What's Wrong With Cosmopolitanism?

By Greg Johnson

John William Waterhouse, Diogenes, 1882, detail

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What’s wrong with cosmopolitanism?

The short answer is: nothing, if cosmopolitanism is properly understood. But a much longer answer is necessary, of course, because cosmopolitanism is almost never properly understood.

Cosmopolitanism means that the whole world (cosmos) is one’s hometown (polis), i.e., that one is a citizen of the world. The term originates with Diogenes of Sinope, the founder of Cynicism. When asked about his hometown, Diogenes did not claim to be a citizen of Sinope but a citizen of the world (kosmopolitês). Diogenes’ answer follows from the basic principle of Cynicism, which is to reject living according to socialconventions, which are many, varying from time to time and place to place, and to live one’s life according to nature, which is unchanging and common to all. (The Cynics were cynical only about convention. Toward nature, they were reverent.)

Cosmopolitanism presents itself as a statement of fact—“the cosmos is my polis”—but it is actually just a statement of an aspiration. Nobody is really at home in the whole universe. Indeed, we are seldom at home in the next town or country over. To be at home is to be part of the many particular human worlds that we call cities, regions, cultures, and nations. To be at home somewhere means that the place is familiar to you and that you can understand the people around you. Home is a familiar, intelligible, comfy place.

Jean-Léon Gérôme, Diogenes, 1860

There are many reasons to leave one’s place of birth: war, natural disasters, scarcity, opportunity, adventure, etc. But in such cases, people merely trade one particular home for another. They pull up roots and put them down somewhere else. They work to familiarize themselves with their new home and to establish mutual understanding with their new neighbors. They remain earthlings.

The cosmopolitan gesture is different. It is not a search for a new place to put down roots. It is an aspiration to deracination, to rootlessness. It is an attempt to sever one’s connection with one’s actual home and step into a bigger world—the biggest possible world—the whole world. It expresses a desire to kick free of the Earth and float through the cosmos. Cosmopolitans are not earthlings but space cadets.

But nobody is at home everywhere. Nobody is familiar with the whole world. Nobody is comfortable everywhere. Nobody can understand all the people of the world, or be understood by them. Thus there are no actual citizens of the world. Thus cosmopolitanism is merely an aspiration. A cosmopolitan is just an alienated or disgruntled citizen of somewhere, a misfit who thinks that the misfits of the world constitute a global community which he wishes to join.

   

Cosmopolitans say they represent the common interests of the global community. But in fact, they constitute a community of their own, a community that has only one thing in common: alienation from and loathing for the real communities its members aspire to leave behind. And yet these cosmopolitans also wish to rule over the rest of us. But we have to ask: why is it in our interest to be ruled by people who despise us? Shouldn’t we want leaders who feel loyalty and love for us instead? Which sort of leadership is more likely to be corrupt and tyrannical? Which is more likely to produce good government?

If the citizen of the world is a bogus notion, what makes the idea of cosmopolitanism even conceivable?

First, there is the existence of a common objective world. Opinions are many, but reality is one. Cultures and worldviews are many, but reality is one. And if reality is one, then there is one truth about reality as well. And if there is one truth, then a multiplicity of opinions and worldviews simply has no warrant, no ground, no reason to be taken seriously. The cosmopolitan aspires to be a citizen of the sunlit objective world, not the many different caves of collective opinions.

Second, there is the existence of reason, which makes it possible to discover and communicate objective truths about objective reality. The various academic disciplines, for example, are genuine cosmopolitan communities, in which people who are rooted in many languages and cultures create a common language and forums of communication in order to cooperatively investigate various realms of objective reality. Why can’t all of society be like academia?

Third, meritocratic enterprises like businesses, sports terms, and orchestras compete for the best talent regardless of race or national origin, so why not structure all of society that way?

Fourth, the market economy, unless trumped by national interests, is inherently global and globalizing. If there is one global market, there will be one global price for each specific product—including types of labor—regardless of language, culture, and nationality.

Fifth, what grants cosmopolitanism a moral and political imperative is the existence of genuine global interests, a global common good that trumps more particular national interests. Global collective interests include protecting the planetary ecosystem from destruction by mankind, protecting the planet from collisions with comets and asteroids, preserving human biological and cultural diversity, and maintaining peaceful relations among nations and tribes. Securing these goods could license nations standing for the global community to coerce free-riders or violators to bring them into alignment with the welfare of the world.

Sixth, nobody would entertain the ambition of being a cosmopolitan without first feeling alienated from the polis to which he actually belongs.

Finally, cosmopolitanism is indirectly promoted by individualism. Global collective interests may crush more particular collectives from above, but individualism dissolves them from below. Individualism upholds the autonomous individual as the moral ideal, denigrating collective identities and unchosen obligations to family or fatherland. The radical individualist is, therefore, rootless, and although he has no special feeling of attachment or obligation to any community, even a global one, he is a de facto cosmopolitan, because political power has to reside somewhere, and once all more particular attachments have been severed, the buck stops with global government.

There are two senses in which ethnonationalism, as I define it, is a cosmopolitan position.

First, I believe that it is meaningful to speak of a global common good, which trumps all more particular collective or individual interests.

Second, I believe that maintaining cultural diversity and peace between different peoples is best served by the principle of ethnonationalism, meaning the creation of sovereign homelands for all peoples who aspire to them. By contrast, all forms of multiculturalism, including imperialism, create easily avoidable forms of ethnic homogenization and ethnic conflict by forcing different peoples to share the same territory and system of government. Thus the “one world” government advocated by some cosmopolitans would maximize rather than minimize ethnic homogenization and ethnic conflict, both of which are contrary to the common good of the world. Thus ethnonationalism serves the legitimate aims of cosmopolitanism better than global government would.

From an ethnonationalist point of view, what’s wrong with most of what passes for cosmopolitanism today?

First, many of the global interests to which we are supposed to sacrifice national and individual interests are simply bogus. For instance, the prevalent cosmopolitan view is basically global liberalism: all human beings have “rights” simply in virtue of being human; these rights trump all considerations of identity, such as race, culture, religion, and nationality; and these rights must be enforced equally and impartially across the globe. This means, at minimum, the erasure of borders and national sovereignty. Moreover, Left-liberal cosmopolitans believe that we have rights to equal living conditions. This means global welfare.

Of course, since people are not all equal, this sort of liberal cosmopolitanism leads to terrible injustices. Economic globalization means that Third World farmers will lose their markets to First World agribusinesses, while First World factory workers lose their jobs to Third World sweatshops. Open borders mean a one-way flow of migrants and refugees from the Third World to the First World. Global welfare means a one-way flow of wealth from the First World to the Third World. Such policies can only destroy advanced nations but do nothing to uplift the backwards ones. Indeed, because the races are not equal, we can only equalize downward, by destroying advanced white and Asian civilizations.

Second, many cosmopolitan proposals to serve genuine global interests are ineffectual and even harmful. For instance, regardless of whether man-made global warming is real or not, arrangements like the Kyoto Protocol are no solution. It makes no sense for advanced nations to cripple their economies while developing nations, which contain the vast bulk of the global population, are left free to try to “catch up.”

The only way to avoid a whole host of ecological catastrophes and Malthusian traps is dramatic technological innovation, particularly in terms of energy. But not all nations are equally capable of contributing to such goals. Only the First World has the potential to save the planet, whereas unrestrained Third World growth will inevitably destroy it. Thus a far more sensible solution would be for the developed world to impose growth limits on the rest of the planet while devoting a significant percentage of First World GDP to technological research and development projects, the equivalent of dozens of Manhattan Projects and NASAs.

Third, cosmopolitanism is premised on a false view of human reason. Cosmopolitans like the Stoics and Kant argue that if all men are rational animals, then we can understand one another. And if we can understand each other, we can deliberate with one another about the best way to live together, which allows us to enjoy a measure of civic equality in a common political community. Thus if all men possess reason, all men can be part of the same cosmopolitan political order.

The fact that individuals and groups are not equal in their reasoning powers is not an impediment to this kind of cosmopolitan community. It just means that the cosmopolitan community will have to be hierarchical. With greater inequality comes greater hierarchy. But hierarchy can be intensified to the point that some people are in effect no longer part of the political community, meaning that they have no power to participate in government, no power to rule themselves. They are simply ruled over. Obvious examples include children, the mentally retarded, and the insane. But this category also includes foreigners with whom we cannot communicate. Where persuasion is impossible, social order can only be maintained by force.

This implies that people who cannot understand or agree with one another at all cannot really participate in the same political system. Thus they must either go their separate ways or accept one group simply ruling over the others. Such domination can be entirely benevolent, but it precludes any form of political participation on the part of the ruled.

