The Green NAZI Deep Ecology of Martin Heidegger

Meet the man who put ecofascism on the map and fit in squarely with atrocious NAZI totalitarianism.  Agenda 21’s precursor — some zeitgeist.

by Mark Musser

One of the most influential philosophers of the 20th century, foundational to the academic left and deep ecology of the greens, was committed to Nazism.

The green Nazi/deep ecology connection in the life and works of Martin Heidegger have been routinely given a pass over the years by many western scholars who love his existential philosophy.  According to French professor Emmanuel Faye’s latest book on Heidegger, the days of viewing his commitment to Nazism as something incidental to his life are now officially over.

In his book Heidegger: The Introduction of Nazism into Philosophy in Light of the Unpublished Seminars 1933-35, French Professor Emmanuel Faye has exposed the real Martin Heidegger (1889-1976).  Western scholars have been so enamored with his existentialist philosophy that it has been very difficult for them to accept the fact that he was a real Nazi.  Too many have been more than willing to overlook his Nazi past as something incidental to his worldview.

Environmental historians have been quick to cover for Heidegger because he is such a critical figure in modern green philosophy.  Many of his views are consistent with what is today called deep ecology.  Heidegger is known among environmental thinkers for later advocating an anti-technology “let it be” attitude toward nature after his so-called ‘turning’ from National Socialism.  However, Faye clearly shows that Heidegger’s ‘turning’ from National Socialism is a modern myth built on outright lies and the later redaction of his earlier materials hidden under dense language and opaque existentialism.  Martin Heidegger is an unrepentant Nazi.  Even years after the war, he spoke of the “inner truth and greatness” of National Socialism.

The idea that Heidegger temporarily strayed into Nazism only to recover himself later with a much more mature philosophy is simply untenable.  According to Faye, it is far more likely that Heidegger managed to infiltrate much of the post-modern world with a more developed Nazi political ‘philosophy.’  Although Faye does not discuss in detail the environmental leanings of Martin Heidegger, his brand of green existentialism is much more at the heart of the issue than most people realize.  Heidegger has certainly hidden some of his Nazism in the modern green movement.

Existentialism is fertile ground from which to develop a deep ecological worldview.  Existentialism often uses natural existence or ‘being’ to trump idealistic or religious thought that heightens itself above the natural world.  Nature and its holistic interrelatedness is used to neutralize both philosophy and religious faith as incongruent to the existential realities of the real world.  This also allegedly leads to a false, dominating view over nature, which has become especially superficial and unsustainable in the modern mechanized world.  Truth is not a matter of abstract doctrinal statements that unnaturally detaches people from the real world, but is self-defined according to one’s own natural existence rooted in his particular environment.

photo from http://www.hermes-press.com/philosophy_tyranny.htm

For Heidegger, what needs to be done is to destroy western philosophy and its Judeo-Christian handmaid. Even after the war, Heidegger’s philosophy was aimed point blank at the overthrow of traditional western philosophy/religion in order to save the planet.  With its transcendental emphasis upon mind, thinking and thought, both western philosophy and the Judeo-Christian worldview elevate ‘rootless’ rationalism and/or faith over the reality of natural existence.  As far as Heidegger was concerned, this has led modern, western man into an inauthentic lifestyle contrary to the natural world grounded in what Heidegger calls ‘being.’

The main thrust of Heidegger’s thought is thus to reduce all metaphysics or philosophy to the question of ‘being’ or existence, particularly German ‘being.’  In so doing, western man’s alienating and destructive dominance over nature can be arrested.  Indeed, Heidegger went so far as to say that the motorization of the Wehrmacht in Nazi Germany’s victory of France in 1940 was a “metaphysical act.”  This, of course, reduces philosophy to the realm of politics and power – the epitome of Nazi existentialism.  Nazi Germany’s conquest over France represented the victory of National Socialist ideology over the international values of the French Enlightenment that exaggerated human reason over Nature.

