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CHAPTER XVIWARS & RUMORS OF WARSWritten By
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Money
has a way of blinding people - of rendering them unable to see
the danger which may soon sweep them away - and this is most
especially true of the elites. They're not quite as omniscient
as they sometimes appear (and as they sometimes think they are)
- as the Romonovs, the Hapsburgs and the Hoehenzollerns all
came to realize - a lesson which America's present elites may
soon find out. The fact is, the rage of the mob is more powerful
than all the guns and all the bombs the elite can muster in
their defense! - and modernity is not necessarily an effective
bulwark against this rage, as the communists found out to their
horror in 1989-'91.The effort over the past twenty years by Western elites to push multiculturalism by disengaging the great mass of ordinary people from their historic culture or "civilization identity" is on the verge of unraveling;39 as a result, these elites are in grave danger of pushing their secular multicultural agenda beyond the limits which can be easily tolerated by ordinary white Americans and Europeans, the great mass of which continues to subscribe to a European, Christian-based civilization.
It is the common mistake of all elites to presume that they speak for the great mass of ordinary people - or at least that they should because they somehow "know better;" that their concepts are necessarily the people's concepts (or they should be), and their beliefs are the people's beliefs (or, again, they should be) - or at the very least, failing that, that they (i.e., the elites) can lead the masses where they (i.e., the people), in the end, might not want to go because they (i.e., the masses) are just too stupid to know that they are being bamboozled. But history has shown over and over again that this simply is not the case - and more often than not, this kind of elite presumption is nothing more than an illusion, and that the elites are tolerated by the people so long as it is convenient, but thrown off when they press too far in directions the people do not wish to go, as the people did in Iran when Iran's secular elites pressed too far toward "westernization."
Contrary to the views of a great many conspiracists, elites lead so long as the people allow them to do so - and it is their rather unhappy fate that this is a lesson they have to learn over and over again. So also with the Western elites.
Nonetheless,
the elites plod on, seemingly oblivious to their growing disconnection
from ordinary people and to the danger which surrounds them as a result.
Rationalism, positivism, and materialism are the elite's passwords,
not religious belief and faith. In reality, however, the secular
elites are nothing more than a thin crust overlaying the civilization
they purport to represent - a civilization which considers science
to be nothing more than a flickering candle when compared to another
reality - a reality which, though obscured and half-hidden, is as true,
nonetheless, as is the seen reality of science and technology: the
world of religion and mythology. And when compared to religion and
mythology, reason and science are but the tip of an iceberg that shows
above the water, while submerged down below is the great mass of that
which is true and real. It is precisely this - the border line which
separates reason and science from religion - the secular elites from
the mass of ordinary people - that is at the core of the elite's inability
to communicate with everyday people, and which may be leading inexorably
to a break.
Speaking on elite control of the media - and the resultant disconnection between the media and ordinary people which this control leads to - Wills writes that the secular elite would do itself a service by -
"...reflecting on the number of churchgoers in the national press, as opposed to the general population; or on the uneasy way journalists talk about religion, as opposed to its frequency of reference among ordinary people40 ... Some of the glibbest persons in the nation are oddly tongue-tied when the Bible is brought up. And editors seem to prefer inarticulacy on the subject. Major papers and networks encourage reporters to acquire expertise in the law or economics, but I have not heard of any editor asking reporters to brush up on theology ... Religion embarrasses the commentators ..."41
Carolly Erickson, a professor at the University of California at Santa Barbara, writes,
"(People) ... who assign such things (i.e., religion and the supernatural) to the fringes of reality cannot easily recognize the awesome import of (these things) for people who set them at (the) center (of their reality)."42
And it is the reality of this world - that part of the iceberg which exists below the waterline, rather than the world of science and technology - that lies more closely to the roots of Western Civilization.
UNIVERSALISM VS.
"CIVILIZATION CONSCIENCENESS"
Still, to many Americans it might seem difficult to comprehend that we may be headed away from "universalism" and back towards a period of "civilization consciousness." Americans and West Europeans have passed through a period of dazzling universalism, but it is one which has just about run its course and is banging up against the wall of absurdity: the rejection of all sexual, cultural, and religious differences which has led to the madness of a multiculturalism or universalism where women are being injected into military combat, white males are viciously denigrated with very little distinction as to whether they are rich or poor (there are many more poor white males in the United States than all the poor blacks, Latinos and Asians - men and women - combined), all borders are open, the primacy of the English language within the borders of the United States is being challenged, homosexuals are viewed in the same moral light as are heterosexuals, all values are relative, and all religions are the same. A "counter current," as Luis Alfaro has called it, has set in - a growing white backlash fueled by middle-class, Christian fundamentalists and charismatics (both Catholic and Protestant) which, like other reactions in the past, may very well whiz right past the cultural middle in its pell-mell race in the opposite direction, without even bothering to stop and say "hello." And it might be worth noting in this connection that in the past, the periods of "civilization conscienceness" have lasted much longer than the periods of "universalism."