The problem with basing cosmopolitanism on human reason is that objective reality is one, but human reason is many, simply because we think and communicate with language, and there are many different languages. If we share a common language, we can communicate and deliberate about how to live together in the same political system. But we cannot deliberate with people who cannot understand us. Thus sharing a common language is one of the necessary conditions for a political community.

The plurality of languages does not, of course, make cross-cultural understanding impossible. But it does make it very difficult and achievable only by a tiny, polyglot minority. This means that the more polyglot a society is, the less capable the populace is of self-government and the smaller the elite is that runs it. This means that a global government would be maximally elitist and undemocratic.

The plurality of languages has always stood as a stumbling block for cosmopolitan schemes. This is why cosmopolitans have advocated the creation of artificial languages to serve as universal means of communication. Esperanto is the most famous of these languages, but it is just one among hundreds. Esperanto, however, is nobody’s mother tongue. Any artificial language is learned as a second language, and each speaker understands it in terms of his primary natural language. Inevitably, he speaks Esperanto with a French or Spanish or Russian accent. Even mathematics depends for its meaning on the plurality of natural languages, and most matters cannot be expressed in mathematical terms in any case.

The glib inference that all men belong to a common community based on being “rational animals” has been overthrown by such thinkers as Martin Heidegger, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Michael Polanyi, Michael Oakeshott, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and Gilbert Ryle, to name but a few. All of these thinkers argue that reason is rooted in language and other social practices, which are forms of practical knowledge, insofar as they help us disclose and cope with reality. Practical knowledge, moreover, cannot be meaningfully articulated as sets of universal rules. We know much more than we can say.

If practical knowledge cannot be articulated and communicated in the form of universal rules, how is it passed on? We acquire it through belonging to a particular community, in which each new generation imitates its elders and refines its performances under their guidance. This process can be helped along by articulated rules of thumb. But they are merely rough abridgements of practical knowledge, not a substitute for it.

This means that reason is rooted in particular ethnic identities. Ethnic identity is one of the conditions that make knowledge possible. And there are many different ethnic identities. Being a “rational animal” does not, therefore, make us citizens of a single global community. Again, this does not mean that we cannot arrive at cross-cultural understanding. But, as I have already indicated, it is a rare achievement of elites.

The classical and modern conception of reason also presupposes a dualism between mind and body. Mind-body dualism, however, is not a tenable position. Within the phenomenological tradition, Maurice Merleau-Ponty has deconstructed mind-body dualism, showing that consciousness is corporeal, not a disembodied activity only accidentally associated with a physical body. But bodies are divided into biologically distinct races. Which implies that different races reason and relate to the world in different ways.

Phenomenologists simply evade this implication, but it is amply confirmed by empirical science, which demonstrates not just that races differ in terms of simple intelligence, but in terms of their relationships to time, causality, moral responsibility, empathy, and a host of other socially and politically relevant traits.[1] Reason, therefore, is not just culturally but racially differentiated. And unlike the cultural factors that differentiate reason, biological differences cannot be bridged by cross-cultural understanding.

Fourth and finally, cosmopolitanism is premised on a false view of human nature and thus on a delusional and inauthentic relationship to who we really are.

Human beings are biologically differentiated into races and sub-races. We are culturally, linguistically, and politically differentiated into tribes and nations. We have natural, normal, and healthy partialities for kin over strangers, our tribe over foreigners, our race over other races, etc. This natural preference for one’s own was long understood as the basis of political life. Plato divided the human soul into three parts: reason, spiritedness (thumos), and desire. For Plato, both reason and desire were universalizing, since he regarded human reason and human desires as the same for all peoples. Thumos can also attach itself to universal goods, but first and foremost it is love of one’s own, an attachment to particulars, and a willingness to fight for them.

Thumos, therefore, is the foundation of politics. For, as Carl Schmitt argued, the political is inherently about us and them. Thus the denial of thumos is the foundation of all individualist and universalist ideologies, global government schemes, and notions that society can be structured as a global marketplace, sports team, or academic community. But even the cosmopolitans who wish to abolish war and enmity simply reinstitute it hypocritically and on the sly by declaring war those of us who love our own. Ultimately, though, they are at war with human nature itself.

Even reason itself—our outlook on the wider world—is opened and structured by our racial and cultural specificity. This is true even for glib rationalists, radical individualists, and cosmopolitan lovers of “humanity,” which is merely an abstraction.

Thus cosmopolitans who sneer at patriotism and other “petty” attachments are deluded about and alienated from who they really are.

It should be noted, however, that not all advocates of cosmopolitanism are rootless, delusional, and inauthentic. Diaspora peoples and market dominant minorities—such as Jews, for instance—preach cosmopolitanism in order to make other groups blind to their specific identities and interests and maximally open to penetration, upward mobility, and domination by outsiders. But such cosmopolitans remain rooted in their own tribal identities and interests, and they do not intend to dissolve themselves in the cosmopolitan melting pot.

Both the delusional and deceptive types of cosmopolitans are, however, phonies and fakes.

There is no such thing as global, cosmopolitan man. But there are global, cosmopolitan interests. So how do we secure them? The welfare of the world is real, and it is too important to be entrusted to the delusional, alienated, and inauthentic—or to parasite tribes and rootless elitists who preach cosmopolitanism but practice ruthless selfishness. What kind of men, therefore, can be tasked with minding the welfare of the world?

First and foremost, they must be authentic, meaning that they must own up to their racial and cultural specificity. They must also demonstrate normal moral sentiments by proving their loyalties and discharging their obligations to the more particular groups to which they belong. But, by the same token, they must also demonstrate a genuinely broadened moral outlook and a sincere attachment to the welfare of the world, to which more particular interests must be sometimes subordinated. Such nested identities and concentric circles of attachment are, however, perfectly natural and normal, although the widest cosmopolitan sense of identity and obligation is naturally the rarest and most difficult to achieve.

In his Ernst and Falk, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing argued that the proper duty of the head of a household is to care for his family. If, therefore, he looks out for the welfare of other families, he is going above and beyond his specific duty. The duty of a religious leader is to care for his flock. If, therefore, he concerns himself with the followers of another religion, he is going above and beyond his specific duty. The proper duty of a citizen or a statesman is to look out for the welfare of his society. Thus someone who concerns himself with the welfare of the world is going above and beyond his duty.

But the welfare of the world is the most serious business of all. Therefore, we cannot simply leave it to hobbyists who, in their spare time, go above and beyond their specific duties. We need someone to make caring for the welfare of the world his proper duty. Lessing argues that this is the duty of the Freemason. Lessing makes it clear, however, that he is not speaking of Freemasonry as it actually existed. Instead, he is arguing that something like Freemasonry needs to be invented. These sorts of Freemasons, however, are not rootless cosmopolitans. They recognize that political diversity is inevitable and world government is impossible. Thus, to care for the welfare of the world, they form an international fraternity that helps the different nations of the world cooperate to serve the global common good.

Such institutions for pursuing global interests in the absence of a world-state actually exist. Examples include non-sovereign intergovernmental organizations like the United Nations and the European Union; military and political alliances like NATO; summit meetings of the leaders of major powers, like the Group of Eight; and treaties like the Kyoto Protocol. All of these mechanisms cultivate contacts between the leadership strata of different nation-states and coordinate governmental actions to address global issues. Of course from an ethnonationalist point of view, all of these examples have serious problems. But they are nevertheless models for pursuing legitimate global interests by sovereign nation-states.

The abiding problem of all such organizations is preventing them from falling into the hands of a merely selfish cosmopolitan elite. This risk can be lowered but not eliminated by greater realism about the racial and cultural differentiation of reason and human nature in general. Ultimately, though, the greater risk will always be to ignore the welfare of the world than to try to secure it.

 

Note

1. Michael Levin’s Why Race Matters: Race Differences and What They Mean (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 1997) is the best summary of scientific literature on biologically based racial differences and why they matter.

The Free Market & Immigration: Two Thought Experiments

By Ted Sallis

German translation here

Free market proponents of open borders and mass immigration must be happy about this story. As we know, the free marketers tell us that nations with low birthrates require alien immigration because of “labor shortages” (yet Spain and the USA have high unemployment coupled to large-scale immigration), or the need for “greater productivity and economic growth” (yet many immigrants are low-skilled and on welfare and even when high-skilled often tend to be net consumers of services), or the need for “younger workers to pay for the social services for aging/retired natives” (as if, when they amass sufficient political power, young non-Whites will cheerfully pay for the care of old White folks, who they hate).

Then one can also question whether opposition to immigration is really irrational from an economic standpoint — the natives’ economic standpoint — when virtually all of the benefits (if any exist) of “economic growth” accrue to the immigrants (and possibly to wealthy natives) themselves rather than to the general native population. These are, of course, all economic arguments.

We, on the other hand, argue that there are more important things than economics — such as demographic displacement, race survival, genetic interests, and culture. But let’s get back to some basics of the general free market argument and consider two simple thought experiments.

