The following piece asks the question, ‘was what Hitler or Stalin did rational?’.
The question sounds perverse, and in a way it is. How can the mass killings of people–especially those who are ‘innocent’–be rational? Also, even if we allow that no one is innocent in either the spiritual or ideological sense, who has the right to kill so many?
Still, rational isn’t the same as moral. The opposite of rational is mad or irrational. Neither rationalism nor madness is moral or immoral; both are amoral. We generally prefer rationality, but rationality isn’t the same as rationalism. Rationalism says that we should think, believe, and act according to the rational dictates arising from premises founded upon scientific principles. It could be argued that Hitler and the Nazis would have been less dangerous had they been mad than rationalist. As madmen, they might have killed Jews one day, spared them on the next, and so on. Mad people lack consistency and don’t follow logical courses of action.
This cannot be said of Stalin or Hitler. They had a set of beliefs or principles supposedly founded on scientific facts, and acted accordingly and consistently. To be sure, there are people who can be mad or delusional in some fundamental way and then be logically consistent in the pursuit of that delusion. Think of UFO nuts whose basic belief in alien beings are founded on nonsense or lunacy but logically pursue ‘data’ based on their assumptions. And, there’s another kind of madness where some people see patterns and conspiracies through overly active, imaginative, and paranoid mind.
All of this makes us wonder to what extent people like Marx, Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, and others were merely scientifically wrong or fundamentally imbalanced psychologically. Were they scrupulously rational and sane men who unfortunately or tragically came upon a set of wrong ideas, or were they fundamentally imbalanced mentalities fated to mis-connect historical and ‘scientific’ dots–those that would not have been connected by people more attuned to reality. (But, what is macro-reality except what we read about in books and magazines, and what author or researcher has full grasp of larger social reality? All views of social reality are half-truths and half-guesses founded on personal agendas and prejudices.)
Anyway, no one can know everything about the world of men. It’s difficult enough to understand the nature of elemental particles or the behavior of ‘simple’ organisms. When it comes to mankind–all the people together--, it’s impossible to know the utlimate truth about human nature, human potential, human diversity, and human good/evil. So, anyone who claims to know about humanity and then comes up with a set of theories which justifies policies for creating utopia is deeply suspect.
In this sense, rationalism is dangerous when applied to the human world because there is only so much we know about ourselves, much less others. To look upon mankind as particles of (historical)matter can lead to dehumanization–no matter how utopian the goals–, as was demonstrated many times in the 20th century.
The problem is never rationality, something we always need more of but of excessive rational-ISM. Excessive or radical rationalism assumes that a handful of very intelligent men can understand the true nature and potentialities of man, and such, they should have the power to socially engineer us like guinea pigs. This is not necessarily an anti-government position. Indeed, one could argue libertarianism is just another radical ideology though less dangerous than leftism. The libertarian philosophy of let-chips-fall-where-they-may also looks upon human beings as particles of (socio-economic)matter; supposedly, individual freedom and free markets will sort everything out for the good of all. Rather fanciful notion considering the nature of man.
Anyway, one could argue both Stalin and Hitler were rationalistic men–even ultra-rationalistic. They believed in a set of principles and then pushed them to their logical conclusions. When it came to ideology, Stalin was a communist and Hitler was a National Socialist. When it came to strategy, both were opportunists. As a result, their tactics were sometimes at odds with their stated ideologies–especially during the Nazi-Soviet pact–, but everything they did made rational(ist) sense within what they believed about the world and statecraft.
One may ask, how rational was it for Stalin to kill so many? What possible harm to the state could entire families of peasants or various powerless ethnic groups possibly do? What was the necessity of pushing millions of Ukrainians and others toward starvation? Why did entire ethnic groups have to be deported across the vast Soviet continent and worked and/or starved to death?
While some of it made brute economic sense, the scale on which it took place makes us wonder if there could be any rational justification.
And yet, if we take Stalin’s ideology seriously, it made sense enough. After all, Stalin wasn’t only trying to build an economy but create the New Man, a New Culture, a New World. In this equation, all the little nationalisms were an hindrance. All nationalisms had to be smashed or made Soviet-friendly. And, the logic of the revolution dictated that the most ruthless, dramatic, and sudden attacks on the Old Order was most effective. The Russian Civil War taught the Bolsheviks that it’s us-or-them. There could be no compromise. So, the communists waged a total blitzkrieg against the old order–churches, nationalities, property owning peasants, etc. That most of the victims were powerless–and even poor–was irrelevant. Cumulatively, they were seen as a deadweight dragging the revolution. The only way to turn the lethargic masses into a revolutionary force was through a war mentality. Everything had to be us-against-them. So, even people who didn’t oppose the revolution could be deemed as the enemy if they weren’t part of the revolutionary army or militants. The enemies were not only the anti-revolutionary saboteurs and agents, but the people themselves clinging to old ways of thought. In a way, the latter type was a bigger challenge for the revolution. The ruthless Soviet secret police could amply ferret out and destroy anti-communist agents in a totalitarian police state. But, what do you do about the population who only wanted to be left alone, keep their property, and mind their own business? Such people weren’t out to overthrow the system, but they were standing in the way of the revolutionary locomotive. Either they worked to lay down new tracks or they had to be run over.
In this sense, Stalin’s mass killings did make sense. That they unfairly killed millions of innocents is very true, but what is an ‘innocent’ in historical terms? Whether one is innocent or not depends on the historical context. A well-off German family in the early 1940s is doing no direct harm to anyone and is indeed innocent. But, as a witting or unwitting cog in the Nazi-dominated German machine–much of it devoted to war–, is he truly innocent? Similarly, within the context of Soviet ideology, anyone who owned private land and didn’t want to relinquish it to the communists could not have been regarded as innocent. By the very nature of his outlook and habits, he could only be regarded as a reactionary or even anti-revolutionary.
