Paul Gottfried on Germans, Jews, Catholics, and Calvinists
You are one of the prominent popularizers of Carl Schmitt today in the United States. Is the liberal elite frightened by his theories? If so, is it because, as Alain de Benoist suggests, he correctly assesses that an amplification of the spectre of global terror (as performed by the Bush administration) destroys democracy by rendering a permanent state of exception?
I don’t think that American liberals fear or even think much about Carl Schmitt. They simply use association with his ideas or the failure of some of his exponents to attack Schmitt sufficiently as evidence of fascist sympathies. This has been done not only in my case but also to Straussians, on the basis of their teacher’s interest while in Germany in Schmitt’s Concept of the Political.
National movements are frequently associated with anti-semitism. As a Jew, have you personally experienced anti-semitism by nationalist groups? If so, please share an experience or two.
Although I have never been attacked by leaders of European nationalist movements, it is possible to see why Jews of a certain age (most of whom are dead by now) might have associated anti-Semitism with certain forms of nationalism. In Europe in the early twentieth century nationalism did carry conspicuous anti-Semitic strains but except for the Russian far Right those strains don’t seem to be integral to most European nationalisms today. But as Jews overreact to these forms of reawakened nationalism, and even line up on the side of Islamicist immigrants against the native population, nationalist movements of the Right may move again for understandable reasons in an anti-Jewish direction.
You’ve written on the campaign against the Junge Freiheit and limitations on free speech in supposedly free Germany including the virtual media blackout attending the firebombing of their offices. Can we expect something similar for independent media in the United States?
I couldn’t imagine that Americans (although this may be a failure of imagination) would ever allow themselves to be jerked around in quite the same fashion as the Germans. Americans generally feel good about their country, which they identify with human rights and democracy. Germans by contrast see themselves as the descendants of genocidal murderers, whose entire past up until the postwar American occupation was full of bigotry and belligerence. There is nothing that Germans could do, or so their media and democratically elected leaders tell them, to cleanse themselves entirely of their collective guilt toward Jews and their neighbors. The German mainstream media and academic world are far more antipatriotic than even those whom FOX commentators condemn as the “hate America” crowd.
Your Ph.D. thesis on Catholic Romanticism in Munich received scant notice in your book. Do you no longer believe in the positive potential of such an ideal (assuming you ever did, if not, why did you chose to focus on that topic)?
I simply lost interest in my dissertation topic after I expanded it into a book. This did not come about because of a philosophical decision or because of any existential turning point.
In your response to Kevin MacDonald you state that he overemphasizes “the importance assigned to Jewish efforts to ‘deethnicize’ Western Christian societies,” noting the inherent liberalism attending both Canadian Catholic and Pennsylvania Anabaptist communities. Kevin MacDonald disputes, however, that there is corresponding evidence for an internal WASP implosion. Do you find WASP culture subject to the same problems as other Christian sects?
I’ve no idea what kinds of WASPs Kevin has encountered recently. At my college the overwhelmingly WASP faculty voted last week overwhelmingly to attend diversity training classes and to require students to discuss their homophobia, sexism and racism in special classes reserved for this purpose. This seems necessary in response to outbursts of Christian bigotry directed against “religious and ethnic minorities,” incidents that never occurred.Part of the solution to our raging bigotry proposed by my WASP colleagues is to fill our college with minority students, brought from neighboring inner cities. Has Kevin, by the way, read the social statements of mainline Protestant denominations and even of Evangelicals? They are full of lamentations about lingering racism and statements identifying sin with politically incorrect attitudes.
What about Catholic culture?
I’ve always been skeptical of the view, which was widespread in the 1950s, that the Catholic Church or Catholicism is going to save the American Right from the clutches of the Left. From where I stand, it seems that the Church can’t even manage her own flock. Most American, English and Canadian Catholics hold more leftist social and cultural positions (not to mention voting patterns) than their Protestant fellow-citizens. I wish that weren’t the case but it is.
In your recent autobiography you state a personal affinity for certain aspects of Calvinism. Is there any reason why you don’t accept the religious doctrines of Calvinism?