1. The supporters of the free market assert that it is the most rational and efficient approach for allocating resources, managing the economy, and increasing standards of living. We are told that supply and demand and other free market mechanisms promote rational decision-making and incentivize behaviors that lead to optimized outcomes for society. Thus, they look at the global economy and say if there is a labor shortage in “X” and a labor surplus in “Y” then the free market dictates that the most effective solution to the problem is a movement of labor from “Y” to “X.” That is how the labor shortage of “X” — possibly due to a low birthrate — is solved.

Why does the solution need to be global? What happens if a country with a low birthrate will not, or can not, make up for the “labor shortage” with immigrants? (Note: Japan may be a real-life experimental model for this scenario, if they maintain their hard line against immigration, which seems doubtful over time). The reasons for “no immigration” need not concern us, let us assume, for the sake of this model system, that mass immigration is not possible or desirable. What happens then?

If the free market is so very efficient in finding the correct solutions for societal problems and resource allocation, shouldn’t it work in a national context? Why can’t the free market solve a purely internal problem of low birthrates and labor shortages? Why the hypocrisy in asserting the magical properties of the free market on a global level but its hopelessness on a national level? Shouldn’t the free market work, locally and nationally, to lead to policy choices and resource allocation to incentivize pro-natalist policies, to increase the native birthrate? How about increasing productivity through better education and, above all else, enhanced automation? If the free market really is a “miracle worker” then it should lead to creative solutions to national problems that do not depend on temporary fixes involving shifting problems such as overpopulation/poverty from one nation to another. The vaunted free market should incentivize either pro-natalism or birth control whenever and wherever each is needed.

Thus, in our thought experiment: what would happen to a low-birthrate nation in the absence of immigration? Will the population really dwindle down to zero? Will the economy collapse? Will everyone just sit around passively and let the nation disappear from the face of the Earth? Indeed, one can argue that without the immigration safety valve, nations would be forced to develop long-term solutions to their societal problems, instead of increasing these problems and postponing their solution to the next generation. If the free market really worked, it would be independent of scale, and would work for one nation and not just on a global level.

2. One can consider the opposite thought experiment. Instead of restricting the free market from global to national, one can expand it from global to inter-stellar. Assume that the Earth is contacted by an alien species, a bizarre species quite different from humans. These aliens are very fast-breeding and have over-populated their own planet. Earth’s environment is suitable for them. Further, they are highly intelligent and productive — indeed, superior to humans as inventors and workers.

These aliens want to ship their surplus population to the Earth, where they will join the economy, work hard, invent, create businesses, and sharply increase economic growth. Of course, these fast breeders will soon begin to fill up the Earth with their numbers, crowding out native humans, and, of course, their home world population will also be increasing, and clamoring to come to Earth as well. But . . . the Earth’s economy will be growing! Isn’t that all that matters? If concerns about demographic displacement, culture, etc. are all “irrational” then the free marketers should have no problem with a scenario that includes the gradual displacement and replacement of humans by aliens, all in the name of global economic growth for the Earth. Will they make this argument? If so, they expose themselves as traitors to humanity. If not, then why does the “there are after all, more important things than economic growth” argument not apply to the internal Earth situation? Maybe White folks don’t want to be displaced and replaced in their own countries by alien immigrants?

Why Hitler Let The British Escape At Dunkirk

B. H. Liddell Hart

Editor’s Note:

B. H. Liddell Hart was a highly-acclaimed English soldier, military historian, and military theorist, and a prolific author. The following text is excerpted from his book The Other Side of the Hill: Germany’s Generals, their Rise and Fall, with their own Account of Military Events 1939–1945 (London: Cassell, 1948), chapter 10, “How Hitler Beat France—and Saved England,” pp. 139–43. The title is editorial.—Greg Johnson 

Hitler’s Halt Order

On wheeling north, Guderian’s Panzer Corps headed for Calais while Reinhardt’s swept west of Arras towards St. Omer and Dunkirk. On the 22nd, Boulogne was isolated by Guderian’s advance, and next day Calais. That same day Reinhardt reached the Aire-St Omer Canal, less than twenty miles from Dunkirk — the only escape port left to the B.E.F. [British Expeditionary Force]. The German armoured forces were much nearer to it than the bulk of the B.E.F.

“At that moment,” Rundstedt told me, “a sudden telephone call came from Colonel von Grieffenberg at O.K.H. [German headquarters], saying that Kleist’s forces were to halt on the line of the canal. It was the Fuhrer’s direct order—and contrary to General Halder’s view. I questioned it in a message of protest, but received a curt telegram in reply, saying: ‘The armoured divisions are to remain at medium artillery range from Dunkirk’ (a distance of eight or nine miles). ‘Permission is only granted for reconnaissance and protective movements’.”

Kleist said that when he got the order it seemed to make no sense to him. “I decided to ignore it, and to push on across the Canal. My armoured cars actually entered Hazebrouck, and cut across the British lines of retreat. I heard later that the British Commander-in-Chief, Lord Gort, had been in Hazebrouck at the time. But then came a more emphatic order that I was to withdraw behind the canal. My tanks were kept halted there for three days.”

Thoma, who was chief of the tank side of the General Staff, told me that he was right up forward with the leading tanks, near Bergues, where he could look into the town of Dunkirk itself. He sent back wireless messages direct to O.K.H., begging for permission to let the tanks push on. But his appeal had no effect. Referring to Hitler’s attitude, he bitingly remarked: “You can never talk to a fool. Hitler spoilt the chance of victory ”

Meanwhile the British forces streamed back towards Dunkirk, and cemented a defensive position to cover their re-embarkation. The German tank commanders had to sit and watch the British slipping away under their very nose.

“After three days the ban was lifted,” Kleist said, “and the advance was resumed—against stiffening opposition. It had just begun to make headway when it was interrupted by a fresh order from Hitler—that my forces were to be withdrawn, and sent southward for the attack on the line that the remainder of the French Army had improvised along the Somme. It was left to the infantry forces which had come down from Belgium to complete the occupation of Dunkirk—after the British had gone.”

Hitler’s Reasons

A few days later Kleist met Hitler on the airfield at Cambrai, and ventured to remark that a great opportunity had been lost of reaching Dunkirk before the British escaped. Hitler replied, ”That may be so. But I did not want to send the tanks into the Flanders marshes—and the British won’t come back in this war.”

To others Hitler gave a somewhat different excuse—that so many of the tanks had fallen out from mechanical breakdowns that he wanted to build up his strength and reconnoitre the position before pushing on. He also explained that he wanted to be sure of having sufficient tanks in hand for the subsequent offensive against the rest of the French Army.

I found that most of the generals, including Kleist, had accepted these explanations with little question, though they were sore about the decision that had deprived them of complete victory. They felt that Hitler’s anxiety about the marshy ground was exaggerated, and were convinced that they could have easily avoided it. They knew that lots of fresh tanks had been arriving daily to replace wastage. Nevertheless, Hitler’s decision was assumed to be purely an error of judgment or excess of caution.

But certain members of Rundstedt’s staff regarded the excuses as thin, and believed that Hitler had a deeper motive for his halt order. They connected it with the surprising way he had talked when visiting their headquarters at Charleville on May 24th, the day after the armoured forces had been halted in their stride.

Hitler was accompanied by only one of his staff, and talked in private to Rundstedt and the two key men of his staff—Sodenstern and Blumentritt. Here is what the latter told me—”Hitler was in very good humour, he admitted that the course of the campaign had been ‘a decided miracle’, and gave us his opinion that the war would be finished in six weeks. After that he wished to conclude a reasonable peace with France, and then the way would be free for an agreement with Britain.

“He then astonished us by speaking with admiration of the British Empire, of the necessity for its existence, and of the civilization that Britain had brought into the world. He remarked, with a shrug of the shoulders, that the creation of its Empire had been achieved by means that were often harsh, but ‘where there is planing, there are shavings flying’. He compared the British Empire with the Catholic Church—saying they were both essential elements of stability in the world. He said that all he wanted from Britain was that she should acknowledge Germany’s position on the Continent. The return of Germany’s lost colonies would be desirable but not essential, and he would even offer to support Britain with troops if she should be involved in any difficulties anywhere. He remarked that the colonies were primarily a matter of prestige, since they could not be held in war, and few Germans could settle in the tropics.

“He concluded by saying that his aim was to make peace with Britain on a basis that she would regard as compatible with her honour to accept.

“Field-Marshal von Rundstedt, who was always for agreement with France and Britain, expressed his satisfaction, and later, after Hitler’s departure, remarked with a sigh of relief—‘Well if he wants nothing else, then we shall have peace at last’.”

