WCF

History, politics, and culture articles and forum discussions.

Modern Europe

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Kierkegaard and the Industrial Revolution

Soren Kierkegaard, one of my favorite philosophers, lived in Denmark during the Nineteenth Century when Danish Christianity became less of a spiritual experience and more of an exercise in routine life. Kierkegaard criticized the way his fellow citizens in Copenhagen practiced their religion, one in which comfort removed the challenge of interior faith. As Kierkegaard put it:

Christendom has done away with Christianity without being quite aware of it.

I think that we can see similar strains of spiritual dryness in both the state of the church in Denmark during the mid-1800s, and in the Church of England during the early Eighteenth Century, which precipitated the Methodists and rise of the Wesley brothers, and eventually the First Great Awakening.

I also think that Kierkegaard might be reacting, if not explicitly, against an effect of the Industrial Revolution in Europe. With the rise of the factory, growth in urban areas, and expansion of economies, life began to change like never before. While Holland had already tapped a new line of capitalist activity with its development of the Dutch East India Company and state-focused stock trading in the Seventeenth Century, I imagine that factory life was something that became increasingly pervasive only in the later 1700s and into the 1800s. It is understandable that an increasingly mechanized world would cause spirituality to suffer, as the average worker might be required to work longer hours (and in shabby conditions), and even the factory owners would be subject to the production demands of their clients. Less time would be spent with family and spiritual matters as the hours were mainly spent at monotonous jobs.

This is a hypothesis, so anyone agree/disagree?

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Hitler and the Jews

I was browsing another WWII Newsgroup…when I came across a message from a youngster wanting to know why Hitler hated the Jews so much.

I considered for some time how to reply to this question, and finally came up with the following draft submission:

Albert Speer, Hitler’s Economics Minister, writing after the war commented “He (Hitler) had read a lot but had interpreted all that he had read according to his own lights…without improving his knowledge”.  This is however only half-true. In fact Hitler was an avid if rather narrow minded and selective reader, with a particular interest in Modern popular psychology, Political Sciences and Economics.  He read the works of Schopenhaurer, Lenin, and Paul de Lagarde (the nineteenth century apostle of the ‘leader principle’), and in addition he also read and was influenced by Houston Stewart Chamberlain who was perhaps the most widely known of the late nineteenth century ‘Race theologists’.

A wall in a Warsaw ghetto.

From these Hitler, blind to rational or critical objections, became convinced that the world was about to witness one of the periodic upheavals of world history in which the survival of civilization could be only be achieved by replacing the traditional breakdown of society into classes, with a society where the importance of ‘Race’ (or Nation) replaced the class system (which to Hitler benefited only the interests of the bourgeoisie and created class envy, the worship of money, and alienated the working classes from the nation).  Hitler wanted the nation to represent a particular kind of community, with ‘Race Comrades’ instead of classes, and an economy controlled in the name of the people.  For this a common blood would be the most defining form of allegiance.

The enemy of these ambitions was, principally, the Jews.  At some point at the end of the Great War, Hitler absorbed the popular anti-Semitic argument that the Jews were to blame for the German defeat, either as Marxists preaching an ideology of festering social decomposition, or as capitalists pulling the strings of the world market, or as a biological challenge to the purity of the blood.  Thus, ‘Jews’ became a historical metaphor for explaining Germany’s troubles and its economic crisis.

So in Hitler’s warped political mind, the success of ‘New Order’ depended upon people being either seduced and mastered, or excluded and eliminated – a view that Hitler maintained until the end.  Obviously this is not a definitive explanation, and so I was wondering if anyone here would care to comment or improve on the draft.

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Reasons for the odd fascination with Nazism today

An article came out a few years ago about the appeal of Nazism to people of today: Germans fascinated by Nazi era eight decades later.  Here’s a bit from the article:

German interest in the darkest chapter of their history seems stronger than it has ever been as the country marks several key anniversaries this year linked to the Nazi era.On TV talk shows, in newspapers and online, people endlessly debate the Nazi era – from what their own grandparents did and saw, to how the regime’s legacy constrains German peacekeepers on overseas missions today, or why unemployed Greek and Spanish protesters lampoon Chancellor Angela Merkel as a new Hitler.

I am wondering why there is such a fascination with WWII Nazism and Hitler even today within Western society. Here are some reasons that could potentially explain this odd appeal:

The present vs. the past

Major cultural changes and attitudes in the West over the past 70 years make it increasingly difficult to understand how the rise of Nazism was ever possible. Attempting to understand this mystery of the nature of man and his political choices has led to greater interest in the topic.

The presence of a single cult figure

Hitler has been identified as the single person in whom WWII Nazism can be defined/blamed. This makes it more appealing to study than, say, earlier wars.

An eccentric leader

Hitler has become derided and parodied so much in modern times that he has become almost a comic figure (think of the Hitler meme that came out over the past few years, or the “Hipster Hitler” cartoon). This inevitably changes perceptions of the man, and actually garners a more sympathetic view of him than he had before.

Fascination with darkness

People today are fascinated by dark chapters in human life which contrast with the normal, sanitized world which most people live in. Just as horror films have increased in popularity over the past several decades, more people are interested in macabre chapters in human history.

German response to their past

I am guessing that the fierce response by Germans to quash this chapter in their history has made it somewhat taboo, which only serves to make it more desirable.

Disillusionment of the present age

Decades after the fall of Nazism, the present age fails to offer an entirely satisfactory model for Germans or others. Despite the moral disasters presented by Nazism, it can be said to have produced a utopian vision of the future which may be admirable to some in form, rather than in content.

All of these reasons have help explain the cultural interest in Nazism today.  Of course, this is separate from the other, ridiculous fascination of Nazism by actual Antisemites today.

 

WCF