Heidegger is also important in understanding the ideological basis for Nazi technology even though National Socialism was a secular religion of Nature.  Martin Heidegger did not become anti-technology per se until after the war when the Allies were in charge of the atom bomb.  In the 1920’s and 30’s he spoke of the ‘natural powers’ of German technology that grows out of and is limited by Nature.  He thus believed in an Aryan sustainable technology rooted in the soil of Germany.  Technology based on the globalist forces of the Enlightenment is inauthentic and locally destructive to the native German peoples (das volk) since it has been uprooted by the ‘liberal’ Jewification of society.

That modern environmentalism has swept in behind the collapse of classic western philosophy and the fading of the Judeo-Christian worldview is thus no accident.  It is part and parcel of the whole post-modern outlook that denies any transcendental truth or God that exists independent and outside of the natural world.  Without such transcendental truths, all that is left is an amoral nature and its factual existence, and Martin Heidegger has been leading this particular charge since his early days in the camp of National Socialism.

Although Heidegger did not join the Nazi Party until 1933, he was very supportive of the movement from its inception.  Heidegger’s wife, Elfride, was a Nazi enthusiast going back as far as the early 1920’s.  She was very involved in the naturist Nazi youth groups of the time.  With inheritance money, she also purchased Heidegger’s chalet in the upper reaches of the Black Forest called  Todtnauberg.  The chalet had beautiful nearby valley views topped off by the Alps in the distance.  From this very chalet would come the inspiration for much of Heidegger’s green existentialism.  Ironically enough, Todtnauberg means “mountain of death.”  In 1934, Heidegger signed an environmental petition called the “German Landscape in Peril.”  Other Nazi greens who signed the petition included Paul Schultze-Naumburg, Walther Schoenichen, Hans Schwenkel, Konrad Guenther, Werner Haverbeck, and Fritz Todt.  In those days, many German greens got caught up in what was called the Nazi “blood and soil” ideology developed by Himmler’s SS where German blood rooted in German soil became the basis for protecting the homeland (Heimat) – culturally, militarily and environmentally.

Heidegger’s Todtnauberg chalet, photo from Wikimedia: Muesse

Former students of Heidegger also confirmed that he was a Nazi blood and soil environmental enthusiast throughout the much of the 1920’s.  Heidegger bragged about the Nazi naturist youth movement as one of the keys to a successful future.  Heidegger also believed that universal reason as practiced by modern philosophy since the Renaissance is contrary to the existential realities of blood and soil.  Another student claimed that Heidegger was convinced that only a National Socialism dictatorship could oppose Marxism properly.  Heidegger advocated that violence, if not liquidation and assassination, against opponents was an acceptable solution to political problems.  He openly proclaimed the Fuhrer principle, German racism and eugenics, Nazi collectivism, and was even promoted as rector to the University of Freiburg when Jewish professors were forcibly removed from their posts.  He was also anti-Semitic.  He considered the Jews in the East unnatural nomads unworthy of their living space (lebensraum).  Shockingly, many dead German soldiers on the battlefields of the Second World War possessed Heidegger’s books in their rucksacks.  Heidegger also proclaimed that the people of Germany should have an ‘erotic’ love for the Nazi state.

In June of 1933, Heidegger gave a speech at the Freiburg university stadium when a symbolic bonfire of un-German like books were burned.  Even much of his later existentialism was specifically designed to do away with all inauthentic thought that elevated itself above its own natural environs.  The antipathy that radical greens have toward the foundations of modern culture – whether religiously, philosophically, or even economically – has become increasingly perilous.  What is worse?  Burning books or tearing down dams and choking off energy supplies and burning corn in cars?  The latter may turn out to be far worse than the former if continued unchecked.