When Hitler continued to keep on the brake, Blumentritt’s thoughts ran back to this conversation. He felt that the “halt had been called for more than military reasons, and that it was part of a political scheme to make peace easier to reach. If the British Army had been captured at Dunkirk, the British people might have felt that their honour had suffered a stain which they must wipe out. By letting it escape Hitler hoped to conciliate them.”

This conviction of Hitler’s deeper motive was confirmed by his strangely dilatory attitude over the subsequent plans for the invasion of England. “He showed little interest in the plans,” Blumentritt said, “and made no effort to speed up the preparations. That was utterly different to his usual behaviour.” Before the invasion of Poland, of France, and later of Russia, he repeatedly spurred them on. But on this occasion he sat back.

Since the account of his conversation at Charleville and subsequent holding back comes from a section of the generals who had long distrusted Hitler’s policy and became more hostile to him as the war continued, that makes their testimony on this point more notable. They have criticized Hitler on almost every score. It would be natural to expect, that, in the present circumstances, they would portray him as intent on the capture of the British Army, and themselves as holding him back. Their evidence has the opposite effect. They very honestly admit that, as soldiers, they wanted to finish off their victory, and were upset at the way they were checked from doing so. Significantly, their account of Hitler’s thoughts about England at the decisive hour before Dunkirk fits in with much that he himself wrote earlier in Mein Kampf—and it is remarkable how closely he followed his own bible in other respects.

Was this attitude of his towards England prompted only by the political idea, which he had long entertained, of securing an alliance with her? Or was it inspired by a deeper feeling which reasserted itself at this crucial moment? There were some complex elements in his make-up which suggest that he had a mixed love-hate feeling towards England similar to the Kaiser’s.

Whatever be the true explanation, we can at least be content with the result. For his hesitations came to Britain’s rescue at the most critical moment of her history.

The Meaning Of Dunkirk

By Savitri Devi

Editor’s Note:

The following text is excerpted from chapter 14 of Savitri Devi’s The Lightning and the Sun. The title is editorial.–Greg Johnson

Not only had Adolf Hitler done all he possibly could to avoid war, but he did everything he possibly could to stop it. Again and again—first, in October 1939, immediately after the victorious end of the Polish campaign; then, on the 22nd of June 1940, immediately after the truce with defeated France—he held out his hand to England; not the hand of a supplicant, still less that of a man afraid, but that of a far-sighted and generous victor whose whole life was centred around a creative idea, whose programme was a constructive programme, and who had no quarrel with the misled blood-brothers of his own people, nay, who saw in them, despite their hatred of his name, his future friends and collaborators.

And nearly a month before his second peace offer to England, the Führer had already given the Nordic sister-nation a tangible sign of his generosity—nay, of his friendship, in spite of all, in the midst of the bitterest struggle—and such an extraordinary one that history writers have not hesitated to characterise it as “a wonder.” The Allied armies—the British Expeditionary Corps and a remnant of the French troops—were fleeing towards Dunkirk as fast as they possibly could before the German advance; fleeing from the Germans towards the sea. And the German Commander in Chief, General von Brauchitsch had, on the 23rd of May, given the order to press them in from all sides and take the lot of them prisoners before they had time to embark. It was, from the military point of view—and from the normal political point of view; from the point of view of immediate success—the thing to do. But Adolf Hitler appeared unexpectedly at General von Rundstedt’s Headquarters in Charleville and cancelled the order of attack on Dunkirk. The German armoured divisions—the “A” Heeresgruppe, as well as the “D” Heeresgruppe, which was, under General von Bock, pressing towards Dunkirk from the East—where to slow down their speed and leave ten kilometres between their foremost ranks and the fleeing enemy. These counter-orders, “that held back the German advance for two days, and gave the British time to bring home safe and sound the most valuable section of their army,”[1] are utterly incomprehensible unless one boldly admits that they were dictated by considerations which exceed by far the domain of “politics” no less than that of strategy; considerations not of a statesman but of a seer.

The generals did not know what to think, but they obeyed: orders were orders.

To anyone who, in the name of a pan-Aryan view of things (or merely in the name of “Europe’s” interest) stood—and stands—without reservations, on the side of National Socialist Germany, the tragedy of the situation was—and remains, retrospectively—maddening. The capture or destruction of the whole British Expeditionary Corps at Dunkirk, and the immediate invasion of Great Britain—by parachuted troops, if a proper landing was, on account of the British fleet, impossible—could have, one feels, put an end to the war: crushed rotten, Jew-ridden, West European democracy before the USA had time to save it, and united all Europe under the strong hand of the greatest European of all ages. And that new unity in the spirit of National Socialism would have made Europe the bulwark of higher mankind, not “against Asia,” but against the Dark Forces “in Time” embodied in the latest and lowest form of the old superstition of the “value of every man”: Marxism; against the Dark Forces which are, with the help of the Marxist doctrine, threatening Europe and Asia and the whole world. And the Führer himself destroyed that possibility with one word.

That is, at least, the spontaneous (and superficial) view of the average racially-conscious Aryan, Adolf Hitler’s German or foreign disciple. But that was not Adolf Hitler’s own view. The Führer’s more-than-political and more than strategic intuition reached “far beyond any quickly concluded, timely peace.”[2] It grasped—whether he was himself in a position to exteriorise that vision of things or not—the only real earthly peace that ever was and ever can be: the peace of the coming Golden Age, of the far-gone latest one, and of all successive Golden Ages; the peace of this earth whenever the visible world-order is in full harmony with “the original meaning of things,”[3] i.e., with the invisible and eternal cosmic Order, as it is, in fact, at every great new Beginning and at no other time. That peace excludes such bitterness as is bound to arise as the consequence of the humiliation of a great people. Adolf Hitler did, therefore, all he could to spare England the humiliation of total defeat. The baffling orders he gave on that fatal 23rd of May 1940—the date Germany “began to lose the war”[4]—and the astoundingly generous peace proposals he laid a month later before the English, have no other significance.

Rudolf Hess’ much misunderstood, lonely heroic flight to Scotland as a desperate, self-appointed peace-maker, on the 10th of May 1941, has also no other significance. It was, on Hess’ part, neither the rash action of a man half-insane (as it had to be described, officially, for the sake of convenience, and as Rudolf Hess himself wished it to be described, in case of failure) and still less an attempt at rebellion against the Führer’s policy; an effort to end the war against his will. Quite the contrary! Rudolf Hess undertook his long-planned flight, doubtless without Adolf Hitler’s knowledge, as all the details of the event (and especially Hess’ own last letter to the Führer), clearly show. But he was guided from the start by the unfailing certitude that his was the supreme chance—if any—to bring about, in the teeth of the most adverse circumstances, that which the Führer had, in vain, always wanted, and always striven for: lasting peace with England—the sister-nation, in spite of all the insults of her Jew-ridden government and press; the great Aryan power, in spite of her betrayal of the Aryan Cause—constructive collaboration with England, first step towards the constructive collaboration of all peoples of the best Nordic blood.

Rudolf Hess failed—in the realm of visible facts, at least—as Adolf Hitler himself was destined to fail, and for the very same basic reason: namely because he is, like he, one of those uncompromising idealists and men of action whose intuition of permanent earthly realities exceeds and overshadows the vision even of the most compelling emergency; one of those men, “against Time”—both “Sun” and “Lightning”—who have in their make-up too little “lightning” in proportion to their enormous amount of “sun.” (In fact, of all the Führer’s paladins, none—not even Hermann Göring; not even Goebbels, who was so passionately devoted to him—seems to be so deeply like him as Rudolf Hess.)

England’s answer to Adolf Hitler’s repeated peace proposals was, after a categorical “no,” an intensification of her war effort, and a hardening of her war methods.[5] England’s answer to Rudolf Hess’ supreme appeal to her sense of responsibility before the dead, before the living, and before the yet unborn was . . . a cell in the Tower of London (and, later on, in Nuremberg, and finally in Spandau, to this day) for the daring self-appointed messenger of peace. England’s answer to all the understanding and friendliness that National Socialist Germany had showed her from the very beginning, her answer to Adolf Hitler’s sincere profession of faith in Anglo-German collaboration; her answer to his unheard-of generosity at Dunkirk was . . . war to the finish: hundreds and thousands of bombers—one wave after the other, in tight formations—pouring night after night (and often in the daytime) streams of fire and brimstone over the German towns, and on the other hand—unlimited, enthusiastic aid to Soviet Russia, no sooner had Adolf Hitler declared war on her. England’s answer to the German Führer’s repeated plea for honest pan-European anti-Bolshevistic solidarity rooted in the consciousness of common Aryan blood (or of a high proportion of it at least) resounded in Churchill’s jubilation at the news of the “second front,” thanks to which the German forces were now divided. Churchill—the anti-Communist, but still wilder anti-Nazi—declared: “The cause of Soviet Russia is now the cause of every Englishman.” England’s answer was, in August 1941, the Atlantic Charter—an open alliance with the main tool of Jewry in the USA, President Roosevelt, who (although the USA were not yet at war with Germany) now ordered actual firing at every German ship the Americans met on the high seas. England’s answer was two years later the Yalta and then the Potsdam Agreements between Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin: the sinister coalition of the Western plutocracies and of the Marxist Empire—of all the forces “in Time”—against National Socialist Germany; the cold-blooded planning of Germany’s dismemberment and enslavement forever; and the relentless advance of the crusaders of hatred from the East and from the West, until their two hosts of hundreds of thousands, in one of which there were Englishmen, had met and merged into each other over the martyred Land. England’s answer was, through British accusers along with others, the shameful distortion of history in the Nuremberg Trial, the condemnation of the peace-maker Rudolf Hess for “crimes against peace,” and the prolongation of the whole propaganda of infamy against both the National Socialist doctrine and the German Nation, to this day.

