Formulating a new approach to the problem of Nazism and racism will require us to distance ourselves from certain outdated judgments and concepts from the twentieth century that are losing relevance today. This includes, for example, the binary theory of totalitarianism or the perception of Nazism as solely a German phenomenon.
Many stereotypes have yet to be overcome. They are fueled by both the lingering influence of Soviet ideology and the systematic influence of liberal propagandists, who promote a distorted approach to the European Nazi-racist legacy, portraying it as either justifiable or revanchist depending on the situation and the distribution of political roles.
There is often a direct substitution of concepts, where terms like «Nazism» and «fascism» are wrongly applied to various phenomena such as «personal power regimes» or «violations of fundamental rights and freedoms» – which, while negative, have little to do with the subject at hand.
It is worth outlining the main research directions immediately. It will delve into the historical genesis of Nazism, exploring its connections with colonialism, Anglo-American hegemony, and neoliberal macroeconomics. It is essential to elucidate the relationships between the concepts of «Nazism», «fascism», «racism», «colonialism», and «totalitarianism»; as well as to delineate modern forms of Nazism; and to describe the ongoing discursive struggle surrounding it. The question of the connection between Nazism and liberalism is of great importance. Historical experience demonstrates that the latter often serves as an external ideological «protective belt» for Nazi doctrines. It is also imperative to analyze the religious and philosophical underpinnings of Nazism, exploring its connections with Protestant ethics, Puritanism, Calvinism, Nietzscheanism, and radical enlightenment trends such as Malthusianism and Hobbesianism.
Within the confines of a small book, it may not be feasible to comprehensively address all the stated issues. However, the primary objective of the author, who is far from perfectionism, is to catalyze a serious public discussion on these matters.
The theoretical aspects of studying Nazism within the framework of this book are associated with the social and traditionalist line of thought highlighted in the monograph «The Social Tradition»1.
A traditionalist perspective on the issue could benefit from incorporating certain key principles from classical leftist ideologies of the twentieth century. However, it's important to acknowledge that the leftist anti-Nazi tradition has its limitations, notably its apparent reliance on liberal methodologies. The ideology of contemporary leftists often appears to be simplified or distilled to a liberal framework. Addressing this set of ideas necessitates substantial adjustments and reevaluations.
The traditionalist concept should incorporate measures to counteract the neoliberal ideology influenced by Americanism and Transatlanticism.
Liberal interpretations of Nazism often rely on mimicking this phenomenon and its inadvertent rehabilitation in new contexts and manifestations. Strictly speaking, liberal interpretations of Nazism are inherently intertwined with the subject matter they seek to describe. Thus, proponents of the liberal approach often attempt to characterize Nazism through indirect and generalized terms such as «antidemocratism», «autocracy», «totalitarianism», «political paganism», and so forth, deliberately redirecting the analytical focus. Simultaneously, crucial ideological indicators and the economic rationale underlying Nazi discourse, linked to colonial capitalism and military-political expansionism, are frequently overlooked or omitted.
When comparing Nazism with its historical opponent, socialism, analogies are frequently drawn using double standards, leading to conclusions about an imagined political equivalence between them. Today, much like in the twentieth century, «liberal sociologists consistently highlight the systemic socio-economic logic behind totalitarianism on the ”left”, yet curiously, they steadfastly deny this logic when discussing totalitarianism on the ”right”. They argue that in the absence of private property, the emergence of the GULAG was inevitable, while attributing the existence of Buchenwald and Auschwitz to mere accidents within the bourgeois economic order»2.
It is notable that in such comparisons, liberal thought tends to omit references to Thalerhof, Terezin, British camps in South Africa, secret prisons in Europe, and reservations in the United States altogether. Instead of examining the origins of the phenomenon, analyses often focus on its external symptoms.
Certainly, a robust modern concept of Nazism should be impervious to the liberal-neo-Nazi approach, meaning it should exclude any liberal concepts at the foundational level. This condition is fundamental for achieving a truly comprehensive theoretical understanding of the phenomenon.