More than a few environmental historians have pointed out that since Heidegger did not believe in biological racism, he cannot be considered a genuine Nazi.  Faye, however, strongly points out that in place of a fundamentalist view of Nazi blood, Heidegger taught a racial rootedness in the German soil that was ontologically or existentially based rather than biologically based.   This ontological en-rootedness only deepens the issues further.  It provides a philosophical justification for German racism without it being tied to the fundamentalism of Nazi scientism.  This, in turn, provides a broader foundation for Nazi doctrines to rest upon, pollinate and grow.  That such nuances have been used by scholars to disassociate Heidegger from National Socialism needs to be corrected and abandoned.  Heidegger’s fascism is built on environmental existentialism rather than biological scientism. Indeed, in his Heidelberg courses he enlightened his audiences by saying that, “the Fatherland is being itself.”

This article was originally published in American Thinker, 7/10/2011


.Mark Musser is the author of Nazi Oaks: The Green Sacrificing Offering of the Judeo-Christian Worldview in the Holocaust and Wrath or Rest: Saints in the Hands of an Angry God.

Additional items by or featuring Mark may be found in Gulag Bound.

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Graphics added by Gulag Bound

Comments

  1. You cite my article on the volkisch undertones of Nazi ecology, but I’m not sure if you noticed that my blog is written from a firmly Marxist position. My perspective is not only anti-fascist, however, but also anti-Stalinist. I’m just not sure if you were clear on what kind of post you were referring to in citing me.

  2. This is so silly, it’s hard to know where to start.

    Take the assertion above: “Shockingly, many dead German soldiers on the battlefields of the Second World War possessed Heidegger’s books in their rucksacks.”

    That’s linked to an article that states: “Yet, as one of Heidegger’s most perceptive critics, Paul Hühnerfeld, has said: ‘”These books, whose meaning was barely decipherable when they appeared, were devoured. And the young German soldiers in the Second World War who died somewhere in Russia or Africa with the writings of Hölderlin and Heidegger in their knapsacks can never be counted.”

    Really? Perhaps the number is zero. I bet more soldiers had Bibles than Heidegger’s works in their packs. Therefore, following your reasoning: people who read the Bible must be Nazis because many German soldiers had Bibles in their packs.

    Were you aware that the publication of Heidegger’s works was barred by the Nazis? Where do you fit that fact into the chain of unsubstantiated assertions?

    What the article mainly indicates is that there is collection of people who hate Heidegger (Hühnerfeld, Faye, and so on), who all cite each other in a circle that reinforces their hatred, but offers nothing to others who are curious about philosophy, but not involved in this hate fest.

    Close to one hundred books by Heidegger have been published in English, but you don’t cite or reference any of them. Instead you copy one propagandist, who’s copying what another progagandist wrote, and so on down a chain of innuendo that is unrelated to the works of Heidegger, and which are available in any public library and online. Depending on how you slice the statistics, Heidegger can come up as the most cited XXth century philosopher. Yes, Heidegger was a Nazi, and scholars have made their careers investigating that aspect of him, but the article doesn’t tell us anything that helps us make sense of what Heidegger wrote about philosophy and environmentaism.

    • Enowning,

      See the other Musser articles, linked after the article, for more context. Heidegger generally took the environmentalism ball from Arthur Schopenhauer and the general anti-jew, anti-Christ post enlightenment German zeitgeist and ran with it.

      Don’t even try to bring up the Big Lie about false ties of Naziism and Christianity. If you do, you follow in HItler’s footsteps, trying to both blame the doctrines of the Bible and co-opt those influenced by their culture. No dogs to train, here.

  3. Dear Enowning,

    Publicly, Hitler did not speak against Christianity, but privately before his henchmen, he constantly criticized Christianity. Read Hitler’s Table Talk 1941-44. This is Martin Bormann’s handiwork being the Secretary of the Nazi Party. Bormann hated Christianity too, and he made sure that every time Hitler said something against Christianity it was in there. Compared to Hitler’s Table Talk 1941-44 Mein Kampf is a politically correct document!

    I readily admit that I am no expert on Heidegger, but I am smart enough to use his own existential ‘existence’ against him. I also do not know of any books of Heidegger that were banned by the Nazi Party. Please provide us with a list. I would be interested in looking at it.