I am indeed attracted to Calvinism as both a theological system and a formative culture for the early American Republic. It is an impressive attempt to give architectonic form to a Hebraic vision of an all-powerful God, who expresses Himself as sovereign will. It also avoids the simplistic notion of ethical rationalists, that one can teach human beings to be good by appealing to their shared reason. Calvinists understand the fallen and depraved side of the human personality, and they also grasp that doing good requires an exercise of will that can only be accomplished through divine intervention aka grace. The problem with the system is that in saving divine sovereignty , Calvinism must also attribute the presence and operation of evil and sin to a divine souce. Any other understanding of the origin of evil would infringe on the majesty of God. Calvinism is additionally predicated on the acceptance of a fundamental Christian tenet that runs counter to my understanding of God’s otherness. I am referring here to the key Christian teaching that God humbled Himself to die on the cross for our sins. Although I concede that God could act in this way, given his infinite power and total freedom of action, it is hard for me to reconcile such a belief with His dignity. Perhaps at the end of the day I’m too much of an Old Testament Jew to accept this act of divine self-debasement as a ransom for our sins.
You’ve criticized Russell Kirk’s attempts to re-appropriate an aristocratic political culture which did not exist. Even assuming you are correct, are there ‘permanent things’ worth defending and advocating for in the present time? If so, what are they?
Note that my criticism of “value conservatism” and Kirk’s appeal to aristocratic Tory ideals is never used to justify value relativism. In fact I suggest several times in Conservatism in America that I am not a value relativist and that I am scornful of those who are inconsistent enough to embrace this self-description. I also make an attempt in this book to distinguish classical and biblical virtues from modern “political values” rooted in the changing preferences or fixations of journalists. For example, I can appreciate the attempts to approximate in our communal lives such qualities as justice, truth, piety and sobriety. But such approximations arise out of the practices and traditions of communities and out of philosophical reflection. They are not journalistic slogans or the hothouse creations of modern ideologues.
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Darwinism: it ain’t what it used to be
The gist of Ryan’s readable but apparently respectable book for laymen is that Darwinism ain’t what it used to be. Random-mutation-and-selection is increasingly viewed as only one of four modes of evolution, and by no means the most important of them. The others are epigenetics, polyploidy through inter-species mating (hybridisation), and viral symbiosis. Most of his book focuses on the last of these, specifically on the Human Endogenous Retroviruses (HERV’s) that have depsosited the so-called “junk” DNA that occupies the vast preponderance of the human genome, and which vastly accelerate the rate of evolution. The book lacks a conclusion — how these four different modes of evolution interrelate, e.g., to what extent HERVs may play a role in epigenetics, is still not understood at all. But then, the story Ryan tells is very new: only a few decades ago, scientists were being denied publication and some simply ceased submitting their research results because the Darwinian Consensus was about as kind to them as the Papacy reputedly was to Galileo.
However, Ryan’s book makes clear that evolutionary biology is moving in a direction that increasingly emphasises cooperation as well as competition among species, toward a view of life as a co-evolving community. Among the things that seems to be evolving is the ability, through greater genetic diversity and complexity, to evolve ever more rapidly. The difference between this and evolution merely by random-mutation-and-selection for the interface of religion faith and science may be, for many believers, significant enough to merit attention.
Ryan’s book reminded me of Jared Diamond’s famous Guns, Germs and Steel. Before Diamond, the question: “Why did civilisation arise where it did, and not elsewhere?”, was answered by reference to access to dead things, to resources like flint and tin and copper and iron. Diamond revolutionised his field by answering it by reference to access to living things, to domesticable species of plants and animals. He portrayed the prehistoric development of civilisation as the evolution of a multi-species symbiosis led by humans, a trans-species community that strikingly seems to foreshadow Isaiah’s “Peaceable Kingdom.”
Now evolutionary biology seems to be taking the same turn that prehistoric studies recently took — toward a focus on multi-species community and cooperative symbiosis. Speciation seems so rapid, and to proceed by such diverse means, that “species” becomes a far more tentative and fluid notion. The role of competition among and within species in evolution diminishes, whilst the role of cooperation and community grows. Randomness gives way to creativity. This will not satisfy those who insist upon a literal reading of Genesis 1 and 2 in terms that a second-millennium BCE Hebrew could have understood. And it remains full of death and suffering, “red in tooth and claw.” However, it may appeal rather more than did 19th-century Darwinism to believers in a God who infuses purpose into life and history, and to whom Isaiah’s vision of the eschaton is prophetic.