Another crucial condition, particularly relevant to Russian thought, is the rejection of the historically «comfortable» notion of Nazism's collapse in 1945. The assertion that the Soviet people defeated Hitler's Germany and thereby saved humanity from the «brown plague» is only partially accurate, specifically in its initial part. Nazism is a shared affliction of the Western world. Nazism did not originate solely from Hitler; therefore, the triumph over the Third Reich did not, unfortunately, result in the complete eradication of Nazism as a whole.
This acknowledgment does not diminish the pivotal role of Soviet Russia in the defeat of German Nazism. It is crucial not to overlook the most significant fact that the mission of the German Reich, following its downfall, automatically shifted to the former allies of the USSR.
In the twentieth century, Nazism was frequently characterized as a distinctive «traumatic experience» of the Western world. This comprehensive and seemingly intentional definition mythologizes the issue. This suggests that the Nazi phenomenon was unexpectedly unveiled to European eyes, implying that it was impossible to predict the emergence of the Hitler regime or its counterparts beforehand. Thus, it is postulated that Europe subconsciously rejected this social evil, and that the minds of Europeans possessed some form of moral instinct that rejected «brown» ideologies. All of this, of course, diverges from reality.
The end of the twentieth century and particularly the first decades of the new century, during which Nazism was actively nurtured in Eastern Europe, revealed that the complacent attitude of the average European towards collective morality is merely the sedative effect of a propagandistic narrative, and the widely publicized mission to denazify Germany is nothing but a staged performance. Authentic denazification has yet to commence.
Nazi ideology did not prompt condemnation and rejection in Europe during the 1930s. It should rightly be considered «pan-European», particularly given that more than twenty countries, primarily European, participated in Hitler's aggression against the USSR. Together with the Wehrmacht troops, forces from Austria, Finland, Croatia, Romania, Italy, Hungary, and Slovakia invaded Soviet territory. The 45th Infantry Division of the Wehrmacht, which stormed the Brest fortress, was formerly the 4th Austrian Division. We can also mention the French 33rd Waffen-SS Charlemagne Infantry Division, named after Charlemagne.
The Polish elites openly lamented that they were unable to align with Hitler as allies for the eastern march and instead became the target of aggression themselves. In other words, the animosity towards the «Eastern barbarians» in Polish society was far more pronounced than towards the actual conquerors, indicating the presence of racist mythologems in the collective unconscious of Europe. These mythologems operate on a much deeper psychological level than mere reactions to contemporary political events, regardless of how tragically these events may be perceived by Poles or other European activists.
The pan-European nature of Nazism can be discerned not only in the official discourses of political elites but also in regional studies of the daily life and attitudes of the population during the Second World War. For instance, following the German army's entry into Poland in 1939, various ethnic groups exhibited loyalty to certain ethnic and religious communities while rejecting others. Polish Germans confessed that they harbored dislike towards Jews and Catholics («Papists»). At the same time, the latter sympathized with the Poles, and the Poles themselves endeavored to appease the occupation authorities, falsely accusing Jews of «drinking blood from them»3.
Independent studies of daily life in Western society during the 1930s and 1940s reveal that not only politicians but also ordinary Europeans and Americans were largely internally prepared for the advent of the Nazi regime and perceived it as a new social norm, or what might be termed today as a form of «new normality».
Therefore, the mindset of forgetting the «traumatic experience» today serves as a mechanism for displacing feelings of guilt from mass consciousness and, consequently, absolves responsibility toward the victims of Nazism. It is noteworthy that within the framework of the same Nazi logic, the victims are also categorized according to their significance for Western public opinion. This is evident in the silencing of information about the crimes of the Wehrmacht in the East, among other examples.
