"He does not thereby become a German" - The Biological Basis of Nazi Genocide

As I said in the comments the other night, one of the claims about the motivation of the Nazis in their genocides couldn't be more obviously wrong.  It was after the guy who lies about me every day, Steve Simels, attributed the Holocaust to the Spanish Inquisition which I have never found mentioned anywhere in the Nazi literature promoting genocide, almost every point in that,  the Nazis pin their condemnation of Jews on biology, not religion.   What I said about his knowledge of the Spanish Inquisition, something shared almost universally by those with a superficial college education in the English language,  is obviously true.  Their conception of it is derived entirely from things like Monty Python skits and ideological blathering from anti-Catholics and atheists, that is the case with what most college credentialed people who know not more than that something called "The Spanish Inquisition" happened believe they know about it, that it was bad and you're supposed to figure it was to blame for anything anyone wants to blame on it, no evidence required as long as you hold to the common college grad line on it.

The common conception gets that one thing right, The Inquisition was bad, it was among the more morally atrocious products of the late medieval period which lingered in many places until well into the modern period.  It is rightfully considered to have been an emblem of a period of great corruption among the rich and powerful, both in the Catholic Church and in secular governments, all of them monarchies.   It wasn't, though, a monolithic entity and by the time it ended, it had been supplanted by forces in European and Western culture which fueled the Age of Genocides which was the 20th century.  Foremost among those was one largely and one exclusively atheist ideological movements, Darwinism* and Marxism.

The Spanish Inquisition, was, by the way, led by the Spanish state at its most infamous phase, when Fredinand and Isabella demanded control of the Inquisition from church authorities and made a bad thing even worse.*  Ironic for the charge made is that the most infamous Grand Inquisitor of that period, Tomas de Torquemada, came from a famous and powerful family of conversos, converts from Judaism to Catholicism.  His uncle was a famous Catholic theologian of the period, Juan de Torquemada, who became a cardinal and the archbishop of several powerful diocese.   He was also powerful in Rome voting in four papal conclaves, something of a kingmaker, only he was more of a pope maker, at least in the election that brought Nicholas V into the papacy.  As I said to Simps, who certainly never thought about it before, the Christian churches, including the Catholics, wanted Jews to join them, whereas the Nazis wanted to kill them, and did, those converted to Christianity and not as well as the atheists and secularists.  For Hitler, for the Nazis, being Jewish like being German was a matter of biology,  Nazism was first to last a biological ideology. 

Let me point that out again, in caps, EVEN IN THE SPANISH INQUISITION, THE VERY EVENT AND INSTRUMENT THAT IS ALLEGED TO BE A FORERUNNER OF THE NAZI GENOCIDE,  CATHOLICS WANTED JEWS TO BE CATHOLICS AND ACCEPTED CONVERTS AS EQUALS, EVEN ELEVATING THEM TO BE "PRINCES OF THE CHURCH" EVEN PUTTING THEM IN CHARGE OF THE SPANISH INQUISITION.   Anyone who doesn't see the problem with the accusation is either a total liar or a complete idiot. [Note: responding to the trolling, I should point out, one can be and people frequently are both.] The two things, the two practices have nothing in common.

We know this because, in fact, the earliest document of Hitler expressing his antisemitism is known, a letter of 1919, in which he says exactly that, expressing his antisemitism in purely biological terms, explicitly rejecting religious terms and, well, that first. This translation is found at the Jewish Virtual Library, I will set the passages relevant to points I want to make about it in the most bilious green that blogger provides with this template.  No doubt, other, more complete analyses of the document are possible, and it would be irresponsible to claim that this is the last word on the topic as the most developed form of Nazi genocidal theory was in its infancy when this was written, the year the Nazi Party came into existence.  The Anti-Defamation League, though, did say that it was written at a point when Hitler wasn't trying to cover up his ultimate intentions, something he did as he was carrying out the plan first drafted in this document.