When H.G. Wells was a young man, the mood, as he tells it, was "quasi-universal."43 A few years later, however, it had become the aggressive, jingoistic belief we have come to recognize in such popular turn-of-the-century leaders as Joseph Chamberlain and Cecil Rhodes. Rhodes, the great British empire builder, was clearly a racist; he saw and made others see, in the words of Francis Thompson, his admirer,
".... the Teuton and the Saxon grip, hands round the ... world ... part(ing) it as a dish ..."44
Moreover, Rhodes' followers made it clear that his greatness lay in being the first British statesman whose imperialism was not of empire, but of race.45 Politics, religion and race-theories seemed then to be natural allies, and the "great white race" or "Nordic" myth, which has had as many forms as there have been situations to shape it, was very much in vogue46 - a racism which combined in it a concept of civilization which linked Christianity to the white or European race, and made it the special purveyor of civilization and progress to the rest of the world.
RACISM, CHRISTIANITY,
AND CIVILIZATION EXPANSION
The concept of the "White Man's Burden" was central to Cecil Rhodes' notion of civilization, and was pivotal to the expansion and sustenance of the French, Dutch and British Empires during most of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The ideological underpinnings of these empires lay not - in the first instance - in any theory of "trade expansion," or economic aggrandizement, although this phenomenon certainly followed on the heels of empire (or civilization) expansion, but in the belief that they were carrying Christianity and, ipso facto, the blessings of Western Civilization to the rest of the world.47
A greater reason than "trade expansion" must be given to the people if an empire is to be sustained over any length of time - especially to the common man who must do most of the fighting and dying involved in the creation and sustenance of empire,48 and whose financial rewards for doing so are negligible, at least in relation to the benefits from trade expansion which accrue to the economic elites. Indeed, very good arguments can be made to show that the collapse of these western empires was due in large part to the corrosive effects of socialist ideology on the religious underpinnings of these great empires - and that compared to this, economics played only a secondary role. No, it was not the thought of trade expansion that fueled the popular imagination, but "civilization expansion" - the expansion of God's kingdom on the earth. Now that was something the common man could believe in - if not the elites - and it's back to this kind of thinking that men like Huntington, Kaplan and even Baker believe the world is moving.
RACIAL CHRISTIANITY AND THE
EXPANSION OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION
People tend to forget the lessons of history and to recognize just how far racism has been carried in the past, all in the name of Christianity. Indeed, most would be appalled at just how far "Racial Christianity" extended less than 100 years ago; but so far were these concepts carried in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, that throughout all of the Western World - and not just in Germany - racial and religious theories were in vogue which linked the white race to Christianity through the vehicle of the "Ten Lost Tribes."
The story goes something like this: in the closing years of the kingdom of Israel, a considerable proportion of the inhabitants of northern Israel were carried away into captivity. The deportation took place in the reign of Pekah (II Kings 15:29); they were taken to Media and Mesopotamia after the fall of Samaria, 722 B.C. (II Kings 17:6). The kingdom of Judah was dealt with similarly by the Babylonians in 586 B.C. But while the Scriptures narrate the return of the captives of Judah, they are silent regarding the fate of the exiled natives of the northern kingdom, so that the ten tribes comprising it simply seem to have disappeared from history. These are the facts of the matter.
Now
the myths: over the years, stories developed which posited the theory
that these tribes migrated up through the Caucuses mountains (the mountainous
area which lies between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea and which
constitutes the main land bridge from the Middle East into Europe proper),
reappearing in history as the Germanic invaders49
of the Roman Empire in the second and first centuries B.C. The theory
continues: God - knowing that the Jews would reject Christ - had carried
the northern ten tribes off to Europe in order to preserve them from
the consequences of the Jews' later rejection of Christ, which of course
meant God's rejection of them (i.e., the Jews). After the death of Christ,
Joseph of Arimathea carried the Gospel - along with the "Holy Grail"50
(the cup from which Christ drank during the Last Supper and which Mary
supposedly used to catch Christ's blood during His crucifixion) - to
Great Britain, where the Gospel was preached, the Germanic (or white)
people brought to salvation, and consequently made the purveyors of
Christianity (and, ipso facto, civilization) to a lost and dying
world.
The myth accomplished two things: first, it made the white race - as the descendants of the "Ten Lost Tribes" - the inheritors of all of God's promises to Israel of earthly glory in the Old Testament; second, it consigned "Jewry" (i.e., the Jewish people, those who rejected Christ) to ignominy, making them - as Christ's enemies - the enemy of Christianity and ipso facto, the human race. This kind of thinking created an atmosphere towards the Jews which lead people in the early twentieth century to easily accept the veracity of the "Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion."
The
enormous popularity of this kind of thinking in the late nineteenth
and early twentieth centuries has been greatly underplayed by secular
histories which have ascribed such thinking to the rather limited circles
which today encompass "British Israelism" and "Identity;" but just how
widely such thinking was accepted one-hundred years ago can easily be
gleaned from the fact that the generally accepted term for whites today
is "Caucasian" - which term was clearly lifted from this mythology!
Moreover, the myth of Joseph of Arimathea's appearance in Great Britain
had for centuries previous been accepted by ordinary Britains and other
Europeans as generally true, and had been woven deeply into the Arthurian
legends and the Germanic myths which surrounded Parsifal; these legends
later became the themes for Richard Wagner's music - a "heroic" kind
of music which vilified the Jews, lent credence to the Arthurian legends
(Parcifal and Tristan and Isolde) and ipso facto
to the myth of the "Ten Lost Tribes" and which enjoyed unparalleled
popularity at the turn of the century, not only in Germany, but in England,
France and the United States.