Equally notable is the anti-Nazi refrain: «Never again». Its usage instills a subconscious assurance in both the speaker and the recipient that such atrocities have never occurred previously. Indeed, only in this scenario does the hope for preventing the recurrence of the Nazism experience hold significance. Unfortunately, such confidence runs counter to the logic of European history, overlooking the formation of the first colonial empires and, at its core, the establishment of behavioral patterns characteristic of Protestant ethics.
Hitler's Nazi project involved transplanting the former pan-European colonialist experience within Europe itself and reviving past racist ideologies to align with the Reich's contemporary objectives, including the genocide of Russians and Jews.
At the same time, classical forms of colonialism and the new intra-European forms introduced by the Nazis continued to coexist in parallel. While Dachau furnaces were operational in continental Europe, the British administration orchestrated a famine in Bengal in 1943, resulting in the deaths of over three million people. This famine was perceived as punishment by the British administration for the August 1942 revolution and the support of the Indian National Army led by Subhas Chandra Bose. History once again demonstrated the unity of causes, goals, and methods between old and new colonialism at this juncture.
Meanwhile, the foundations for a new Nazi adaptation of classical Euro-Racism were established long before Hitler and the NSDAP (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei) came to power. The Royal Prussian Colonization Commission, established in 1886, contemplated a plan to colonize the «barbarian East». Germany's most prominent scientists, including Werner Sombart, advocated for Germany's claim to Lebensraum, a new «living space» in the East. Hitler merely expressed his willingness to implement the plans devised by his predecessors when he referred to Russia as «our East India» and stated, «We are starting where we left off six centuries ago. We are looking towards the lands to the east. When we speak of new territory in Europe today, we must principally think of Russia and the border states subject to it».
The ostentatious ritual condemnation of Hitlerism and the Third Reich, unfortunately, did not alter the identity and social character of Westerners or the ethos of Western public institutions. Perhaps this acknowledgment may challenge someone's civic beliefs, but one cannot deny the obvious: European consciousness was and remains imbued with fascism at the level of its cultural unconscious. The Western commoner, much like the Western intellectual, will eventually need to acknowledge this reality and embrace the responsibility and inherent historical pessimism that come with it. Only then can there be a degree of clarity in understanding this issue and exploring potential solutions, rather than resorting to non-binding «traumatization». This approach will enable critical thinkers to navigate through numerous ideological impasses.
Essentially, since the 19th century, the racist ideology of the West has operated on a two-tier system: the British standard and a set of European, continental, and American variants. In essence, Hitler merely transposed to Europe the colonial practices (and their ideological justification) that had previously been employed by all Europeans solely on the «outskirts» of the world. Therefore, minimizing the significance of the history of colonialism and racism in comparison with the era of European Nazism is inherently a Nazi position – referred to as «secondary Nazism» or «second-order Nazism». In this scenario, the human losses and sufferings experienced by representatives of different nations and races are unequal.
Historically, Nazism (national racism) resulted in the most severe human losses in the twentieth century, primarily affecting Russians and Jews. However, the colonization practices that preceded it represented a pan-European phenomenon and, in their entirety, were no less bloody. However, since Hitler's Nazism emerged later, it acted as a sort of disciple of classical, primarily English racism, as Hitler himself has repeatedly expressed. He acknowledged that his policy was based on British models, harbored dreams of an «East India», and expressed admiration for the British people, who «have performed deeds... which have surpassed human imagination». The outcome of the endeavor to emulate the English in the «colonization business» was the genocide of all ethnic groups carried out in the occupied territories of the USSR.
It is not uncommon to encounter the definition of Nazism as «extreme nationalism». This is a fairly popular stereotype that is perpetuated by inertia, and at the same time, it can be considered an ideological ploy when used by political and social strategists. For all the undeniable drawbacks of «extreme» nationalism, which is certainly a legitimate target of criticism, it still bears no intrinsic connection to Nazism. And this recognition should not be for the purpose of justifying nationalism, but rather to prevent the erosion of «Nazism» as a concept and its gradual rehabilitation as a phenomenon.
