Nazism caused by Secularism

[Gunny]

This has political ramifications for the views of the future of the GOP and the Christians in the US. The argument here is very interesting between Pat Buchannan and the editor of Newsweek.

Media Matters - After Buchanan suggests secularism leads to Nazism, Newsweek's Meacham agrees that there's a "great danger"

I disagree. Nazi-ism became a faux-religion itself in the Third Reich. One of the basic tenets of Nazi-ism WAS racial purity, not religious purity.

One can take ANY exclusionary extreme (race, gender, religion, hair color) and create scapegoats of those that don't fit the mold to create solidarity among the group and make the same argument.

This is an extremely simplistic view of Nazi-ism.

There's a far greater danger of falling to fascism by allowing the state to legislate itself the power to take over everything in the name of "saving the economy."

 

[Shogun]

Martin Luther was the founder of the protestant movement and the Lutheran church, the largest church in Germany.

Google "Luther jews" and see the real source of the nazi's religious bigotry against the jews and the inspiration for their actions.

Thats EXACTLY it. It's funny as hell to see some uneducated dogma junkie start throwing stones despite history. ANYONE can see what real antisemitism looks like by reading Martin Luther. "On the Jews and their Lies" is a GREAT place to see just how secular the root of antisemitism is.

 

[Gunny]

Except that Hitler used Christianity to gather his people and give them"common cause".

Bit simplistic way of synopsizing the discussion. I'm surprised at Media Matters.

No he didn't. He used nationalism and racial purity, anti-communism and antisemitism. The religionism in his propaganda appealed more to ancient Nordic religion, and Aryan purity than anything else.

 

[KittenKoder]

Hitler used his speech giving skills (like you know who) to gain popularity and then used that popularity to convince Germany that his idea was a good one ...

 

[Gunny]

Anyone who thinks secularism - whatever that is in their minds - was a cause of Nazi Germany should not be a commentator on anything but 'Fox pseudo news.' If there is one element that can be assigned blame it would be the economic situation. Look at the many wackos out in the streets today in this country over the economic downturn, now add poverty, hunger, depression, and hopelessness and you get the seeds for Hitler.

"The most ominous development after World War I and one of the primary causes of World War II was the rise of Adolph Hitler in Germany. The Treaty of Versailles helped lead to this in five ways. First, there was the common belief that Germany had been betrayed, since the Armistice had been signed before allied troops had reached German soil. Germans, looking for scapegoats, blamed bankers, Catholics, and especially the Jews. Second, the Treaty of Versailles angered the German people and destabilized Germany both economically and politically. Third, the Weimar Republic, which succeeded the Kaiser’s monarchy, was moderate, but weak, and thus let matters get out of hand. Fourth, the German economy's over-dependence on American loans caused it to collapse with the Stock Market Crash in 1929. Finally, the Depression, especially with the renewed raising of tariffs, created tense international relations. All these provided the conditions for Hitler to seize power."

FC134: Adolf Hitler and the Rise of Nazism in Germany (1919-39) - The Flow of History

The Rise Of Nazism

We agree on result, but not reaction. I don't see any whackos in the street. What I DO see are whackos allowing the government to take even more control of of everything in our lives in the name of a "cure" for the economic woes when any 2nd grader can see the "cure" for something is not more of the same.

 

[Gunny]

Originally posted by Evangelical
Actually secularism and paganism are the exact same thing.

Both worship creation, and if you look at ancient Pagans most of their "religion" was ritualizing the mundane, such as drinking, or sex, or harvest, etc.

They simply made into idolatry the things we do as humans.

What more idolatrous is there than a secular society?

No, Evangelical.

Secularism is the political idea that gives millions of individuals around the world the freedom to be theocrats like yourself.

Theocracy is the political idea that, from ancient human societies to "modern" Saudi Arabia, has opressed, persecuted and killed millions of secularists like myself.

More simplistic bullshit. Hate of difference has oppressed and killed more people than anything else and YOU are just more of the same.

 

[Gunny]

Martin Luther was the founder of the protestant movement and the Lutheran church, the largest church in Germany.