Much the same could be said of Hitler’s mass killings. It may seem perverse to say Hitler’s killings–especially of the Jews and gypsies–were rational(ist), but it would be more perverse to say they were mad. It was not like Hitler was hallucinating day in and day out, rolling the dice and killing Jews and gypsies the one day and then embracing them the next. No, there was a terrible logic to what Hitler did, and it was certainly rationalist.
One may ask, what is so rational about killing Jewish conservatives(Jews who embraced German nationalism) and Jewish children? How could children be guilty of anything? This is a valid question within the field of criminal justice, but Nazi ideology had another way of judging people-racially. It was the contention of Hitler and other Nazi ideologues that Jewish problem was essentially biological. Therefore, the outer manifestations of Jewish sickness was rooted in Jewish genes. As such, the genes themselves had to be eradicated. Within the beliefs of this ideology, Hitler’s holocaust makes rational sense.
After all, how do we deal with cockroaches and rats? Do we just kill the adults of the species since they are the ones doing the harm? No, we find ways to eradicate their babies too. Why? Because the babies will inevitably grow up into harmful bugs and pests. We don’t hope that maybe the young rats and roaches will grow up to be different from their pesty parents. We believe that rats and roaches are genetically programmed to engage in behavior that is harmful to us.
This was the logic of Nazism when it came to the Jewish and gypsy question. Nazis believed that the social, economic, and political problems related to Jews or gypsies were essentially rooted in biology. In other words, Jew can’t help but be a Jew. A gypsy can’t help but be a gypsy.
Of course, not even Hitler believed all Jews were bad or corrupt, but he believed that even good or decent Jews possess recessive or latent genes that could produce an evil or wicked Jew down the line.
The nature of Nazi ideology being what it was, one could argue that the Jewish holocaust was rational even if horrific. Rationalism always operates within the context of what is assumed to be true. As such, it is amoral.
To be sure, one may question the rationalism of the premise itself; one can argue, for instance, that Nazi ideology wasn’t rational at its roots, and so the Jewish holocaust was the rational outcome of something irrational. There is some truth to this. If Hitler and the Nazis had looked carefully at the facts, they would have realized that the nordic race wasn’t purely ‘Aryan’, a misapplied term to begin with. Also, they would have admitted that the so-called Aryans were not superior to Jews in intellect nor superior to blacks in physical prowess. So, Nazi ideology was fundamentally false, and the rationalist actions perpetrated in its name served a set of lies or delusions. So, would proper rationalism have prevented something like Nazism? If Nazism had been founded on truth than falsehoods about race and human biology, could the Jewish and gypsy holocaust have been prevented? Perhaps, perhaps not.
After all, the truth–Jewish intellectual superiority, for instance–could just as well have served an ideology committed to the mass killing of Jews–man, woman, and child. A people may feel contempt for those deemed inferior but may fear those deemed superior. We humans wouldn’t want to be visited by beings much smarter than us from other planets. (Suppose a 1000 alien being arrive from another planet, and their average IQ is a 1000; and suppose we accept them as fellow beings. Suppose their numbers multiply quickly, and they gain control of our economy, politics, etc. Suppose they grow more arrogant and contemptuous of us dumb humans as they gain power and wealth. Wouldn’t many people prefer to wipe them out before we eventually become their guinea pigs–like Christian Slavs, for a time, became the chattel of Bolshevik revolutionaries disproportionately made up of significantly smarter Jews?) There’s a chance that the Alien Beings may be nice, but what if they are not? And, even if they are nice, it would mean we are now at the mercy of their kindness; if they choose to destroy us, we are finished.
So, the Jewish holocaust could have happened even if Nazism had been an ideology of inferiority than of superiority. Indeed, there’s enough evidence to suggest that Nazism was as much founded on inferiorist impulses and resentments as on supremacist ideas. No race, nationality, or people want to regard themselves as inferior or less worthy, so they mask their feelings of inferiority with superiorist rhetoric. But, look behind the facade, and the real passions may well be driven by fear and resentment of the people perceived to be smarter, richer, more talented, and/or hostile to the established order of the native majority. In Germany, especially during the great depression of the 20s and early 30s–and the humiliation of defeat in WWII and fear of Soviet communism(dominated in the early stages by radical Jews), many Germans came to regard Jews with envy, fear, and dread. Many Germans were too proud to admit their sense of inferiority vis-a-vis the Jews, so the Nazis came up with a theory of why Jews were more successful and accomplished than Germans. It was said Jews were devious, cunning, or conspiratorial. Or, that Jews concocted false ideas like Marxism, Freudian psychology, and Einstein’s theory of relativity to confused good solid Germans. Even in the world of the bourgeoisie, it was said Jews got ahead through fancifully devious finance capitalism than good honest economics. (A crucial contradiction that Nazism fed upon was the perception that ‘Aryans’ looked nobler and more handsome but were less intelligent than Jews. Nazis believed that aesthetics should be synonymous with intellect, and natural nobility with talent, but that wasn’t the case in actual reality. A rather funny looking and acting Einstein was the greatest scientist of his age. ‘Nibelungenish’ Jews were better businessmen than Germans who were themselves among the best in the world. This divergence of intellect and aesthetics has been something Jews have been well-aware of as well. So, Jews always found ways to find and use idealized‘decent’ good looking goyim who would serve to cosmeticize the superior intellectual ideas of Jews. And, so Freud placed his hopes on the Aryan Carl Jung to be serve as the conduit for Freudian psychology. Ayn Rand was radical Jewess who propped up Aryan-like heroes of commerce and art, when in fact many giants of business and arts of the 20th century were funny looking Jews–or funny looking gentiles for that matter. Reagan was the tall handsome goy face to Milton Friedman-ism, and the ‘noble’ and ‘soulful’ Obama is the idealized mask behind which Jews like Larry Summers and the New Republic gang hope to operate. In Hollywood, many writers have been funny-looking Jews, but the actors have often been Aryan-like whites or Idealized blacks. The superior aesthetic image of the goyim has been made to serve the ideas and values of Jews. Since the audience come to see ‘Aryan’ or ‘Soulful’ types espousing values pushed by liberal Jews, people are led to think that Jewish values are their own values.)
