What Megan and Daniel said. I would only add that there's an apples and oranges element involved in this comparison: The term "theocracy" describes who rules (the ecclesiastical authorities, standing in for God), whereas the term "totalitarianism" describes how the state rules (by seeking "to subordinate all aspects of the individual's life to the authority of the government," to borrow Britannica's phrasing). Thus one can imagine both totalitarian and non-totalitarian theocracies; the latter have been the historical rule, though as Larison notes, "historically theocratic governments ruled states that were not especially administratively effective, nor were they powerful enough to enforce their restrictions with the kind of thoroughgoing interference of the modern totalitarian state." Which is to say that given power enough and time, the Taliban might have established a tyranny as dreadfully pervasive as Kim Jong Il's. Still, at the very least one might suggest that anyone who would prefer Nazi Germany or contemporary North Korea to, say, the 18th-century Papal States or Puritan Massachusetts on the grounds that the latter would be more likely to insist that "it’s not enough to obey the rules, you have to believe in them, too," should perhaps consult a history book or two and reconsider.
« The Golden Compass | Main | Mid-Century Exceptionalism » Theocracy Versus Totalitarianism10 Dec 2007 08:34 am Comments (23)
Ross, Not quite a fair comparison, don't you think? You're comparing two relatively benevolent Christian 'theocracies' (both of which were small areas that a dissident could fairly easily leave) to two of the most malevolent atheist totalitarianisms in history. I can't think of anyone who would prefer to live in North Korea rather than the Papal states- or for that matter, virtually anywhere else. But it isn't absurd to think you would have preferred to live in Tito's Yugoslavia rather than in Calvin's Geneva, or in present-day Cuba rather than in present-day Saudi Arabia. (To be fair, I can't think of many places I would less rather live than in present-day Saudi Arabia). (It's also subject to debate whether Yugoslavia and Cuba would be better characterized as totalitarian, or authoritarian- I would think probably the latter). part of the problem, of course, is that you're only considering Christian religious states. And being a Christian, you don't find that a burdensome thing- and to be fair, I would prefer if we had a bit more Christian sensibilities in government, myself. But no doubt you and I both would find living under an Islamic theocracy to be a terrible thing indeed. The medieval Catholic church was, as a general rule, far less repressive and all-encompassing than any totalitarian or even most authoritarian states. But I think it would be fair to say that at certain times and certain places (usually only for short bursts at a time) it did indulge in heresy-hunts that were as fierce as anything that went on in Bolshevik Russia. The proverbial case of the girl in 13th century France who was hit on by a priest comes to mind; who refused his advances because she believed sex was evil, this was taken as ipso facto proof that she professed the Manichaean heresy, and she was promptly burned. or the way that Inquisition spies would drag people off from Spanish cafes because they picked the bacon bits out of their stew. These were by no means typical of the medieval church, nor of Christianity as a religion, but they did happen, and shouldn't be swept under the rug. 
Moe, Actually, much of what you (and I too) admire about present day Massachusetts is the direct legacy of its Puritan settlers. The emphasis on human equality, the belief in hard work and achievement, the strong tradition of education, etc. Massachusetts would look very different if it had been settled by Dutch merchants or secular planters like New York or Virginia. If Massachusetts had been another Virginia, for one thing, we would probably never have gotten rid of slavery.
I can't think of anyone who would prefer to live in North Korea rather than the Papal states
What's next, an argument that rape isn't as bad as genocide?
Hector writes: two of the most malevolent atheist totalitarianisms in history. Nazi Germany was an atheist totalitarianism? Gott Mitt who? Tell another!
Soma catches: "Hector writes: two of the most malevolent atheist totalitarianisms in history. Nazi Germany was an atheist totalitarianism? Gott Mitt who?" Yeah, that was pretty low on Hector's part. Nazi Germany wasn't even arguably "atheist." Hitler despised atheism as a liberal ideology. There was ample religious content in Reich propaganda, and strong support for Hitler among Christians of all denominations. Hector knows all of this, too, but he just can't help slandering atheists no matter what.
Moe, You would pick up on a throwaway comment. I didn't bring up the Nazis, Ross did. If you had actually read my post, you would see that I was making the argument that the medieval Church, at some times and in some places, engaged in heresy-hunts markedly similar to political persecutions in at least the more liberal decades of the Soviet Union. That ought to be a point you applaud, not criticize. You might want to check out the quotation from a high ranking confidant of Hitler below. "When we Nazis speak of belief in God, we do not mean, like the naive Christians and their spiritual exploiters, a man-like being sitting around somewhere in the universe. The force governed by natural law by which all these countless planets move in the universe, we call omnipotence or God. The assertion that this universal force can trouble itself about the destiny of each individual being, every smallest earthly bacillus, can be influenced by so-called prayers or other surprising things, depends upon a requisite dose of naivety or else upon shameless professional self-interest."
