The first step when it comes to understanding a text is to make sure
that one reads it carefully and without prejudice, failing which,
consciously or not, one tends to make it say, not what it actually
says, but what one would like it to say, what one would like to hear,
distorting it until it becomes a mere reflection of one's own views,
whether one has an agenda or not ; failing which any discussion of a
text is bound to be sterile. Selective quoting is usually paired with
misconstruction.
Heiki Valk's study (see message 1090) is not just about the burial
practices of medieval and post-medieval Estonians. "In a wider
European context, similar burial customs can be found in the same
period only in Latvia, Lithuania, at the Saamis and eastward
Finno-Ugrians (...) Similar transitional phenomena occur also in the
culture of all Northern Europe but in a more early time.". It's no
secret : "in somes cases, the Christianisation of the West was only
superficial".
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Troy/1856/Muti.htm/, at
least until recently, and, in other cases, it did not happen overnight.
To support her thesis, the second scholar we mentionned the other day
needs 'Humani generis' to say that the Church leaves open the
possibility of polygenism ; it does not say it, but, to her, it does
not matter, and here she goes : The Church "deliberately leaves open
the possibility of polygenism for theological inquiry." To support her
thesis of a development of racial consciousness in the Middles ages
(more precisely : in medieval literature) and of the compatibility
between Christianity and racism, the first goes so far as to see in
'Civitas Dei' what is not found in it, that is, a refusal to decide on
whether other races descend from Adam or not.
What is absurd about your criticism against her thesis - the
development of a racial consciousness in the Middle Ages, in medieval
literature - is that you share it. What is absurd about your
criticism against biological racism and your claim that "In the Middle
Ages, Jews were either chased out or permitted to live in ghettos.
This may be disliked by professors today, but it indicates
a racial consciousness," is that, without your realising it, it turns
out to be closely akin to that of one of the main representatives of
that current, Reich Minister of the Interior Dr. Frick, who, in "Why
the Aryan Law?", states, mistaking the racial plane with the religious
one : "Even in the Middle Ages, the most important thing was not the
difference between the Christian and Mosaic faiths. Rather, there was
on the one hand the natural sense that the Jew was of a foreign race,
and on the other hand the strict law of blood which demanded a clear
separation if the Jews were to fulfill Jehovah's mission." However, he
does not go as far as you do, insofar as, a few paragraphs below, he
speaks of "the reawakening of German racial consciousness" in his
time, which implies that racial consciousness was 'dozing' until then.
Nor did racial consciousness vanish in thin air overnight, it took
time before the genocidal teachings of the Church managed to dull it,
all the more easily as the very fact that Germanic tribes had
converted to Christianity, no matter the reasons, shows that it was
already weakened in these peoples. In the Middle Ages, it remained in
the latent state, and, at the very best, on the plane of the soul,
without manifesting itself, without asserting itself, without shaping
the material world. The European medieval man was once defined rightly
as an 'animic man'. See European medieval languages. Contrary to what
scholars publishing on a yearly basis expensive manuals called 'Old
English grammar', 'Old French grammar', 'Old Italian grammar' would
like their students to believe, European languages had no fixed
grammar until the late Renaissance ; as for orthograph, most words had
fifteen or twenty different spellings. Nothing was fixed in the Middle
Ages. We were still in an intermediary, subtle world, and so was the
medieval European man, whose world was half-way between the dynamic
stability of ancient traditional societies, whose languages, whether
Saussure's followers like it or not, had rules derived from the very
nature of things, and the rigidity of modern European languages, whose
grammatical and orthographic rules are completely arbitrary and, in
general, fanciful.
Race as an active principle and as a force, which was originally at
work on the plane of the spirit, subsided gradually to the plane of
the soul, and, finally, to that of the body, on which it was
vegetating when, in the early XXth century, nationalist forces came to
power in Europe. In 'Il problema della selezione interrazziale in
Germania' ('Bibliografia Fascista'), J. Evola stated that Bismarck did
not need to resort to race to accomplish what he did. Nor did any of
the European kings who ruled from the early Middle Ages to the early
XXth century.
Hence, maybe, the situation in which Europe found itself at that time,
and the fact that, since nothing had been done for almost 2000 years,
drastic measures had to be taken, to prevent it from sinking definitely.
