Very interesting article addressing what I think are some real truths, but one thing that deserves critique is the near utter uselessness of citing national statistics on religion, specifically Christianity. There is no doubt that a large majority of people who claim to be "Christian", on whichever forms capture this data, would struggle to coherently explain Christianity and its central tenets and haven't been active in a church for years. In other words, not truly Christians in terms of how they live and influence society. It's one thing to lazily slap a label on oneself when pressed but another thing altogether to follow Christ and live within that moral framework that many modern man rejects. Most of these people would be disregarded in a serious discussion of the topic in how "Christianity" impacts culture, as they live more like agnostic hedonists or nihilists. However, don't ask me how one might capture more realistic percentages of who is Christian... it's beyond any survey.
I love AA and I love the people dissing AA. Great article, great thoughts, no j bullshit like on telegram, no theological shitfights, no denigration of Christianity either. Its quite clear that any western faith reaches its Zenith and its Elogy only through Huwhite Kultur. Thanks for the article.
Whether or not de Gobineau's central thesis is correct or not, the Cherokee are probably the worst choice to pick as far as North American natives go. They assimilated quite decently, at least to a degree, some of them even owning their own plantations and Negros by the middle of the 19th century, and I say that as someone who is descended from both people who were hacked to death and scalped by Cherokees and also from some Cherokee squaws.
Underlying this Christian Nationalism effort is the belief that too many of those other Christians are ultimately possessed by heresy and that by expunging this heresy the nominal "Christians" will shed the progressive world view. The analysis here is correct and coherent. However, I do think that a revivalist movement is something that could save Western man because it could provide the needed animating spirit. The problem is that Torba particularly is putting the cart before the horse. There is nothing inspirational about him or those associated. This is the much bigger piece than just intramural American protestant doctrine.
So are you suggesting you can have aa great civilization without a moral framework? Or even more cringe that like a 4 horseman atheist you can be good without god? A civilization without an ideal of the good, the true and the beautiful Isn't a civilization it is a post modern hellscape. This is actually worse than siding with the pagans who to quote The Big Lebowski "at least have an ethose." This is just nihlism.
Sorry but this is your weakest effort yet. Stick to long juicy video esaays about David Bowie.
Q. What has Christianity done to tame the savagery of the Congo?
A. My Archbishop (a white man) would rather spend most of his time in the Congo, than the West (even though it is part of his jurisdiction). He says in the Congo, at least they know men are men and women are women.
"Nations can be great only if the goal of their existence be the collective realisation of the commandments of the Gospel. Otherwise nationalists are reduced to senseless and pernicious chauvinism.
If nationalism flourishes not by the power of evangelical podvigs and not to Orthodox catholicity, then it will choke in its own egoistic chauvinism. Nations pass, the Gospel is eternal. Only in so far as a nation is filled with eternal evangelical truth and righteousness, does it exist, and itself becomes and remains eternal.
This is the patriotism of the Holy Apostles, the Holy Martyrs, the Holy Fathers. When the emperor-tormentor asked the Holy Martrys Acindynus, Pegasius, and Anempodistus where they were from, they answered:
'Are you asking us, O Emperor, about our homeland? Our homeland and our life is the most Holy, Consubstantial and Undivided Trinity: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, the one God.'
It should be evident we cannot celebrate the "Orthodoxy" or "Patriotism" of political or Ecclesiastical leaders who in any way proclaim heresy. Those who espouse and proclaim heresy are not Orthodox patriots and nor are they champions of or defenders of the Faith - regardless of how much the 'externals' of Orthodoxy may flourish under their watch and irrespective of their battles against particular evils."
I think your view of South America is incorrect and rather reeks of Black Legend. The Spanish empire was extremely successful and one of history's greatest civilising forces. Spanish America's troubles began with the political instability caused by "independence".
"The labourer in the viceregal age of 1792 could buy 23 measures of a hundred kilograms of flour yearly, in 1891, he could only purchase 9.71 and in 1908, only 5.35 …. Thus have we descended down the path of progress." Esquivel Obregón, "Influence of Spain and the United States over Mexico", 1918. (my translation)
Civilization is the tower of Babel: the attempt by man to assert himself against God, without God. It is an attempt to energize oneself and one's neighbors, however you choose to define your neighbors, to rally them to you, by provoking God. The tower of Babel provoked God to divide the tongues, causing all the ethnic splits and racial conflicts that exist today. How exciting! Who will survive, I wonder? Who will come out on top? It's all very tiresome/interesting.
Without God, there is no civilization because there is nothing. But civilization does not want God. The entire premise of civilization is the rejection of God, and the perfection of civilization is the perfect rejection of God. As long as there are Christians left, as long as there are some people who are not fully ready to reject God, civilization has something to aspire to: the final annihilation of Christ on earth. As soon as it reaches its aspirations, it will have completed its own self-destruction. Time will be abolished, and all civilizations will be erased from reality, completely and forever.