This is not to say that people everywhere accepted these myths - but they seemed to explain to ordinary whites what seemed to be so obvious to them: their own "superiority" as exemplified in the accomplishments of their own Euro-centered, Christian-based civilization over and against the apparent "backwardness" of other non-Christian, nonwhite civilizations.
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RACIAL CHRISTIANITY: NOT QUITE AS
DEAD AS SOME WOULD LIKE TO BELIEVE
Moreover, it would be a great mistake to believe that "Racial Christianity" is a thing of the past, even now - in a time which is still dominated by a "multicultural chic." And one should not necessarily look to science and modernity as a bulwark against this kind of thinking and the racism it produces if the pendulum begins to swing back towards these kinds of concepts; the sad fact of the matter is, science - especially anthropology, evolutionism, physiology and genetics - can be made to serve racism just as easily as it can be made to serve universalism, as the history of all four of these disciplines has so clearly shown - the protestations of secularists notwithstanding. After all, it is no accident that the racial or "gene pool" theories of William Schockley and Arthur Jensen are gaining ever more adherents within the so-called "scientific community," many more than most multiculturalists would care to admit - despite their efforts to disrupt the lectures of both men on university and college campuses; indeed, such efforts have only drawn more attention to these men and the "race-science" they are purveying.
THE GERMANIC TRIBES Most of the Germanic tribes that invaded Western Europe seem to have come originally from the Scandinavian area, the homeland of the later Vikings. Gradually they migrated into central and southeastern Europe and began to press against Rome's imperial frontiers. The Franks (which settled in France), the Angles and the Saxons (which inhabited Germany and then migrated to England) came to Europe as non-Christians. The Visigoths (which ended up in Spain), the Ostrogoths (which located themselves finally in Italy), and the Vandals (which settled in Italy and North Africa) had absorbed Roman culture to some degree before they crossed the frontiers; all had been converted by the fourth century to Christianity. |
When we
speak of the so-called Germanic tribes, we are not only speaking
of those peoples who settled in Germany, but also those who
settled in France, Spain and Italy as well - in other words,
all those people which have eventually come to be known as "Western
European."
THE IMPORTANCE OF MYTH
Huntington has postulated that all eight of the world's great civilizations are undergirded by religion, but not necessarily by religion in its pure sense, but by religion which has been intermingled with each respective civilization's folklore, for example the folklore which produced the myth of the "Ten Lost Tribes" just discussed, and which - when combined with Christianity - contrived the "Racial Christianity" that fueled the imaginations of men like Cecil Rhodes at the turn of the century.
Myths involve the interaction of sometimes difficult religious and cultural concepts together in stories which can be easily understood by "everyday" people; in doing so, they exert extraordinarily powerful images on society - images which project the goals and values towards which a society presses, heroes which individual members of that society can pattern themselves after, and villains which portray those things against which the society feels itself arrayed.
Myths do not have to be true - or even portrayed as true - to be powerful; the important thing in mythology is not so much the historic reality of the individual "actors" in the mythological drama as the values they set forth. For example, take the heroes of the Old West: very few of these heroes - heroes which John Wayne, Gary Cooper, Randolph Scott and a whole host of other actors portrayed in such movies as Red River, Stage Coach, Shane, High Noon, etc. - have any real basis in fact, and people realize this. Yet the images which these actors and movies, dime store novels and comic books [Red Rider, Tom Mix, Roy Rogers, (and, of course, the more modern manifestation of this mythology as portrayed in Highlander, the Super Heroes, and in the "Spaghetti Westerns" of Clint Eastwood {The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, A Fist Full of Dollars}, etc.)] portray have determined how countless numbers of Americans have patterned their lives: the image of a strong, highly individualistic, chivalrous hero who stands for justice, honor, and the "American Way."
In projecting such images, a society fashions for itself unifying patterns and values around which the society can rally. So important are these images to a society that most historians assert that a civilization cannot come into existence without them. Indeed, German philosopher Friedrich von Schelling argues that -
"a ... (civilization) comes into existence with its mythology ... The unity of its thinking ... (is) presented in ... (it) ... It's mythology contains (its) fate."51
To be truly effective, however, myths must be fashioned in such a way that ordinary people can readily identify themselves with the concepts and heroes portrayed. The myth of the Samurai, for example, while a powerful image in Japanese society, holds little attraction for most Americans. Why? - the Samurai portray cultural, religious and - yes - racial images with which few Americans can readily identify. And herein lies the great problem with all civilization myths: while they unify, they also separate. All civilization myths create "insiders" and "outsiders." For example, John Wayne, Gary Cooper and Randolph Scott, Clint Eastwood, etc. portray "American" images which are white and "Euro-centric" with which few American Asians, Latinos, blacks and most especially Native Americans can readily identify - and more, they often project these images in a manner which denigrates nonwhites.