Maybe, the Jew-ridden United States of America have, under the Freemason Franklin Roosevelt, played an even greater part than that of England in the preparation, conduct, and gruesome conclusion of the Second World War. But England is the nation to which Adolf Hitler had, over and over again, the most sincerely, the most appealingly held out his hand, in the name of the natural brotherhood of Nordic blood, in the name of the peaceful regeneration of the West. Her crime against him, against his people, against herself and the whole Aryan race, is therefore greater than that of any other of the Allies of 1945. And nothing—absolutely nothing—can ever make good for it.

Notes

[1] Kleist, Auch Du warst dabei. Ein Buch des Ärgernisses und der Hoffnung [You Were There Too: A Book of Scandal and Hope] (Heidelberg: Vowinckel 1952), p. 278 (quoted by Grimm, Warum? Woher? aber Wohin?, pp. 364–65).

[2] Grimm, Warum? Woher? aber Wohin?, p. 367.

[3] Mein Kampf, p. 440.

[4] Grimm, Warum? Woher? aber Wohin?, p. 367.

[5] It is now proved that England began her mass bombing of civilian populations on the 11th of May 1940; see on that point J. M. Spaight’s book Bombing Vindicated (London, Geoffrey Bles, 1944).

Chester Bennington & White Male Suicide

By Aedon Cassiel

Image by KEKM8

Audio Version: To listen in a player, click here. To download the mp3, right-click hereand choose “save target or link as.”

On July 20, 2017, Chester Bennington, lead singer of the band Linkin Park, committed suicide by hanging. Just two months previously, Bennington perform Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” at Soundgarden and Audioslave singer Chris Cornell’s funeral after Cornell was found dead, having also committed suicide by hanging, on May 18. These were just the most recent in a spree of mostly white and mostly male high-profile suicides over the past several years, from actor Robin Williams to author David Foster Wallace.

Some in the Alt Right have wanted to focus on simply judging Bennington as weak, or cowardly, or irresponsible, over the fact that he left behind six kids. But this is at least somewhat ironic, given the nature of our cause. In 2016, the suicide rate in the United States surged to its highest level in nearly three decades—driven almost entirely by an increase in suicide among middle-aged whites—even as the suicide rate among black men fell. This cannot be because white men as a group simply have weaker wills than all other demographics. The explanation must be, as leftists would say, “structural.”

Chester Bennington and family

But the traditional explanations offered by pundits in the popular press fall short. In an interview with the BBC, Pat Remington, a professor of population health sciences at the University of Wisconsin, pointed to “the widespread availability of guns and prescription drugs” as significant causes. But black Americans are killing each other with guns at significantly higher rates than whites are despite lower rates of gun ownership. Japan has a suicide rate that is nearly twice that of the United States, and South Korea has the highest suicide rate in the world, despite nation-wide bans on firearms. Meanwhile, there may be fewer prescription drugs in black communities, but there most certainly isn’t any lack of access to drugs in general.

So what can we learn from this epidemic of white male suicide? The first lesson of note is what it tells us about the nature of white men: we aren’t simplistic, one-dimensional, hedonistic pigs. Our deepest needs obviously transcend the economic. All the money and cars and sexual access to young, willing women in the world weren’t enough to keep the lead singers of Linkin Park and Audioslave interested in going on with their lives.

Those experts also point to “the financial downturn that began in 2008.” But a major cause of that financial downturn was our collective refusal to admit that blacks and whites behave differently at equal levels of income (for instance, whites who earn less than $25,000 per year have better credit scores than blacks who earn between $65–75,000). As such, because the housing boom was disproportionately driven by expanded minority home ownership, the housing bust also disproportionately hit minorities. So this can’t explain suicide rates either.

“We’re the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War’s a spiritual war . . . our Great Depression is our lives.” ― Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club

It may be worth revisiting why suicide exists in evolutionary terms.

A basic sentiment commonly expressed by the suicidal is: “Everyone would be better off without me!” Evolutionary analysis suggests that suicide exists because we really do have innate mechanisms crafted to evaluate whether or not everyone would be better off without us. Why? Because if our handicaps require assistance that limits our close kin’s ability to survive and reproduce, we may in fact increase our own genetic fitness more by committing suicide and removing the reproduction-limiting obligations we impose upon them than we would be going on living with the help of our kin.

This is only a paragraph-long oversimplification of a very complicated topic, but the underlying gist should be clear enough: what we really need more than anything is to be needed. As Sebastian Junger’s Tribe or Jack Donovan’s The Way of Men have been hammering in, this is why tribal societies are happier: the smaller a unit of people is, the more likely it is that it actually needs you.

That quote referenced above from Fight Club actually ends like this:

“We’ve all been raised on television to believe that one day we’d all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won’t. And we’re slowly learning that fact. And we’re very, very pissed off.”

But what are we to make of it when those very movie gods and rock stars turn out to be part of the suicide epidemic, too? Bennington, whose net worth was around $25 million, clearly could not have been a financial drain on his close kin.

Well, think back to his children: exactly what is it that he supposed to stick around to offer them? Under historical guild systems—which The Distributist Review opens by telling us are “the oldest, most necessary, most deeply rooted, of all human institutions . . . [appearing] in all civilizations which are at all stable, because it is necessary to stability”—a man knew that the trade he invested his life in was one he could pass on to his children. He could mentor his children and pass on the lessons he spent his life learning, because the lessons he spent his life learning were directly relevant for their success, since they were assured a place in his occupation.

Modern free market economies sever this particular kind of intergenerational tie. And public schooling ensures that fathers no longer truly raise their children, anyway. Libertarians will be quick to tell us how much more economically efficient the free market’s severance of that tie is, but how do we account for the psychological and sociological impacts of a world where fathers really do have little to pass on directly to their children?

Those libertarians will also be the first to tell us that value is subjective—could we not then have different subjective assessments of the value of increasing gross domestic profit versus building a more stable and rooted social order? I, for one, would unquestionably value the stability of a world where I knew that when I learned to increase my skills within a field, I was learning lessons I could pass on directly to my children well more than I value any increase in the amount of trinkets that exist to purchase in the current system.

Our sickness, as Palahniuk would have it, is a spiritual sickness. It’s about the nature of our social bonds—to each other, to our children, to the future.

And that can’t be reduced in any way to the number of trinkets and widgets up for purchase in the economy. Nor is there any necessary link between increasing the number of widgets up for sale and restoring us from that sickness. We’re also getting married less than our parents. At the same time, we’re participating in the economy less than our parents.

Clearly, the two phenomena aren’t unrelated. Men’s conspicuous consumption is an evolutionary adaptation to attract women. As Bridget Brennan (author of Why She Buys) writes at Forbes, “Women drive 70-80% of all consumer purchasing, through a combination of their buying power and influence. Influence means that even when a woman isn’t paying for something herself, she is often the influence or veto vote behind someone else’s purchase.” She concludes, “There is certainly no doubt: women’s consumer domination is here for the long term.”

In short, the basic fact is that one of the biggest reasons men work at all is to afford women. But today, “female empowerment” takes the form of things like lowering standards for firefighting just to ensure that women who are less physically capable of performing the duties of the job can join. And this combines with welfare to the point that over the course of a lifetime, only men pay taxes; men collectively pay more in taxes than they receive until around the age of 80, while the average woman will, over the course of her lifetime, represent a net fiscal impact of –$150,000.

When women are artificially subsidized into positions of work, and all men are collectively forced to pay all women just to exist, we artificially create a situation where no particular woman truly needs any particular man any longer. And the one thing we, as human beings, need most of all is to be needed.