Google "Luther jews" and see the real source of the nazi's religious bigotry against the jews and the inspiration for their actions.

Thats EXACTLY it. It's funny as hell to see some uneducated dogma junkie start throwing stones despite history. ANYONE can see what real antisemitism looks like by reading Martin Luther. "On the Jews and their Lies" is a GREAT place to see just how secular the root of antisemitism is.

Oh, I agree with THAT. Just probably from a different point of view.

 

[Gunny]

Hitler used his speech giving skills (like you know who) to gain popularity and then used that popularity to convince Germany that his idea was a good one ...

Again, simplistic. No one thing led to Hitler coming into power. Yes he had charisma. In that regard, he reminds me a lot of Obama. Talk his fool head off and say nothing while convincing the nonthinking his ideas are best.

His strategy was to convince the German people they were superior while providing a focal point for their hatred of their own plight during the Depression. While he could be called a uniter, he was actually a supreme divider. He made promises and despite the means, he delivered on them, at least until he could no longer do so.

The German people at the time very-much considered themselves superior to all others and it was not hard for Hitler to play on that. It was not hard for him to point a finger at Jews, who suffered less economically than the average German from WWI, and blame them for stealing the wealth. After all, the average German had nothing at the time. ANone with "more" was "wealthy."

Starting to sound familiar?

He then staged events, blaming Jews, and seized more and more power one step at a time until he had it all.

And why should the average German care? After all, he got $15 more in his paycheck every week.

 

[Shogun]

if you want to start trading Marin Luther quotes I'm ready when you are.

 

[KittenKoder]

Hitler used his speech giving skills (like you know who) to gain popularity and then used that popularity to convince Germany that his idea was a good one ...

Again, simplistic. No one thing led to Hitler coming into power. Yes he had charisma. In that regard, he reminds me a lot of Obama. Talk his fool head off and say nothing while convincing the nonthinking his ideas are best.

His strategy was to convince the German people they were superior while providing a focal point for their hatred of their own plight during the Depression. While he could be called a uniter, he was actually a supreme divider. He made promises and despite the means, he delivered on them, at least until he could no longer do so.

The German people at the time very-much considered themselves superior to all others and it was not hard for Hitler to play on that. It was not hard for him to point a finger at Jews, who suffered less economically than the average German from WWI, and blame them for stealing the wealth. After all, the average German had nothing at the time. ANone with "more" was "wealthy."

Starting to sound familiar?

He then staged events, blaming Jews, and seized more and more power one step at a time until he had it all.

And why should the average German care? After all, he got $15 more in his paycheck every week.

Meh, I was just pointing out one of his more apparent qualities and skills that he misused, not trying to say it's the only thing he did.

 

[Iriemon]

I was raised and confirmed in the Lutheran Church.

It was so anti-anti-Semitism you'd think it was run by Rabbis.

Martin Luther was not exactly sane, ya' know?

Oh, you didn't know that?

Well, they made no secret of it in my church.

You know he thought he was plagued by demons, right?

Luther wasn't exactly a liberal.

He was very much a reactionary EXCEPT as it regarded the Catholic Church.

Did he hate Jews? Wouldn't surprise me. Most Catholics and Protestants did back then. (exception? Moravians)

ML completely supported the system of aristos which kept the peasants down, supported killing those peasants who revolted against that vile system, too.

He was a former Catholic Priest, after all. He wasn't exactly an advanced thinker when it came to how society was suspposed to work.

His so called reformation was entirely religious and based on his objections to the Catholic Papacy, and in no way shape or form that I am aware of remotely liberal.

All that being said, Hitler's system has nothing to do with christianity..Christianity, perhaps, but christianity, definitely not.

Hitler considered christianity the philosophy of slaves.

He worked with Formal Churches if he could.

He cut a deal with the RC church of Germany to get their support in his election, and I would not be at all surprised to hear he cut deals with various Luthern Churches, either.

The Lutheran church in America today is of course not the same as the Lutheran church in Germany in the early 20th century. Anti-semitism was far more widespread then and there and not just among Lutherans of course, the Catholic church as a rich history of it as well.