Anyway, for the Nazis, this wasn’t just a political, cultural, or historical problem but one rooted in Jewish genetics. Hitler and his ideological comrades were convinced that the Jewish gene had directed Jewish survival, behavior, deviousness, and repulsiveness toward non-Jews from the beginning of history. Jews were like a unpleasant breed of dogs–one with weasel-like features and different from the normal breeds. This was an extreme form of anti-semitism, but philo-semitism could also be based on genetic uniqueness of the Jews. Charles Murray, a neo-conservative gentile, wrote an article last year in Commentary magazine arguing that Jews–at least the Ashkenazi kind--are intellectually and creatively more gifted than other peoples(which implies that Jews are more precious than other peoples). Murray makes a genetic case for why we should admire Jews whereas Nazis made a genetic case for why we should hate them.
Given the premise of Hitler’s beliefs about race and history, it made rational(ist) sense to remove Jews from gentile society and even execute something as radical as racial extermination. Indeed, given the principles and beliefs of Nazis, it would have been irrational not to do otherwise. Again, rational(ist) isn’t the same as moral or what we would consider sane. It is what logically follows from what is accepted as the factual premise. If the premise states that Jews are a cancerous tumor, only radical surgery can save your people from the Jews.
It’s often said that Nazi biological science ranged from crude to downright false, but that was true of all biological sciences back then. (Of course, much ‘scientific’ knowledge about humanity even today is pretty fanciful or tainted by ideological prejudices, mostly leftist and egalitarian.) The problem wasn’t so much the theory of racial differences but the radical conviction that one’s beliefs were totally correct. In this light, one may ask whether Nazi prejudices were the results of biological sciences or biological sciences merely justified their prejudices. We may also ask if rationalism and radicalism are compatible, inseparable, or opposites.
First, the relationship between rationalism and radicalism is a tricky one. Rationalism says one’s view of reality and worldly actions must comply with what reason has revealed about the nature of reality. Perhaps, the problem isn’t so much rationalism as the need to live and to act–to apply rationalism to the real world. If we existed as mere consciousness without physical form, we may indefinitely ponder the nature of truth through open-ended rationalism. But, we must act IN THIS WORLD, and our knowledge–whatever the methods used to attain it–is always faulty and incomplete. So, rationalism can only amount to applying one’s imperfect understanding of reality to reality. For most of history, the great scientific minds thought the sun and stars revolved around Earth.
Even the best minds could only be rational with known data, and not everything is ever known; also, even if everything has been discovered and revealed, no single man or group of men can learn and synthesize ALL knowledge and come up with a totally unified theory of reality or what it means to be human. Also, what we may know about subatomic particles or cells or simple organisms may not tell us much if anything about morality and human needs.
Anyway, the problem of man is he must live, and in order to live he must act. To act, he must make decisions. He cannot put off decisions forever in search for the ultimate truth. Like a commander in battle, he must make decisions with limited, faulty, and ever shifting intelligence. So, man is always condemned to act with imperfect understanding of reality despite his effort to be factual and rational.
(We must also keep in mind that factual and rational are not the same thing. The problem is different ideas and decisions can be rationalized from the same set of facts. Suppose you hit a dog with a car. Should the dog be put to sleep or treated for recovery at great cost? Both are rational.)
Besides, most people are not particularly brilliant or intelligent, and so their rationalism amounts to accepting what the experts say. If textbooks told kids that there are only two lifeforms–animals and plants–, that’s what most kids would unquestioningly believed. If a new textbook said there are 3 lifeforms–animals, plants, and protists–, that would the new orthodoxy. And, so on. So, even for most secular people, rationalism is little more than going along with the experts. Since we can’t understand the complexity of their ideas and methods, we readwatered down magazine articles or books that explain in layman terms. Or, we watch a PBS or cable documentary on scientific matters which are really no more than fancy graphics and generic narration. Even so, we believe that most people in science are serious and worthy men committed to the truth and have the character and caution to admit and correct mistakes. And, who can deny that this system has indeed done wonders for the modern world? Of course, we are talking of hard sciences such as physics, chemistry, and elemental biology.
But, when it comes to human or social sciences, the picture is different. Assumptions and beliefs about mankind are never free of prejudices, agendas, ideologies, and so on. Worse, though social or human sciences are the least truthful and objective of all the sciences, they are expected to offer the greatest number of answers to our social and psychological problems. And, this is where radicalism creeps into rationalism. Social scientists don’t merely want to understand the world but to change it–as Marx put it(though Marx was wrong to assume he was the first to try; philosophers had ALWAYS wanted to change the world; one only needs to read Plato, Han Fei Tzu, or Machiavelli). On the one hand, as scientists they must be filled with caution and humility. But, given the nature and scale of human problems, they feel a need to do something. Just being ‘objective’ may be belittled as ‘bourgeois’, ‘privileged’ and detached from the needs of fellow man. Social scientists and intellectuals of the Left argue that scientists who insist on ever more experiments and discussions are living in a bubble; when the world is crying out for help from poverty, oppression, ignorance, and so on, how can scientists in their ivory towers just search for better truth and look upon every proposed program for social change with skepticism? And, indeed, it may well be true that some people calling for caution and more experimentation/discussion rather than radical action aren’t necessarily devoted to pure science but trying to maintain the status quo. The Left may call for a radical program on scientific grounds, but the Right may call for caution and stasis on the same grounds. The Left may argue that science tells us so and so, and we must act on the so and so. The Right may argue that the so and so are not so certain, and we shouldn’t do anything until we know more. But, how long do we have to wait?
Rationalism isn’t the same as radicalism, but it’s often compatible with radicalism–at least in the human sciences–because many ‘scientists’ in the field believe that their discoveries must serve to advance mankind. There is a built-in impatience within human sciences, which aren’t so much about knowing simply to know but about knowing to DO more. Even so, rationalism isn’t necessarily serviceable only to the Left. Though the Right, due to its religious grounding, has often been at odds with rationalism, rationalism has served the agendas of the Right. Consider the leftist principle of the equality of man. More scientific data are showing that not only are individuals markedly different from one another but there are also considerable differences between men and women and among races. The scientific left has tried to do away with the concept of race altogether, but more data is showing that such is a scientific stupidity, borne more of ideological fixations than real science. While race is not the same as species, that different groups within the same species have different genetic makeup cannot be denied.