At the very least, we may confidently infer that “social Darwinism” is unlikely to derive much support from evolutionary biology in the future. As biology increasingly stresses inter-species community and symbiosis, the idolators of competition among races and tribes seem likely to be divested of pseudo-scientific respectability.
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Fabius Maximus on Restoring the Republic
An interview with internet-based commentator Fabius Maximus.
(1) On your about page (and previously at Defense and the National Interest) it states that Fabius Maximus “was the Roman leader who saved Rome from Hannibal by recognizing its weakness, the need to conserve and regenerate. He turned from the easy path of macho ‘boldness’ to the long, difficult path to rebuilding Rome’s strength and greatness. His life holds profound lessons for 21st Century America.” However, there is no Hannibal at America’s borders. What is America’s greatest enemy at this moment?
If the American political regime fall, we will be responsible. The most serious threat lies within us. As an intangible threat, each person will explain this differently. I express this as our hubris and paranoia being the greatest threats. Looking at our actions, rather than our thought processes, our passivity is the greatest threat.
Note that the American political regime, based on the Constitution, is not America. I have faith even then we will pick up the pieces and try again.
For more about this see Forecast: Death of the American Constitution, 4 July 2006.
(2) You have been asked on various occasions where you reside, what citizenship(s) you hold, what occupation or position you held, if any, within the US government or related organizations. Care to share anything with us?
Just that I am an American. Nothing else should matter.
The “About” pages explains why: About Fabius Maximus and this blog.
(3) You share with me the dubious distinction of raising the ire of the Small Wars Council. Why? What is it about you that irritates others? Or, assuming that you are correct, why don’t they ‘get it’?
The SWC and the FM websites both discuss things of great importance that are on the edge of the known – on the edge of what is knowable. Passions run high, which is a good thing in my book. Out of the hottest fires come the strongest metals.
(4) On your website you highlight many lesser known news sources, especially Tom Dispatch. What sorts of themes are left out by the mainstream media and how do you chase after them?
The mainstream media serves to keep us dozing. Dampen our sense of wonder, our passions, and our attachment to what makes us what we are. And above all to keep us feeling mildly fearful and impotent. It provides a steady stream of trivia, carefully crafted to confirm the establishment’s worldview.
The alternate view is that we’re in a vast universe, standing in a small lit circle amidst mysteries. Fearful challenges lie I the dark, somewhere in which is our true future.
The problem is not finding material to write about (I have a file drawer stuffed with material), but finding the time to write. I try to focus on a small number of themes, focused on geopolitics.
(5) You call for a new humble grand strategy on the basis of respect for differing belief systems. Like Edward Luttwak, who said that great powers “see everything in forms of force and power, and not in term of knowledge,” you have mentioned the appalling lack of HUMINT among the US intelligence community. You have also advocated for an American foreign legion. Along these lines, what shifts in thinking and operation would be necessary to build an intelligent intelligence community and military? What would it take for them to come to pass?
Great question! The answer lies in structural reform on a scale difficult to even imagine happening. Our intel apparatus exists to confirm the view of senior leaders. So we have as analysts legions of well-educated academics. People who are (to over-generalize) not only incapable of understanding the fantastic events on the margins and in the depths of civilization, but incapable of forcing these insights on their superiors. On the other hand, their reports are neatly typed, politely expressed, with excellent spelling and grammar.
Military reform is simple — requiring a long, hot war, forcing us to develop an effective force. Or the military might find a great leader capable of forging a sharp weapon from DoD’s bureaucratic morass. The cures are worse than the disease.
I’m no fan of the dualisms on which most of modern thought rests (such as sacred and profane). Rousseau and above all Nietzsche attempted to move us beyond these dualisms, back to a more holistic view of humanity.
(6) You have criticized advocates of ‘Anthropogenic global warming’ as relying on inadequate or unproven science. Why, in your opinion, is global warming such a hot button issue for so many people?
It fills a need for many people. Following the decline of Christianity and Judaism as meaningful faiths for large sections of the public, something must fill the vacuum. To be marketable it should be compatible with our superstitions, easy to understand, and undemanding in its prescriptions. The green religion fits these requirements.
It fits the bastardized notions the general public has of science. Offers redemption without the necessity of substantially altering our behavior (i.e., how we treat our spouse, children, friends, coworkers, clients). Feeds our deeply held love for apocalyptic eschatology. And allows everyman to be in the chosen.
