Book Review 301: Catholicism & the Roots of Nazism

CATHOLICISM & THE ROOTS OF NAZISM: Religious Identity & National Socialism, by Derek Hastings. 290 pages, illustrated. Oxford

Although numerous Catholic apologists have been concerned to deny it, it goes without saying that a mass political party organized in 85% Catholic Bavaria must have been, in some sense, compatible with Roman Catholicism.

And so it was. In “Catholicism & the Roots of Nazism,” Derek Hastings shows precisely how this worked and, following the failed putsch of 1923, how Nazism left Catholicism behind.

Bavarian Catholics before 1914 were deeply divided between “politicals,” allied to the Center Party and the Vatican; and “religious,” nominally non-political and nationalist. The religious Catholics were Jew-haters while the politicals were Jew-dislikers.

Obviously, the religious were likely adherents of a racist-nationalist political grievance party, of which there were many in Germany. Of these, only the DAP (later NSDAP) was overwhelmingly Catholic. Hastings persuasively traces the symbiotic growth of the alliance, dominated by the once-central figure of the Catholic Jew-hater Franz Schronghamer-Heimdal.

But it was not until 1923, when numerous priests became active recruiters in a hugely successful membership drive, that Nazism took off. Hitler then overreached, and the party went into temporary eclipse.

His alliance with the Lutheran bigot Ludendorff, combined with political failure, drove Catholics out of the revived party from 1924; but in the only real failing of Hastings‘ impressive account, this is not described as what it was -- the abandonment of Catholicism by Nazism, rather than the other way around.

The Nazis briefly (through 1926) allied with Protestant anti-semites, then gathered self-confidence and  abandoned dependence on confessional politics altogether.

The conflicts between Nazi politics and German religion, however, were never concerned with the two great crimes we revile the Nazis for -- violent conquest and Jew-murder. The religions never objected to either. Schronghamer remained a popular, locally revered Catholic publicist up to his death in 1962.

Hastings asks -- as writers of dissertations have to do -- what is the significance of his research; and his answer is thoughtful.

But for an American reader in the 21st century, there is an additional significance to his thorough inquiry into the (one imagines) turgid files of Bavarian religious publications of the early 20th century. We are now told by American rightwingers that Nazism learned racism from Darwinism.

This is improbable. Bavaria was saturated in Catholicism not Darwinism. Hastings shows (without drawing  attention to his feat) that justifications for anti-Jewish racism in the publications of the nascent Nazi party, and in non-Nazi publications by its allies, never mentioned Darwinism but derived their Jew-hatred entirely from traditional and ancient folk and religious sources.

This archival excavation goes back far before Drexler started the DAP, and even before Hitler moved to Munich.

In his introduction, Hastings reviews other scholars who have inquired into Nazi racism, and gives the back of his hand to Daniel Goldhagen’s thesis of a pre-existing “eliminationist” German Jew-hatred. This is strange, since Hastings’ own excavations find numerous eliminationist and even exterminationist statements from Bavarian Catholic apologists from before 1914.

In 1919, for example, Schronghamer wrote: “The salvation of the world can only come through the extermination of the world poison whose destructive capacities we recognize in the intellectual foundations of Jewry.” The word Hastings translates as extermination is unequivocal: Vernichtung, and many other Catholic apologists used it, too.

Goldhagen has been disparaged by many academics, but “Catholicism & the Roots of Nazism” goes far to show he got it right.







  

A mass murder without a gun

RtO is referencing this story just for the gun nuts. Otherwise, it has no significance, just a mental breakdown tragedy, with 5 people knifed to death.

But can you remember the last time 5 people were slain using something other than a bomb or a gun? Yes, you can. Arson also allows killers to easily snuff out several lives at a time.

But admit it. If I say 5 people are slain in New York City, your first thought is guns.

But this is the usual, isn't it? Not really a mental breakdown tragedy, just a nut with a gun. Another 5 dead.

(Reuters) - A man who killed four members of a neighboring family and their two dogs with a shotgun before taking his own life over the weekend in Arizona may have been sent into a rage by the dogs' barking, police said on Sunday.

But police said what drove 56-year-old Michael Guzzo of Phoenix to carry out the shooting frenzy may never be known for certain, as both he and his victims, who ranged in age from 17 to 66 and lived next door, were dead before officers arrived.