Today, there are many rationalist scientists whose findings may be equally disturbing to the religious right and to the ideological left. Consider the case of Edwin O. Wilson whose theories are at odds with the religious right who cling to God and the ideological left which blindly embraces the notion of human equality as fact than as mere ideal.
And indeed, this has been the problem of the Left from the very beginning. On the one hand, it claims to be rationalist, i.e. based on scientific inquiry, experimentation, and data, but on the other hand, it claimed to be for the equality of man. This is the fundamental contradiction within the so-called Enlightenment Principles. Consider this statement on the Soviet revolution from this site which we’ve heard over and over from the Left:
http://www.history.ucla.edu/people/faculty?lid=651"His research seeks to understand how the greatest experiment of the 20th century, led by a movement that grew out of rational, enlightened, egalitarian, and democratic traditions resulted in dictatorship and the deaths of millions of its own people."
The above statement assumes that ‘rational’ and ‘enlightened’ are synonymous with ‘egalitarian’ and ‘democratic’. Taking note of the contradiction within Enlightenment principles, it’s not hard to understand why Leftist experiments failed miserably.
To be sure, there was something enlightened and undoubtedly true about the notion that all men are basically the same and that the traditional forms of social hierarchy were based on false assumptions. In other words, the King and noblemen didn’t have any special kind of blood running through their veins; they were not biologically superior to their subjects. So, an idea of a society where all people would have equal chance and a greater stake made sense. But, just because traditional forms of hierarchy were based on false assumptions, it doesn’t naturally follow that there are no natural hierarchies among men.
Given the fact that most people aren’t very intelligent, we can’t expect them to be expert rationalists. Also, to be truly enlightened was and will always be an elitist ideal and possibility. One may argue that all people should equally have access to higher wisdom, but the fact is only a relatively few are bound to achieve it. Also, being educated doesn’t necessarily mean learning how to think freely or think rationally. For many people, it simply means being indoctrinated, just swallowing what one reads in books or gets from lectures. Why else are so many social scientists clones of one another, spouting the same cliches and certitudes? They’ve learned how to read books, take notes, and make good grades, but the great majority of them never learned how to think freely on their own.
So much for rationalism and enlightenment being cousins of egalitarianism and democracy. The enlightened order is bound to be just as elitist and hierarchical as the old order though on firmer biological and, perhaps, moral grounds(depending on how one conceives of right and wrong). In the old order of the king and aristocracy, power and wealth were passed down by blood/heredity. In the enlightened order, many on top happen to be people with the best minds, talent, ambition, etc. The successful in the enlightened new order tend to have earned their right to wealth and power. Even so, we don’t have an egalitarian order.
There were bourgeois revolutionaries–especially Americans–who were perfectly happy with this new order; there was a greater emphasis on equality and fraternity–whatever that means in practice–in the French Revolution. Many French revolutionaries wanted simply to get rid of king and the noblemen and make for a freer society. But, the more radical ones–and such folks tend to be more ruthless, committed, and conspiratorial–insisted that the ‘rational’ and ‘enlightened’ must be synonymous with ‘equality’ and ‘democracy’. They were Procrustean rationalists. It was this irrational insistence that led to socialism and communism and the horrors of Marxism-Leninism-Stalinism-Maoism.
Worse, radical leftism also raised major doubts about the value of intelligence and intellect. People like Marx, Lenin, Bela Kun, Trotsky, Stalin, Ho, Mao, Che Guevara, etc were no dummies. They were highly intelligent men. Marx and Trotsky were probably even geniuses. Yet, each of them was monstrous in his own distinct way. While some people with superior intelligence/ intellect may despair of the stupidity of most people, other men of intelligence actively seek to ‘save’ mankind–and make things worse.
To be sure, most communist leaders embraced the ideal rather than the factuality of equality as it was a useful justification for holding onto all the power. Even a communist society isn’t equal, and that becomes the excuse for leaders to hold onto power–as the goal hasn’t been accomplished yet. Indeed, this is still the ideological justification of the Chinese Communist Party--that everything it does(even pushing capitalist market reforms)is all part of building a truly equal society.
This may well explain why so many elitists–cultural, intellectual, and political–have tended to be of the Left. Egalitarianism has been more about creating than living in an equal world. For such to be realized, ‘enlightened rationalists’ must have more and more power over the people(nominally, to serve the people). So, it is in the name of equality that a permanent mandarin class seeks power. And, people are too dumb to realize this, which is why the masses of people keep voting for politicians who promise more equality and ‘social justice’. The end result is we end up with politicians who are more powerful than ever before. We elect would-be-tyrants in search for equality. We need only to look at the example of Venezuela with Hugo Chavez. The funny thing is, for all the rhetoric about the nobility and self-respect of The People, The People often don’t trust themselves or their. Poor people want tougher government to take from the rich to give to the poor. The rich people may want tougher government to protect the property of the rich from the poor. The more ‘enlightened’ rich may want bigger government to buy off the poor–by providing diversionary bread and circuses–before the people turn into angry mobs and rebel.
There is also the problem of temperament and personal nature. Whatever intelligence may achieve in math or hard sciences, it is a slave to one’s temperament or emotional nature shaped by cultural upbringing and factors in human affairs. Men like Marx, Lenin, and Hitler may have been genetically fated to be radical and dangerous. What’s true with cats and dogs is true with humans. Some people are naturally more tolerant and live-and-let-live than others. Generally, people of strong emotional dispositions tend to seek dogmatic or radical belief system. It’s hard to imagine someone like Marx or Hitler as an easy going liberal even if they had been raised by Maude(of the 70s TV show). On the other hand, take a man like Gorbachev who grew up in a radical communist system; he had a generally congenial and easygoing nature and liberalized an iron-clad totalitarian system. Intelligence may be crucial in attaining power, but decisions are often driven by emotion and temperament.