By the way, Anne Case and Angus Deaton published a follow-up this year to their original 2015 paper covering the “shocking increase in midlife mortality among white non-Hispanic Americans.”
In the original paper, they concluded that the rise in white deaths was “largely accounted for by increasing death rates from drug and alcohol poisonings, suicide, and chronic liver diseases and cirrhosis.” But the follow-up corrects for the fact that in this original conclusion, they focused only on the increase in deaths, without focusing on the disparities between this demographic’s death rate and the falling death rates found everywhere else in the world.

Fifteen years ago, middle-aged whites in the United States were tied with their German counterparts; now, white Americans are 45% more likely to die than white Germans. Every year, about 285 people out of 100,000 die between the ages of 45 and 54. In the United States, that number is more than 410. And of these additional 125 deaths, only about 40 are explained by the spike in drug use, drinking, and suicide.

Much of the other two thirds of this figure is owed to deaths from heart disease—and it is very well established in the scientific literature that psychological and emotional stress plays a massive role in producing heart disease.

People who have been clinically depressed even once are twice as likely to suffer a heart attack, as long as ten full years after the original episode. A 2014 study, “An Inflammatory Pathway Links Atherosclerotic Cardiovascular Disease Risk to Neural Activity Evoked by the Cognitive Regulation of Emotion,” found that the very psychological experience of negative emotion contributes directly to creating the type of inflammation that causes heart disease.

In fact, subjective psychosocial factors probably do more to explain death from heart disease than physical lifestyle factors do: “Traditional coronary risk factors cannot explain the rapid increase in CHD mortality among middle-aged men in many of the newly independent states of eastern Europe. However, eastern European men score higher on stress-related psychosocial coronary risk factors (e.g., social isolation, vital exhaustion) than men living in the West.” In other words, men in eastern Europe have higher rates of heart disease, but this can’t be explained by the normal physical factors, because men in eastern Europe eat and exercise just as well as their Western counterparts. They are, however, more socially isolated, and have higher rates of ‘vital exhaustion’ (a fancy term for nervous breakdowns).

The average age of first heart attack in men is 65—for women, it’s 72. And men are 50% more likely to die from it. As you include older age groups, more women end up dying annually from heart disease than men—but this is only because older age groups are skewed female because most of the men have already died by then.

I normally wouldn’t share articles from the Huffington Post. Much less one authored by a lying plagiarist. Much less one that attributes bad behavior to environment, rather than choice or innate disposition. But I actually think drug abuse is an exception to the rule, and Johann Hari’s article on addiction really is excellent.

To summarize, the most important point here is that most of the animal studies on the addictiveness of hard drugs involved putting rats in small cages alone with nothing else to do, and then seeing how addicted they became to cocaine-laced water. But when Vancouver Professor Bruce Alexander placed rats in “Rat Park”—filled with colored balls and winding tunnels and access to social relationships with other rats—as a whole they consumed less than a quarter the amount of cocaine-laced water that the isolated rats did, and none of them became heavy consumers or died of overdose.

Further, when he took rats who became addicted to cocaine while stuck alone in small cages and placed them in Rat Park, even they got off of the drugs—voluntarily; spontaneously.

So the rise in white and male deaths, even as deaths fall for most other cohorts, is mainly owed to three things: suicide, drug abuse, and heart disease. All three of these things are major symptoms of psychological and emotional stress as well as social isolation.

And that is why, no matter what we think about the teen angst-fueled nu-rock music of Linkin Park, we shouldn’t contribute to a public atmosphere of condemnation of Bennington for committing suicide—because the fact is, for everything else that can rightly be said about this event, and whether Bennington himself was even able to recognize the fact or not, he was also a casualty of the same forces that are currently working to destroy us all.

The Market As The Capitalist Demiurge

                        By Thomas Storck

In an article a few years ago in The Economist (12/7/13) about economic bubbles, the writer noted, “Many economists have struggled to accept that bubbles exist, as that is difficult to square with the idea of efficient markets.” That is to say, economists struggle to accept the evidence before their eyes since that is difficult to square with their a priori theoretical construct. Although economists are not the only practitioners of an academic discipline who prefer their models and theories to reality, they are perhaps the worst offenders in that respect. Economists have erected an edifice of enormous sophistication and complexity, which, sad to say, often bears little resemblance to the real world. The chief structural component of this edifice is the market, the quasi-magical process by which all that is out of kilter in the world can be made right. Thus we may refer to it as the capitalist demiurge, the quasi-deity imagined by some Greek philosophers that constructs and orders all things in this world.

“[B]ubbles [are] difficult to square with the idea of efficient markets.” How do we explain such a flight of unreality? Let us look at some of what is said about market efficiency and competition in order to understand how there could be such a departure from evident reality based on a theoretical assumption.

Two centuries ago, Adam Smith proclaimed that, through the workings of the invisible hand, those who pursue their own self-interest in a competitive economy will most effectively promote the public interest. This concept—that the rough-and-tumble of market competition is a potent force for raising output and living standards—is one of the most profound and powerful ideas in history….¹

It is not difficult to see that market competition can achieve benefits at times—”Free competition [is] justified and quite useful within certain limits,” Pope Pius XI noted, but it “cannot be an adequate controlling principle in economic affairs.”² Competition can stimulate manufacturers to seek more efficient ways of working, to lower artificially high prices, to produce better quality products. But it can equally work to lower wages, to deceive consumers with shoddy products, to push industries toward cheap or quick manufacturing processes that injure the environment. It is no magic or infallible method for running an economy or promoting the public interest. The beneficial efficiency that market competition can sometimes produce is in no way a substitute for intelligent concern for the common good, as Pope Pius likewise pointed out, when he criticized

the “individualistic” school, [who] forgetful or ignorant of the social and moral aspects of economic activities, regarded these as completely free and immune from any intervention by public authority, for they would have in the market place and in unregulated competition a principle of self-direction more suitable for guiding them than any created intellect which might intervene.³

Adam Smith’s analysis of human behavior that led him to the concept of the invisible hand was not only based on a small subset of humanity, but more importantly, it was focused on only one aspect of human conduct and ignored equally important features. The desire for gain is not always the chief motive for people’s economic conduct, let alone the only motive. Economies have functioned with widely differing kinds of incentives over the centuries and over the face of the earth. Even among countries with broadly capitalist economies there are notable differences in their understanding of the goods that an economy must respect or seek, and hence notable differences in worker rights, the place of unions, government regulation, consumer protections, and so on.⁴ But when a society constantly tells its members that their economic activity is and should be based solely on self-interest, is this not likely to narrow our focus and actually create the kind of mentality it assumes?

Smith and his followers fail to understand the key role that the

legal and tax systems of a society have. Corporations, for example, as we understand them today, with their features of limited liability, perpetuity, and freedom to operate anywhere, originated only in the 19th century. They are purely a creation of laws and court decisions, all of which could be changed. If their limited liability, for example, were taken away and their officers and directors made criminally liable for corporate malfeasance, corporate behavior would no doubt change radically and immediately. Human nature would not change, but it would express itself differently because the legal environment had changed.

In addition to culture and the legal system, economic power—who owns what, who controls what—goes a long way toward determining economic outcomes. A rich corporation or even a rich individual has much more potential economic power than any number of poorer workers. This has historically been the reason for labor organization, to create a situation in which the mass of workers had some bargaining equality with those holding economic power. Necessary as unions have been and are, however, distributists generally think that worker ownership by means of cooperatives would be better. A government that desired to promote social peace and health could favor such cooperatives by granting them guaranteed loans and favorable tax treatment. Of course, the believers in the magic of market efficiency might object, saying that such favorable treatment hindered the free operation of markets. But this is based on a misunderstanding—or perhaps on a myth. There is no such thing as a pure market, a market divorced from economic power, divorced from the cultural outlook of the society in which the market functions, and which is not structured by laws of one sort or another. The type of economic thought that was first formulated by Adam Smith presupposes a culture and a legal system of a particular sort, and regards this culture and this legal system as somehow natural to mankind. But in the history of the human race such cultures and such legal systems were rare or non-existent until recent centuries. Medieval Europe, from which our own society is descended, looked upon economic activity as having an essential but subordinate place in social life. As a result, their approach to the economy stressed different goals. They did not think of the amassing of goods as the purpose of life, nor that laws and institutions should be framed so as to facilitate production with no regard to its purpose. Richard Tawney, in his well-known and extremely important book, Religion and the Rise of Capitalism, conveys some idea of the medieval outlook:

Material riches are necessary; they have a secondary importance, since without them men cannot support themselves and help one another; the wise ruler, as St. Thomas said, will consider in founding his State the natural resources of the country. But economic motives are suspect. Because they are powerful appetites, men fear them, but they are not mean enough to applaud them. Like other strong passions, what they need, it is thought, is not a clear field, but repression.  There is no place in medieval theory for economic activity which is not related to a moral end, and to found a science of society upon the assumption that the appetite for economic gain is a constant and measurable force, to be accepted, like other natural forces, as an inevitable and self-evident datum would have appeared to the medieval thinker as hardly less irrational or less immoral than to make the premise of social philosophy the unrestrained operation of such necessary human attributes as pugnacity or the sexual instinct.