Hector, I don't care if it was a "throwaway comment" or not - it was a lie, and as I said, you know full well it was a lie. Here's Hitler himself, your fellow Christian, on atheism: In a speech at the Sportpalast on October 24, 1933, Hitler said: "Without pledging ourselves to any particular Confession, we have restored to faith its pre-requisites because we were convinced that the people need and requires this faith. We have therefore undertaken the fight against the atheistic movement, and that not merely with a few theoretical declarations: we have stamped it out." So stop lying, Hector. Your lies make Baby Jesus cry and Fetus Jesus fidget in the womb.
Moe, The Nazi regime was what Maritain called 'practical atheism'. it denied the existence of natural law, the power of love, gentleness, and the other Christian virtues in its practices, even if some Nazis, at some times, pretended to be Christians fighting the good fight against 'godless bolshevism'. I know full well that many Christians did buy the 'fighting against godless bolshevism' line, to their eternal discredit. Hitler was almost certainly a catamite, too; _really_ a catamite, not just pretending to be one as he pretended (not very hard) to be a Christian; does that discredit the entire gay rights movement? By the way, Hitler was known in some of his speeches to talk about the universe being run by deterministic forces (racial power being one of them), and say things like 'the law of force is as unstoppable as the law of gravity', i'm paraphrasing. That seems hard to square with any sort of religious metaphysic. Fine, Nazism may not have been 'atheist', it was certainly both secular and anti-christian.
Ok, what is this "Hitler was a catamite" thing? I have never heard this, before, and you hear a lot of things about Hitler, hanging out on these here internets. But yes, Nazism wasn't atheist in the strong formal sense that Communism was. Maritain's is precisely the formulation to use (though I think Gilson and he -- didn't Maritain do this also?) rather slander Hegel as the father of such practical atheism.
Hector writes: "The Nazi regime was what Maritain called 'practical atheism'. it denied the existence of natural law, the power of love, gentleness, and the other Christian virtues in its practices, even if some Nazis, at some times, pretended to be Christians fighting the good fight against 'godless bolshevism'." Could you possibly bend over backwards any further, Hector? By that definition the Catholic Church has been "practically atheist" at many times during its history. "Hitler was almost certainly a catamite, too; _really_ a catamite, not just pretending to be one as he pretended (not very hard) to be a Christian; does that discredit the entire gay rights movement?" There is nothing in Hitler's history that suggests he was a homosexual, Hector. Nothing. That's just your own deeply rooted bigotry against homosexuals showing up yet again. You should be ashamed of yourself. "Nazism may not have been 'atheist', it was certainly both secular and anti-christian." His great popularity among German Christians and the common use of pro-Christian, pro-church, pro-gawd propaganda would seem to belie this, at least among those of us in the reality-based community. But since you're so desparate to distance Christianity from him that you're willing to use the "he was a fag" card, you're obviously not a member of that group.
TMoC questions: "Ok, what is this "Hitler was a catamite" thing? I have never heard this, before, and you hear a lot of things about Hitler, hanging out on these here internets." You've never heard it because Hector just made it up. I've seen speculation that Hitler was a pervert, perhaps a coprophile, and that his odd practices drove his niece/lover Geli Raubal to commit suicide - but he was, by all reliable accounts, heterosexual.
I've certainly not made it up, Moe. I heard it from a friend of mine (who is a believer in gay rights by the way) who read a secret document that was a psychoanalysis of Hitler prepared for the OSS (precursor of the CIA) during the Second World War. The document was later turned into a book. The team of psychiatrists who put the document together were convinced that Hitler was gay. He was known, in the days before he became a politician, to frequent notorious gay bars in Berlin. http://www.amazon.com/Adolf-Hitler-Secret-Wartime-Report/dp/B000HJ2GR4 Hitler's homosexuality was a popular topic of speculation beginning in the 1930s, in the West and even more in Soviet Russia. Among the Soviets, it was widely believed that the entire Nazi movement was an expression of latent homosexuality.