In some cases, totalitarian systems do come under the rule of men of superior intelligence and intellect. This can be said of Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin, Mussolini, Hitler, Mao, and to a lesser extent, Castro and Che. But, in some cases, second-raters come to power with the help of sponsors–like the communist bosses of Warsaw Pact nations installed by the Soviet Union–or over a mostly ignorant, stupid, and pathetic populace(in which case, it only takes cunning and opportunism–as with Mobutu in Zaire or Chavez in Venezuela). This fact further complicates the problem of ‘social justice’ and egalitarianism. What chance does a nation have for making progress if its rulers who think themselves so smart, wise, courageous, and visionary are really just demagogic political hacks? But then... did nations ruled by men of genuine intelligence and talent–Russia under Lenin, Trotsky, or Stalin–, or Italy under Mussolini, or Germany under Hitler, or China under Mao do any better? Intelligent and talented, yes, but intelligence and talent in the service of what? In the service of impossible dreams and warped by the megalomaniacal personalties who thought they knew everything.
Neither the rationalist–as opposed to rational–premise for communism nor Nazism was truly scientific in light of what we know today–indeed even of what they knew back then. The Enlightenment ideal of equality was rooted in Judeo-Christian principles despite the anti-religious position of French revolutionaries. The concept of fairness or justice has little or nothing to do with scientific facts. Also, the facts were bound to show that humans were more equal than some ‘scientists’ claimed while less equal than others claimed. There was always bound to be scientific data that could be used to emphasize similarities or differences. Study of DNA can show that every person on Earth belongs to the same human species and originated from a tribe in Africa. But, studies of people around the world make it plain as day that intellectual, emotional, and physical differences do exist among races. So, there is a scientific and rational basis for both leftism and rightism. Humans and society, being ever so complex, what is The Truth that favors one -ism over the other.
A leftist could argue that his side is preferable because it’s in our interest to live together as equal world citizens with mutual respect for one another. A rightist could argue that the nature of blacks being what it is, a higher number of blacks in any society is bound to lead to social decay and the sort of thing you have in Haiti, Detroit, and Africa; it can be argued that no amount of goodwill or idealism is worth a dime if it goes against the reality of how things actually work out.
And indeed, this is a major problem we face today. The number one problem in both US and Europe today is race. In the US, Jews, the smartest and most talented people on Earth, have gained near-monopoly in many areas. Jews tend to look upon white gentiles as their main rivals and have used blacks to guilt-bait white gentiles. Blacks, the strongest and most aggressive and the wildest race on Earth, have often been a criminal, social, sexual, and cultural threat to white America. Of course, most Jews don’t live with dangerous blacks; most Jews range from affluent to super-rich. Jews have also milked the Jewish holocaust for all its worth to pre-empt any criticism of Jewish power. Though many Jews are leftists and champion the need to speak truth to power, don’t ever think it applies to Jewish power. We must all pretend that even billionaire Jews just got off a refugee boat. We have idiot white trash Evangelicals praying for Israel and cheering Jerry Springer who exploits them with derision.
As long as Jews control the media and schools and fill our eyes, ears, and brains with the Jewish holocaust all night and day, we’ll think that our primary moral duty in life is to suck up to Jews. Thomas Frank wrote a book called ‘What’s the Matter with Kansas?’ where he asked why poor whites support rich Wall Street Republicans. Someone should write a book called ‘What’s Wrong with White Goyim?’. Why are so many white gentile Americans supportive and slavish to Jews and Jewish interests when the vast majority of Jews support policies–economic, political, cultural, demographic, foreign policy, etc–which go against interests of white goyim? If rich secular Wall Street republicans have exploited cultural issues to make poor whites vote for free trade policies, Jews have exploited moral and historical issues to make white folks support the Jews when in fact most Jews are doing everything in their power to undermine white power. The vast majority of Jews–through their all-powerful control of media, culture, entertainment, and academia–has given us the contemptible and disgusting Obama as president. When will white America wake up and understand that Oprah and Obama are both hoaxes manipulated by liberal and leftwing Jews to undermine white power. And, why shouldn’t white people think in terms of white power when blacks think in terms of black power and Jews think in terms of Jewish power?
When it came to Jews, the Nazis came to find a connection between their physical repulsiveness with their moral repulsiveness. Of course, repulsiveness is subjective. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and what may be deemed morally repulsive to some may seem morally justified and liberating to others. But, we have a tendency to match one kind of hideousness with another. Most movies still follow this formula, which is why good guys are generally handsome and bad guys tend to be either ugly or hideous in some way. The central prejudice that says beauty is good and ugliness is evil still stands.
And, in some ways, we use this against the Nazis. How useful it has been for anti-Nazis that Hitler and his henchmen were mostly an unpleasant looking bunch. To be sure, there was a certain intensity and striking quality about Hitler; there is genuine power in his photos. But, Hitler and many Nazis come across, in many newsreels, as dark and disturbed rabble-rousers. They were into the ‘bad boy’ image. Given the nature of our debased and mindless rebel culture, it may explain why there continues to be a fascination among some youths for Hitler and his cohorts; they could almost be seen as the proto-Rolling Stones who played rock n roll with history itself.
Anyway, the way we remember and condemn Nazism is often contradictory. On the one hand, we give them the same treatment they gave the Jews. We look upon them as ugly, hideous, monstrous, subhuman, degenerate, and irredeemable sickos. It’s as though there was only one way to get rid of them--eradicate them. Germany had to be thoroughly de-nazified, and even–or especially–Germans took up on this theme. In a way, the process is far from over. Today, German kindergarten students are drilled to tears about the Holocaust and made to feel national-spiritual guilt over what happened during WWII. It’s as though the German soul and psyche are naturally infected with this evil which must be rooted out at an early age; in other words, Germans are BORN guilty and wicked.