For example, take the mythology which surrounds the Alamo. The mythology of the Alamo pits heroic, white, European settlers driven by "Manifest Destiny" and led by such cultural champions as Jim Bowie, Davy Crockett, Col. William Barret Travis, etc. against pathetic, illiterate, brown Mexican/Indian peasants led by a despotic and ruthless overlord, "Gerneralissimo" Santa Anna. One side represents democracy, Christianity and everything that is good, while the other side represents despotism, illiteracy, and everything that is "backward" and bad. The two sides stand in stark contrast to one another. Mythological imagery permits no gray areas to confuse the message that is being sent: white, European settlers are good; brown, Mexican peasants are bad.
Moreover, try as they will, white Texans are unable to mitigate the message of the Alamo myth for a "new" Texas, a more "inclusive" Texas which multiculturalists hope will embrace the globalist ethic being trumpeted by America's present-day secular elites - an ethic which embraces browns as well as whites. It's for this very reason that brown (Mexican /American) Texans are demanding that the administration of the Alamo site be taken from the "Daughters of Texas" and given over to caretakers which will portray the Battle of the Alamo in a more multicultural manner. Of course, to do so will strip the mythology of its power and meaning, rendering the myth impotent - a myth around which untold numbers of Texans have patterned their lives and portrayed themselves to other Americans for over one hundred and fifty years. As a result, whites throughout Texas are enraged.
Take another example, the myth of the "Old South," as portrayed in Margaret Mitchell's classic, Gone with the Wind - a South characterized by planter aristocrats, grace, gentility, hospitality and a deep respect for womanhood - a place where L.V. Cooley could describe blacks as those -
"... chattering, singing ... and willing (workers who labored) in (musical) rhythms to show their fellows ... that the strain of the cotton bales, the grain sacks, the oil barrels and the timbers merely loosen their muscles and lighten their hearts."52
And make no mistake about it, this myth, the myth of the "Old South" - the South of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, a myth immortalized in the music of such Stephen Foster songs as "My Old Kentucky Home," "Old Black Joe," "Old Folks at Home," "Camp Town Races," etc. and in Walt Disney's Song of the South, and so forth - continues to exert an almost magical hold on most white Southerners, even today.
Like all civilization myths, the myth of the "Old South" clearly has "insiders" and "outsiders." Whites are the "insiders" and blacks are the "outsiders" - and, as the "outsiders," blacks are clearly denigrated. Moreover, like the Alamo myth above, efforts by Southern whites to mitigate the racist "insider/outsider" tensions inherent in the myth without at the same time destroying the myths' magnetism have been futile - and it's for this very reason that blacks throughout the country feel compelled - compelled out of a very justified sense of their own self-worth - to ban Song of the South from being played in movie houses throughout the country, to forbid the playing of Stephen Foster's old classics in public, to destroy all references to the myth in the nation's text books and histories, going even so far as to brand the confederate battle flag as a racist symbol and to demand the removal of statues dedicated to the honor of fallen confederate soldiers in the parks and town squares of the Old South as racist symbols "not appropriate" to the new "multicultured" South of Presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton. Of course, by denigrating the heroes which countless numbers of white Southerners have patterned their lives after - not just for 150 years, as in the case of Texas above, but for over 300 years - blacks are stripping white Southerners of their own self-worth - and so the battle is joined, a battle where there is apparently no middle ground.
Finally, take the case of General George Custer and the Battle of the Little Big Horn - "Custer's Last Stand" - portrayed for years as a battle between the agents of civilization and the agents of savagery. Again, like the two previous examples, the myth portrays "insiders" and "outsiders" - the "insiders" being the whites, the "outsiders" being the Indians or Native Americans; so repugnant has this myth become to Native Americans, that they have demanded and received from the federal government a promise to change the name of the battlefield; demands have also been made on publishers to change the histories in school textbooks so as to present a more "evenhanded" approach as to "what really happened" at the Little Big Horn. But whites protest, saying that, after all, Custer was merely following the orders of the same federal government which today is denigrating his memory - and so it goes, on and on, apparently without any resolution.
Universalists insist that new multicultural heroes can be fashioned that will appeal to everyone - regardless of one's cultural and ethnic heritage But all too often, what the multiculturalists produce is a monotonous blandness that appeals to no one. The failure of the former communist regimes in Yugoslavia and the old Soviet Union to fashion multicultural symbols around which people of diverse backgrounds - Ukrainians, Latvians, Russians, Georgians, Armenians, Azeries, Bosnians, Serbs, Croats, etc. - could rally indicate the success that can be expected in this direction.
THE FASCIST MINDSET
If people are honest, they will have to admit that much of their own self-identities revolves around these kinds of myths? - and, if they're fair - they will see what a powerful magnetism these kinds of myths produce. But this is the exact kind of mythology which produces fascism - and again, it is out of a fascist mindset that the Antichrist will eventually emerge - and remember, it's out of the confines of the Western World that the Antichrist will spring - he will be a product of Western mythology. It is, thus, a great mistake to think that the kingdom of the Antichrist will spring out of "New Age" thinking and "universalist" concepts. Those who are looking for the Antichrist to emerge from out of this kind of nexus are looking in the wrong direction. The kingdom of Antichrist will have a very definite "Christian" stamp to it and will largely emerge as a populist reaction against the concepts of "universalism" and the "New Age." But the Christianity out from which Antichrist will emerge will not be Biblical Christianity - but heterodoxy.
