1. Hitler used a perverted notion of animal breeding, applying it to races. That's unnatural selection.
2. It has been shown that Hitler definitely claimed to be a Christian, when it suited him, and it suited him when he was trying to win over Christians.
3. In your own quote, Marx spoke of rising above the "dog-eat-dog" animal world. How is that a perversion of Darwinism?
I wanted to wait until I had a little free time to respond to this. I'm off today.
1. I wasn't talking about eugenics. In the OP, I gave evidence from Mein Kampf that Hitler used and perverted the idea of natural selection, applying it to races rather than species. I later gave evidence from his speeches that when speaking to general audiences, he concentrated mostly on anti-Semitism, claiming that the Jews were destroying Germany through "internationalism." His point was that the Aryan race was superior and it was morally correct for them to dominate other races. We cannot, he says, escape Nature. That we can conquer Nature is a perverted Jewish idea (I've been surprised how often he returned to the idea that we should live according to Nature). To live according to Nature means to live according to the rule of "survival of the fittest." That is natural morality. Also, it is natural for a race to remain pure, just as it is natural for species to have separate gene pools.
Your idea has been that what matters is how the Nazis convinced the masses, not what they "really" thought, even if we could know that. You also said that they convinced the masses through traditional nationalism and religious tie-ins.
My point is that their nationalism was thoroughly racial in their propaganda, based on the idea of the superior Aryans.
Hitler also made Christian references, but from what I've seen this was not his most frequent type of demagoguery. Also, his Christian references are bizarre perversions of Christian doctrine.
But apart from propaganda, we want to know their ideology, their motives for doing what they did once they gained power and where these ideas came from. In above messages, I outlined the Nazi ideology, according to Hitler. Life consists of struggle between races for living space. The superior race is destined to dominate and populate the world while the weaker races will be eliminated or be enslaved. Aryans are the makers of high culture. Whatever helps the Aryan race to dominate is good.
International Marxism is unnatural, says Hitler. So is democracy, another Jewish invention.
2. Hitler's use of Christianity: Sometimes Hitler referred to himself as a Christian in his public speeches but Christianity was not a part of Nazi ideology. On the contrary, Christian ethics is in direct opposition to Nazism. In "Table Talk," Hitler reveals exactly what he thought of Christianity. He despised it. Sometimes he had the idea that after they had won the war it would be wise to just let Christianity die out little by little; at other times he said he would exterminate it. Christianity is unnatural.
3. Marxism used Darwinism in a quite different way. The animal kingdom is dog-eat-dog. So is capitalistic enterprise. But society should be socialized to eliminate this animalistic system. So Marx did not use the idea of natural selection. What he used was the idea of evolution, as I show in the quote from Engels above.
The reason that Marxism is "scientific" is that it is based on the principle of evolution, which Marxists refer to as "dialectics." Just as there is dialectics in the animal world, there is also dialectics in the history of the evolution of human society. Marxism uses Darwinism to make the claim that dialetical materialism is scientific.
So both Nazism and Communism misuse ideas lifted from Darwinism. In the case of Nazism, it is social Darwinism of the racial variety. In the case of communism, it is the idea of evolution, which allows Marxists to say their system is scientific.
Neither of these movements were religious. They were secular and pseudo-scientific.
Marx wrote a clever novel. Hitler wrote a stupid novel. Their discourse was artistic, camouflaged as science.
This message has been edited by robinrohan, 06-24-2005 09:43 AM
This message has been edited by robinrohan, 06-24-2005 09:45 AM