Like all good religions, once adopted it is immune to disproof. Hearing a heretic or infidel questioning the authorities (IPCC, the Pope) reveals only their ignorance. The obvious response is to read them a tract. It’s like telling a country priest during the dark ages that Jesus is not in the host. There is no place for debate.
For more about this see A note on the green religion, one of the growth industries in America, 17 March 2009.
(7) You have cited the Batman saga (http://fabiusmaximus.wordpress.com/2008/07/23/batman/, http://fabiusmaximus.wordpress.com/2009/01/17/alfred/) as an accurate description of our current predicament. Are there any other artistic works you feel are especially relevant to the present moment?
Yes. Our myths should be a source of insight and strengths in the coming days. In our age of an impoverished imagination, mythology has retreated to and concentrated in our comics. Some examples in addition to Batman:
Spiderman’s motto is a great lesson for a hegemonic power – “with great power comes great responsibility.”
The tagline of Full Metal Alchemist (slightly paraphrased) provides a powerful lesson for a society that wants to have it all, ideally for free:
“Humankind cannot gain anything without first giving something in return. To gain anything, something of equal value must be given. That is life’s First Law of Equivalent Exchange, and applies to thing tangible and intangible — matter, energy, and spirit.”
(8) You stated in 2006 that Israel appears to be on the road to disaster. Is there anything in the intervening time that would cause you to modify this view? Is there anything that Israelis can do to prevent this?
As Lawrence of Arabia said in the movie, “nothing is written.” Israel could radically change course by giving the West Bank back, starting a Marshall Plan-like effort to build it up, and attempting to forge an alliance with the Palestinians – who are among the most vital of the Middle East’s people, and in many ways so similar to the Jews. It might not be too late.
(9) You have commented that the American public is like sheep. What would they be doing if they weren’t so sheepish?
Just as we have always done when faced with a challenge. From the days before the Revolution, through the long anti-slavery campaigns, the “penny auction” and private relief efforts during the recession, and WWII (after which we lost our way). Organize, work together, and ignore the blandishments of those who seek to divide us for their own political advantage.
We all know what to do. We just lack the will.
Photo courtesy of David Ball.
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Future of this Forum
Thanks to the many of you who have made the revival of this forum possible and contributed to many of the active topics this past week, including:
American Kleptocracy?
The Morality of Superman.
Games and the spirit
Darwinism: it ain’t what it used to be
And various topics on our private board.
However, we hope to expand this forum by means of highlighting innovative thinkers on the various topics discussed in this forum, including but not limited to politics, economics, art, science, technology, philosophy, and theology.
To this end, we have arranged interviews with persons active in the above fields, who also agree to participate in the discussion on their interview in our forum, giving you also an opportunity to ask them follow-up questions.
We hope to post one interview each Friday. Our first two interviewees are Fabius Maximus (interview to be posted October 16) and Paul Gottfried (interview to be posted 23). Please respond to the forum thread on this topic if you have suggestions as to possible interviewees and/or if you would be willing to submit questions for an interview or otherwise contribute to our blog (Book Reviews, Essay, etc.).
Thanks again for your input. We hope for a successful and stimulating forum future.
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Dunedain.net Reopens
The Conservatory, formerly known as Dunedain.net Discussion or Spenglers Stammtisch, has just reopened. We continue true to our original purpose of facilitating conversation on theology, philosophy, economics, metapolitics and literature. Old usernames will continue to work.
Changes include:
(1) A blog highlighting the contributions of forum members, to be launched on the same date
(2) Upgrade to new version of forum software (PHPBB3)
(3) New forum graphics
(4) Members have privileges beyond other registered users.
(5) Forum reorganization:‘The Wasteland’ is now ‘Das Findelhaus.’
‘Dover Beach’ is now ‘Catacombe Roma.’
‘Lórien’ is the general use forum.
The Theology and Philosophy forum has been merged with ‘Lórien’
If you are having trouble with your account or have other concerns, please email the forum admin at dunedain dot net
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Time of the Nets
Alain de Benoist writes on the Internet age:
The twentieth century ended in November 1989, with the fall of the Berlin Wall. The 21st century unofficially begun in 1993, with the first diffusion on a vast scale of the Internet. There is no doubt: the coming of the “global web” announces an unprecedented epoch: the Age of Net. The Internet is a net whose circumference is unlimited and whose centre is nowhere. This decentralised, interactive, horizontal medium, that connects its users at the speed of electron, establishes a sort of planetary brain whose neurons are the connected individuals. More than thirty million people have already entered this global communicating society, that easily overcomes frontiers and controls. Each month, one million new “contacts” join this system. On the “info-highways”, where writing, sound and image blend in a unique numerical language, a New World is rising, a “cyberworld”, populated by “cybercitizens”. Neither governments nor politicians have so far understood the exact measure and the consequences of this phenomenon.