And he continues,

At every turn, therefore, there are limits, restrictions, warnings, against allowing economic interests to interfere with serious affairs. It is right for a man to seek such wealth as is necessary for a livelihood in his station. To seek more is not enterprise, but avarice, and avarice is a deadly sin. Trade is legitimate; the different resources of different countries show that it was intended by Providence. But it is a dangerous business. A man must be sure that he carries it on for the public benefit, and that the profits which he takes are no more than the wages of his labor.⁵

The capitalist order has changed the life of what was once Christendom much more profoundly than most people realize. And it has equally profoundly changed the way most of us, including most Catholics, think about not just economic activity, but about the social order as a whole. But this need not be. We can reframe our thinking. As difficult as this would be, it can be done. G.K. Chesterton said that being a Catholic “is the only thing that frees a man from the degrading slavery of being a child of his age.”⁶ Just as many Catholics laudably have resisted the notion that sexual pleasure justifies any amount of wrong-doing, up to and including the murder of an unborn child, so we can resist the juggernaut of capitalist thinking and acting. It is hardly possible to withdraw entirely from capitalist-controlled society, but it is always possible to free our thoughts and subject them, not to the pressures of consumer fulfillment, but to the yoke of Jesus Christ the King.

Demystification Of The Birth & Funding Of The NSDAP

By Veronica Kuzniar Clark

"Germany's Liberation"

Part 2 of 2

Most potential recruits and financial supporters heard about Hitler and the NSDAP via word of mouth. Nothing was as effective as this. When men like Scheubner-Richter, Schacht, Borsig, Kirdorf, and Thyssen recommended the NSDAP and personally endorsed Hitler, wealthy and other upper- and middle-class Germans were willing to seriously consider Hitler and his party. Hitler was invited to speak to heavy industrialists in 1927 by word of mouth in fact. He even wrote a secret pamphlet intended only for this industrial-capitalist audience, which they then passed around to others.

Besides active word of mouth campaigning, the NSDAP also placed posters everywhere they could, promoted speaking engagements and other party activities and viewpoints in their VB, sold various odds and ends to raise small funds (e.g. various items like soap with NSDAP packaging), and sent wealthier members abroad to raise funds from German expats and foreign sympathizers. Kurt Lüdecke excelled at this form of campaigning.

In the very beginning, Hitler and the NSDAP targeted veterans, farmers, workers, young men, noblemen and women, small businessmen and women, and pensioners. These were the social classes who were initially the most receptive, due to the economy and prevailing anti-monarchism, but later on Hitler’s support base included wealthy elites, heavy industrialists, fascist and monarchist foreigners, landed Junkers, veterans’ organizations, the German Army and Navy, and even Montagu Norman.

"Our Last Hope"

Norman was a prominent English banker and personal friend of Hjalmar Schacht who, according to both his private secretary Ernest Skinner and Émile Moreau, despised Jews, the French, and Roman Catholics. He unabashedly refused to assist France’s treasury with anything and proved willing and able to arrange financing for the NSDAP by way of his connections to Bruno von Schröder (Schroder Bank), Kurt von Schröder (Stein Bank), and the Bank of England (F. C. Tiarks and M. Norman himself).

Norman had strong sympathy for the Germans which dated back to his days as a student in Dresden, and naturally offered to financially assist and thereby stabilize the new government that his friend Schacht had openly supported since 1931. Since Hitler was hostile to France (he saw the French as foreign enemy number one), friendly to Britain (which he did not feel was a threat), and discriminatory towards Jews, the three things that Norman found favorable, he recommended that Kurt von Schröder extend credit to Hitler’s party, which now controlled the government.

Schacht was Hitler’s de facto lifeline in this respect, a nationalist German banker who had his own designs for German recovery, but who was also personally impressed with Hitler’s speeches and mass appeal, which no other politician possessed.

As for Hitler’s initial support, many farmers were blighted by financial obligations to relentless moneylenders, and most, including landed Junkers, felt threatened by Communist expropriation and insufficient protective agricultural tariffs. The veterans were receptive because they felt betrayed by the ruling class, especially the liberal-democrats of the SPD, and because they had a difficult time finding work. Workers, who were mostly young men, were receptive because they felt they were being exploited by the business class, but primarily because they were the most negatively affected by the inflation and unemployment. Pensioners on fixed incomes were receptive to Hitler’s socialist stance. Noblemen and women were interested in Hitler because he opposed Freemasonry and expropriation of their landed estates, and because he hinted at restoration of the monarchy. Additionally, all of these groups generally opposed Marxist-Communism because they were not interested in a revolutionary bloodbath, but economic and social security as well as justice and prosperity for the German nation.

"Death to lies"

Hitler’s main opposition in the formative years came from the Communists, who denounced him as a tool of capitalism and the former nobility; the heavy industrialists, who distrusted his socialism and the SA (they feared the SA was nothing but a Communistic horde); and the left-wing faction within his own party, who questioned Hitler’s financial sources and pro-business stance.

When someone requested to join the NSDAP, one paid one’s initial annual dues and was then given a membership card and asked to perform some service or task for the party. This could be anything from putting up posters before speaking engagements to spreading the word by simply talking about the NSDAP or handing out flyers on street corners and at beer halls. After the Hitler-Strasser break, he or she was asked to swear allegiance to Adolf Hitler.

Vetting was likely performed by those members doing the actual talking and recruiting in the streets, as there was no known formal vetting procedure. As long as a person paid his annual dues and served the party loyally, he or she was trusted. Those who wished to break with the party were actually told to leave by Hitler himself at a rally that took place after the Strasser and Stennes affairs. We’ll revisit this topic later on.

Along these lines, Kurt Lüdecke, Otto Wagener and Ernst Röhm played leading roles in arming, training, and drilling SA men. Their personal fundraising; their secret dealings with the German Army (Reichswehr), which had many prominent sympathizers of the NSDAP and SA; and Lüdecke’s connections to black market Jewish arms dealers proved imperative to building a credible paramilitary threat to the status quo.

The government in Berlin tended to ignore SA violence against Communists because it opposed a Communist takeover. Also, Hitler’s party supported German national unity at all costs, so Hitler and his SA were worth tolerating to prevent Bavarian secession.

             

Hitler’s real bargaining base was his SA and the masses. Without both, he could afford to be ignored by the elites, government, and industry; however with both he was a true threat, like the Communists.

Lüdecke, Wagener, and Röhm all led, at one point or another, regular drilling and paramilitary basic training at a large hall funded by party members and various supporters. Marching in formation and drills also took place in the forests and countryside when possible, but mostly it occurred in the party’s own rented hall or on a wealthy sympathizer’s private estate. Fortunately for unemployed and poor members, the party paid for everyone’s uniforms.

When SA and SS ranks were introduced, the requirements were loyalty and leadership aptitude. The SS consisted of men handpicked by Hitler himself. Thus, he vetted them personally. As a matter of fact, Hitler usually personally appointed leaders to their positions even in the SA. He recalled Röhm from Bolivia, for instance, to reorganize and lead the SA.

Hitler tended to choose people who he felt would resist falling prey to groupthink. Historians have tended to characterize this as Hitler’s “divide and rule” tendency, but in-depth study of the party’s early development suggests instead that Hitler chose people who would (a) not challenge or question his leadership, and (b) not fall prey to the “yes man” problem. This appointment procedure did two things: it prevented serious intraparty division by subordinating all to Hitler himself, while at the same time supported intraparty challenges, which prevented groupthink. Leaders could disagree and even challenge one another’s authority without destroying the party.

              

Hitler based promotion solely on performance, not status. This tendency increased later on during the war especially after Hitler established the NSFO (National Socialist Commanding Officer Corps). This NS-high command likely would have replaced the OKW (Armed Forces High Command). Hitler wanted select NSFO officers to undergo a 4- to 18-hour course in political-ideological instruction. He himself appointed the head of the NSFO, Hermann Reinecke, in December 1944.

The NSDAP expanded into cities and states outside of Munich (Bavaria), where it had its Brown House headquarters, by appointing certain members to run party operations and perform party services in their own states, cities, towns, and villages.

The most well-known example of an NSDAP member-cum-leader who acquired almost enough personal power, financial backing and mass following to challenge Hitler himself was Gregor Strasser. Hitler was able to prevent a crisis from developing with his gifts for clever maneuvering and personal appeal, but such risks are inherent to any party that becomes as large as the NSDAP. And they are risks that must be taken if a party wishes to develop and grow.

Talented, committed and qualified speakers and leaders were appointed to run operations in every location possible. But Berlin NSDAP members also traveled around giving speeches and lectures and soliciting financial support. All speaking engagements required admittance fees. Hitler himself was constantly traveling and meeting with workers and elites alike to recruit new members and bolster his finances.