Each year since 1945, veterans of the Waffen SS 20th Estonian Division
have been celebrating, openly since 1991, the anniversary of the first
clashes between Estonian pro-German troops and the Soviet Army in
1941, and so have veterans of the Estonian
SS-Freiwilligen-Panzergrenadier-Bataillon Narwa, whose remnants,
withdrawn to Germany, formed the core of SS-Füsilier Bataillon 20
which fought heroically in defense of Silesia, even when encircled, in
1945. Most of the survivors, tall old men, whose eyes are as blue as
their hair are (still!) blond, would certainly be entertained by your
sally about 'low caste' ones, as well as their offspring.
--- In
evola_as_he_is@yahoogroups.com, "Toni Ciopa" <hyperborean@...>
wrote:
>
> It is difficult to know where to begin, since like the end of
> fireworks, which initially fascinate, but then come floating down in
> every direction like so many unrelated ideas. Yet, since every journey
> begins with the first step, the best first step would be "Evola as he
> is", or using another metaphor, to stand on the shoulder of a giant
> for a better view.
>
> As for Evola's opinion of the Middle Ages, we can quote from
> "Imperialismo Pagano":
>
> <<the grandeur of Rome, having risen from the forces of the Nordic
> Aryans, created the last, great, universal period in the West, the
> feudal-imperial civilisation of the Middle Ages.>>
>
> Hardly a negative judgment. It would behoove us to try to understand
> what is so great about that civilisation. By the way, no period since
> was considered by Evola to have reached such a height, and certainly
> not the Rome-Berlin Axis.
>
> A series of unrelated contingent events depicting disloyal subjects
> and the burial practices of low caste Estonians does not change that.
> The opinions of a post-modern, feminist, American university professor
> does not change that, all the more so since her definition of "racism"
> probably derives from Trotsky in 1922 who first coined the word.
>
> Evola is relentless in criticizing the views of the biological
> racists, including the two pamphlets published by Thompkins&Carriou.
> Let's keep the following points in mind to understand the Middle Ages
> and just what constitutes "racial consciousness".
>
> In "Three Aspects of the Jewish problem", Evola characterises the
> Aryan is not simply by blood, but "an affirmative attitude toward the
> divine." So to answer the question of the racial consciousness of the
> Middle Ages means to explore their attitude towrd the divine.
>
> Only confusion can arise by not properly distinguishing the Catholic
> system -- which is a determinate and positive thing -- from
> Protestantism and primitive Christianity, which are indeterminate and
> chaotic. Again, Evola from the same work:
>
> <<From an Aryan standpoint, the Catholic Church is all the more worthy
> as it has managed to Romaanise Christianity, resuming hierarchical
> ideas, traditions, symbols, and institutions that are related to a
> larger heritage, rectifying by means of the Roman spirit the
> pernicious element that is closely connected to Jewish Messianism and
> to the anti-virile Syrian mysticism peculiar to the revolution of
> primitive Christianity.>>
>
> Perhaps, in their Wisdom, this is what those Medieval kings saw. In
> Evola's hierarchical conception, and the conjunction of the royal and
> sacred functions, it is lawful for the King to choose the people's
> religion and any resistance is disloyalty and betrayal.
>
> The "political" excuse is absurd since, for Evola, the religious and
> the political elements are inseparable (just as they were for Maistre
> and every right thinking man).
>
> In the Middle Ages, Jews were either chased out or permitted to live
> in ghettos. This may be disliked by professors today, but it indicates
> a racial consciousness, one that was lost by the way whenever and
> wherever the Catholic Church began to lose its grip; e.g., Protestant
> England, Republican France, and then all over Europe. It wouldn't be
> absurd to look for a cause and effect relationship here.
>
> What is absurd is to look at recent and contemporary attempts to build
> a "racial consciousness" on a purely material and biological plane, a
> course doomed to failure, and worse than failure, as the mistakes of
> the first half of the 20th century have proven.
>
> No, as Evola repeatedly asserts, a racial awakening is really a
> spiritual awakening. He calls for a new Counter-Reformation and we can
> learn from the efforts of our ancestors in the Middle Ages.
>
> <<Only a profound spiritual change and regeneration and a move from
> within that would resurrect those values ... from an essentially
> super-biological and super-racial point of view, in terms of type of
> civilisation, can lead to a real solution.>> (ibid)
>
> Not a Fata Morgana, but a "real" solution. But if you don't know what
> to look for, you will never see it, even when it is pointed out.
>