Dear Herr Gemlich,

The danger posed by Jewry for our people today finds expression in the undeniable aversion of wide sections of our people. The cause of this aversion is not to be found in a clear recognition of the consciously or unconsciously systematic and pernicious effect of the Jews as a totality upon our nation. Rather, it arises mostly from personal contact and from the personal impression which the individual Jew leaves­­ almost always an unfavorable one. For this reason, antisemitism is too easily characterized as a mere emotional phenomenon. And yet this is incorrect. Antisemitism as a political movement may not and cannot be defined by emotional impulses, but by recognition of the facts. The facts are these: First, Jewry is absolutely a race and not a religious association. Even the Jews never designate themselves as Jewish Germans, Jewish Poles, or Jewish Americans but always as German, Polish, or American Jews. Jews have never yet adopted much more than the language of the foreign nations among whom they live. A German who is forced to make use of the French language in France, Italian in Italy, Chinese in China does not thereby become a Frenchman, Italian, or Chinaman. It's the same with the Jew who lives among us and is forced to make use of the German language. He does not thereby become a German. Neither does the Mosaic faith, so important for the survival of this race, settle the question of whether someone is a Jew or non­Jew. There is scarcely a race whose members belong exclusively to just one definite religion.

Through thousands of years of the closest kind of inbreeding, Jews in general have maintained their race and their peculiarities far more distinctly than many of the peoples among whom they have lived. And thus comes the fact that there lives amongst us a non­ German, alien race which neither wishes nor is able to sacrifice its racial character or to deny its feeling, thinking, and striving. Nevertheless, it possesses all the political rights we do. If the ethos of the Jews is revealed in the purely material realm, it is even clearer in their thinking and striving. Their dance around the golden calf is becoming a merciless struggle for all those possessions we prize most highly on earth.

This reminds me of nothing so much as the current atheist practice of misrepresenting passages in the Bible, completely turning the meaning of the story to an atheist and putrid purpose, a tactic obviously shared with Hitler.  The entire point of the story of the golden calf is that in order to be a people, it was necessary for them to worship God who is not a material object like anything in the physical universe, a part of the universe.   It is especially dishonest  of Hitler to fault the very people who broke out of the worship of material things for what he, himself, promoted.

And, as I said, for Hitler the entire thing was a matter or biology, of material, biological inheritance.   "He does not thereby become a German." Whereas no Catholic would doubt that St. Edith Stein was a Catholic before she was murdered by the Nazis as a Jew.  There were a lot of Catholics and other Christians murdered by the Nazis because of their Jewish heritage, as well as Catholics and other Christians murdered for their religion, some of them murdered for their nationality as Poles, in the mass shootings by the Einsaztgruppen in Poland, during the invasion in September 1939, for example.

For Hitler, who obviously bought the biological determinism of Darwinism, along with most of the science establishment of the time, it was all a matter of the "material realm," people being scientifically transformed into objects for use or disposal, their quality, value, being determined by their biological inheritance, their health or mental capacity, the undesireable to be culled from the herd, a concept which was introduced by Darwin, himself, and which is repeated over and over again in the literature of Darwinism up to and during the Nazi period and after.   Hitler's talk of spirituality was a perversion of the word, an emotional appeal that is at odds with his (emotional) citation of the practice of reason, an appeal to the "enlightenment" ethos.

The value of the individual is no longer decided by his character or by the significance of his achievements for the totality but exclusively by the size of his fortune, by his money.

The loftiness of a nation is no longer to be measured by the sum of its moral and spiritual powers, but rather by the wealth of its material possessions.

That pile of bull shit is so obvious it hardly seems worth pointing out that "the loftiness of a nation" was always measured by the sum of its wealth and material possessions.  The entire body of the Jewish-Christian scriptures is a warning of the calamity that comes with that practice, it is directly in opposition to it, which is exactly why the Nazis, as all atheist-materialist ideologies hate it so much.  They hate it because the tradition is in opposition to materialism, vulgar and going under the guise of intellectualism.  The same reason that in the classical period, one of the Nazis favorite Romans, Tacitus, hated Judaism and other Roman aristocrats hated Christianity.