In contrast, there is the oft-seen image of the noble Jew, the wonderful Jew, the Jew you wanna hug, Jew you wanna invite to dinner, the Jew worthy of your daughter, the delightful Jew, the warm Jew, and etc. In many cases, good looking non-Jews play Jewish characters in movies to physically ennoble Jews–to sanctify them as more christian than christian. So, Lena Olin is a Jewess in "The Reader", Montgomery Clift was a Jew in "Young Lions" and "Freud", and Aidan Quinn played a Jew in "Avalon" and so on. Or, Jews are placed in what should really be handsome roles. Because we’ve been brainwashed that Jewishness is wonderful, we don’t say ‘Ewwwwwwwwww’ but force ourselves to believe that Barbra Streisand is really the romantic heroine or that Sarah Jessica Parker is sexy and on par with the hot women around the world. So, there is the ugly-fication of Nazis and ‘white supremacist’ types who are portrayed in most movies as subhuman neanderthals, human apes, degenerate retards, or sick fuc*s, whereas there is the pretty-fication of Jews as the new and proper ideal of physical nobility or beauty. (This reversal of standards is also being carried out with homosexuals. The Jews who run the media would have us believe that there’s nothing as dysfunctional, desperate, and degenerate as the traditional nuclear family and nothing as healthy, normal, and clean as a gay couple. Ozzie and Harriet are closet psychotics while Ozzie and Harry know best.)
But, there is a more sophisticated twist to countering the Nazi myth that equated (Aryan)beauty with goodness. This way is to subvert and undermine the notion of beauty altogether, or at least the notion of Aryan or gentile white(especially Northern European) beauty. The remarkable documentary ‘Architecture of Doom’ does exactly this. http://www.amazon.com/Architecture-Doom-Rolf-Arsenius/dp/B00003XALS
The central theme of Peter Cohen’s documentary is that beauty as a political ideal is anti-humanist as it imposes godly standards on us. Susan Sontag argued along similar lines in ‘Fascinating Fascism’, an attacks on the aesthetic sensibility of Leni Riefenstahl. Beauty itself is the enemy since it is elitist and exclusive. Most people are not beautiful, not even pretty. Indeed, one wonders if Nazism would have waged war on the ugliness among the Aryans after the Jews had been dealt with. Had Hitler triumphed, what would have been the next stage? To favor the beautiful and healthy Germans over the ugly and less healthy Germans? We may be attracted to beauty, but people are generally not beautiful.
Also, beauty is not the same as morality or intelligence. And, since Jews are generally less beautiful than white gentiles, Jews have seen beauty as a false idol to smash and desecrate. So, the Jewish character in ‘Broadcast News’ says that William Hurt’s character(who gets promoted based on looks) is ‘the devil’. And, white goyim have bought into this as well. So, Robert Redford made ‘Quiz Show’ which apologizes for the special treatment good looking white goyim got over more deserving and intelligent Jews. So, Tom Brokaw broke down in tears and confessed that he got ahead in his profession because he was a good looking white gentile male on the night of Obama’s win. (So, do Obama’s undeserved win and the promotion of other undeserving blacks in various professions at the expense of better qualified non-blacks serve justice?). So, Betty Friedan waged her feminist campaign which essentially was an ugly Jewish attack on the pretty goyess order. Since Friedan felt ugly and worthless as a woman, she felt a need to undermine and discredit the entire edifice of femininity. Her main enemy for many years was Phyllis Schlafly, but Schlafly could never be effective with her marmish and moralistic demeanor. The ugly gang of Jewesses finally met their match in the pagan Camille Paglia who celebrated beauty.
Though the Jewish attack on (white)beauty was radical, hateful, demented, and ugly, there was an important issue to consider–namely, that beauty in and of itself is not morality, intelligence, dignity, or nobility; heck, we need only to consider the moral and intellectual makeup of most Playboy bunnies. The Nazi cult of beauty was indeed not just dangerous but insane. It was inhumane in its impossibility, contempt, arrogance, and delusion. (Hitler was also blind to the beauty of the Slavic peoples.)
The absurdity of the cult of beauty can be seen in Japan today. Most Japanese are, by world standards, short. By world standards, Japanese are not generally a good-looking people though there are wonderful exceptions. Now, consider the manga and anime, the cultural obsessions of Japan. From a young age, Japanese kids gobble up this stuff, and what do they learn? That nothing is more important, essential, and cool than being tall, muscular, western-looking, and etc. Most Western people cannot match the ideals set forth in manga and anime, so just imagine how many Japanese fit the bill? This culture has spread all over Asia and may explain why so many Japanese are unwilling to get married. With short Japanese guys dreaming of the ultimate dreambabe goddesses of anime and with short Japanese girls dreaming of the ultimate studs of manga, most Japanese are bound to be very disappointed with actual fellow Japanese. This is a massive self-delusion on a national scale. At the very least, the Nazi ideal was based on some measure of reality as good number of Germanic peoples were tall, sturdy, and solid looking. When wimpy Japanese guys pretend that they are anime-like studs or when Japanese girls pretend they are like manga-like goddesses, it’s pathetic and ridiculous. They may dye their hair blonde or wear shoes with foot-high midsoles, but they aren’t fooling anybody but themselves. Of course, Japanese haven’t killed anyone as a result, but it is still a flight from reality that is pitiful and laughable.
Anyway, another way Jews have tried to destroy white beauty is by promoting miscegenation. This way, white beauty becomes absorbed by blacks, Jews, and others. Since our multiculturalist society ideologically favors non-whites over whites, half-breeds generally tend to identify with the non-white side–especially if black. So, when a white mixes with a black, white beauty is serving blackness. When we see a good looking person of white/black ancestry, we don’t say, ‘doesn’t white features make the black person look good?’ but instead, we say, ‘isn’t he or she good looking because he or she IS black?’