Moe, Check out these quotations concerning a recent book by prominent contemporary German historian. ""Hans Mend served with Hitler during World War I. According to Machtan, Mend divulged "his secret information to an opponent" of the Nazi regime in 1939 in a "protocol" that included this explosive tidbit: "In 1915 we were billeted in the Le Febre brewery at Fournes. We slept in the hay. Hitler was bedded down at night with `Schmidl,' his male whore. We heard a rustling in the hay. Then someone switched on his electric flashlight and growled, `Take a look a those two nancy boys.' I myself took no further interest in the matter." "Machtan also cites notes left by Eugen Dollmann, Hitler's interpreter. Dollmann wrote that he had heard Otto von Lossow, a Reichswehr general in Munich after World War I, read from what Lossow claimed was a police file containing statements by young boys in Munich. Those boys, according to Lossow, said that Hitler had paid them to spend the night with him." "Machtan, who teaches history at the University of Bremen in Germany, suggests that Hitler probably had a homoerotic relationship with his friend August Kubizek, with whom he lived in Vienna in 1908; that he had a blatant sexual affair with a fellow soldier during World War I; that he may have had homosexual contacts with young men in Munich after the war; and that he may have engaged in homosexual activities right up to his assumption of political power in 1933." By the way, I'm sorry I called Hitler an atheist, he was certainly not a Christian either. Moe, if you have the impression that I think all atheist/agnostic governments are bad or evil, you're wrong. There have been many atheist/agnostic leaders that I think were great or at least very good men. Jawaharlal Nehru. Salvador Allende. Lazaro Cardenas. Tomas Borge and Daniel Ortega (although whether they were ever atheist is questionable, and they're certainly Christians now.) Jose Gaspar de Francia. Benito Juarez. Leon Blum. Ernesto Guevara. Atheist/agnostics made up many of the young men and women in the American Civil Rights movement. I can recognize that there have been a great many men and leaders who loved their neighbor intensely but were never able to take the further step of believing in God. So why can't you also accept the fact that there have been some bad apples among the irreligious leaders, like Stalin and Mao and Hitler, as well as some good ones?
Hector, Hitler was a confirmed Catholic who remained a member of the Church throughout his life. He was not "irreligious," and he despised atheists. I find your dead horse-flogging on this issue to be bot stupid and revolting. As for the homosexuality angle, if you find those sources to be convincing I can only say that you lack any semblance of critical thinking ability. Try reading some of the excellent conventional biographies of Hitler and tak "secret documents" written by opponents with a grain of salt.
Re: If Massachusetts had been another Virginia, for one thing, we would probably never have gotten rid of slavery. You know, Dutch businessmen and British farmers did get rid of slavery elsewhere that they ruled. They even managed to do so peacefully. So I think you are wrong about the above. Slavery didn't make a whole lot of economic sense (though it did for some indivdual slave-owners). This fact did not escape the Dutch merchant or the Anglo small-holder in the North and West (I am talking about some of my own ancestry there). True, they would not have opposed slavery with the fire and passion of a latter day Puritan, but in time they would have cut it off from its vine and it would have withered and died as the Founders imagined. Re: Nazi Germany was an atheist totalitarianism? Gott Mitt who?" I think I've explained this before, but again: "Gott Mit Uns" was a traditional part of German military apparel dating back to the Hohenstaufens (whose point was probably that God was with them and not their enemy the Pope). The Nazis did not invent that slogan. One might as well claim that the presence of stylized crosses on several European national flags (including Britain's and Sweden's) is evidence that theocracy is flourishing in Europe today. Re: Among the Soviets, it was widely believed that the entire Nazi movement was an expression of latent homosexuality. Come now! Using the Soviets as authorities on anything among their enemies is a bit like using the Nazis as authorities on all things Jewish. Re: Hitler was a confirmed Catholic who remained a member of the Church throughout his life. Nonsense walking on very high stilts there! Hitler apostized in his adult life. He ceased to attend church services and never confessed or received Communion, something every Catholic is required to do once a year at Lent/Easter season. Those who do not are considered self-excommunicate. As for Hitler's occasional "Christian" speeches, if you take them as legitimate (and also authentic, which I doubt to a degree-- putting words in the mouths of the dead is a common practice among polemicists), then I suppose you will also concede the point made by some of our more strident propagandists on the Religious Right who use similar platitudes coming from our Founders (including even Jefferson) as evidence that they were all devout, Bible-believing Christians, Falwells and Robertsons in powdered wigs and knee breeches. Fact is politicians (even Nazi ones) will say all things to all people, at least all people they are trying to woo, and using a politician's political speeches to discern his innermost heart and soul is a task more hopeless than the punishment of Sisyphus. We would do better to follow the advice of Jesus in this much: "By their deeds you shall know them", and by that standard Hitler was less a Christian than my cats.