As a Christian pastor and theologian Luther was concerned that people have faith in Jesus as the messiah for salvation. In rejecting that view of Jesus, the Jews became the "quintessential other,"[100] a model of the opposition to the Christian view of God. In an early work, That Jesus Christ was born a Jew, Luther advocated kindness toward the Jews, but only with the aim of converting them to Christianity: what was called Judenmission.[101] When his efforts at conversion failed, he became increasingly bitter toward them.[102] His main works on the Jews were his 60,000-word treatise Von den Juden und Ihren Lügen (On the Jews and Their Lies), and Vom Schem Hamphoras und vom Geschlecht Christi (On the Holy Name and the Lineage of Christ) — reprinted five times within his lifetime — both written in 1543, three years before his death.[103] He argued that the Jews were no longer the chosen people, but were "the devil's people." They were "base, whoring people, that is, no people of God, and their boast of lineage, circumcision, and law must be accounted as filth."[104] The synagogue was a "defiled bride, yes, an incorrigible whore and an evil slut ..."[105] and Jews were full of the "devil's feces ... which they wallow in like swine."[106] He advocated setting synagogues on fire, destroying Jewish prayerbooks, forbidding rabbis from preaching, seizing Jews' property and money, smashing up their homes, and ensuring that these "poisonous envenomed worms" be forced into labor or expelled "for all time."[107] He also seemed to sanction their murder,[108] writing "We are at fault in not slaying them."[109]

I certainly agree with your distinction between big and little "c" christianity. But Luther's writings sound a lot more like what the Nazis were saying than any secular doctrine to me.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Luther

 

[Sinatra]

I wish to thank Evangelical for this fascinating thread. It is a subject I have spent some years exploring.

Nearly all societies have struggled between the influence of the secular and those of the religious. Each example is capable of creating much harm - and has done so throughout history.

In the more modern era - 20th century to present, there has been a constant battle between these two generalized schools of thought.

Regarding Hitler specifically, he appears to have hinted at his own Catholic upbringing from time to time during his formative political years, but once gaining power, he increasingly spoke out against the concept of faith, and more directly against organized religion. In essence, Hitler utilized the influence of the Catholic Church as a means of gaining favor of the German population. His open hostility against the Jews combined with this playing of the German Catholics - who shared Hitler's distrust of all things Jewish, was a valuable tool for the increasingly motivated Hitler.

Once he gained absolute power, Hitler predictably saw the German Catholic Church as a threat, and moved to purge its leaders. He bent the church so that it reflected the zealous nationalistic slant of his own government, where German Christians were to place the rule of the state before that of God, that the two concepts were in fact, one and the same.

In his final years, Hitler was far more a Darwinian than he was a Catholic. Darwin's theory of evolution was the perfect compliment to Hitler's insistence of Germans as the "master race" - and gave Hitler (in his own mind) the moral authority to cleanse the earth of the lesser races who were inflcting harm upon humanity. The leading German Darwinians viewed religion as running counter to Darwinism, as religion often held a belief in helping the sick, the poor, etc. For Darwinians, morality was a personal choice, not a divine mandate. For Hitler, the only morality that mattered was that prescribed by the state - ie., Hitler himself. (Which actually runs counter to Darwinian thought, but Hitler was never one to deal with the devil in the details...)

Did Hitler believe in a higher power? Perhaps - though even this becomes clouded in the perverse paranoia and God-complex tendancies that dominate Hitler's remaining years. It is quite likely Hitler viewed himself as a version of the Almighty - and if not that, certainly an agent of His.

The fact is, the guy was a complete nutter...

 

[YWN666]

This has political ramifications for the views of the future of the GOP and the Christians in the US. The argument here is very interesting between Pat Buchannan and the editor of Newsweek.

Media Matters - After Buchanan suggests secularism leads to Nazism, Newsweek's Meacham agrees that there's a "great danger"

What a load of steaming horse shit. Using Pat Buchanan as a source of wisdom is like using Jeffrey Dahmer as a source of diet advice.

 

[jillian]

Except that Hitler used Christianity to gather his people and give them"common cause".