Jews see a sexual parallel between Nazi hatred of Jews and white American fear of blacks. In the American South, white men feared the much stronger black men on two levels: one fear was that the black man would rape the white woman whereby the weaker white man would be unable to protect his wife or daughter(the Willie Horton scenario where the negro raped a white woman while her man was beaten up and helpless to save her); the more humiliating was perhaps the scenario where the white woman would willingly choose the black man over the white man because she found the negro so much more masterful and stud-like(the Jack Johnson scenario where white women swarmed all over the studly and powerful negro and laughed at the flabby white men who’d been pummeled into hamburger meat by Johnson). Black men were a physical sexual threat to white men. As such, white men propped up the mythic ideal of the pure and dignified white woman who remained loyal to her chivalrous white knight warrior.
In Europe, gentile men often resented the ‘ugly Jew’ using his superior intellect and talent to gain more money and power to charm and buy quality ‘white pussy’. There is some of this today. There’s no way any good looking woman would fall for Woody Allen if not for his fame, fortune, and celebrity attaiend through superior smarts and talent. The idea of ugly and hideous Jews using their smarts and cunning to ‘buy’ quality Aryan women was anathema to many proud European men. (A variation of this resentment and even fear applied to Asiatic men as well–the Fu Man Chu or Ming the Merciless, who sought to sexually conquer and enslave white women with their ruthlessness and wantonness. This, like the fear of blacks and resentment of Jews, was rooted partly in history as huge areas of Europe had once been conquered and raped by Mongol barbarians; also, the Ottoman Turks who conquered Greece and some of the Balkans and long posed a threat to Europe were partly of Asiatic origin.)
Anyway, for these reasons, Jews have a felt a need to destroy the ideal of the pure white woman and the noble chivalrous white knight warrior. Jews have tried to turn white women into lowlife skanks aping and lusting after negroes or hopping into bed with a rich Jew. As for white males, they’ve been castrated into faggotyass dweebs who look upon this prospect of racial suicide with happy acceptance befitting a retard.
Is an ideology based on beauty irrational? If so, one could argue that the Nazis rationally served an irrational idea. But, could a rational case be made for beauty? After all, we all love beauty. Suppose there are two kinds of butterflies facing extinction and only one could be saved. One is very beautiful while the other one is plain. Wouldn’t we choose the beautiful one? Would such choice be rational or irrational? Isn’t it rational or at least sensible to choose beauty over ugliness or plainness? On the other hand, beauty isn’t necessarily the truth. What if we had to choose between a beautiful painting that presents a false vision of humanity and an ugly painting that presents something truthful. Would the ugly truth have greater value than the beautiful lie? I’m sure many on the Left would agree with this, but this preference of truth over beauty also undermines the philosophical assumptions of the Left. The idea of human equality is, after all, just a beautiful lie. We know that people and peoples are not equally beautiful, intelligent, or noble in disposition. Is the ugly truth held by misanthropes then preferable to the beautiful lie of progressives who’d have us believe that if we overcome our ‘racism’ and ‘sexism’, the world will be a shining utopia? What if we swallow their lie onl to find our civilization invaded and under attack by savages and barbarians who cannot elevate themselves? What if a healthy modern white nation takes in a million black immigrants from Africa in the leftist belief that blacks are merely white-people-with-black-skin and find out otherwise: that blacks are, by nature, stronger, less intelligent, more aggressive and out-of-control?
A beautiful idea is worthless unless it is grounded in truth. Otherwise, it’s the false dream of the privileged elite that doesn’t have to deal with reality on the streets but only learns about reality through the media owned and operated by themselves. It becomes a self-perpetrating lie until all of civilization crumbles and even the elite finally fall under the sword. The problem is that the privileged elite is always the LAST to fall under the sword. Even as the elite has the most power over social policy, it suffers the least until it’s too late. They can afford to be safe and protected in their gated communities and ivory towers. So, the civilized masses fall first before the barbarians or savages–or the civilized people themselves become savage or barbaric(as is happening in the UK). And then, the elite no longer finds itself protected by a buffer of stable civilized folks(the very people the elite has been admonishing all these years)from the savages and barbarians(those whom the elite had been apologizing for and corrupting with their destructive and decadent policies).
The rise of Fascism and National Socialism can be understood in these terms. The elite lost its soul, and the civilized masses in the middle felt civilization giving way to madness and supported men like Mussolini and Hitler who promised a iron-clad defense of all that is proud, strong, stable, healthy, and noble. Of course, Mussolini and Hitler ended up bringing about the fall of European civilization as dictatorial systems have a way of allowing ‘great leaders’ to act according to their personal whims. But, the mass support and solidarity behind both Fascism and National Socialism weren’t so much to worship the godlike leader as to save civilization from looming chaos and/or radical-bloodbath-of-the-Bolshevik-kind.
If an ideology founded upon beauty isn’t fully rational, can the same be said of one founded upon the notion of human equality? How is egalitarianism rational when there’s plenty of scientific evidence to show that humans are, as individuals and as racial groups or as sexes, not equal? There’s an idea about all men having been created equal by God, but this is not a rational idea. Perhaps a nice idea, but nothing more. One could argue that people are, more or less, the same, but this is only true in the most basic sense. There is a world of difference between Albert Einstein and Mike Tyson, just as there is between a Chihuahua and a Pitbull. And, there’s a world of difference between someone with an IQ of 80 and someone with an IQ of 180. An person with IQ of 80 will probably never master Calculus in a 1000 yrs whereas a person with an IQ of 180 can build the atomic bomb in a few yrs. Indeed, though Jews are publicly the most vocally opposed to the notion of racial differences, no group better demonstrates the awesome power of racial differences. The power of the Jews cannot be explained nor understood without taking genetics into account. For some reason, Ashkenazi Jews ended up with the highest IQ of any group.
It is for this reason that one of the profoundest contradictions in the West, especially America, is that the people who are vocally and ideologically most egalitarian are themselves the richest and the most powerful. In a way, the Jews are trying to have it both ways. They practice Ayn-Rand-ism to become the richest and most powerful amongst us and then they support big government socialism to fool us that they care about all of us. Of course, capitalist Jews and socialist Jews collude to help one another.