What is civilization? Civilization is self-destruction. Civilization is nihilism. Civilization is death. Civilization is total self-contradiction, total confusion, total chaos, order without meaning, temporal and temporary everything, eternal nothing, illusions and lies, whitewashed sepulchers, corpses, preliminary death foreshadowing permanent death. Civilization is idleness, meddling, vain lust for power, and empty words. Civilization is scholarship, printing presses, computers, networks, blogs, and endless stupid comments like this one that no one will ever read, and rightly so, because they add nothing to anything.
Give thanks for Lenin and for AA, if you value your soul, because if you do not get out of politics on your own, they will force you out, or kill you. They may be destroying themselves, but at least they are doing you a big favor in the process. May God have mercy on them, for the benefit that they bring to us by driving us out of the world, if for no other reason.
Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, both now and ever, and unto the ages of ages.
It was the Germanic peoples who, in modern times, reintroduced mass abortion and face been largely successful in imposing it on the world. They were also the first to adopt LGBTQ doctrine and are once again set on spreading it around the world. Why exactly should they be regarded as civilizationally superior to, say, the Philippines? And if none of that stuff matters to civilization, what exactly about Western civilization is worth preserving?
This is an old article, but since AA recommended reading it again recently, I feel justified in commenting. The topic is not less relevant today than when it was written.
This well written and thoughtful article unfortunately misses one important fact that AA usually never misses, which makes the entire thesis fall flat: elite theory.
Why bring up population statistics to argue your case, when you yourself admits that culture is downstream from law. What religion the masses believes is irrelevant when determining if christianity betters a civilization. All that matters is to figure out what faith a civilizations elites have, and if that has a positive effect on civilization. Instantly almost all examples listed and quoted by this article becomes irrelevant, as it cannot be argued that the elites of Eskimos, Chinese, African people, Brazil, Mexico or Haiti were believing Christians. As for Carlyle, your own quote from Julius Evola perfectly explained that the west were captured by Freemasons, Jews and American protestant since the French Revolution. What nation's elites still remained mostly christian? America. Which civilization became the next super power? America. The elites in Europe in the meantime either embraced enlightened freemasonry ideals as in france, sweden and prussia (Germany), or was captured by jewish banking elites as in England. No wonder Carlyle saw the decline.
As for the muslim example, I do not contend, since my defence is only for Christianity. When it comes to other religions such as Islam, my contention is that they are better for society as far as they come close to Christian sentiments, and is bad for civilization where they differ from christianity.
Sorry for my poor English. English is not my first language, and Im saving to take your (AA) English grammar and writing course.
You make a good point that they're mostly unrelated, but also I would argue that Christianity stripped of an actual mysticism or applied spirituality was just a set of moral codes posing as something more and that is another reason why it was superfluous. As Asia among other examples have shown, you can have a functioning moral code without Yahweh and Jewish supremacist literature at the core of your theology.
There is some evidence that de Gobineau had abandoned Christianity altogether by the time of his death (cf. Michael Biddiss’s biography). Oscar Levy writes in his introduction to the English translation that he believes the Christianity of the Essai itself (written 1854) to have been purely a matter of form and to avoid association with contemporary radicals like the Carbonari and Freemasons, whom Gobineau as a legitimist aristocrat would have despised.
Finally, this question of Christianity and the west has been extensively treated by the classicist Revilo Oliver, in his “Christianity and the Survival of the West,” and a later work whose name escapes me. I imagine these would be of interest to you.
You came in the front door and took a wrong turn, making the long analysis irrelevant.
First, you must consider the question NOT as "decline of the West," but rather "the decline of the USA." The "West" is only coherent when considering the USA as the culmination of that culture. The USA is special because we built our culture on the foundation of the Greco-Roman civilization that spread through Europe. But the USA is also the culmination of that culture because we separated, geographically, philosophically, and politically from Europe.
With that in mind, the other point that caused the wrong turn mentioned above is: It's NOT "Christianity" that made/makes the USA special. It is WASPness (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant culture) separated from Europe and given space and freedom to develop itself.
Catholic (Italian, Spanish, Irish) culture, though Christian, is/was NOT able to create the freedom, individualism, liberty that created America. Neither can Orthodox Christianity (Russian, Slav, Greek).
So, NOT "Christianity", but rather WASPism is what created America. A special flavor of Christianity is part of it, but NOT all of it.
