A low point in Europe's history - discussion about the Nazi time
A discussion in and around Mystics of Kali.
- Notes by Colin Robinson
- Response by Sharon Law
- Response by Margaret Fyre
- Response from Zibethicus
- Send us your comments
The German edition of Wikipedia has described the Nazi period as "a low point in the history of Germany and of Europe". In April 2009, Mystics of Kali began our own discussion of this low point. Colin Robinson afterwards wrote an article about the Nazi crusade and what it reveals about Europe.
Notes on a low point in Europe's history
Friday, 17 April, 2009
To: Friends and members of Mystics of Kali
On the Nazi time -- remembered nightmare and recent reflections.
- family memories -- a sense of powerlessness
- dreams that expressed the sense of powerlessness
- some questions I've been reflecting on
- on learning from history
- what it has to do with Kali
Family memories -- a sense of powerlessness
Mother telling me, as a child, about rise of Hitler, persecution of Jews, and start of Second World War. She emphasized that no one could stop him. There was a sense of powerlessness.
She had travelled in Europe in the nineteen thirties, including Germany under Hitler, before the war started. She knew Jewish people there, although she herself was not Jewish. Later she was living in Britain when Hitler was bombing that country and firing missiles at it.
Dreams that expressed the sense of powerlessness
1. When we were growing up in the nineteen sixties, someone asked mother about prophetic dreams: the kind that come true in ways hard to explain. She then mentioned a dream she had herself, in Britain during the Second World War. Her dream was about a big group of people in some sort of enclosure. They were frightened, looking for a way out, not finding one. When she was having the dream, she didn't know who or where the people were. She thought perhaps they were miners trapped underground by the collapse of a shaft. The next day she received news about an atrocity in Europe: German forces herding together the inhabitants of a particular French town, and shutting them in a big building, before killing them all.
2. In childhood or early adolescence, I had a dream where I become aware of something following me. I turn around, and see a shadowy figure that moves like a human. I am paralysed with fright.
The way I now understand that the dream: the shadowy figure, the demon, has all the energy, because too much of reality had been demonized.
Some questions I've recently been reflecting about
1. The words "Never again" are appropriate. The question is how to make them effective.
2. "Reductio ad Hitlerem" (the idea that something must be wrong because it resembles something said or done by Hitler) is rightly described as a faulty way of reasoning. For instance, it is well known the Nazi leader supported early work on the Volkswagen; but does that prove to me that the VW is a worthless car?
3. What about the fact that the Nazis adopted an old sacred symbol, known in Sanskrit as the Svastika? Does that prove to me that the svastika in itself is something bad?
4. It is legitimate to think of the Nazis either as individuals, or as Germans, or as Europeans, or as humans. As individuals, they were responsible for their own actions. However, don't they also represent part of the story (like it or not) of Germany as a nation, part of the story (like it or not) of Europe as a subcontinent, and part of the reality (like it or not) of the human soul.
5. I am reluctant to describe the Nazis as my kindred. However, if I am to think of humanity as a family, can I deny that the Nazis, too were part of that family?
On learning from history
6. Is it the case that "ignorance is strength"? Or is there more truth in the statement that "those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it"?
7. To learn as much as possible from history, isn't it worthwhile (even if disagreeable) to study the words of the Nazis, as well as the words of those who suffered from Nazism and fought against it?
8. To learn as much as possible from history of Nazism, isn't it worthwhile (even if disagreeable) to take seriously the historical problems whose solution Nazism claimed to be: the perceived injustice of the Versailles Treaty; the rise of the Communist International and of its German section, the DKP; and the Great Depression?
9. To learn as much as possible from history of Nazism, isn't it worthwhile (even if disagreeable) to look at the way Nazis drew from cultural and religious traditions of Germany, Christendom, and India?
What it has to do with Kali
10. The Devi Mahatmya hails the Goddess as sarva bhuteshu, present in all beings. To me, all means all. Even the demons. Even the tyrants.
11. The image of Kali is also a realistic image of the destructive and constructive potential of human soul. On one hand, the power to kill and to terrify. On the other hand, the power to reassure and to give.
12. Kali overcomes the demon by consuming and including the demon.
Om Shantih
Colin Robinson
Response by Sharon Law
Friday, April 17, 2009
Hi Colin! We are both well... Now you may be shocked at my reply due to the fact I am Jewish. However Nazi Germany should have been a high spiritual time in fact it was as you will well understand spirituality is more than love light and fluffy bunnies. The highest degree of spirituality was in the concentration camps where levels of death were high. the swastika is no more evil than gas it is the symbol of power and power is neither good nor bad until it is used. This great power could and should have been used for inspired leadership. No one can deny Hitler was an excellent speaker and knew how to lead a demotivated nation. It is a shame he chose to use his free will to abuse the gift he was given.
Remember my children the lives burnt away, a waste of life.
Remember who we were never again allow such strife!
Let us be the teachers of tolerance peace and love too.
Never allow this slavery to happen to any of you.
Notice current day parties seee through their misgivings this day
Stand up use your power and protect all the innocent nations in your way!!
Hope these thoughts are useful feel free to share them at the Puja take care luv and light sharon and john xx
Response by Margaret Fyre
Friday, April 17, 2009
Hi Colin - hope you are good and you had a good Easter - been very busy here and crowded with lots of visitors - very interesting read - and still a prickly situation - no one wants to have to take on any part of the responsibility for the autrocities - and as such learn nothing from them - No 12 is very relevant - and only known and realised by those of us who recognise a force such as Kali exists to help and protect us - hope you have been doing some fun stuff among all this heavy thinking Colin - all work and no play etc -
take care love Margaret and David
Response from Zibethicus
Saturday, April 18, 2009
> Some questions I've recently been reflecting about
1. The words "Never again" are appropriate. The question is how to make them effective.
I have been doing a great deal of abusing of Deniosaurs (as I call the stupider sort of global warming deniers) on the ABC forum Unleashed just lately. It seems to me that humanity has reached a decisive crossroads where so-called 'free market' principle have been revealed as literally destructive to civilisation and humanity and the planet itself.