    Thanks,

    Mark Musser

    • “I am smart enough to use his own existential ‘existence’ against him”

      Can you elaborate? I don’t know what existential existence means.

      “I also do not know of any books of Heidegger that were banned by the Nazi Party. Please provide us with a list. I would be interested in looking at it.”

      I wrote barred no banned. The Nazi’s didn’t want to get into a public fight with Heidegger, while at the same time suppressing his writings. They controlled the supply of paper, so they simply denied paper for printing Heidegger’s books, while at the same time they authroized printing new works by Sarte and Camus during. They were darlings of the resistance after the war, and Heidegger was a Nazi philosopher, you claim. Yet the Nazis printed their works and not Heidegger’s.

      It’s hard to prove a negative, that something didn’t happen. But if you can come up with a printing history of Being and Time during the war, or a copy of “Being and Time” printed by the Nazis, or one recovered from a battlefield pack, then I’ll eat my criticism!

      • Dear enowning,

        In my opinion, Martin Heidegger’s own ‘being’ in National Socialism is a self refutation of his own philosophy. Also, when you bring in the likes of Satre and Camus, you only deepen the connections between existentialism with Nazism. That there was infighting between Rosenberg, Krieck and Heidegger in no way calls into question the commitment to Nazism, which, of course created problems for Heidegger. However, this largely all shop talk on how best to be a Nazi rather than a moving away or a turning from Nazism. It had more to do with personal ambition and rivarly than Nazi commitment. Faye spends some time on the Krieck controversy in his book. Too many scholars make a big deal out of shop talk to try and disassociate their favorite philosophers, practioners, etc. from National Socialism. The excuses that everyone dreams up, the amnesia that takes over, is incredible.

        • I read sometime in the last year a letter from Heidegger complaining that he couldn’t get his works reprinted once the Nazis could control of the supply of paper. But I can find it anywhere on google books, so I’ll set that aside.

          The issue with Heidegger is not whether he was a Nazi – he joined the party, so that’s pretty definitive – but whether his choice of political party affects his philosophy. And its clear to me that you, Faye, et al, just don’t know what to make of him. That’s not surprising, it takes years of study to figure out what, 25 centuries since the Greeks, any philosopher has to say that’s new. The intellectually bankrupt position is to say: he was a Nazi, I hate Nazis, therefore Heidegger’s philosophy was wrong. That’s political correctness. It works at the Saturday matinee, but kills intellectual progress.

          If a physicist were to say: Heisenberg was a Nazi, therefore the Uncertainty Principle is Nazi physics, that person would be laughed out of any reputation they might have had as a scholar.

          The same applies criticism of Heidegger. Sure he was a Nazi, and I wouldn’t give my daughter permission to marry him, but his contributions to our understanding of Aristotle stands, irrespective of the dictates of political correctness.

          • While I generally sympathize with your disgust at the way that this whole thing is being handled on this site and so on, I do not think it is ridiculous to examine the way that Heidegger’s philosophy (even before he officially joined the Nazi party) may have lent itself to fascist tendencies. For example, Adorno, in his excellent The Jargon of Authenticity (1963), identified the fascist elements of Heidegger’s work long before the documentary evidence was made abundantly clear in Victor Farias’ book in the 1980s. Besides Heidegger’s glorification of the simple, authentic German volk compared with the cosmopolitan, Jewish “they” of the cities, with their “idle talk” and “chatter,” Adorno picked up on overarching linguistic similarities between fascist language and Heidegger’s own:

            At times [existential philosophy] even picks up banal [words], holds them high and bronzes them in the fascist manner which wisely mixes plebeian with elitist elements.

            There’s much more that I could go into, but I don’t want to get involved in a long and overwrought hermeneutic debate. All I will say is that Heidegger’s letters to his former pupil Herbert Marcuse, written after the war, express no regrets for his political position, and even makes extremely specious moral equivalencies between the genocide of the Jews and the deaths of German civilians in the chaos following the war.