The rest of this piece of shit is given only to prove my points, it is as banal as it is disgusting.

This thinking and striving after money and power, and the feelings that go along with it, serve the purposes of the Jew who is unscrupulous in the choice of methods and pitiless in their employment. In autocratically ruled states he whines for the favor of "His Majesty" and misuses it like a leech fastened upon the nations. In democracies he vies for the favor of the masses, cringes before the "majesty of the people," and recognizes only the majesty of money.

He destroys the character of princes with byzantine flattery, national pride (the strength of a people), with ridicule and shameless breeding to depravity. His method of battle is that public opinion which is never expressed in the press but which is nonetheless managed and falsified by it. His power is the power of money, which multiplies in his hands effortlessly and endlessly through interest, and which forces peoples under the most dangerous of yokes. Its golden glitter, so attractive in the beginning, conceals the ultimately tragic consequences. Everything men strive after as a higher goal, be it religion, socialism, democracy, is to the Jew only means to an end, the way to satisfy his lust for gold and domination.

In his effects and consequences he is like a racial tuberculosis of the nations.

The deduction from all this is the following: an antisemitism based on purely emotional grounds will find its ultimate expression in the form of the pogrom. An antisemitism based on reason, however, must lead to systematic legal combating and elimination of the privileges of the Jews, that which distinguishes the Jews from the other aliens who live among us (an Aliens Law). The ultimate objective [of such legislation] must, however, be the irrevocable removal of the Jews in general.

If he'd put this in terms of contemporary evo-psy, he could probably have gotten it published in a journal and a book published by a major publisher and gotten it cited in a new-atheist screed.  I've already mentioned John Hartung in other posts.** As an aside, Hartung's blog is called "Struggle for Existence".  I will also note, in passing, that one of Hartung's antisemitic scientific publications is the cited basis of one of Richard Darwkins' claims about the Jewish People which would fit right into this document.***

This is a rough, first draft for a plan of rational, scientific, industrialized murder.

For both these ends a government of national strength, not of national weakness, is necessary.

The Republic in Germany owes its birth not to the uniform national will of our people but the sly exploitation of a series of circumstances which found general expression in a deep, universal dissatisfaction. These circumstances however were independent of the form of the state and are still operative today. Indeed, more so now than before. Thus, a great portion of our people recognizes that a changed state ­form cannot in itself change our situation. For that it will take a rebirth of the moral and spiritual powers of the nation.

And this rebirth cannot be initiated by a state leadership of irresponsible majorities, influenced by certain party dogmas, an irresponsible press, or internationalist phrases and slogans. [It requires] instead the ruthless installation of nationally minded leadership personalities with an inner sense of responsibility.

But these facts deny to the Republic the essential inner support of the nation's spiritual forces. And thus today's state leaders are compelled to seek support among those who draw the exclusive benefits of the new formation of German conditions, and who for this reason were the driving force behind the revolution ­­the Jews. Even though (as various statements of the leading personalities reveal) today's leaders fully realized the danger of Jewry, they (seeking their own advantage) accepted the readily proffered support of the Jews and also returned the favor. And this pay­off consisted not only in every possible favoring of Jewry, but above all in the hindrance of the struggle of the betrayed people against its defrauders, that is in the repression of the antisemitic movement.

Sounds like something the ACLU would endorse being said "on principle" the daffiest, most irresponsible and preening of "principles" ever articulated by a degenerate intelligentsia after the Century of Genocides.

