Mickey Z
Cool Observer
Sunday, November 20, 2005
Mickey Z. and the Holy Grail?
Thank you for this Mickey, I´ve been researching this a lot these days. I´m going to print this off and take it home with me.
Posted by Owen on from Barcelona 11/20 at 08:36 AMI CHANGED 1 WORD, AND THIS REFLECTS TODAY’S STRUGGLE. Yes, we have a cult complete with symbols, yellow ribbons, fanaticism, etc.
“More than a political party, the U.S.WAR party was very much a cult,” says author Jonathan Vankin. “Like most demagogic religious sects, its rank and file was spellbound with the courage of demented convictions, and its leadership was financed and supported by powerful people whose main interest was accumulating more power. The finely tuned machine of brainwashing, fanaticism, and secrecy is perfect for that purpose.”
Posted by RMJ on from Churchill 4 Prez Hdqts 11/20 at 08:38 AMGreat Article, Mick. It is scary where the human mind can go when it is fed propaganda and lies. Catch you all later.
Posted by JOS on from Calle Colón 11/20 at 09:10 AMGreat article on the Dem’s real position on Iraq and our current occupation:
Posted by JOS on from Calle Colón 11/20 at 09:32 AMG’morning, all. Looking forward to your feedback, Owen. RMJ: you hit it on the head. When I was assigned this piece, I took it with the understanding I would not present this information as something anomalous that happened in the past.
JOS: You never fail to provide valuable links. Thanks. I might have to add space to each day’s post for “Big Country’s Links.”
This quote from Resident Bush yesterday connects all around: “We will stay in the fight until we have achieved the victory that our brave troops have fought for.”
Posted by Mickey Z. on from Astoria 11/20 at 09:41 AMA recent article by Enzo Traverso, the author of
‘Nazi Violence: A European Genealogy’:http://mondediplo.com/2005/02/15civil
Posted by sk on from 11/20 at 10:05 AMThanks, SK. Haven’t heard from you in a while.
Posted by Mickey Z. on from Astoria 11/20 at 10:33 AMI thought you an RMJ would especially like that one…
Hello, sk.
On the Bush quote I wonder what his sort of victory would look like...extermination?
Posted by JOS on from Calle Colón 11/20 at 11:46 AMHeads up, long post: Before I start about some philosophical roots of Nazism, a little about the Hegelian Dialectic - after Hegel I think, can´t be sure of the chronology - who put his name to a tool of political control whereby you provide a population with two apparently opposite ideologies, a thesis and an antithesis, and once people are sufficiently divided you offer them a synthesis of the two to fuse the two extremes together (example: divide people by having them call themselves ´left´ or ´right´ then offer them the ´centre´ as your preconceived solution to problems you created).
Now everyone knows about Nietzsche influencing Nazi doctrine and everyone knows the quote attributed to Hitler about having to understand Wagner before understanding Nazism but the subtle interplay between the two is much less widely-discussed. Started with an enormous argument upon Wagner´s opera Parsival and Wagner having claimed he had been party to a revelation that Jesus was of Aryan blood. Nietzsce declared again his contempt for Christianity, which he regarded as a depravity. The dispute boiled into a bitter public feud which split Pan-Germanic pagan-mysticism to its roots, thesis to antithesis.
Synthesis: Houston Stuart Chamberlain is another, along with Eckart, to help forge Hitler´s worldview, and it was he who proclaimed him as the new German Messiah. Chamberlain was the son of an English admiral and the nephew of Neville Chamberlain raised in Paris before moving to Dresden in 1882 and gaining a reputation as being more German than the Germans. In 1899 he published Die Grundlagen deer Neunzehnten (The Foundation of the Nineteenth Century) in which he expanded on Wagners´ Master Race by saying it wasn´t necessary that the race be subjected through time and decay to a “Twilight of the Gods” (dilution by inferior races), and here he cunningly incorporated Nietzsches´ notions of breeding a “Higher Race.” Chamberlain wrote of this as being more than mere genetics, a mingling of souls at a historic moment in time, the “Spirit of World Destiny” and named the defeat of the French in 1870-71 as such a moment when the population became homogenous under Bismarck and Wilhelm of Prussia, the genesis of the German Master Race. Chamberlain, who wrote his works mostly in a condition of trance and claimed to be channelling a higher intelligence which drove him to work slavishly leaving him exhausted or in hysterics afterwards (Abwehr agents assigned to watch him reported seeing him fleeing these invisible demons), became a sensation overnight, though many were repulsed by the racist doctrine. Kaiser Wilhelm invited him to court and welcomed him by saying “It was God who sent your book to the German people and you personally to me.”