  4. Dear Enowning,

    I am sorry to say that we are merely talking past each other, and there is probably nothing that can be said to fix the problem. Heidegger cannot be understood apart from his commitment to Nazism. Nazism is at the core of his ‘being.’ Karl Lowith, one of his students, even said that Heidegger was more of a radical Nazi than either Rosenberg or Krieck. As a final note, I will say that the Nazi dossier on Heidegger exonherated him of any wrongdoing against the Nazi party. While Krieck and other Nazi philosophers who were more anthropological/biological in their Nazi scientism (and therefore sharply criticized Heidegger for his ‘existential’ or ‘ontological’ racism), the Nazi bureaucrats pointed out that Krieck’s opposition to Heidegger was a question of personal hostility, not over a commitment to Nazism.

  5. Dear Ross Wolfe,

    I am not a Marxist, of course, but I still liked your discussion on the German volk and Heidegger, and so I included it as a link.

    Thanks,

    Mark Musser

    • I’m flattered that you appreciated my discussion of Heidegger’s blatantly Volkisch tendencies, which are no less problematic than when American politicians invoke “the American people.” The major difference between the two forms of populism is that German populism and nationalism has always had “blood and soil” connotations underneath it.

      But I hope that my comments and sincere remarks can remind the authors of this site that nearly every Marxist I know is an anti-fascist to his core. I think that the term “fascist” gets thrown around far too loosely, as it was undoubtedly the most hideous ideology of all time, and was far more historically specific in its characteristics than just some sort of authoritarian tendency (which can be found in all sorts of non-fascist regimes).

      Not only that, but the huge amounts of blood spilled by members of the German Communist Party fighting the brown-shirt SA in the streets of German cities throughout the 1920s and early ’30s, the countless Marxists (Spanish, Russian, and even American and British) who went to Spain to fight Franco and his fascist military regime, not to mention the some 20 million members of the Soviet Red Army who died fighting the barbaric forces of Nazism all the way back from Stalingrad to Berlin. Not to mention Hitler and Mussolini’s virulent anti-Bolshevism. The very notion of a “Marxofascist” seems absurd and insulting to me.

      • Arlen Williams says

        Thank you for the comment Ross.

        May the fighting that Marxists and fascists do be so intramural again, in the back alleys of frustrated authoritarianism. Meanwhile, may the rest of us work on that self-responsible, free moral agent thing.

        • The only reason Marxism is called authoritarian is because most of the regimes that donned that mantle were the products of Stalinism, a brutal and barbaric despot if ever there was one. Marxism at its core is anti-state, like most anarchists. The only difference is that Marxists (and Leninists specifically) view the state as a necessary transitional organ to manage the production and distribution of goods throughout society. But the state should be stripped of all the grotesque bureaucracies that typically accompany the governments of the world. In fact, in time the government would become increasingly useless, as society would just begin to freely regulate itself, with abundance for everyone.

          Anti-Stalinist Marxism is quite compatible with individual liberties.

          • Arlen Williams says

            Thank you for sharing your hopes, Ross. When you find a nation where everyone is responsible for everyone else and there is no need for a method of governance, let me know. We may wish to publish the news.

  6. And moreover, there is really nothing “Marxofascist” about Heidegger, either. Whatever “Marxofascist” is supposed to mean, Heidegger bitterly disdained Marxism as a philosophy and theory of society.

    • Arlen Williams says

      Since I coined the term, I’ll explain briefly. Marxofascist is the engaging in Marxofascism and that term may be used synonymously with neo-Marxism meted out by means of crony capitalism and “public-private partnerships” as stepping stones, or Marxist power play gradualism (Gramsci-through-Alinsky), or Marxist manipulation for permanent majority rule of the proletariat (Trotsky), or communitarianism, or the looser definition of socialism.

