“It doesn’t matter what we believe in, as long as we believe.”
- From the diary of Joseph Goebbels
The Age of Nihilism: Christendom from the Great War to the Culture Wars, by John Strickland
In this chapter, Strickland moves from the Communism of the Soviet Union to the National Socialism of Germany (next will come a look into the Liberalism of the West). Just as in the chapter on Communism, there is much here that will sound, unfortunately, as if it is being written about today’s western democracies. This chapter adds another dimension: a striking mirror to Israel’s actions regarding Palestinians in Gaza.
National Socialism was the most bestial vision of the West ever concocted. More even than Communism, it promised to replace decrepit humanism and moralistic Christianity with a totally new moral order unrestrained by reason or mercy.
I struggle with this statement. Was National Socialism somehow worse in this regard than Communism? It is the story we are supposed to believe: Hitler, not Stalin, has become the stand-in for Satan. But regarding this “totally new moral order unrestrained by reason or mercy,” one could argue that National Socialism at least held some mercy toward Germans.
This mercy toward Germans can be seen in the three nihilistic convictions that lay at the heart of National Socialism:
“…the existence of a master race, the inferiority of other races, and the need for a war of racial annihilation.”
By the way, is this not inarguably the view of Israel when it comes to their position and against the position of Palestinians?
In any case, for whom did Communism, under Stalin, hold any mercy? He purged those even in his inner circles, let alone Russian, Ukrainian, or Georgian commoners. In the battle of “most bestial,” Stalin killed far more civilians before the first shot was fired in Europe in World War Two than did Hitler.
As to the first conviction, the existence of a master race, Strickland sees this as necessary within Hitler’s framework as a defense of “Christendom in general and Germany in particular.” This is a second statement which is baffling to me.
There is nothing in Hitler’s actions that were a defense of Christendom. Worship was of Hitler; allegiance was sworn to Hitler. Strickland offers many examples that counter his own assertion:
· Mixing Wagnerian nationalism with Nietzschean worship of the will…
· …the West was built by a master race called the Aryans.
· …preserved Aryan supremacy through morally unflinching expansion and conquest.
· …racist nationalism…
· …the racial transformation of the world…
· …evolutionary ideas about an Aryan master race…
· …individual human beings have no innate value.
· “A stronger generation will drive out the weaklings,” Hitler claimed.
There is no defense of Christendom here, not in any sense to understand the word. And this points to one of the problems I have had with Strickland’s entire narrative arc (as valuable as I have found his work in many ways). His narrative depends on hinging the problems of the West to the schism of 1054.