Respectfully,

Adolf Hitler

Read it and weep, Stupy, no Christianity, no mention of the Spanish Inquisition, something you only know from some Monty Python skits and whatever you heard your fellow ignoramuses gassing on about.  As I pointed out last week, in the years after this, after the Beer Hall Putsch when Hitler got sent to prison where he was provided with the latest literature of Darwinian biology, he put it all together in Mein Kampf, a book which the Nazis intended would replace The Bible in their interim heresy of "Positive Christianity" in which the plan was to eventually  drop any pretense of Christianity for a purely Nazi, atheist creed, explicitly replacing the The Bible with Mein Kampf, the Cross with swastikas, morality with pseudo-scientific assertions of Aryan superiority eugenic biology and the kind of constant "struggle for life" which Darwin said was the engine of biological progress and Hitler in place of the God of Abraham, Issac, Jacob, Moses, the Prophets and Christianity.

* In the earliest periods, the Inquisition had no authority to persecute Jews but was inaugurated to oppose heresy within Christianity.  It could and did target some converts suspected of practicing other religions, including Judaism.  It was when secular leaders got control of it that the worst of the anti-Semitic part of the Inquisition started, no doubt not discouraged by the fact that one of the punishments that it could inflict was the confiscation of property, something which was the motivation of some if not most of the expulsions of Jews from German and English realms.  But it was hardly a uniform manifestation over the centuries it existed, in fact, unlike the Nazi courts - when those were even used - most of the people accused by the Inquisition got of relatively lightly or were acquitted, whereas the Nazis uniformly killed people, if not immediately, then as they worked people to death or used them in criminal experiments for science.

* Given that Darwinism, natural selection, immediately generated

- the assertion, by scientists that racial, ethnic and class inequality were not only natural, a product of biology but was the engine of biological progress,

-  the assertion  that efforts in giving those in need the necessities of life upset natural selection, their death through starvation, exposure, disease, AND VIOLENT CONFLICT, THE "STRUGGLE FOR LIFE" WHICH DARWIN, IN HIS VERY TITLE TO THE FIRST EDITION OF ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES, INTRODUCED INTO HIS THEORY.

- proposals for eliminating support to those deemed of lesser fitness, on the basis of class and identity within populations, leading to an increased death rate of those   (as Karl Pearson named one of his major collection of Darwinian essays)

-  claims of the enormous benefit of not only the deaths and elimination of those marked as "unfit" through negligence and, from the very start of Darwinism, through government policy and action, including, from the beginning, the use of killing as well as things like forced sterilization, and from the first decade and directly from the major figures of Darwinism, Charles Darwin, Thomas Huxley, Ernst Haeckel, etc. of NOT ONLY THE BENEFIT BUT THE NECESSITY OF GENOCIDE, and that genocide would be beneficial for those who did the killing, who won Darwin's "Favored Races In The Struggle for Life."

- that the cultural change in Europe brought by Darwinism led to biological advocacy for genocide, such as Rudolph Hess's claim that "National Socialism is nothing but appllied biology" as well as the active eugenics that became law in the United States Canada and in other advanced, scientific socieities, a direct inspiration to fascists and Nazis,

I'm not going to continue to practice the massive lie of post-war college credentialed, received ideology based in useful ignorance  that eugenics is somehow separate from Darwinism.

You can't even honestly separate the advocacy of genocide from Darwinism, it was there from the start, finding its inspiration on the very title page of the first edition of On the Origin of Species, something confirmed in the further elucidation of the theory, from Darwin, Galton, Haeckle.  And, for the purpose of this footnote,  Thomas Huxley (see his infamous essay, Emancipation Black And White, from five years after the publication of Origin of Species), the very person who gave the word "Darwinism" its modern meaning, applying a word which had, before 1860 referred to the quite different evolutionary theory of Darwin and Galton's common grandfather, Erasmus Darwin but with the publication and adoption of On the Origin of Species and natural selection as the central ideology of evolutionary biology, from then on referred to natural selection.  His Darwinism was enough to lead him to declare

The doctrine of equal natural rights may be an illogical delusion; emancipation may convert the slave from a well-fed animal into a pauperised man; mankind may even have to do without cotton-shirts; but all these evils must be faced if the moral law, that no human being can arbitrarily dominate over another without grievous damage to his own nature, be, as many think, as readily demonstrable by experiment as any physical truth. If this be true, no slavery can be abolished without a double emancipation, and the master will benefit by freedom more than the freed-man.