JonF writes: "We would do better to follow the advice of Jesus in this much: "By their deeds you shall know them", and by that standard Hitler was less a Christian than my cats." Unfortunately the Church never actually excommunicated him, and the "deeds" standard never works since Christians "aren't perfect, just forgiven." The Church doesn't care about the Lent/Easter "requirement," if it ever truly did. It certainly doesn't come up when people want to get married in a church, or stand godparent to some child. The Church has actually put more pressure on US politicians who refuse to vote "pro-life" than they ever did on Hitler. If we start denying people "Christian status" because they behave in certain ways, we're going to run out of Jesoids rather quickly. I would bet that a majority of US Christians today support the Dumbya Bush torture policy. You can tell them they're not Christians if you wish. I don't have time for such hairsplitting, excuse making nonsense. From the "pictures are worth a thousand words" file: http://nobeliefs.com/nazis.htm
Re: Unfortunately the Church never actually excommunicated him He was already self-excommunicate as I noted above. The Chuirch does not bother to excommunicate apostate members since they have already done it themselves. Re: The Church doesn't care about the Lent/Easter "requirement," if it ever truly did. It is on the books on the canon law. Look it up if you don't believe me. Re: If we start denying people "Christian status" because they behave in certain ways, we're going to run out of Jesoids rather quickly. Being trained in science (physics) originally, I do rather think that empirical evidence is the best sort, especially when dealing with politicians who will say just about anything. Come now, whould you critique George Bush on his words (all that mushy compassionate conservative stuff) or by his deeds? Re: I would bet that a majority of US Christians today support the Dumbya Bush torture policy. The majority of rightwing Christians (a subset of the whole class) probably do. But the "deeds" I am talking about here are religious deeds. Does a self-proclaimed Christoan go to church and participate in Christian religious life? If not (as with Hitler) any assertion that they are a "Christian" is highly suspicious at the least. As for your pictures they don't mean much. So Hitler toured religious sites and occasionally met with church bigwigs. Any leader who is not a radical atheist would do the same whatever their personal beliefs. Heck, you could probably dig up pics of Joe Stalin doing some of that stuff, since Stalin at least was mildly superstitious and doted on the Orthodox Church when he dragged it out of the gulag in 1941 to serve as a rallying point for Mother Russia against the Nazis.
The notion that Hitler was a Catholic or Christian is just not true by any reasonable definition of how modern people think about religion. I wouldn't argue that he was an athiest as it's a little more complicated than that - he opposed athiesm (though really on political grounds). He certainly used religion when it suited him, but he felt that Christianity and national socialism could not coexist and so his ultimate goal was to replace Christianity with a Nietzche/Wagner/Viking civic belief system he felt would be compatible with national socialism. He used Christianity in an opportunistic fashion but privately loathed Christianity, calling it a drug and "the invention of sick brains." And of course he made Nazism the official state religion of the Third Reich - he kept the churches, of course, but he replaced copies of the Bibles with Mein Kampf. Of course, the fact that Hitler personally was not a believer in Christ does not mean that he didn't play on feelings of religious superiority, messianism, etc. and exploit them in German Christians at the time.
The real clincher in this discusson of the Naxis is their anti-Semitism. Since it was racial and not religious it's impossible that the Nazis could have been enamored of Christianity (however much they dissembled and played to German Christians) since Christianity was founded by Jews.
There is also the fact that thousands of Catholic priests (not to mention millions of Catholic Poles and Orthodox Russians) were sent to concentration camps, where many of them died. While these non-Jewish victims of the Holocaust were not murdered because of their Christian faith, their experience certainly argues against any kind of compatibility between Nazism and Christianity. I had the opportunity to visit Auschwitz five years ago, and visiting the barracks where St. Maximilian Kolbe perished is just one of the memories of that place that I will hold onto as long as I live. And to back up the Nazism-as-racial-ideology point, the fact that Pope John Paul II had to study in an underground seminary in Krakow during WWII is odd if Nazism were indeed on friendly terms with Christianity. Nazism stated that Slavs were inferior to Aryans, and so they were useful only as workers and higher education was thus banned in occupied Poland. One of the reasons why Hitler didn't give a damn about the fact that Christians in Poland had to risk their lives to obtain any level of higher edcuation was because...he wasn't a Christian in any meaningful sense of the word.
Hitler was a Christian; the requirement to be a Christian is to believe that Christ is the son of God. Which he did.
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Ross writes: "Still, at the very least one might suggest that anyone who would prefer Nazi Germany or contemporary North Korea to, say, the 18th-century Papal States or Puritan Massachusetts on the grounds that the latter would be more likely to insist that "it’s not enough to obey the rules, you have to believe in them, too," should perhaps consult a history book or two and reconsider."
An almost perfect straw-man!
I have never met anyone who would prefer North Korea or Nazi Germany to Puritan Massachusetts. But I have met or conversed with many people who, I think, would take Puritan Massachusetts over current-day Massachusetts. These people suffer from a peculiar form of insanity, but they're not rare.
Posted by MoeLarryAndJesus | December 10, 2007 10:11 AM