Very interesting article addressing what I think are some real truths, but one thing that deserves critique is the near utter uselessness of citing national statistics on religion, specifically Christianity. There is no doubt that a large majority of people who claim to be "Christian", on whichever forms capture this data, would struggle to coherently explain Christianity and its central tenets and haven't been active in a church for years. In other words, not truly Christians in terms of how they live and influence society. It's one thing to lazily slap a label on oneself when pressed but another thing altogether to follow Christ and live within that moral framework that many modern man rejects. Most of these people would be disregarded in a serious discussion of the topic in how "Christianity" impacts culture, as they live more like agnostic hedonists or nihilists. However, don't ask me how one might capture more realistic percentages of who is Christian... it's beyond any survey.
I love AA and I love the people dissing AA. Great article, great thoughts, no j bullshit like on telegram, no theological shitfights, no denigration of Christianity either. Its quite clear that any western faith reaches its Zenith and its Elogy only through Huwhite Kultur. Thanks for the article.
Whether or not de Gobineau's central thesis is correct or not, the Cherokee are probably the worst choice to pick as far as North American natives go. They assimilated quite decently, at least to a degree, some of them even owning their own plantations and Negros by the middle of the 19th century, and I say that as someone who is descended from both people who were hacked to death and scalped by Cherokees and also from some Cherokee squaws.
Underlying this Christian Nationalism effort is the belief that too many of those other Christians are ultimately possessed by heresy and that by expunging this heresy the nominal "Christians" will shed the progressive world view. The analysis here is correct and coherent. However, I do think that a revivalist movement is something that could save Western man because it could provide the needed animating spirit. The problem is that Torba particularly is putting the cart before the horse. There is nothing inspirational about him or those associated. This is the much bigger piece than just intramural American protestant doctrine.
So are you suggesting you can have aa great civilization without a moral framework? Or even more cringe that like a 4 horseman atheist you can be good without god? A civilization without an ideal of the good, the true and the beautiful Isn't a civilization it is a post modern hellscape. This is actually worse than siding with the pagans who to quote The Big Lebowski "at least have an ethose." This is just nihlism.
Sorry but this is your weakest effort yet. Stick to long juicy video esaays about David Bowie.
Q. What has Christianity done to tame the savagery of the Congo?
A. My Archbishop (a white man) would rather spend most of his time in the Congo, than the West (even though it is part of his jurisdiction). He says in the Congo, at least they know men are men and women are women.
"Nations can be great only if the goal of their existence be the collective realisation of the commandments of the Gospel. Otherwise nationalists are reduced to senseless and pernicious chauvinism.
If nationalism flourishes not by the power of evangelical podvigs and not to Orthodox catholicity, then it will choke in its own egoistic chauvinism. Nations pass, the Gospel is eternal. Only in so far as a nation is filled with eternal evangelical truth and righteousness, does it exist, and itself becomes and remains eternal.
This is the patriotism of the Holy Apostles, the Holy Martyrs, the Holy Fathers. When the emperor-tormentor asked the Holy Martrys Acindynus, Pegasius, and Anempodistus where they were from, they answered:
'Are you asking us, O Emperor, about our homeland? Our homeland and our life is the most Holy, Consubstantial and Undivided Trinity: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, the one God.'
It should be evident we cannot celebrate the "Orthodoxy" or "Patriotism" of political or Ecclesiastical leaders who in any way proclaim heresy. Those who espouse and proclaim heresy are not Orthodox patriots and nor are they champions of or defenders of the Faith - regardless of how much the 'externals' of Orthodoxy may flourish under their watch and irrespective of their battles against particular evils."
paraphrased from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VCyzhhhLOS4
If you become pitiless, you will receive no pity. Become merciless, you will receive no mercy.
I think your view of South America is incorrect and rather reeks of Black Legend. The Spanish empire was extremely successful and one of history's greatest civilising forces. Spanish America's troubles began with the political instability caused by "independence".
"The labourer in the viceregal age of 1792 could buy 23 measures of a hundred kilograms of flour yearly, in 1891, he could only purchase 9.71 and in 1908, only 5.35 …. Thus have we descended down the path of progress." Esquivel Obregón, "Influence of Spain and the United States over Mexico", 1918. (my translation)
What is civilization?
Civilization is the tower of Babel: the attempt by man to assert himself against God, without God. It is an attempt to energize oneself and one's neighbors, however you choose to define your neighbors, to rally them to you, by provoking God. The tower of Babel provoked God to divide the tongues, causing all the ethnic splits and racial conflicts that exist today. How exciting! Who will survive, I wonder? Who will come out on top? It's all very tiresome/interesting.
Without God, there is no civilization because there is nothing. But civilization does not want God. The entire premise of civilization is the rejection of God, and the perfection of civilization is the perfect rejection of God. As long as there are Christians left, as long as there are some people who are not fully ready to reject God, civilization has something to aspire to: the final annihilation of Christ on earth. As soon as it reaches its aspirations, it will have completed its own self-destruction. Time will be abolished, and all civilizations will be erased from reality, completely and forever.