THE ROOTS OF WESTERN
MYTHOLOGY: HETERODOXY
At the root of Western mythology - the mythology which produced the myths just described - is a curious mixture of folklore and religion - a mixture which first took root in Europe, producing the Arthurian legends - and which spread to the New World with the coming of white European settlers. The end result of this remarkable mixture of myth with religion produced heterodoxy - a result not unique to Western Christendom and which can be found in other religions and other civilizations, but a fusion which has joined Western folklore to the Christian religion in a manner not replicated anywhere else - so much so that other civilizations speak of Christianity not so much as a universal religion, but as a "Western religion," a result which the "Fathers" of the early church could never have foreseen.
The Alamo myth, the myth of the "Old South," and the myth of "Custer's Last Stand" are in reality nothing more than American variations on the Arthurian legends. Indeed, the favorite author of white Southerners in the Old Confederacy was Sir Walter Scott, whose manors and castles, graced by brave Ivanhoes and fair Rowenas, roughly mirrored their own semi-feudal society. The Southern aristocrats, who on holidays would sometimes stage jousting tournaments, strove to perpetuate in the nineteenth century a kind of Arthurian world which reflected their mythology. So far did Southerners strive to replicate Camelot that Mark Twain once accused Sir Walter Scott of having had a hand in starting the Civil War; the British novelist, Twain said, aroused the Southerners to fight for a decaying social structure - "a sham civilization." The same could be said with regard to the defenders of the Alamo and the men of the Seventh Cavalry, whose music and campfire stories clearly reflected the fact that they thought of themselves as Templars and Teutonic knights pushing back the forces of chaos and expanding the realm of Christendom.
And just how close the relationship is between the Arthurian legends and the myths which came to surround America can be measured by the easy acceptance not only of the flow of the Arthurian myths to America, but the flow of the American variations on this myth back to Europe. Take the myth of the Old West, for example. In Germany, the most popular fiction writer of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries - and perhaps even today - was a man named Karl May. May had never been to America, but his tales of cowboys and Indians were accepted as gospel by generations of German and Austrian boys. Hitler, in particular, was enthralled by May. As a boy, the adventures of old Shatterhand and his comrades were almost an obsession. He tirelessly led his schoolmates into reenactments of Shatterhand's many adventures, and when the enthusiasm of the older boys began to flag, he recruited younger ones and even, on occasion, girls. In 1933, when Helena and Egon Hanfstaengle visited Hitler at his mountain villa on the Obersalzberg, they were surprised to find that the great majority of the books in his library were the wild west novels of Karl May; and once, when confronted with timidity in his generals at the boldness of his plans to attack France through the Ardennes Forest in 1940, he derided his opponents as cowards, saying that "They should have read more Karl May!"
And these myths are alive and well - even today - and have been popularized to the public in such recent modern-day versions as The Highlander, Rambo, and the "Super Heroes" in today's popular comics - comics which enjoy a popularity in the younger generation far beyond what most adults can possibly imagine. In reality, the super heroes of these comics are nothing more than variations on the old Arthurian legends - Lancelots, Parsifals, Gallahads, Guineveres and Isoldes dressed up in modern garb and possessing all the supernatural powers that the Vulkries and the Niebelungen in Wagner's operas possessed.
Carolly Erickson53 writes,
"Heterodoxy - belief that goes beyond or varies from orthodox doctrine - has always existed in the Western Church as the unavoidable result (of the mixture of Christianity with Western folklore) ..."54 (a result where) "... Christian doctrine tends to fade into ... pre-Christian beliefs ..."55 She adds, "the flowering of heterodox belief ... was one dimension of a final stage in the Christianization of Europe. As such it was not a periph-eral matter but one of central importance to popular belief."56
And more than most people care to admit, this kind of thinking is as central to Christians today as it was a millennium ago.57
THE ENCHANTED WORLD
Thus, when people speak today of "religion" and/or "Christianity," to a greater or lesser degree they are speaking of heterodoxy. "Christianity" - as it has come to be understood within the Western tradition - has been enshrouded by an aura of myths that has tied it to Western Civilization. The depth to which the Christian core is shrouded by these myths varies from sect to sect, but it is almost always there. Therefore, when people speak of "religion" and/or "Christianity," to a large degree they are speaking of this kind of heterodoxy - and this is as true of evangelicalism and fundamentalism as it is of Catholicism, the protestations of evangelicals and fundamentalists notwithstanding,58 as we shall soon see.
Erickson has called heterodoxy, "the enchanted world ..." Erickson goes on to say that to understand the kind of thinking which is central to the core of our civilization - the way most people think when they are alone - "... means coming to terms with a quality of awareness that much of modern (secular) education is intended to discredit,"59 but an "awareness" which can generate myths like the "Ten Lost Tribes, "Camelot," "Valhalla," etc. - all with the aim of promoting within the popular imagination "civilization identity."