In a way, socialism empowers the elite more than the masses. Socialism is about government power, and as such, it makes those in government more powerful over the people. Sure, the people get more freebies, but this means people become less self-reliant and more dependent on government programs and dictates(the bureaucracy and the professional political class; also for the rich, nothing is as satisfying, sexy, and fulfilling than Political POWER!!!).
Jews gain riches through capitalism and then expand government so that they will have political power over us as well. And of course, Jews pretty much took over all of the media and have the dominant role in the top universities across America. Much of this is worthy of great admiration and respect as Jews achieved so much through intelligence and diligence. But, there are other reasons as well. Though Jews have long attacked the old-boys-network(generally meaning wasp or wasp-ized power), they practice the Jew-Boys-Network. We need only look at the workings of Hollywood and the Bernie Madoff scandal to see Jewish tribalism in business.
Also, Jews have cleverly exploited the Jewish holocaust to prevent anyone from speaking truth to Jewish power which is the most powerful power in the world.
Anyway, whether it’s Milton Friedman-ism or Naomi Klein-ism, it means more power–economic or political–power to Jews. Just look at the top businessmen in the US, and great many are Jews. Just look at the top appointments in governments, and they are Jews. To some extent, this is inevitable since Jews are more intelligent and talented. On the other hand, it means more power to liberals and leftists since the great majority of Jews are liberals and leftists. And, considering that Jews generally look upon white Americans with feelings ranging from condescension to distrust to hatred, it’s something we need to be worried about.
Anyway, the notion of rationalism is generally flawed in our political discourse. At best, all we can hope for is a crazy quilt coordination of mini-rationalisms based on mutual respect and trust. In this sense, rationalism is like law and business. It cannot work properly unless all sides play by the rules and don’t overstep their boundaries. Laws are worthless unless people obey them. Not everyone may interpret or adhere to laws equally, but they must do so, more or less. Same is true of business. Commerce cannot long function if only a handful of people follow the rules while most people cheat–at least woefully. Since no one has the powers of God and can know everything, the most he can do is try to gain the best knowledge in his own specialized field and then try to coordinate his findings with data gathered and theories developed in other fields. So, people in each field should ideally follow the methods of science and offer up their fragment of truth. Some people may then be adept enough to knit all these pieces together to form a better sense of the larger reality.
In hard sciences, great things have been achieved through this process, but the same cannot be said for human sciences. There is too much ideology, too much prejudice, too many agendas, too many sacred dogmas–religious, cultural, or secular–for us to arrive at any agreed upon unified understanding of human reality. In sociology, for instance, those who favor the nurture argument will not even bother to consider the findings of those who favor the nature argument, and vice versa.
Also, what may be valid for one group of humanity may not be applicable to others; there may far less universal truths for humanity than we assume. For instance, many of us believe that the free market system works best, but perhaps its success depends on a people with adequate intelligence, discipline, and certain emotional qualities. After all, what applies to some breeds of dogs may not apply to other breeds of dogs. All dogs are intelligent, but some breeds are more intelligent than others. Also, temperamental differences among breeds make some breeds better at other tasks than other breeds are. So, in a very general sense, we can speak of universality of man but this breaks down when we get down to the nitty gritty. What would have been the chance of creating an atomic bomb had the Manhattan Project been dominated by African Pygmy scientists? How many gold medals in the 100 m sprint would US win if it only sent Mexican- or Asian-Americans? Humans are flexible and intelligent enough all around the world to appreciate and imitate the achievements of others–and even the most intelligent peoples required ideas borrowed from other peoples and cultures–, but it cannot be said that what comes naturally or more easily to one group of people will be true with all groups of people.
In the human sciences, we have three main problems as pertaining to the ideal of rationalism. First, scientists come with ideological baggage first and then seek only that data which justifies or validates their ideology or prejudices. So, a leftist who enters the field will seek only the data proving that races don’t exist at all whereas a rightist will try to emphasize biological differences as much as possible. Secondly, there is the willful falsification, distortion, or repression of data to disprove the other side; the left will also use social, moral, and intellectual ostracism to discourage any research that might undermine its ideological dogma. Third, because there’s so much bogus or exaggerated ‘science’ from all sides, it’s nearly impossible to coordinate them into even a rough rationalist picture of reality. There are simply too many divergences among the ‘discoveries’ and theories. It must also be said that humans are the most difficult subject to study–even if they could be used as guinea pigs.
In hard science, there is much less of this problem. In many cases, scientists will first look at the vast available data before venturing upon their own hypotheses. In other words, a new hypothesis is likely to be the product of great knowledge gained through long years of study than merely something to prove out of ideological fervor. Also, though hard scientists are often passionate, it’s hard to get ‘personal’ about neutrons and electrons. And, since the data are likely to be produced from genuine scientific methods, they are much more likely to complement other data to form a larger picture of reality.
I don’t see human sciences being truly rational no matter how much it may be rational-IST. But, just as realism isn’t reality, rationalism isn’t rationality; rather, it is the conceit that one is being rational or the cult of rationality. In a way, rationalism may blind us to rationality just as much as religion, because a fool who’s deluded that he’s being rational is less likely to heed warnings and advice. Why should he when he’s being SO ‘rational’? This was both the problem of Nazism and communism. They had no need for critics or nay sayers since they had Reason on their side.
Still, no one argued that Nazism was the legacy of the Enlightenment and the Age of Reason. Despite its scientism, it hasn’t fooled most of the scientific and humanities community. But, communism did fool a lot of people–in hard sciences, human sciences, and the humanities–that it is indeed a product of the Enlightenment. But, this is both a curse and a blessing. There was much that was profoundly good and necessary about the Enlightenment but much that was twisted and contradictory. The Age of Reason wasn’t so much about reason as what intellectuals assumed reason would reveal. It was more about the prophecy than the practice of reason. The French philosophs argued that reason would show This to be true,Tthat to be false and would lead to such and such society. Much of this was fantasizing and delusional. And, communism was built upon the hallucination of reason. Funny that those who were most passionate about reason were so unreasonable, but then passion and reason are dangerous partners.
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