What is civilization? Civilization is self-destruction. Civilization is nihilism. Civilization is death. Civilization is total self-contradiction, total confusion, total chaos, order without meaning, temporal and temporary everything, eternal nothing, illusions and lies, whitewashed sepulchers, corpses, preliminary death foreshadowing permanent death. Civilization is idleness, meddling, vain lust for power, and empty words. Civilization is scholarship, printing presses, computers, networks, blogs, and endless stupid comments like this one that no one will ever read, and rightly so, because they add nothing to anything.
Give thanks for Lenin and for AA, if you value your soul, because if you do not get out of politics on your own, they will force you out, or kill you. They may be destroying themselves, but at least they are doing you a big favor in the process. May God have mercy on them, for the benefit that they bring to us by driving us out of the world, if for no other reason.
Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, both now and ever, and unto the ages of ages.
It was the Germanic peoples who, in modern times, reintroduced mass abortion and face been largely successful in imposing it on the world. They were also the first to adopt LGBTQ doctrine and are once again set on spreading it around the world. Why exactly should they be regarded as civilizationally superior to, say, the Philippines? And if none of that stuff matters to civilization, what exactly about Western civilization is worth preserving?
"Religion does not matter to the fate of civilizations." USSR; hold my beer...
This is an old article, but since AA recommended reading it again recently, I feel justified in commenting. The topic is not less relevant today than when it was written.
This well written and thoughtful article unfortunately misses one important fact that AA usually never misses, which makes the entire thesis fall flat: elite theory.
Why bring up population statistics to argue your case, when you yourself admits that culture is downstream from law. What religion the masses believes is irrelevant when determining if christianity betters a civilization. All that matters is to figure out what faith a civilizations elites have, and if that has a positive effect on civilization. Instantly almost all examples listed and quoted by this article becomes irrelevant, as it cannot be argued that the elites of Eskimos, Chinese, African people, Brazil, Mexico or Haiti were believing Christians. As for Carlyle, your own quote from Julius Evola perfectly explained that the west were captured by Freemasons, Jews and American protestant since the French Revolution. What nation's elites still remained mostly christian? America. Which civilization became the next super power? America. The elites in Europe in the meantime either embraced enlightened freemasonry ideals as in france, sweden and prussia (Germany), or was captured by jewish banking elites as in England. No wonder Carlyle saw the decline.
As for the muslim example, I do not contend, since my defence is only for Christianity. When it comes to other religions such as Islam, my contention is that they are better for society as far as they come close to Christian sentiments, and is bad for civilization where they differ from christianity.
Sorry for my poor English. English is not my first language, and Im saving to take your (AA) English grammar and writing course.
You make a good point that they're mostly unrelated, but also I would argue that Christianity stripped of an actual mysticism or applied spirituality was just a set of moral codes posing as something more and that is another reason why it was superfluous. As Asia among other examples have shown, you can have a functioning moral code without Yahweh and Jewish supremacist literature at the core of your theology.
Great blog!
Fascinating. Subscribed. Just finished reading Vico too. He concludes New Science:
“In sum, on account of everything that has been reasoned upon in this work, … if one is not pious, one cannot in truth be wise.”
Sir,
There is some evidence that de Gobineau had abandoned Christianity altogether by the time of his death (cf. Michael Biddiss’s biography). Oscar Levy writes in his introduction to the English translation that he believes the Christianity of the Essai itself (written 1854) to have been purely a matter of form and to avoid association with contemporary radicals like the Carbonari and Freemasons, whom Gobineau as a legitimist aristocrat would have despised.
Finally, this question of Christianity and the west has been extensively treated by the classicist Revilo Oliver, in his “Christianity and the Survival of the West,” and a later work whose name escapes me. I imagine these would be of interest to you.
You came in the front door and took a wrong turn, making the long analysis irrelevant.
First, you must consider the question NOT as "decline of the West," but rather "the decline of the USA." The "West" is only coherent when considering the USA as the culmination of that culture. The USA is special because we built our culture on the foundation of the Greco-Roman civilization that spread through Europe. But the USA is also the culmination of that culture because we separated, geographically, philosophically, and politically from Europe.
With that in mind, the other point that caused the wrong turn mentioned above is: It's NOT "Christianity" that made/makes the USA special. It is WASPness (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant culture) separated from Europe and given space and freedom to develop itself.
Catholic (Italian, Spanish, Irish) culture, though Christian, is/was NOT able to create the freedom, individualism, liberty that created America. Neither can Orthodox Christianity (Russian, Slav, Greek).
So, NOT "Christianity", but rather WASPism is what created America. A special flavor of Christianity is part of it, but NOT all of it.
Where does Paul Gottfried's thesis in 'Multiculturalism' about the role of Protestantism fit into this picture?