Erickson continues,
"The visionary imagination (of most people), long a disquieting embarrassment to rationalistic historians ... (is) not aberrant (within the confines of the Western tradition - as many secularists would have us believe) but mundane, not unearthly but natural, even commonplace (- with some polls showing that as many as 90 percent of the population in the United States subscribing in one way or another to belief in the supernatural - editor). (It) ... is full of visions. Extraordinary appearances - unusual configurations, visual portents, dream messages ... divine and infernal warnings, intellectual illuminations, visions of the future - everywhere compliments ordinary sight."60
Coming to grips with how widespread this heterodoxy is, is crucial to any understanding of Western Civilization and the forces which drive ordinary people - even today.
The importance of the "civilization myths" produced by heterodoxy to the "civilization identity" of a people cannot be overemphasized. These kinds of myths - the kind produced by heterodoxy - are the highest and truest expression of a civilization's spirit (Geist). And just as it would be impossible to understand Japanese civilization without at the same time understanding the mythology which surrounds the concept of the Samurai,61 or try to come to grips with Islam without comprehending the mythology which surrounds the Hegira or the struggle between the Umayyads and the Shiists, so also would it be impossible to understand Western Civilization without at the same time understanding Camelot and Valhalla (and the Christianity which came to intermingle not only Camelot, but Valhalla as well) - and this is as true in Spain (i.e., the El Cid legend) and Italy as it is true of England, Germany and France.
Perhaps more to the point, myths are important because they explain the thinking and worldview of the people rather than the elites - and in the end, it is what the people think, not what the elites think, that determines the direction a civilization takes. The dismissal of these myths by the secular elites is the primary reason why there is so little connection today between these elites and the ordinary person.
WESTERN MYTHOLOGY:
WHERE WILL IT LEAD US?
Huntington has postulated that the world's civilizations are today involved in a "search for identity;" that this search involves a return of the people to religion because religion is at the core of a civilization's identity - it is, therefore, at the heart of the people's search for their own identity; that religious fundamentalism62 has been the main beneficiary of the movement of the people back to religion, infusing fundamentalist religious groups throughout the world with "young, college-educated, middle class professionals and business persons."
Erickson then goes on to elaborate what is meant when most people refer to religion: it's heterodoxy - a system of belief that goes beyond or varies from orthodox doctrine, one which produces "civilization myths" which define societies and cultures, and which set parameters that engender "insiders" and "outsiders."
Finally, Von Schelling argues that these parameters create a channel down which a civilization flows towards its destiny.
It follows then, that an examination of Western mythology might very will give us a glimpse of where we as a culture and a civilization are heading, given Huntington's basic assertion that
"... world politics are entering a new phase ... (in which) the great divisions among humankind and the dominating source of conflict will be cultural ... The clash of civilizations will dominate global politics ..." 63
FOOTNOTES
- These distinctions are observed by Trench (New Testament Synonyms], Thayer (Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament), and Vincent (Word Studies in the New Testament).
- Please see Strong's Concordance #1484; also Trench, Thayer and Vincent.
- Paul Hockenos, Free To Hate. New York: Routledge, 1993, pgs. 11-12.
- Ibid., pg. 22-25.
- Samuel P. Huntington, "The Clash of Civilizations," Foreign Affairs, Summer, 1993, pg. 22-25.
- Ibid., pg. 22-25.
- Ibid., pg. 22-25.
- The term "ethnic cleansing," when applied to what's happening today in the former Yugoslavia, is a misnomer. The people of the former Yugoslavia are all of the same race, i.e., for the most part, they are all "white Caucasians," whether we are speaking of the Bosnians, the Serbs, or the Croatians. The better term for what's going on is "civilization cleansing," or even "religious cleansing." Unfortunately, however, if history is any indicator, "religious cleansing" inevitably leads to "racial cleansing."
- Greece is one of those nations which lurk at the periphery of civilizations - what Huntington calls a "torn nation." While religiously it is a part of the Orthodox world, culturally it is a part of the West - and has been since it broke with the Ottoman Turks in February of 1830; indeed, because of their struggles with the Turks, the Greeks were forced into a military alliance with the West (first with Britain, then with the United States), and it is this alliance - forced on Greece out of military necessity - which has pushed Greece into the West; it is one of those few times where military necessity has proved more of a determining factor insofar as "civilization identity" is concerned than religion.
- James Baker, "Will 'Who Lost Russia'? Become 'Who Lost Europe'?" in the Los Angeles Times, February 6, 1994, pg. M-1.
- So out of touch has America's multicultural elite become with America's white (i.e., of European extraction) middle class on the issue of multi-culturalism and globalism that a growing number of very reputable scholars [e.g., William Greider (formerly an editor with the Washington Post and author of Who Will Tell the People); Robert W. Merry (executive director of the Congressional Quarterly); Donald Bartlett and James Steele (both of the Philadelphia Inquirer and authors of America: What Went Wrong?); Lester Thurrow (Head to Head); Professor George Kennan, etc.] are fearful that it is in danger of being swept aside over this issue.
