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The problem with tyrannical regimes is you can make a lot of statements that were technically true but also transitory. Things can be afforded and then taken away. The main advantage of National Socialism is that it didn't last long enough for any of that to happen. But many quite similar post-enlightenment philosophies have risen and fallen entirely on their own. We never actually question the premise, "perhaps Enlightenment thinking is flawed in some way?" We only question the correct "blend" of dysfunctional ideas that don't work and have never worked, when there are other ideologies that lasted 1,000+ years, with high levels of stability, happiness, accountability to the government, etc.
Why is that? In the period since the great enlightenment we have seen the most volatility and largest purges in human history. At what point do we say "well, these other things actually worked pretty well. Let's just go back to the wisdom of our ancestors, maybe they were onto something"
I actually agree with you, when you say, that enlightenment was a mistake, and we should go back to what was there before that.
There's this peculiarity in history, that quite often some new ideology comes up and pretty much becomes genocidal after reaching some critical mass, and wipes out things that were there before, which has been stable and functional for a long time. Then those new ideologies badmouth the things they've genocided for eternity. That's something National Socialism fell victim to, funnily at the same time, while it tried to be at the other end of the stick.
That's also how the enlightenment came about, which replaced a feudal system, that was rather limited in it's scope of abuse, with absolutism, in which everything is within the state, and nothing is against or outside it.
However, christianity came about in the same manner. Christianization wasn't peaceful in the past, and christianization wouldn't have worked without large-scale terror and genocide. Which of course was mostly committed under the watch of rome, not some feudal lords. Besides, people tend to forget, that all prominent figures in christianity were jews, and that the christian god was invented by jews, so it's an middle eastern ideology, that has been foreign from the beginning.
Oh cool. A thoughtful response. I appreciate that.
I think the extent to which Christianization was accomplished by the sword is massively overblown. I'm sure there's a lot of truth to these claims, especially discussing the Western Roman Empire and the Papal States, but it's also easy to forgot the Roman Catholic Church was actually the weaker empire for the majority of it's lifespan until the crusades, and they were the ones who preferred that method. Unlike pretty much every fucking other ideology on the face of the planet, the Holy Roman Empire actually worked to preserve the traditions and history of pretty much every culture it came across. People really don't understand how fucking rare that is. We take it for granted. Think of these leftists today who would love nothing more than to tear down and erase every remnant of our history. Muslims destroying ancient artifacts. China cannibalizing all of its own history. Doesn't that say something for the philosophy behind Christianization, juxtaposed beside the image portrayed of knights on horseback burning down villages and killing infadels?
But that aside, it's a far cry from regimes that literally have to perform regular purges on its own population in order to continue functioning. I'm thoroughly convinced this would've been the ultimate fate of the National Socialists.
Not even out of malice necessarily, but because central planning doesn't work, and the only way to keep it rolling is increasingly brutal force. It's like whack a mole. But as time goes on the rubber mallet doesn't work and you need an iron fist. An economic issue here, a little unrest there, these things snowball into larger and larger issues. They were employing slave labor, for example. You will not find any strong economy employing slave labor. So they "got around" the issues other regimes faced by enslaving and pillaging surrounding countries rather than their own people.
I think the extent to which Christianization was accomplished by the sword is massively overblown.
Let Varg answer that for me: https://files.catbox.moe/rajpi3.webm
As I said earlier, feudalism doesn't deserve it's bad reputation, and rome doesn't deserve it's good one. During feudalism large parts of what became christianization can be seen as the results of local conflicts leading to war with non-christians losing out over time, while being bribed into accepting the foreign religion with all kinds of otherwise unavailable riches and power. One can still argue, that pagans fought a defensive war, similar to the crusades, which were a defensive war against islam, but even then it's still something entirely different than what happened under rome, when the military superpower of it's time decided to use it's civil, political and military institutions to destroy the culture of it's own provinces.
the Holy Roman Empire actually worked to preserve the traditions and history of pretty much every culture it came across. People really don't understand how fucking rare that is.
That's a problem brought by monotheistic religions, e.g. christianity. If you have a pantheon of gods to choose from, you don't have to care to which god someone else prays, and there's no need of conversion. If you believe however, that there's only one god, and everyone must submit to it, then you'll end up having a problem with each and every foreign culture you'll come about, and your drive will be to assimilate them into your version of universal truth and justice, and thereby destroy their culture and religion. So I think that it's more that christians during the middle ages tried to preserve some of their own ancestral traditions, which have been much stronger and more alive than they are now. And if I'm correct with those assumptions, that preservation didn't happen because of christianity, but despite of it. Plus, later on, when the reformation came, christianity tried to got rid of those preserved traditions, and purify their religion down to it's original middle-eastern core. Which, at least in europe, was completely rejected. Regions that became lutheran nowadays are comprised of something like 90% of atheists.
Leftists
Did it ever occur to you, how much leftists act as the avangarde of the values of modern society, which still are in essence christian values? The enlightenment thinkers quite often tried to prove christian morals to be true even without asserting the existence of god. You know, humanism is like (at least ragtag-) christianity without god, and leftists promote humanism. However, it's not entirely without god, because god became the state, e.g. the thing closest to an omnipotent being with a claim for autarchy humans can create, which now certainly plays the role of the christian god, but in real life. So while oldfashioned christians pray to something, which, when seen rationally, in all likelihood doesn't exist - that's why christians stress the importance of belief - leftists have their all-powerful being that reigns over their life in actuality.
P.S.
You've changed large parts of your post, my answer was written for the old version, that doesn't exist anymore ;)
Nazis pillaging
I think, that you're correct in that regard. They used moneyprinting to finance their big recovery. Of course this would have ended in huge inflation, e.g. same amount of stuff but far more money, e.g. what sent the weimar republic down the drain. However, they solved that by taking away other people's stuff. First by kicking out the kikes and taking their stuff, and later by taking over other regions and imposing yet another on the conquered people, for which people hat do exchange real goods, that were transported into the reich to increase the availability of stuff in relation to the availability of money.
However, what people don't get is, that the bad parts of their system survived and are alive and well. The US Dollar and the Euro are a continuation of the nazi's monetary policies.
(post is archived)