Despite her own liberal viewpoints, Hannah Arendt, a prominent scholar renowned for her in-depth study of fascism and totalitarianism, expressed her observation, «Many scholars, perhaps reluctant to confront fundamental truths, choose to inaccurately classify racism as merely an extreme form of nationalism. Important scholarly works often go unnoticed, particularly those by French researchers demonstrating the unique destructiveness of racism and its impact on national unity»4.
Nationalism seeks to uphold the rights and privileges of the native population within its historical homeland. By extension, it acknowledges the analogous rights and privileges of other nations and ethnic groups within their respective historical territories. Nationalism is often associated with national liberation movements and the fight against colonial subjugation. It is fundamentally «non-global» in nature. Nazism proclaims the superiority of certain nations and races (and in the case of cultural racism associated with Nazism, of cultural and historical types) over others on a global scale. This serves as justification for colonization and the oppression of peoples, violent alterations in the ethnic composition of entire regions (e.g., Kosovo, Ukraine), and the imposition of destructive institutions and socio-economic models (as seen in Russia during the 1990s). Nazism invariably encompasses globalist attitudes.
The memory of war typically fosters collective immunity against Nazi ideology. However, this immunity, unfortunately, does not extend automatically to every individual. Hence, individuals holding Nazi views could and can still be encountered among representatives of any nationality or ethnic group without exception. This can be easily verified by historical phenomena such as the Russian Liberation Army led by Andrey Vlasov or the Russian Volunteer Corps as part of the Armed Forces of Ukraine-NATO.
Individuals from any nation can become Nazis, a reality evident in the tragic history of events like the Russian «Scaffold» and the Jewish Holocaust of the 20th and 21st centuries.
Nazism is also a choice of worldview. And people of all nationalities are not immune to it because «a human is weak and sinful», and personal gain can outweigh moral norms, traditions, and ancestral memory, especially in a liberal market society.
As previously noted, the prerequisites of Nazism emerged long before Hitlerism and did not vanish with its demise. Hence, it is imperative to dismiss the narrow interpretation that portrays the emergence of Nazism as merely a misstep of Western democracy. This is not a descent into primitive savagery nor a random error, but rather a natural progression of Western culture. The Nazi «ordnung» was inevitable as a result of the radicalization of global capitalism and what is often termed liberal democracy. Adolf Hitler (Schicklgruber), as a representative of a certain type of figure, was bound to emerge in the history of Western Europe, regardless of the name he bore.
The continuity between global liberal capitalism, racism, and Nazism is rooted in their shared social Darwinian value system, as well as in their common utilization of «technologically advanced» methods for economic exploitation and population destruction in colonies. Notable examples include concentration camps, which were first tested in the Anglo-Boer War, the suppression of sepoy rebellions, the opium wars, ethnic cleansing, and genocide of the native American population by British settlers, as well as the slave trade, among others.
Liberal regimes bear the burden of implementing «police rule» and imposing harsh economic measures in their colonies to prevent the adoption of similar governance models at home, within the mother country itself. However, when global control weakens, liberal regimes face the dilemma of either initiating war or opting to tighten governance within their own territories. This was evident during the period of McCarthyism in the United States, characterized by the closure of enterprises and restrictions on freedom of information and opinion. Similarly, recent events in Europe, such as lawsuits targeting individuals for holding pro-Russian views in 2022 – 2023, underscore this trend.
An intermediate option between these two models, with a dominant of repressive practices both externally and internally, can be seen in Germany during the Hitler period. Germany, as is known, was largely «late» to the division of the world. In this regard, the expansion of German Nazism extended to the near European abroad, while internal ethnic and social groups, primarily Jews and leftist organizations, were also under attack.
Today, neo-Nazism is again quite widespread in Germany and Europe as a whole, especially within academic circles. The spread began in the 1990s, with the demise of the competing academic system represented by Soviet historiography.