      It is collectivism by committee and ministerial council (a style of governance generally shared by Marxist and fascist societies). In short, it is what one sees from the central banking complex and their sponsored or cooperative institutions and personages (IMF, China, Russia, EU, George Soros, Maurice Strong, Barack Obama, Ban Ki-moon, most American Democrats by default, many American Republicans in half measures, etc.).

      It is a family name for two bastard brother philosophies, the adherents often having regarded themselves as rivals, but often and especially now, cooperating on the upswing of insurrection and revolution.

      • Sadly, I think that Gramsci has been woefully misinterpreted by his followers and epigones in Western Marxism (Ernesto Laclau, etc.). It’s a shame, too, because he actually had some quite interesting things to say. The politics of “cultural hegemony” are not so much a policy of “gradual ideological takeover” as they are a description of the postcapitalist transformation of everyday life. Such a thing would be anathema to any genuine Marxism.

        The only gradualist Marxists were the Bernsteinian revisionists and reformers, along with the advocates of Economism in Russian Social-Democracy. As Luxemburg, Lenin, and Trotsky all made clear, Marx saw that only a decisive revolutionary process would overcome capitalism. The idea of “public-private partnerships” smacks of reformism, and stands against everything these thinkers fought for. Also, Trotsky was not simply for a “proletarian majority rule.” The goal of his “permanent revolution” was the accomplishment of a classless society, not just the exaltation of the proletariat. You’re thinking of Stalinist workerism, Stakhanovism, etc.

        The idea that Obama is anywhere near Marxist is absurd. No Marxist would ever consider Obama anything close. He’s far worse than the Republicans, because at least they didn’t promise “change.”

        Also, I fail to see how fascism has anything to do with what you described. Fascism is a “soil and blood” populist, grassroots ideology. It is anti-individualist, and favors principles of mass Discipline, Will, and Struggle. Also the prominence of a central and decisive “leader.” Marxism is anti-state and anti-government. For Marxists, the state only exists to enforce the laws of the ruling classes. It needs to be abolished.

        • Thanks for the smiles, Ross.

          It’s a classic ploy of Marxism to subvert society, foment revolution, then say, “No, I was just describing the inevitable.” (The “inevitable” that never comes.) “I am not a Marxist.” — Karl Marx.

          About Barack Obama, here’s the “news” as of 2008 and it’s significantly more corroborated, since: Investigating Obama: Career Path Toward a Neo-Marxist Presidency.

          Perhaps you missed the sentence with the term “stepping stones” in it, upwards.

          • I clearly did not miss the term “stepping stones.” I explicitly said that such gradualism is rejected by figures like Lenin, Luxemburg, and Trotsky. Obama is no Marxist. The Democrats in general are practically indistinguishable from the Republicans.

  7. Dear Ross Wolfe,

    I agree with you that Marxism and Fascism are very different doctrines, something which I have expressed on Gulagbound’s blog talk radio. Marxism is largely based on Humanism and Fascism is largely based on Nature. However, for all practical purposes, I think that most people who read this blog could care less about such distinctions. The practical difference between Buchenwald and the Gulag Archipelago is pretty small. Marxism social engineers people based on class. The Nazis social engineered people based on ‘biology’ and the modern greens are doing the same based on the myth of the harmony of nature. Also, anarchy will invariably lead to a dictator like Uncle Stalin every time.

    Mark Musser

    • Mark,

      There is some truth to your distinction between Marxism and Fascism as corresponding to the philosophies of Humanism on the one hand, and Naturalism on the other. Though I must immediately add that there are some very prominent anti-humanist strains of Marxism (Louis Althusser and his successors). I deplore the Stalinist system of the GULag, but I will point out that there were never any sites within the so-called “archipelago” that were specifically intended for extermination. The labor camps within the GULag were relatively comparable to the Nazi concentration (not extermination) camps. One important difference that would remain would be purely climatic. Again, there is no defense of the GULag system or Stalinism in general.