Every technological evolution creates its own ideology, and this ideology drives social change. In traditional societies, human relations were mainly territorial and took place in a continuous spatial dimension. Urbanisation has deeply modified this model. To the disjunction between the place of work and the place of residence some social praxis’ have been added that daily permit to exit one’s own domicile (multilocalization). Space becomes a property like any other, that can be sold, amassed or exchanged. The advent of the net transforms and accelerates this process. While communication becomes the essential engine of social relations, the extension of the net contributes to the fragmentation and the “uninstitutionalization” of society. There is no more belonging, no more adhesion: “to be on-line” is the categorical imperative. Political parties no longer represent an efficient means of achievement for individuals, while civic associations and single issue movements overwhelms trade unions. In the world of the net there are no more nations or populations, but multiple and winded belongings: tribes, Diaspora and clans.
Walkman and mobiles are tools, among many others, that contribute to free man from steadiness. “Tomorrow streets and squares”, Alain Finkielkraut says, “will be invaded by busy mutants talking with themselves”. Thus a nomadic society is created – nomadism of tools, of values and of men – that privileges a cross-sectional modality of communication, flattening all the classical institutional and pyramidal structures. A virtual world, with no distances and no expiration is growing: a world of uncontrollable crypted net, in which unmaterialised objects circulate and return materialised at the end of the process they’re involved in; a world that could also become a financial jungle, where the Stock Exchanges are transformed into electronic casinos.
In addition to nomadism there is cocooning. Internet is a communication tool, but its form of communication abolishes the dimensions of space and time, that are(were) the context in which, until yesterday, human freedom was expressed. In this way, the net imprisons the individual in a private sphere that is more and more limited to the abuse of a remote control or of a keyboard. The progressive sliding of the job place towards the address (telework) goes in this same direction. If world can be virtually discovered remaining at home – philosopher Paul Virilio argues – why should we exit? Finally, the net emphasises all the essential features of this age: the mood for immediacy (i.e. zapping), the oblivion of history and of “the reasons”, the enjoyment is conceived as a privileged way of access to the experience. Freedom of expression is more and more restricted in its commercial form, the absolute sovereignty of the consumer. Bill Clinton defined the electronic commerce “Far West of the total economy”. In a universe in which everything is accessible through a toll (global marketplace), only the market still distracts people from loneliness.
The advent of the net also creates assemblages of a new type. When 300,000 persons are gathered in Paris for the “Gay Pride” day, when the world-wide Days of Youth inspires one million catholic young people to join in Longchamp, when hundreds of thousand persons take part in Belgium to a “white march”, when two million Basques protest in public square against the attacks of ETA, when a million Germans take part in Berlin to a “love parade”, when one million Italians demonstrate in Milan against the division of their country, when an innumerable crowd meet in London for the Ascension-day in paradise of Lady-D, former-Madonna of tabloids and instantly proclaimed Saint and martyr once dead, the sociologists refer to “unidentified popular movements”. These, more or less spontaneous, huge assemblies truly represent the type of manifestation that corresponds to the world of the net.
Besides the obvious diversities of motivations, they all are a unique phenomenon: post-modern ways of affirmation of a feeling, a belief or a shared way of life, set inside the current tendency of affirmation of communitarian identities, that go beyond the limits of the usual belongings.
So, flows replace territories everywhere.
The Internet is only the most immediately visible form of this deterritorialisation. We are only at the beginning of a phenomenon, and whoever believes that it could be reversible in the short term is probably wrong. The advent of the world of the internet is a challenging question. The state of tomorrow will depend on the way we will be able to give it an answer.
Source here. Trans. A.Boraschi.
Nomadism, immediacy, and focus on commercial forms are all characteristics of the current age. The revived Conservatory forum is intended to some degree to be an answer to de Benoist’s question. What else is possible?
That depends largely on you — or, rather, us.
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