One of the most widespread myths is the belief in the denazification of Germany and the repentance of the German elite. But the victory over Germany in 1945 did not signify the defeat of fascism. Former Nazis served in the Bundeswehr, sat in parliament, and held senior government positions. Today, Germany, in alliance with American political elites, is pursuing a course towards the restoration of Nazism in Eastern Europe by supplying weapons to the Kiev regime, thereby supporting military actions and terror against the Russian population. Therefore, it can be argued that German politics is objectively Nazi even today. From this perspective, agreements with such «partners» are dangerous, as they habituate public opinion to the notion of the legitimacy and acceptability of Nazism.
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Efforts are often made to separate individual regimes from the broader spectrum of racist phenomena in order to rehabilitate racism, including national racism (Nazism) – for instance, regimes headed by figures like Benito Mussolini or Francisco Franco may be singled out. Efforts to conflate Nazism and communism under the label of 'totalitarianism' often serve as a means of revisionism, a theme explored in detail in subsequent chapters of this book.
Despite all the apparent disadvantages of the Bolshevik model of socialism, Nazism and communism are fundamentally distinct, both ideologically – embodying social equality versus national racial inequality – and socially. Comparing communism and Nazism is akin to equating the Workers' and Peasants' Red Army with the SS, a notion absurd at its core.
Furthermore, the resurgence of Nazi ideology in the West following the fall and delegitimization of communism portrays Nazism as merely a reaction to communism – a tragic yet natural development. This perspective was notably championed by German neo-Nazi historian Ernst Nolte and his cohort5. The thesis that Nazism is a secondary historical phenomenon fundamentally challenges the post-1945 narrative established during the Yalta period, effectively overturning the historical chessboard. Consequently, the perspective aligned with this thesis serves as a significant ideological bastion within liberal historiography and sociology.
In reality, Nazism did not emerge as a historical response to Marxism and communism, despite its opposition to these ideologies. Its roots trace back much earlier, evolving as a racist political and ideological manifestation within the framework of colonial capitalism. While Nazism indeed reacted to the rising influence of socialist ideals, socialism itself emerged as a response to colonialism – a precursor to Nazism. The roots of the Nazi-racist ideology trace back to the Reformation and Enlightenment eras, making it a foundational phenomenon predating its ideological rivals – socialism and leftist ideology in general.
Centuries before socialism, the colonial system fostered various forms of racist ideology, with German Nazism emerging as the most convenient manifestation in the early 20th century. Conversely, non-systemic6 leftist ideologies, including communism and socialism, actively opposed colonialist hegemony both on a global scale (the Communist Internationals before and after the Zimmerwald Conference) and on the local-national scale (the USSR during the Stalinist period, regimes led by Mao Zedong, Fidel Castro, etc.).
In the twentieth century, Nazism earned the moniker «ideology of shopkeepers» due to its alignment with the institutional and financial influence of large capital. Today, Nazism finds support primarily among comprador segments of the middle and quasi-middle class, which also serve as the social base of liberalism.
It's often claimed that Nazi regimes didn't oppress their adherents. This perspective is not only incorrect but also embodies a fundamentally Nazi ideology, as it implies unequal treatment of individuals and suggests varying degrees of sympathy based on their status as objects of repression. Furthermore, this stance suggests that Germans of Jewish descent in Germany were considered inferior Germans and outsiders. Hence, the fundamentals of Hitler's propaganda are being echoed, whether knowingly or unknowingly, while the concept of «totalitarianism» serves only to conceal this reality.
It is worth delving into the theory of totalitarianism separately. The theory of totalitarianism, while once widely recognized, is now regarded as more propagandistic than scientific. Serious historians today tend to disregard it, viewing it as a product of political journalism that erroneously presents itself as scientific.
The function of «totalitarianism» in the ideological landscape was to disrupt the established association in mass consciousness between the concepts of «Nazism», «racism», and «fascism», aiming to dissociate them and consequently to separate numerous Nazi-racist phenomena from the umbrella of these concepts. We will delve into this topic more extensively in the corresponding chapter.
