-Caveat Lector-
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN%3D0570046033/XyzpublishingltdA
/002-7286772-7408205
Modern Fascism : Liquidating the Judeo-Christian Worldview
(Concordia Scholarship Today)
by Gene Edward Veith
Paperback - 187 pages (February 1993)
Concordia Pub House; ISBN: 0570046033
Synopsis:
This new book in the Concordia Scholarship Today Series examines
how fascist views permeate modern philosophy, art, movies, and
eugenics -- decades after the defeat of the Axis powers in World
War II. Dealing with a variety of fascist thought -- from the
intellectuals to the skinheads -- Veith shows how the fascist's
focus on self and human will is in direct opposition to the
Christian's faith in a righteous God. (Concordia Publishing House)
Customer Comments:
[EMAIL PROTECTED] from Fairhope, Alabama , March 20, 1999
The New Pagans - Veith exposes the real fascism today.
Prof. Gene Edward Veith, a Lutheran professor of English at
Concordia Univ. in Wisconsin, if anything else, has taken a word
which has come to be used as a contentless, empty and generalized
"catch-all" insult, and has attempted to remind a historically
ignorant generation of what "fascism" was really all about in the
1930's and 1940's and from whom, whence, and what sources this
terrible political and philosophical system was derived, the form
it took then, and the form it takes today.
First of all, Veith has a smiling Ezra Pound on the cover giving
the fascist salute in 1958. This picture is not meant to cleverly
provoke, but to show, as is detailed in the chapter, "The Beautiful
Ideas Which Kill", that in his allegiance to fascism, Pound and
some of his artistic and intellectual allies, Imagist poet T.E.
Hulme, George Bernard Shaw, and the pre-war Wyndham Lewis, found
the political vehicle of fascism (to them at least) a very logical
outgrowth of their theories and views of art and life. The
celebration of "the primitive", the concrete over the abstract,
and overall contempt for the "bourgeois, moderate, classical..."
(quoting from Thomas Mann), in favor of the Nietzchean and
Dionysean unrestraint represent not any kind of a current
"conformity" to classical and historical traditions but at the
time, the very "avant-garde" throwing off of all such shackle.
There are many such illustrations of the sort, which Veith uses not
for purpose of mere "high-brow" name-dropping or ad hominem
indictment, but for the deeper meaning of the book itself: Fascism
has always been on the cutting edge, and the people who first loved
and propagandized it were not bourgeois businessmen in suits, but
the writers, artists, poets, and philosophers. It is important to
realize that one reason that the Jewish people were singled out for
castigation was that they represented a transcendent intellectual
order, anti-paganism and moralism. Although it has become a matter
of cliche, Frederich Nietzche really did popularize many of these
ideas in works such as "The Will to Power", where Judaism and
Christianity were systems of weakness and artificial supports for
weaknesses in their hindrance of man's primordial will and drive to
power and action.
"Modern Fascism" covers eugenics, abortion, political ideology, and
religion in addition to the artistic and philosophical aspects of
fascism, marking his obvious subject: the National Socialist state
of Hitler's Germany. Veith offers disparate examples of how history
has been revised and ignored to the absurd point that "fascism" is
now considered somehow "conservative", and the opposite of the
Left. Actually, the extreme Right and the extreme Left are two
competing sides of the same fascistic coin (i.e. National Socialism
(Nazism) and International Socialism (Marxism). Veith also debunks
(as have numerous others) the pernacious myth that Nazism was
somehow Christian. The truth is that Hitler perverted and used
"God-words" for his own end, and eventually dropped them altogether
once complete power was gained. The German Protestant Church had
become so weakened by liberalism and humanistic thought, that it
was powerless to resist. True Christians such as Dietrich
Bonhoeffer were executed.
Finally, one of the most interesting and frightening sections is
the end where Veith links much of modern 1990's culture in America
with the very same fascism it falsely purports to hate. The very
modern return to paganism and Gnostic/New Age type religions (in a
friendly face) and the celebration of the violent, arrogant, and
unrestrained raw sexuality in film, television, literature, and
music is indeed very close to the old fascism in truth no matter
how many "anti-Fascist messages" are attempted. The popular culture
and modern media which was used by the Nazis (Leni Reifenstahl's
use of cinema, the mass rally, etc.) to pound home their message
also sounds current. Veith also reminds us that the Nazis were
supreme environmentalists, criticizing the mercantile and urban
Jews for creating "alienation" between man and nature.
There is a very real problem with skinheads and white racist and
anti-Semitic groups of hooligans in both the U.S. and Europe. But
there is also a much more subtle and less overt form of it in the
academic community where political correctness is enforced and
books are not burned, but "deconstructed." At the very least, the
modern academic community which immerses itself in this nonsense
will have no ground nor the tools to fight fascism if it ever comes
here politically, with power to be enforced. At the worst, they are
collaborators with it. Professor Veith is sure to be criticized by
those who are convinced that Fascism consists solely of either
grainy, black & white newsreels of goose-stepping German officers
or all people who want to "impose their morality" on others, but I
believe he is prescient and absolutely correct in his general
thesis that modern Fascism is ultimately paganism in modern dress.
Veith's final sentence encapsulates the book: "Fascism is the
modern world's nostalgia for paganism. It is a sophisticated
culture's revolt against God."
A reader from Northern CA , February 27, 1999
Missing the mark
Methinks the Prof is way off base when in such a Cartesian manner
he pits Nazism against Christianism. How soon they forget that
Nazis WERE Christians, albeit Catholic Christians, and darned good
ones, too, in the sense that they followed the dogma to its
necessary conclusion: Death. No, if one wants to seek answers to
such heady matters, one would be wiser, along with C.G. Jung, to
look to the Gnostics for answers. If one must be dualistic, then
let the battle cry be "I'd rather be a Gnostic than a Nazi." For it
is the Gnostic Jesus who has the solution, but one must open one's
mind first, mustn't one?
[EMAIL PROTECTED] from Wichita Falls, TX , December 21, 1997
Fascism is back with a new face: postmodernism.
The parallels between the philosophies that led directly to
the Third Reich, and those currently in vogue among today's
intellectual elite are stunning and undeniable. Postmodernism
and its offspring, political correctness, represent nothing more
nor less than fascism with (for the moment) a smiling face.
Veith has done his homework well; his exceptionally
well-documented book exposes the moral vacuum into which
today's young people are being sucked.
[EMAIL PROTECTED] from Chicago area, IL , October 17, 1997
Fascism with a modern mask threatens all of our freedoms.
This highly readable book shows how fascism is creeping into our
culture. Under the label New Age, we are moving away from morality
which places value on the individual to morality which makes the
individual serve the needs of the community. Just like Nazi
morality, this morality has ties with paganism and the occult and
is in direct opposition to Judaism and Christianity. Prof. Veith
shows how this change started with fascism in the academic
community. If you value freedom, read this book.
� 1996-1999, Amazon.com, Inc.
.
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