"It appears he had some issues with barking dogs," said Phoenix police spokesman Sergeant Tommy Thompson. "If true, it does not justify killing four people."

Mens sana

According to a widely-reported study at the University of Rochester:

Brains flush toxic waste in sleep, including Alzheimer’s-linked protein, study of mice finds

 My cat's brain must be the cleanest thing in the universe.

The gun nut paradox

Outstanding commentary by Francis Wilkinson at Bloomberg News on open carry. It's so obvious, I wish I'd written it.

A complete mystery

So, somehow or other, a semi-automatic rifle disappeared from the home of rightwing kook Congressperson Renee ("I need my paycheck") Ellmers.

What the well-dressed congresswoman packs

According to the Raleigh News & Observer:

The weapon had been left leaning against a gun locker in an unlocked garage on Kingsway Drive, the report said.

 The Ellmerses are, of course, responsible gun nuts. The Congresscritter's official spokesman said:

“Gun safety is of the utmost importance in their household, which is exactly why she’s so upset and doesn't understand how this happened,” Doheny said.

I count three whoppers there in fewer than two dozen words.

The gun belonged to Ellmers' teenage son. RtO is going to speculate that he was not arrested and handcuffed because the clerk doubted he could afford to buy this useless item (retail price around $1,000), the way this other, not white teen did when he tried to buy a totally non-lethal belt (retail price $350), which was at least useful in holding up his pants.

Renee Ellmers was endorsed by the National Rifle Association.

Read more here: http://www.newsobserver.com/2013/10/22/3303721/unsecured-ar-15-reported-stolen.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.newsobserver.com/2013/10/22/3303721/unsecured-ar-15-reported-stolen.html#storylink=cpy

Why workers need unions and regulations

Because bosses can be jerks. In this story from Maine, it does not appear that the worker had a union,  but she was able to find a lawyer (no doubt on contingency) who helped her.

And national (not local) regulations provided the tools for redress.

I used encounter religious nuts like Officer Pease all the time in the South, sometimes at work.

“[Pease] told Plaintiff Carnot that he believed that single women should not date, but should court” because “dating involved ‘sexual intercourse,’ ” states the U.S. District Court complaint filed by Carnot in Bangor after she was fired in January 2011.

The Maine native also claimed in the lawsuit that Pease said that a woman should not be involved in any capacity in law enforcement and had a duty to obey her husband in accordance with the Bible. He also repeatedly invited Carnot to attend his Protestant church, even though he knew she was a Catholic, and said “she was not going to go to heaven because she had been divorced,” the complaint states.

The lawyer is right on:

 “The lesson I think needs to be learned from this settlement is you need to check your religious and personal beliefs at the door,” Young said Tuesday. “You do not have the right to impose those beliefs on your colleagues and co-workers.”

UPDATE:

And then there's this.

Do you remember how the big retailers were shocked into action when a factory in Bangladesh collapsed and killed over 1,100 poor workers? Well, they hope you don't because they were lying. Nothing has changed.

RtO has said before, if the market thinks you are worth more dead than alive, it will arrange for you to be killed.

ID and the vote suppressors

Dukes up for stupidity

Here is a roundup, should anyone at this late date still need one, about how the racists and sexists in the Republican Party are trying to defend Americans' sacred right to vote by making it really hard for some Americans to vote.

Not everybody has a birth certificate. I was surprised to learn, a few months ago, that one of them is my mom, the faithful watcher of Bill O'Reilly.

She's 89, and while the anti-Republican vote suppression meme (plenty of further links at first link) is that the phony voter ID laws being pushed in the cow states are aimed at poor blacks or Mexicans, my mom is neither black nor Mexican nor poor.

She was born at home, though, in a Southern state that hadn't bothered to collect vital statistics in 1924.

The Dixiecrats might actually want her to vote, since she's in the swing state of Florida, where every vote means something. Or ought to.

Her congresscritter is the ridiculous Ted Yahoo, er, I mean Yoho, and it would amuse me no end if he were to lose his seat next year because my mom wasn't allowed to vote by the Republicans.

 (RtO found that link by searching for yoho + idiot. Sometimes the Internet emits a cosmic horselaugh or possibly in Dr. Yoho's case, a cowlaugh.)