At the end of 1920, the NSDAP had about 3,000 members. Membership then grew from 27,000 in 1925 to 108,000 in 1928. In August 1931 the NSDAP created its own intelligence and security sector. Heinrich Himmler established the SD (Sicherheitsdienst) and Reinhard Heydrich was appointed head of the organization, which was kept separate from the SS (Schutzstaffel). By the time of the Strasser crisis, the SA was some 400,000 members strong and the party itself had grown to 2 million by 1933. In 1932, it was large enough to achieve control of 37% of the Reichstag.

Here are the election results from 1920 to 1933:

 Political Parties in the Reichstag

June 1920 

May 1924

Dec. 1924

May 1928 

Sep. 1930

July 1932

Nov. 1932

Mar. 1933

Communist Party (KPD) 4 62 45 54 77 89 100 81

Social Democratic Party (SPD) 102 100 131 153 143 133 121 120

Catholic Center Party (BVP) 65 81 88 78 87 97 90 93

Nationalist Party (DNVP) 71 95 103 73 41 37 52 52

National Socialist Party (NSDAP)–––12 107 230 196 288

Other Parties 98 92 73 121 122 22 35 23

 

One can see that the NSDAP lost most of its former 230 seats in July 1932 to the even more radical-revolutionary Communist Party (KPD) in November 1932, not to conservative Catholics or social-democrats. The conservative nationalists (DNVP) only received a boost of 15 seats. These results, contrary to most historiography, do not reflect the demise of the NSDAP, but the masses’ disaffection with any party that was not willing to promise sweeping social and economic change for the majority, even if change meant bloodshed. Hitler and the NSDAP were not viewed as extreme enough, so they lost seats to the KPD!

"Our German Railroad"

This alarmed men like Hjalmar Schacht and Franz von Papen so much so that they were finally willing to give Hitler the opportunity to become chancellor. He actually should have received the chancellorship in July 1932 when his party had the most seats in the Reichstag, but industrialists and noblemen surrounding General Schleicher, Franz von Papen, and President Hindenburg opposed his appointment to the chancellorship. So much for James Warburg’s and the Rothschilds’ “magical funding.”

Hitler faced so much resistance at this stage that he, like everyone else, had to resort to blackmail to receive his due appointment. Hitler arranged a private meeting with President Hindenburg’s son Oskar, during which he is suspected to have threatened to expose his father’s role in the repeated taxpayer bailouts of the Junkers’ mismanaged, bankrupted estates. Since blackmail and intrigue had been used to cheat Hitler of his due appointment, he decided that he could also play such a game.

Hindenburg appointed him chancellor shortly thereafter, which most historians claim was at the behest of von Papen. We see that von Papen’s desire to prevent a Communist majority by giving Hitler the chancellorship was only partly why Hindenburg appointed him. Hitler won, but not because he received covert funding. Franz von Papen continued to intrigue against Hitler and urged industrialists to withdraw their financial support of the NSDAP! The goal of this so-called “cabinet of barons” was to give Hitler just enough power to satisfy him personally without actually allowing him to attain a majority strong enough to overthrow the status quo, but just strong enough to prevent a Communist majority.

Given this context of stalemate, the speed of the NSDAP’s growth in just 6 years and its subsequent attainment of absolute power were only possible with an authoritarian leader in a crooked political situation in which blackmail, corruption and political sleight-of-hand was the order of the day. 

                    are united and loyal.””]

             

What had started as a democratic-style workers’ party with a simple executive committee to which Hitler was appointed in the early 1900s became an authoritarian-style organization with its own uniforms, offices, training facilities, insurance company, sales items, newspaper, propaganda machine, army (the SA), and security service (SS and SD).

 This was nothing short of impressive and most of the credit for its success goes to those leaders and members like Hitler, Hess, Gansser, Eckart, Funk, Schwarz, Feder, Keppler, Himmler, Rosenberg, Goebbels, the Strassers (before 1932), Scheubner-Richter, Hanfstaengl, Lüdecke, Göring, and Röhm, all of whom literally devoted their lives to the party.

NSDAP events took place as often as they could be afforded. The newspaper was of course always available—it was a daily—so the public and members always knew what was going on from day-to-day. Hitler gave speeches and met with important wealthy persons almost non-stop after his release from prison. He was keen enough to purchase vehicles, which were rare in those days. Speedy travel was vital to defeating rival parties like the Communists who still had to walk to their various speaking engagements and meetings.

The NSDAPs doors, so to speak, were always open to receive new recruits. Interested persons either signed up at simple on-site recruitment centers or they mailed their applications to the party’s headquarters in Munich.

The need for bodyguards arose when Hitler started regularly giving speeches. The Communists had caught on to this Adolf Hitler and his NSDAP and therefore sought to intimidate it or shut it down. The SA originally served as the party’s guards, but this role was quickly taken over by the SS (Saal-Schutz), which served as an assembly hall guard as well as Hitler’s personal bodyguard. Himmler started its transformation into an elite paramilitary force, renaming it the Schutzstaffel, in 1929.

"Workers of head and hand vote for front-soldier Hitler"

This Allgemeine-SS later expanded into the National Socialist Armed Forces (Waffen-SS), which eventually grew so large and powerful that it rivaled the state’s official armed forces. Hitler’s intent was to ‘national socialize’ the state armed forces, which opposed him more and more as the war progressed. The intrastate schism between military and social elites on the one side and NS-populists on the other remained intact even under Hitler’s skillful leadership and absolute power. He only fully realized the extent of this social chasm in July 1944 when several of his generals attempted to murder him with a suitcase bomb. This in fact occurred shortly after Hitler ordered the creation of the NSFO, mentioned earlier.

Most early members of the NSDAP gave an incredible amount of their personal fortune and time to the party. Countless young men defied their conservative parents by joining the NSDAP as their only hope for future employment and social security. Young women were attracted to Hitler personally, but also to NS fanfare and its commitment to uphold family values.

The lifeblood of the party was its youth, and numerous parents had their children join either the Jugenbund der NSDAP or Jungsturm Adolf Hitler, both of which were formed in 1922—the creation of at least one of these youth divisions was announced in the VB. In 1923, the organization had some 1,000 members. The Jugenbund, originally based in Bavaria, expanded into a nationwide organization in 1924 and was subsequently renamed the Grossdeutsche Jugendbewegung.

In 1925, after the NSDAP was reorganized upon Hitler’s release from prison, membership grew to over 5,000. In July 1926, the Grossdeutsche Jugendbewegung was again reorganized by Kurt Gruber, a law student from Saxony, and officially renamed the Hitler Jugend Bund der deutschen Arbeiterjugend, (better known as the Hitler Youth). This organization promoted sports, political education and preparatory paramilitary training for later membership in the SA or SS once a child was old enough. Children were given performance booklets in which their HJ accomplishments were recorded. By 1930, the HJ had enlisted over 25,000 boys over age 14. The Deutsches Jungvolk, a junior branch for boys aged 10 to 14, was also formed. Girls between the ages of 10 and 18 joined a similar organization, the Bund Deutscher Mädel (BDM), or League of German Girls. In 1930, HJ membership was about 25,000. By the end of 1932, shortly before Hitler came to power, membership was 107,956. By the end of 1933, the HJ had 2,300,000 members.

Uniforms were an integral part of the NSDAP from the beginning. This was the result of Hitler’s personal influence on the DAP, which did not have or require uniforms. NSDAP members often met in beer halls or at the party’s headquarters for daily or weekly drill and training, and were expected to put on their uniforms after the drill leader arrived. All drills and training took place in uniform, and all NSDAP members who attended either Hitler’s speeches or major party events were in uniform.

"Then as now, we remain comrades. The German Labor Front"

The SA performed considerable community and charitable work. This included organizing soup kitchens, toy and food drives, home handy work, combating crime, patrolling the streets against Communists and other violent groups, and any other form of service or assistance individual party members were willing and able to provide to community members. Patrolling the streets often led to violent conflict involving injury and death on both sides. As a result, Chancellor Brüning banned the SA, SS and HJ, which all went underground until the ban was lifted after Brüning was ousted. The new Chancellor, Kurt von Schleicher, lifted the ban in exchange for Hitler’s cooperation in forming an anti-Communist coalition government. The SA was then permitted to march under police protection in Communist neighborhoods, because no party in the government at that time was pro-Communist. Even the SPD was forced to back away from a Communist alliance. The Social Democrats realized they had to cooperate with nationalists since they were clearly on the wane and very unpopular with the masses and Junkers. Hitler seized the moment: he ordered his Reichstag members to vote with the Communists against the nationalists and conservatives while he ordered his SA to battle them in the streets.