More roots: whenever a country gets to goosestepping it is a common characteristic that in the preceding decades, physicalistic philosophis are heavily promoted by the intelligentsia and kinder ones that espouse the oneness of spirit and matter are suppressed, people being that much easier to lead to war when they see themselves as insignificant glots of chemical reactions. Wilhelm Wundt (1882-1920) is the one credited with having banished the soul from psychological research (even though “psyche” means “soul” in the original Greek!) and sanctified the primacy of matter. While assisting in taking care of the Nazi Germany end of things, Wundt had an American student called G. Stanley Hall who established the American Journal in Psychology in 1887, helped both found the American Psychological Association and boost the carer of one John Dewey.Thanks again for your piece Mickey and out of curiosity, what sources did you research this with?
Posted by Owen on from Barcelona 11/20 at 11:56 AMI should get back to nanoing now, spose it´s good practice. By the way, I have a degree in philosophy but learned none of the above during it.
Posted by Owen on from Barcelona 11/20 at 12:21 PMP.S. that was what came into my head from the first section of your piece, I´ve got way more about the Grail and Vril too.
Posted by Owen on from nanoing after this fer sure 11/20 at 12:37 PMHilarious, re: Dubya
http://tinyurl.com/9qkjr===
Wow, Owen, it will take me a few readings to take all that in. As for sources, these are what I listed in the book:
Berzin, Alexander. “The Nazi Connection with Shambhala and Tibet.” May 2003: http://tinyurl.com/b4zzz
Cross, Robin. “The Nazi Expedition,” Channel4.com: http://tinyurl.com/bbs9a
Hale, Christopher. Himmler’s Crusade: The Nazi Expedition to Find the Origins of the Aryan Race (Bantam, 2004)
Ramsland, Katherine. “All about evil and its manifestations,” CrimeLibrary.com: http://tinyurl.com/aqkfu
Reydt, Peter. “Nazism and the myth of the ‘master-race.” World Socialist Website, September 23, 1999: http://tinyurl.com/98zek
Vankin, Jonathan. Conspiracies, Cover-Ups, and Crimes: Political Manipulation and Mind Control in America (Spring Arbor: 1991)Posted by Mickey Z. on from Astoria 11/20 at 12:38 PMTraverso’s book, which was translated into English 2 years ago, is revelatory as well in it’s wealth of detail and sources:
Unique analysis of how the “germins tumble all together” concocting the witch’s brew of Nazism…
Posted by sk on from 11/20 at 01:05 PMJOS, thanks for that link. I have been thinking about Howard Dean since the vote on Friday night. He has been noticeably silent.//// Bernard Goldberg was just on C-span Book TV criticizing Ward Churchill. Goldberg still does not understand the concept of Blowback when it comes to 9/11. Maybe we all should have our foreheads tattooed with the message, “9/11 was Blowback”.
Posted by RMJ on from Churchill 4 Prez Hdqts 11/20 at 02:06 PMHello, my friends -
A fascinating piece, this morning, Mickey. Thanks very much - and thanks for the peek into Peet’s book. Colin Wilson is a contributor, as well, eh? Years ago, I read his book: “The Outsider,” which I found astonishing. He wrote some of it on scraps of paper, using a flat shovel as a table-like surface, during lunch and breaks, while working as a coal miner.
Peet’s book looks like a very strange and interesting read.So many of us are searching desperately anywhere - everywhere, to find out who we are and who we might be. We forget to enquire of that strange person we find in the mirror, there, whenever we look. We travel tens of thousands of miles and many thousands of years in search of our identity.