      It wasn’t anarchy that installed Stalin at the head of the Soviet Union. It was Stalin’s systematic abuse of his position as General Chairman of party membership combined with his various maneuvers between Kamenev, Zinoviev, and Bukharin against Trotskii. Trotskii probably even could have stepped in and preempted Stalin’s rise, because he still had the backing of the Red Army. But Trotskii did not want to stage a military coup, as he saw this as a relapse into a dictatorship akin to the Bonapartist takeover of the French Revolution. Trotskii’s noble gesture in not removing Stalin by force was repaid by exile and eventually a pick-axe in the back of his head.

      Liberal bourgeois democracy has also at times proved susceptible to despotic takeovers. Bonaparte is certainly one example, but the shortlived Weimar Republic fell to Nazism, and the Spanish republic to fascism soon thereafter. The problem with Stalin’s takeover is that it tainted every single so-called “communist” revolution since. True Marxism is anti-state and pro-democracy.

      • Hi Ross,

        I used Buchenwald as the example because it was not a death camp because I suspected that you might bring out that distinction about the gulag work camps. Marxism in its pure form is both apocalyptic and utopian and is impossible to create on the earth. It is just as abstract and philosophical as idealism itself. Turning Hegel on his head did not prevent Marx from being the ultimate philosopher of history. I think we will have to call this discussion a draw.

        Thanks all the same for your Heidegger piece!

        Mark

    • Arlen Williams says

      Yes, the differences are not as significant as the similarities, to those who value life, liberty, and property as gifts from God for which we are responsible, as you say, Mark.

      Llsten all humanist social engineers…E s s e n t i a l l y . t h e r e . i s . no . d i f f e r e n c e . among you.

      And now, one must observe the beast that is, to know it. That is more essential than observing its quarrelsome parents. People born to fascist parents get taught and inculcate Marxist language and thought (and actually, the original fascists already had a lot of it going on in their minds — they were reactionary… to Marxism!). Also, people born to Marxist parents see the practicality and materialistic appeal of fascism.

      To see it all working together, just observe a university, news organization — or the White House, and more than half the Congress, and the Federal courts. For just one example, are those who attend TED seminars communitarians concerned with class? Yes! Are they also ecologists and technologists concerned with science (and good breeding)? Yes!

      The political fact is, they have largely come together, Marxists and fascists (remember any Marxist and/or fascist reading this — you aren’t bound by history — you create society anew — you don’t care about your dead great-grandparents! ;-) hence we see that the neo-Marxists among us are Marxofascist.

      • Mr. Williams,

        What you’ve just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.

        • Arlen Williams says

          Ross, there is essentially no difference between authoritarian-collectivist states, since the essence of each of them is their denial of the Sovereignty and freedom of the person and their use of force to compel the same against their good motives.

          You maintain that Marxism and freedom may be practiced at once. Not only are they incompatible, there is no such thing as a nation that even succeeds in practicing Marxism in the first place, by its utopian (dystopian) goals.

          For more on the self-contradictions of Marxism, if you are still tracking this, I would suggest Mark Musser’s article in Gulag Bound, “The Absurdity of Karl Marx’s Dialectical Fundamentalism.”

          • “there is no such thing as a nation that even succeeds in practicing Marxism in the first place, by its utopian (dystopian) goals”

            This would be an interesting point if Trotsky and Marx himself did not make it in the first place. No single nation by itself can ever succeed in the practice of creating a postcapitalist society. Socialism requires a broadly INTERNATIONAL basis, such that revolution must be carried out in the most advanced capitalist nations on earth, at the very least, for capitalism to be overcome. This has never happened. The revolutions in Germany and Hungary in 1918-1919 were crushed by old imperialist and proto-fascist forces within Germany and without from Romania.

    • Arlen Williams says

      And now, one must observe the beast that is, to know it. That is more essential than observing its quarrelsome parents.

      But your exposing the roots and stems of modern authoritarianism and humanistic societal engineering are highly important. It’s critical to show the development in order to see its nature, and to see the how’s and why’s of it.

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