty of evidence to show that gratitude to kuffar does not come easily to Muslims, generally speaking. They are conditioned, I think, to regard kindness from infidels as something owed to them as Muslims. If other Muslims don’t help them in their need, they are still Muslims — therefore superior.
Muslims are taught from birth that Muslims are “the best of peoples” whereas infidels are lower than dirt because they have “rebelled against Allah.” And that dichotomy, so fundamental to the Islamic worldview, has nothing at all to do with behavior toward other human beings.
Yes. And don’t forget that the penalty for leaving Islam is still death.
Oh well, it was a nice thought. I most likely assumed that they would function rationally. If they had been re-programmed from birth as you say, then any kindness would be regarded as weakness. That is not to say that the effort shouldn’t be made. Their contempt for the kuffar in the face of the kuffar’s kindness to them will be what judges them and their beliefs. Stay tuned.
I have read accounts from ex-Muslims of how they converted when they saw the kindness of Christians in comparison with Muslims, so your idea is not without merit. The trouble is: how can one reach the reachable, without making it a lot easier for the unreachable to hurt you?
I’m sorry to say I find this not a very insightful thesis overall. It’s well-known that the ardent adherents of Islam in the West were, ultimately, ‘losers’ who took little joy in life, felt victimized, and dreamed of using Islam’s will to power as the way back to personal and national power. Really, consider the major such figures.
Napoleon. After the 7 Years War that ended in 1763 French hegemony in Europe was finished, and Napoleon used the chaos of the French Revolution to launch a grand dream of launching a secular, modern, French-administered Europe. Islam seems to have an inevitable charm for such individuals. Dymphna really comes very close to encapsulating this [insulting adjective] article. So anyway, as the writer says, Napoleon would never have called off his campaign in Syria, that was central to bring an Islamic conquering horde into Europe as his allies to retake Europe and remove the emerging English-speaking hegemony.
Then Hitler pursued a similar grand dream of conquering Europe and making it into a German-run empire, again with Islam’s conscience-less will-to-total-power as the necessary framework. I do agree this says more about such individuals than about any propensity within the West to embrace Islam.
Then Stalin wanted to end Russia’s role as side-kick to the West, to France for 200 years from Peter the Great till the Bolshevik Revolution. Stalin saw Islam as a natural ally for his dream of burying the West, etc …
And now it shouldn’t surprise us that the sorry-assed victimology of the Secular Western elites see some kind of salvation by fire in an alliance with Islam. It’s people who see themselves as victims, who want revenge, who see compassion and love as weakness, who see a thrill in torture and murder.
What I’ve noticed most in the last 18 months of ISIS is how perverse the Muslim world is in its definition of ‘courage’. They truly seem to believe the measure of courage is how much a person can stomach inflicting horrific torture on others. It’s not seen as a willingness to risk your life to help others. It’s being able to jab a screwdriver into someone’s face, or throw acid, or chop off heads & limbs, or set people on fire. This is not ‘being so desperate due to injustice that extreme acts are necessary’, it’s a wholesale pleasure taken in inflicting pain. I cannot think of a closer definition of insanity and evil.
It should alarm us that anyone in the West can see any sort of deliverance in Islam. There is simply nothing redeeming in Islam, not a particle of it. It is a derangement. There are perhaps enough Europeans who feel victimized and lust after power to somehow bury their own fear and emptiness to result eventually in a Euro-dhimmi self-immolation.
You make several good points but regarding the text above, I cannot agree that it offers only one “thesis”. Rather, it weaves a whole spider’s web of theses. It’s the product of a complex mind. Perhaps we should think of it as a set of lockboxes, each of which contains something valuable for those skilled and knowledgeable enough to extricate the contents.
I doubt there are many who can spring all the locks 🙂
It took me a week and 3 very slow readings of the Raddatz article, to where I can now post intelligibly, but so late that no one but myself will read this.
I hold the central theme of the Raddatz presentation is freedom and individuality versus slavery and the collective identity.
Surprisingly, the Christian concept of the trinity is an embodiment of freedom: you have 3 simultaneous, dissimilar, but equally valid pictures of reality. The father, who is the power of the universe, the son, who is the expression of individual reality and value, and the holy ghost, who is the unformed passion of life. These realities enshrine the freedom of choice of the individual and the existence of the individual uniqueness. A totalitarian religion like Islam has one creator, who constantly creates and has complete power over every aspect of existence at every time. So, there is no law, no consequence, and no individual choice. Reality is simply played out by the will of Allah.
What surprised me more than anything was Raddatz explanation that the pre-Christian Roman philosophers developed a trinitarian view of the universe for just those reasons: to encompass the power of natural law, but also the existence of uniqueness and choice.
Being an atheist, my thoughts went to the Freudian concepts of the id, ego, and super-ego. Roughly speaking, the super-ego is parallel to the concept of the father, the ego is the son, and the id is the holy ghost.
So, Christianity is not necessary for freedom, although the trinity provides a groundwork for it.
This is all very nice, but does the Raddatz article provide some effective tools for resisting Islamization? Or, does it just give me some deep thoughts and knowledge as I wait on my knees in the jumpsuit for the Islamist to saw off my head?
I think it provides some powerful tools. It analyzes quite deeply the difference between the personality oriented to freedom, to ambiguity and differentiation, and the personality attuned to slavery, intolerant of differences and any study of causality.
Most of the countries in the West have representative governments to some degree. Perhaps the most important tool is the ability to evaluate potential leaders. We should examine them not for their positions or platforms on specific issues, but their ability to operate within and to appreciate, an ambiguous universe of valid conflicts and cause-and-effect. Can a leader find an identity which involves more than just submerging him (or her)self into a collective mass of undifferentiated passion?