We travel all the way to Oz Itself… And, if we’re lucky, we get to talk to the Wizard, who tells us to look to the person who’s doing the seeking… Look in the mirror; Your home is even closer to you than that…JOS - You said: “It is scary where the human mind can go when it is fed propaganda and lies.”
Our big-brains have been fed little else. Even among those of us here, it’s part of our diet every day. Hell, if we hid in a basement, we couldn’t get away from it - it’s in the air, in the water, it’s in our earliest programming…Owen - another wonderful post, thank you.
I’d just like to add that, though Neitzsche is constantly associated with all of this psychosis, he was neither a racist nor was he at all political. He knew, however, that his work would be misunderstood and misapplied. He often tried to preclude it. I frequently got the impression that he saw Hitler comming, though his mind was gone in the late 1880’s…
He was a towering genius, and a better writer than many of our better authors of fiction.“The future digs like a spur, into the flesh of every present.”
Hi Rosemarie - There are still many millions of Americans who are desperate to ‘resurrect’ the Dems. I’ve talked with some of them, on occassion: Many still feel that opposition to the Dems is de facto support for Bush. Many of those also believe that if you walk in a straigh line, long enough, you’ll fall off the edge of the earth…Posted by joe on from Oregon 11/20 at 03:01 PMNietzsche isn’t quite as unworldly in politics as some have portrayed--how can anyone who subscribed to a ‘radical aristocratic’ viewpoint be considered apolitical?--but his work is open to various interpretations, many of them liberatory. The last sentence from this interview of Giorgio Agamben is telling:
Posted by sk on from 11/20 at 03:23 PMHi SK -
I spent years with Neitzsche.
I can’t claim to have come to a clear understanding of his work, but I fell in love with him. I’m unable to imagine how anyone could spend lots of time with his work and come to any but “liberating” conclusions…
unless, of course, one was seeking other conclusions all along.
He lived most of his life in illness and miserable poverty. Yet, for me, his work was an amazing affirmation of Life.
His last “conscious” act was to throw his arms around the neck of a horse which was being beaten, in an effort to protect the poor creature from the assault.
And then, he was gone -Posted by joe on from Oregon 11/20 at 03:37 PMJoe, You are SO right about many millions who want to resurrect the Dems. I am surrounded by them. They pretend that they are FOR peace, and in the next breath say that they support the vote for war.
Posted by RMJ on from Churchill 4 Prez Hdqts 11/20 at 04:00 PMMy favorite (paraphrased) Nietzsche quote:
Live life with the seriousness of a child at play.
This was during the years I spent with him, joe...and I don’t know which of his works it is from.
Posted by JOS on from Calle Colón 11/20 at 04:11 PMWow, Joe, you spent years with FN? You’re even older than I thought…
It’s 4:42 in Astoria. A balmy 60 degrees. Michele and I just got back from eating falafel “down” in Williamsburg.
Posted by Mickey Z. on from Astoria 11/20 at 04:42 PMThanks, JOS. I’m not sure where that’s from, either. It always seemed to me that his works were really just one very long ‘notebook’ of musings on life and living, often written astonishingly well.
It didn’t surprise me when I learned he’d gone mad. He just saw too much, too deeply…Rosemarie, I think I told you about my visits to In These Times(?) or some such Dem website. I posted a few perceptions of the Democrats and inspired a truly rabid rage. They couldn’t argue with the facts, of course, so they simply attacked with every sort of accusation and insult and abuse. It was an enlightening and disheartening experience, and was probably the beginning of my recent essay.
Posted by joe on from Oregon 11/20 at 04:59 PMHe hated to be called “Freddie,” Mickey.
I kept screwing up…“bad”
Posted by joe on from Oregon 11/20 at 05:01 PMThanks so much for your research, Mickey! This has particular poignancy for me as I was born in Germany (have been an Australian citizen since 1987).
OT: did you know that the founder (and leader for more than forty years) of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union was an expatriate Australian?
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/history/hindsight/stories/s1508092.htm
Transcript will be provided as soon as it becomes available.