Bit simplistic way of synopsizing the discussion. I'm surprised at Media Matters.

Well not quite. Hitler used the "German Christians" who were a very weird group of persons sort of how Episcopalians call themselves Christians but don't follow anything Jesus said to do.

Eventually Hitler turned on the German Christians, and Hitler encouraged the mass exodus of Germans from the church called the Kirkenaustritt.

pretty big leap to decide who's christian and who isn't. the point stands... he used a shared christian identity as a gathering point. it doesn't make it a christian movement, but it was a way for him to achieve commonality, weird group of christians or no. it allowed him to "rally the troops" as it were.

and saying "secularism" caused naziism is pretty silly.

pat should stick to analysis of political campaigns... he's brilliant at that.

 

[amrchaos]

Originally posted by Evangelical
It could not have been without the secularization of Germany after WW1 that Nazism could have pushed their anti-Christian agendas such as their Cathedral of Light which was wholly pagan or their death cult...which I'm sure you know nothing about because you don't actually know anything about Nazism.

A pagan state is a religious state, a confessional state!!

A pagan state is the exact opposite of a secular state!!

Actually secularism and paganism are the exact same thing.

Both worship creation, and if you look at ancient Pagans most of their "religion" was ritualizing the mundane, such as drinking, or sex, or harvest, etc.

They simply made into idolatry the things we do as humans.

What more idolatrous is there than a secular society?

Actually secularism and paganism are the exact same thing.

NO--not true.

Believe it or not--an Athiests state and Secular state are not the same. Secularism is Religious pluralism. Atheism is the absense of religion. For instance, America is a Secular State. So are all Western States.

The Soviet Union and several Communism sought to rid themselves of religion--thus they were, in a sense, Atheists states.

A Pagan state Would be something like Lithuania during the Teutonic wars. You know, the Teutonic order? The Christian order whose purpose were to break/destroy the Pagan State of Lithuania or force it to become a Catholic nation under The Pope?

A Christian mandated Genocide!! It even seems like the "best" of us have skeletons in their closets!!

 

[Bfgrn]

Hitler used his speech giving skills (like you know who) to gain popularity and then used that popularity to convince Germany that his idea was a good one ...

Again, simplistic. No one thing led to Hitler coming into power. Yes he had charisma. In that regard, he reminds me a lot of Obama. Talk his fool head off and say nothing while convincing the nonthinking his ideas are best.

His strategy was to convince the German people they were superior while providing a focal point for their hatred of their own plight during the Depression. While he could be called a uniter, he was actually a supreme divider. He made promises and despite the means, he delivered on them, at least until he could no longer do so.

The German people at the time very-much considered themselves superior to all others and it was not hard for Hitler to play on that. It was not hard for him to point a finger at Jews, who suffered less economically than the average German from WWI, and blame them for stealing the wealth. After all, the average German had nothing at the time. ANone with "more" was "wealthy."

Starting to sound familiar?

He then staged events, blaming Jews, and seized more and more power one step at a time until he had it all.

And why should the average German care? After all, he got $15 more in his paycheck every week.

Yea, Adolf Hitler and Barack Obama both stand on two legs... after that it is right wing paranoia fear-mongering bullshit...

But, if you need to draw parallels to modern times...

The Moral Majority is nothing NEW

"If we are going to save America and evangelize the world, we cannot accommodate secular philosophies that are diametrically opposed to Christian truth ... We need to pull out all the stops to recruit and train 25 million Americans to become informed pro-moral activists whose voices can be heard in the halls of Congress."

"I am convinced that America can be turned around if we will all get serious about the Master's business. It may be late, but it is never too late to do what is right. We need an old-fashioned, God-honoring, Christ-exalting revival to turn American back to God. America can be saved!"

Jerry Falwell
"Moral Majority Report" for September, 1984

"The national government will maintain and defend the foundations on which the power of our nation rests. It will offer strong protection to Christianity as the very basis of our collective morality."