The theory of totalitarianism was formulated in the works of Karl Popper («The Open Society and Its Enemies»), Hannah Arendt («The Origins of Totalitarianism»), and Friedrich August von Hayek («The Road to Serfdom»). It subsequently gained widespread acceptance in both popular political science and media culture. The theory is rooted in identifying characteristics associated with the «police» management methods historically prevalent in many regimes. However, these characteristics fail to fully capture the historical, ideological, and socio-economic nuances of these regimes.
In reality, the issues labeled as «totalitarianism» are distinct from those of Nazism, multi-racism, and liberalism, and do not alter the criteria for assessing their ideological foundations. Dictators like Henry VIII, Napoleon Bonaparte, and Haji Mohammed Suharto are not typically labeled as Nazis, despite their authoritarian rule.
The essence of Nazism lies not merely in dictatorship, but in the justification of global inequality through the purported inherent characteristics of nations, countries, and cultures. This is the most significant and defining characteristic. Historically, this is manifested in the proliferation of Nazi and racist ideologies infused with myths of superiority7 and inferiority of others (in this case, a dependent collective subject), appealing to fabricated racial impurity or cultural inferiority8. A prime illustration of such myth-making is found in the Nuremberg racial laws enacted in the Third Reich, which served as the theoretical underpinning of the Holocaust9. The practical consequence of all theories grounded in the myths of «superiority/inferiority» is the anti-Christian notion of humanity's gradation and the prosperity of the «fully-fledged» at the expense of the «inferior».
Another significant hallmark of racism and Nazism is technocratic dehumanization – the conception of humanity as rational, articulate machines, and of society and culture as man-made constructs. A striking example is seen in Nazi eugenics, the military use of narcotic substances in the Wehrmacht (such as Pervitin), meticulously planned and technically sophisticated methods for eliminating human «surpluses» (like crematoriums and gas chambers), and the systematic application of production technologies in Hitler's concentration camps alongside the utilization of slave labor from the occupied Eastern territories («Ostarbeiter»).
Prominent figures of the Frankfurt School, such as Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer, interpreted Nazism as a byproduct of two profound historical processes: the imposition of rationality standards by the Enlightenment and the «affective» response to this imposition manifested as Nazi archaism10. Technocratic dehumanization in the post-Hitler era took on a somewhat altered guise, but its fundamental principles remained unchanged. Explicitly or implicitly, the aim of «enhancing the human race» is being pursued, transforming Homo sapiens into a so-called high-hume by analogy with high technology. Consequently, transhumanism technologies supplant Nazi eugenics in the new millennium. Due to its technogenic essence, the authoritarian nature of global capitalism runs much deeper and more radically than the ideological authoritarianism of communism.
Nazism is often portrayed as a «reversion to the archaic», which is accurate when viewed through a moral lens. However, in all other aspects, Nazism represents a radical manifestation of modernist ideologies with their technocratism, social Darwinism, and shifting the «cost of progress» from their own social classes to neighboring peoples11. In essence, the Nazi principle of survival of the fittest is inherent in the entire system of colonial capitalism, where metropolises amass resources for their development in the form of tribute from marginal «barbaric» peoples, forsaking traditional values in the process. Conversely, socialism sought to distribute this cost among all social groups within a single society, thereby leading to varying degrees of egalitarianism.
* * *
Nazism is not an incidental historical aberration or a systemic failure of society. Rather, it is a natural outgrowth of Western modernity.
Like all forms of racism, it is predicated on vertical segregation – the division of the «higher» from the «lower». At its extreme, this principle presupposes the oppression or physical annihilation of «inferior» groups, both national – such as Sepoys, Jews, Russians, and Gypsies – and social.
The same holds true for non-national forms of racism, including contemporary ones. For instance, juvenile justice currently engages in repression against allegedly socially «flawed» groups, removing society from close contact with «inferior individuals» (including those deemed inferior in terms of ideology) and thus perpetuating modern social selection. It is evident that this social order was shaped within the framework of the ideology of liberal social racism.