- George Kenny, a consultant to the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and who was - until several years ago when he resigned in protest over U.S. policies in the Balkans - the State Department's Yugoslav desk officer, writes, "Let's not kid ourselves ... about the nature of the Bosnian government. It used to be a moderate, inclusive regime that enjoyed substantial support from the Bosnian Croat and Serb communities. Bosnian Croats and Serbs held key positions. Over the past year, however, under the pressure of the war, it became a 95% Muslim entity ... Today, Sarajevo is the capital, as Bosnian Prime minister Haris Silajdzik told me recently, of a Muslim state. It is only to the outside world that the Bosnian government maintains the fiction of its 'multi-ethnic' character, for the obvious reason that a multi-ethnic state is more likely to get international aid." [George Kenny, "A Forced Peace Is Worth Trying," in "Commentary," Los Angeles Times, February 6, 1994, pg. M-5.] In this connection, it is important to note that the thought of a Muslim state in the center of the Balkans strikes a certain terror in the hearts of most Europeans who remember Western Christendom's millennial-long struggle with the Muslims. To Austrians, Germans and other Western Europeans - if not to Americans - it was not such a long time ago that the "Muslim terror" stretched all the way up to the gates of Vienna and threatened the heart of Europe with destruction and ruin.
- Robert D. Kaplan, "Middle East was just a Mirage," in Forum, February 27, 1994, pg. 1.
- It is interesting to note also in this connection
the initial reluctance of the American Press (which is secularly and
multiculturally oriented and, as a result, loath to concede the religious
dimensions of any issue) to recognize what is all too obvious to the
European Press and the "main players" on the ground - namely, the
religious range of the war. The American Press has treated the strife
in its "racial" dimension, while the European Press and the "players"
(i.e., the Serbs, the Croats, the Slovenes, the Bosnians, the Albanians,
etc.) see the conflict largely in its religious sweep. And to what
extent this is true insofar as the "players" are concerned is clearly
demonstrated by a poster in the office of General Ratko Mladic, commander
of the Bosnian Serbs; it depicts green paint symbolizing Islam spilling
over the blue flag of the European Community.
Mladic is convinced that Muslim influence is rising throughout the former Yugoslavia and Western Europe - and that it's all part of a coordinated strategy he calls the "green transversal" - the effort by Islamic fundamentalists to regain their lost Balkan possessions, possessions which reach all the way to the gates of Vienna. Mladic and his followers believe that they are the only ones standing in the way of Islamic expansion northward into Europe, and that though they are little understood now, someday the world will thank them for the sacrifices they have made to stop this expansion. And there is a great deal of evidence to suggest that his fear of Muslim expansion into Europe is being echoed by right-wingers throughout Europe - especially in Germany, Austria, Hungary, France and Italy. [Please see Roger Cohen, New York Times, as quoted in the San Francisco Examiner, April 17, 1994, pg. A-8.] - Garry Wills is a former Henry R. Luce Professor of American Culture and Public Policy at Northwestern University; he is the author of Reagan's America: Innocents at Home, Nixon Agonistes, The Kennedy Imprisonment, Inventing America, Cincinnatus: George Washington and the Enlightenment, and Explaining America.
- Garry Wills, Under God: Religion and American Politics (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1990), pg. 15.
- Ibid., pg. 26.
- Ibid., pg. 22-25.
- Ibid., pg. 26.
- Ibid., pg. 16.
- Ibid., pg. 26.
- Ibid., pg. 26.
- Ibid., pg. E-1.
- Ibid., pg. E-1.
- Ibid., pg. E-1.
- Ibid., pg. E-1.
- The Rage of a Privileged Class, as quoted in Lynell George, Los Angeles Times, January 30, 1994, pg. E-1.
- Ibid., pg. E-1.
- Ruben Martinez, "The Dance of Nuevo L.A.," Los Angeles Times Magazine, January 24, 1994, pg. 10.
- Op. Cit., George, pg. E-1.
- Ibid., pg. E-1.
- Derek Ingram, Gemini News Service, London (World Press Review, February, 1994, pg. 9).
- Strangely - or so it would seem at first glance - it's easier to find out what's going on in Britain by turning to the German or French press than it is by utilizing the British press. The British press tends to play the problem down, which is not the case with the German and/or French press; the exact opposite is often true with regard to the goings-on in Germany and France, the British press in these instances sometimes being a better source than the French or German press.
- Der Spiegel, Hamburg, Germany (World Press Review, February, 1994, pg. 12).
- "Globalism" and "internationalism" is invariably associated in one way or another by the right-wing in Europe with the Jews - and this is as true in France, Britain, Italy, Holland, etc. as it is true in Germany.
- Barbara Spinelli, La Stampa, Turin, Italy (World Press Review, February, 1994, pg. 13).
- Michael Ignatieff, "A Cosmopolitan Among The True Believers," Harper's, March, 1994, pg. 17. [Taken from Blood and Belonging: Journeys into the New Nationalism, a chronicle of Ignatieff's travels in Croatia, Serbia, Germany, Ukraine, Quebec, Kurdistan, and Northern Ireland.]
- Michael Ignatieff, "A Cosmopolitan Among The True Believers," Harper's, March, 1994, pg. 17. [Taken from Blood and Belonging: Journeys into the New Nationalism, a chronicle of Ignatieff's travels in Croatia, Serbia, Germany, Ukraine, Quebec, Kurdistan, and Northern Ireland.]
- Please see "The Jewish Community and Minority Coalition Building" in inset, this chapter.