That is said after Huxley described what he believed was a scientifically inevitable result of Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation and the subsequent adoption of emancipation in the United States.

The question is settled; but even those who are most thoroughly convinced that the doom is just, must see good grounds for repudiating half the arguments which have been employed by the winning side; and for doubting whether its ultimate results will embody the hopes of the victors, though they may more than realise the fears of the vanquished. It may be quite true that some negroes are better than some white men; but no rational man, cognisant of the facts, believes that the average negro is the equal, still  less the superior, of the average white man. And, if this be true, it is simply incredible that, when all his disabilities are removed, and our prognathous relative has a fair field and no favour, as well as no oppressor, he will be able to compete successfully with his bigger-brained and smaller-jawed rival, in a contest which is to be carried on by thoughts and not by bites. The highest places in the hierarchy of civilisation will assuredly not be within the reach of our dusky cousins, though it is by no means necessary that they should be restricted to the lowest.

Thomas Huxley was writing to an audience he had to have known was, in 1865, largely inspired by the end of slavery in the United States, though his appeal was to those who could be encouraged to believe that racial and, though I'm not addressing it here, today, gender inequality was scientifically validated.  His fellow Darwinists, beginning with his master, Charles Darwin, weren't so mealy mouthed about their claims as to what that imaginary "struggle for life" would mean, the genocide of those considered inferior by them and the benefit to those  having done the killing and winning that struggle for life.  And all of the ones I've read considered Northern Europeans, White People, Aryans, as the inevitable winners in that struggle for life.   Of course, a "struggle for life" is a death struggle in which people actually have to die.  Though, in Darwin's case, taking a claim from W. R. Greg, the Irish population, though having been repeatedly and brutally culled through famine, even within his lifetime, remained biologically inferior to the Brits.  In all applications of natural selection in the human species, the scientific thinker will inevitably include his own group as superior and whatever group he despises as inferior.

**  Not everyone in the field is as critical as Tooby, however. A review praising [Kevin] MacDonald's first book appeared in the journal Ethology and Sociobiology four years ago (the publication was in the process of being taken over by HBES at the time); the author, John Hartung, a professor at the State University of New York and a former secretary of HBES, concluded that the Holocaust, "the most enormous act of reactive racism ever perpetrated," had been misrepresented as an unjustified evil so as to cow non-Jews into looking the other way while Jews "purloin" land in Israel. According to Lingua Franca, which covered the incident, the only public reaction to Hartung's review was a "tepid" letter by the journal's editor saying he didn't realize that it could be offensive, and an outright defense of Hartung by HBES's then-president, Dick Alexander. As for MacDonald, the author of the book that inspired these remarks, there was little visible effort at the time to refute him or to challenge the appropriateness of having him serve in so many key positions.


*** Christians seldom realize that much of the moral consideration for others which is apparently promoted by both the Old and New Testaments was originally intended to apply only to a narrowly defined in-group. ‘Love they neighbour’ didn’t mean what we now think it means. It meant only ‘Love another Jew.’ The point is devastatingly made by the American physician and evolutionary anthropologist John Hartung. He has written a remarkable paper on the evolution and biblical history of in-group morality, laying stress, too, on the flip side – out-group hostility.

Richard Dawkins:  The God Delusion

As a number of reviewers pointed out, if Hartung or Dawkins had bothered to read the very book of the Bible they base their antisemtic claims on, they would see that there were commandments that required that aliens living among the Children of Israel be treated as equals, with equal rights and that after a number of years, they should be considered as members of the assembly.  In short, it is an ideological lie of the same kind which this post addresses on several sides.