This is but one vivid example of the new forms of racism in the 21st century. For instance, the topic of «social rating» merits a genuine discussion.
The distinctions between Nazism of the 20th and 21st centuries pose a separate, substantial, and extremely pressing issue that will undoubtedly garner the attention of researchers in the very near future. Our task is merely to identify approaches to this issue. However, while acknowledging both the differences and the shared fundamental characteristics of the «two Nazisms», it is essential to underscore the unity of their origins.
It must be candidly acknowledged that Nazism and racism possess well-defined cultural and religious dimensions. The convergence of various forms and manifestations of racist-Nazi ideology is rooted in Protestant religious and cultural underpinnings (the so-called «Protestant ethic», as described by Max Weber) and the socio-economic and political model of the Western world that flows from these foundations.
In other words, the influence of Protestant ethics and the Protestant mode of rationality is still readily discernible in modern Western society and its culture. For instance, the perception of social «success» inherent in this ethic can be traced back to the Augustinian-Calvinist doctrine of double predestination, which delineates individuals into «chosen for salvation» and «unelected for salvation», as if the Lord did not die for everyone but, sorting the wheat from the chaff, fashioned a race of «better people» even in their lifetime.
This perspective, albeit in a secularized form, finds full expression in neoliberal ideology with its emphasis on relentless competition and a hyper-rational approach to social interactions and production processes.
The «soft» modern counterpart to German concentration camp rationalism is the subjugation of all spheres of life to the tenets of market fundamentalism, the interests of transnational financial players, and methods of digital algorithmization (hence the term «digital fascism»). Technologies of transhumanism, digital feudalism institutions, and the pursuit of developing artificial intelligence at the expense of human neural resources all aim at «enhancing the human race» today.
However, the Protestant supra-rational worldview has its irrational (quasi-religious) seamy side. Part of this seamy side is the religiously fatalistic view of progress, which is treated as an end in itself. This conception of societal progression over time engenders a specific, positivist model of historicism and eschatology.
Within this model, societal development is guided by the trajectory of man-made transformation and the absurd dichotomy between the values of civilization and the values of morality and culture, giving rise to man-made cults within Protestant culture that are divorced from Christianity.
This issue was repeatedly addressed by the philosopher Martin Heidegger in the 20th century, who considered technology not merely as a «machine» but rather as something that fundamentally alters the human condition. According to Heidegger, the essence of technology – to which we are «slavishly bound» – is «the futility of being-present» and it «is not at all technical», but rather its disclosure occurs «within man» and «through him»12, resulting in a loss of self-presence in the world. Technology becomes the «destiny» of man, while simultaneously man becomes its destiny. In essence, it symbolizes a distinctive new religion – the religion of non-being – which reintroduces the terror of Nothingness, dispelled by the Christian perspective of eternal life.
Thus, the notions of human gradation and social natural selection are underpinned by the Protestant fundamentalist spirit – irrespective of whether this fundamentalism manifests as historical religiosity or in a secular form and whether it is tainted by man-made quasi-religiosity. Concurrently, the principle of relentless competition and the survival of the fittest (Nietzschean «will to power») align perfectly with this Protestant-Enlightenment, modernist culture. Nazism and racism represent the radicalization of this worldview, supplemented by technopaganism and giving rise to a liberal capitalist societal model.
Does this imply that individuals with a Protestant faith and/or worldview are inherently predisposed to Nazism and racism? Certainly not. Such a statement would be as ludicrous as asserting that any Catholic harbors the instincts of an inquisitor. Furthermore, the most potent counter-systemic force in the Western world – Marxism and leftist movements aligned with it that repudiate capitalist society – also emerged within the framework of the Protestant cultural paradigm.
At the individual level, cultural paradigms shape cognitive styles, yet they do not invariably dictate an individual's ultimate beliefs. However, in the realm of collective consciousness, particularly among ruling elites, this dependence is notably more direct and unequivocal – cultural constants wield decisive influence.
2024 ãîä