And hi to all of you MZ’ers from a sunny Daylesford where it is going to be a most pleasant 75 or so F today!Posted by Helga Fremlin on from Daylesford, Australia 11/20 at 05:38 PMAnd thanks for all those great links, Mickey, sk, and JOS. Lots of food for thought and the occasional laughter.
And joe, the best and most tender love/sex scene I have EVER read in any book was in a novel by Colin Wilson - unfortunately we moved house last year, and I still can’t find certain books, so don’t know the title off the top of my head. We’ve got thousands of books between Mr and Mrs Helga ..Posted by Helga Fremlin on from Daylesford, Australia 11/20 at 05:45 PMAnd Mickey, have you ever read the (Australian) book/seen the film: “And he died with a felafel in his hand”? I haven’t but you might have ..
Joke re Russell Crowe:
“Russell is going to host the Australian Film Institute Awards this year. That means that the recipients of these awards don’t have to come up on stage as Russell is going to THROW them into the audience.”Posted by Helga Fremlin on from Daylesford, Australia 11/20 at 06:03 PMDon’t know that flick, Helga. Michele and I still haven’t gotten around to buying a DVD player but we will soon. At that point, we will be asking for everyone’s input, re: rental suggestions.
Totally unrelated:
Kuwait’s biggest field starts to run out of oil
http://tinyurl.com/cjmooPosted by Mickey Z. on from Astoria 11/20 at 06:10 PMHelga, I didn’t know that, about Wilson. I know only that I taught him everything I could, then sent him on his way, trusting him to do his best…
Mickey, great link. Read something similar, recently, by some analyst at the Bank of Montreal, who said that the major oil field in Saudi Arabia, the epicenter of world supply, had probably “peaked” already, and that the Saudis had been pumping water into the fields, for years, to increase the output pressures…
After the article you cite, there’s a comment section in which a guy says:
“A whole 10% less a day. 40 more years left. No big deal. Probably have the slack taken up by other areas. Prices will increase accordingly making oil/gas slightly more expensive thereby allowing other alternative sources of energy (geothermal, solar, hybrid, hydrogen) a chance to compete in the market...”There ya go, Mickey. His comment pretty much says it all, eh?
I just read a line I thought I’d steal and post here:“We prefer death by habit to life by choice.”
Posted by joe on from Oregon 11/20 at 06:20 PMJoe,
I think I am going to steal that last line in my turn - great quote!Posted by Helga Fremlin on from Daylesford, Australia 11/20 at 06:55 PMYou know it, Joe. “No big deal,” he says. Leave it to “the market.” To borrow from Micheal Ray Richardson: “The ship be sinkin’.”
(Anyone remember that one? Big Country?)Hi Helga…
Posted by Mickey Z. on from Astoria 11/20 at 06:59 PMMickey - I’m going to get a tatoo, and have my shirts embroidered with that line:
“The Ship Be Sinkin’.”
A sane motto for an insane world!
Posted by joe"The Ship Be Sinkin'" on from Oregon 11/20 at 07:22 PMWow! What agreat article, Mickey.
You have demonstrated the similarities through history to the present day very simply and very effectively. It’s the same continuum (sp?) and is easy to see in retrospect but harder in the present which is the gift of your writing. Bravo!“Oracle” says zebra. Watch out crossing streets! OK?
Posted by Jim on from 11/20 at 09:08 PMThanks, Jim. It was interesting to work on this article and I’m looking forward to “moving” on to read the full anthology.
Posted by Mickey Z. on from Astoria 11/20 at 09:37 PMI must say I was only 8 or 9 we he said that mick and I had yet to develop my knicks obsession...I guess you are going to be the next guy we start teasing about getting old, right Joe?
Yeah, I love the subject of the anthology...I am definitely going to get a copy.
Posted by JOS on from Calle Colón 11/20 at 11:28 PMI’ve never been happier, JOS… not even close.
There are a few insanities I miss, at times, but generally, I’d not change places with anyone, of any age, anywhere…
It’s all so fucking amazing, my friend.
Even being razzed makes me smile…Posted by joe on from Oregon 11/21 at 01:01 AM
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