"Today Christians stand at the head of our country. I pledge that I will never tie myself to parties who want to destroy Christianity... We want to fill our culture again with the Christian spirit.... We want to burn out all the recent immoral developments in literature, in the theatre, and in the press - in short, we want to burn out the poison of immorality which has entered into our whole life and culture as a result of liberal excess during the past few years."

Adolf Hitler
The Speeches of Adolph Hitler, 1922-1939, Vol. 1 (London, Oxford University Press, 1942), pg. 871-872.

 

[amrchaos]

Hitler used his speech giving skills (like you know who) to gain popularity and then used that popularity to convince Germany that his idea was a good one ...

Again, simplistic. No one thing led to Hitler coming into power. Yes he had charisma. In that regard, he reminds me a lot of Obama. Talk his fool head off and say nothing while convincing the nonthinking his ideas are best.

His strategy was to convince the German people they were superior while providing a focal point for their hatred of their own plight during the Depression. While he could be called a uniter, he was actually a supreme divider. He made promises and despite the means, he delivered on them, at least until he could no longer do so.

The German people at the time very-much considered themselves superior to all others and it was not hard for Hitler to play on that. It was not hard for him to point a finger at Jews, who suffered less economically than the average German from WWI, and blame them for stealing the wealth. After all, the average German had nothing at the time. ANone with "more" was "wealthy."

Starting to sound familiar?

He then staged events, blaming Jews, and seized more and more power one step at a time until he had it all.

And why should the average German care? After all, he got $15 more in his paycheck every week.

Yea, Adolf Hitler and Barack Obama both stand on two legs... after that it is right wing paranoia fear-mongering bullshit...

But, if you need to draw parallels to modern times...

The Moral Majority is nothing NEW

"If we are going to save America and evangelize the world, we cannot accommodate secular philosophies that are diametrically opposed to Christian truth ... We need to pull out all the stops to recruit and train 25 million Americans to become informed pro-moral activists whose voices can be heard in the halls of Congress."

"I am convinced that America can be turned around if we will all get serious about the Master's business. It may be late, but it is never too late to do what is right. We need an old-fashioned, God-honoring, Christ-exalting revival to turn American back to God. America can be saved!"

Jerry Falwell
"Moral Majority Report" for September, 1984

"The national government will maintain and defend the foundations on which the power of our nation rests. It will offer strong protection to Christianity as the very basis of our collective morality."

"Today Christians stand at the head of our country. I pledge that I will never tie myself to parties who want to destroy Christianity... We want to fill our culture again with the Christian spirit.... We want to burn out all the recent immoral developments in literature, in the theatre, and in the press - in short, we want to burn out the poison of immorality which has entered into our whole life and culture as a result of liberal excess during the past few years."

Adolf Hitler
The Speeches of Adolph Hitler, 1922-1939, Vol. 1 (London, Oxford University Press, 1942), pg. 871-872.

Just remember that Hitler used anything and anybody to obtain power. Is it surprising that he will seek to use Pro-Christian propaganda in this attempt. Of course saying you are a christian or using pro-religious terminology does not make your religious.

Hitler was a politician. The fact that you see so much similiar proganada in our nation (or others) to that of Nazi germany is because Politics require propaganda. The nazi's used almost every form and method of propaganda they could find.

 

[José]

Sunni Man wants to establish a muslim theocratic state in America that will inevitably restrict Christianity.

Evangelical wants to create a christian theocracy that will certainly be hostile to muslims.

Both theocrats are too blind and dumb to realise that the secular state is the only thing that protects them from each other's religious totalitarianism.

 

[José]

Sunni and Evangelical are scoundrels of the first order. They use the freedom afforded to them by the secular state to try and destroy this same freedom and replace it with an authoritarian religious state.

 

[Mr. Shaman]

This has political ramifications for the views of the future of the GOP and the Christians in the US. The argument here is very interesting between Pat Buchannan and the editor of Newsweek.

Media Matters - After Buchanan suggests secularism leads to Nazism, Newsweek's Meacham agrees that there's a "great danger"

How odd......that iconic-figure for......

....the STORMFRONT-boys.....

......would disavow his base.

*

I'm guessin' there's a......

......job-offer, from Rupert Murdoch.....

.....already in-process!!!!!!​