- Wills asks, "How ... (does) such a sizable proportion of the population (the great mass of ordinary churchgoing people) escape ... the notice of journalists and political analysists?" He answers his own question, "... (clearly it's) the result of elitism." [Wills, pgs. 18-19.]
- Ibid., pgs. 18-19.
- Carolly Erickson, The Medieval Vision: Essays in History and Perception (New York: Oxford University Press, 1976), pg. 36.
- Op. Cit, Barzun, pg. 32.
- Francis Thompson, Ode on Cecil Rhodes.
- W.T. Stead, Rhodes's Last Will and Testament, 52.
- Op. Cit., Barzun, pg. 33.
- Cecil John Rhodes (1853-1902) was born in Bishop Stortford, Hertfordshire in England. He went to Kimberley in the Orange Free State (South Africa) in 1871 where he made a fortune in diamonds. In 1880, he joined forces with the DeBeers Diamond Trust and established a diamond monopoly which to this day continues to control the international diamond trade. Critics of Rhodes suggest that his concept of bringing "Christian civilization" to South Africa was nothing more than a smoke screen for his financial interests - and this has been the great problem of Christianity throughout the centuries; wherever it has allowed itself to be used by "politicos" and "financial interests" in the service of "Western Civilization" it has suffered great loss insofar as its spiritual message is concerned. Christianity is universal in its Gospel, and whenever it has been portrayed as in the service of "Western Interests," its universalism has been diminished.
- It would be a great mistake, however, to believe that all those who were engaged in empire building in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were merely masking their financial greed behind a facade of Christianity, like Cecil Rhodes. To the contrary, there were many very sincere men and women - not all of them missionaries - who were so engaged, and had become involved not out of any hope for financial gain, but were rather driven solely by "Christian conscience." The name of the great British soldier, Charles George Gordon - known to an entire generation of British school children as "the commander of the 'ever victorious army'," springs immediately to mind: Gordon was a man of great personal courage and profound religious faith. In 1877, Gordon was named governor general of the Sudan and in this capacity did everything he could to stop the Arab trade in black slavery. In reaction to Gordon's efforts, the Mahdi rose in revolt and surrounded Gordon at Khartoum. "Gordon at Khartoum" became the rallying cry of the entire British people, and a great army was raised to rescue him; for almost a year he held out against the Mahdi's forces while British relief columns struggled up the Nile to reach him, but two days before the city was relieved, the Mahdi's forces broke in and killed him. Gordon's martyrdom at Khartoum became legendary, and for years afterwards his name could not be mentioned without bringing tears to the eyes of ordinary, working-class people in England.
- Please see inset entitled, "The Germanic Tribes," this chapter.
- Please see inset entitled, "The Holy Grail" in this chapter.
- Please see inset entitled, "Von Schelling, Nietzche, Wagner & Chamberlain," this chapter.
- Captain L.V. Cooley, Address Before the Society of Economics, New Orleans, April 11th, 1911, on River Transportation and Its Relation to New Orleans, Past, Present and Future. [New Orleans, 1911].
- Carolly Erickson received her Ph.D. from Columbia University in 1969. She is the author of The Records of Medieval Europe and numerous other articles and books.
- Ibid., pgs. 94-95.
- Ibid., pg. 68.
- Ibid., pgs. 94-95.
- Deny as some secularists will the existence
of the supernatural, people are, nonetheless, reminded of it constantly.
Hollywood reminds us. Stephen Spielberg and George Lucas remind us.
The fascination of our young people remind us. Movies such as Gremlins,
Ghostbusters, The Shining, E.T., Star Wars, Amityville Horror, The
Exorcist, and The Omen seem openly to declare the reality of the supernatural.
And despite all the protestations to the contrary, the so-called secular world is also deeply involved today with the supernatural. Indeed, the psychology departments of many of our finest colleges and universities have, in recent years, become nothing more than fronts for the investigation of paranormal phenomenon - that is, clairvoyance, astrology, etc. - and scholastic credit is offered in these subjects. Our best police departments openly consult and even employ [often quite successfully] psychics in the investigation of crimes. And before its collapse, even the Soviet Union, that bastion of state-enforced atheism, carried on widespread and active research in such matters, belying their official policy toward these things. - When we say this, however, we fully appreciate the effort by many Christians to rid themselves of heterodoxy and to get back to a form of "Biblical Christianity" - a Christianity which is not tied to any particular civilization, race, or culture, and is universal in its message.
- Op. Cit, Erickson, pg. 30.
- Op. Cit, Erickson, pg. 30.
- Indeed, both the State Department and the Commerce Department have recently initiated programs designed to instill such knowledge in their diplomats and trade negotiators heading for Japan; private U.S. companies doing business with the Japanese are now doing the same. The thought behind such programs, of course, is to intellectually equip Americans to be more successful in dealing with their Japanese counterparts.
- The return to fundamentalism (which supposedly is, the core essence of a religion after it has been stripped of its extraneous elements) implies a search for purity, and that such a search of necessity involves the purging of foreign elements which dilute that purity.
- Samuel P. Huntington, "The Clash of Civilizations," Foreign Affairs, Summer, 1993, pg. 22-25.
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