Something new must be found if we are to survive. If not, the present system of monoply capitalism will destroy more people - albeit less selectively - than the Nazis ever did. And our generation may well be execrated as /worse/ than the Nazis if we are lucky enough to have any survivors.
To quote the great Walt Kelly: "We have met the enemy and he is us." While a Nazi is externalised, as a uniform or an attitude, it can and WILL happen again.
> 2. "Reductio ad Hitlerem" (the idea that something must be wrong because it resembles something said or done by Hitler) is rightly described as a faulty way of reasoning. For instance, it is well known the Nazi leader supported early work on the Volkswagen; but does that prove to me that the VW is a worthless car?
Difficult to say. It's hard to advance a proposition that the Nazis did /anything/ worthwhile, though in their insanities they did things like, for instance, reduce lung cancer rates through Hitler's aversion to smoking. They certainly, however inadvertently, discredited eugunics - perhaps forever?
> 3. What about the fact that the Nazis adopted an old sacred symbol, known in Sanskrit as the Svastika? Does that prove to me that the svastika in itself is something bad?
http://www.bmezine.com/news/people/A10101/manwoman/
> 4. It is legitimate to think of the Nazis either as individuals, or as Germans, or as Europeans, or as humans. As individuals, they were responsible for their own actions. However, don't they also represent part of the story (like it or not) of Germany as a nation, part of the story (like it or not) of Europe as a subcontinent, and part of the reality (like it or not) of the human soul.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maus
...a recurrent reality...their insanities could never have triumphed if the ground had not been prepared by a millenium of European anti-Semitism, itself partly created by the Apostle Paul in his efforts to expand 'his' faith into Rome. This is old news.
> 5. I am reluctant to describe the Nazis as my kindred. However, if I am to think of humanity as a family, can I deny that the Nazis, too were part of that family?
This movie:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Downfall_(film)
caused a controversy by asking that question. One reviewer said this:
As a piece of acting, Ganz's work is not just astounding, it's actually rather moving. But I have doubts about the way his virtuosity has been put to use. By emphasizing the painfulness of Hitler's defeat Ganz has [...] made the dictator into a plausible human being. Considered as biography, the achievement (if that's the right word) [...] is to insist that the monster was not invariably monstrous -- that he was kind to his cook and his young female secretaries, loved his German shepherd, Blondi, and was surrounded by loyal subordinates. We get the point: Hitler was not a supernatural being; he was common clay raised to power by the desire of his followers. But is this observation a sufficient response to what Hitler actually did?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Downfall_%28film%29#Reception
Sure, we can accept them as members of the human family. But we don't keep in touch with all the members of our family, do we?
> On learning from history...
6. Is it the case that "ignorance is strength"? Or is there more truth in the statement that "those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it"?
As I am typing this, Jeanette is reading Roald Dahl's /Charlie and the Chocolate Factory/, which was made into a movie for children in 1971. Perhaps you've seen it. There are small humanoid factory workers in the movie called 'Oompa-loompas'. The movie was filmed in Munich, but they had to recruit the 'Oompa-loompas' from overseas, as thirty years after the Nazi era there weren't enough little people left in Germany to fill all the roles.
Ignorance is NOT strength; neither is forgetfulness.
> 7. To learn as much as possible from history, isn't it worthwhile (even if disagreeable) to study the words of the Nazis, as well as the words of those who suffered from Nazism and fought against it?
Of course.
> 8. To learn as much as possible from history of Nazism, isn't it worthwhile (even if disagreeable) to take seriously the historical problems whose solution Nazism claimed to be: the perceived injustice of the Versailles Treaty; the rise of the Communist International and of its German section, the DKP; and the Great Depression?
Perhaps. But one can study the problems without succumbing to the Nazi perception of them.
> 9. To learn as much as possible from history of Nazism, isn't it worthwhile (even if disagreeable) to look at the way Nazis drew from cultural and religious traditions of Germany, Christendom, and India?
Yes, we must do this. If only to understand where they abused these traditions. But then, as you and I know, Subhas Chandra Bose - inspired by Vivekananda (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subhas_Chandra_Bose) - expressed some affiliation for certain Fascist ideas during his participation in the struggle for Bengali nationalism.
And, to be brutally honest, I have sat, aghast and wondering, in meetings of the Mystics of Kaali, while anti-immigrant opinions have been freely expressed by more than one of the members after puja. And I have thought to myself: 'We have just met to worship God as a BLACK WOMAN, and you're telling us about how 'dirty' and 'shiftless' and 'unworthy' these non-European people are?
Should we also be looking at our /own/ traditions, for example the connections between some neo-pagan groups and the extreme Right today, as well as in Hitler's time?
> What it has to do with Kali
10. The Devi Mahatmya hails the Goddess as sarva bhuteshu, present in all beings. To me, all means all. Even the demons. Even the tyrants.
AND 'present as error'. She has made all this happen. Why? Ramakrishna once said it was all to 'thicken the plot'...
> 11. The image of Kali is also a realistic image of the destructive and constructive potential of human soul. On one hand, the power to kill and to terrify. On the other hand, the power to reassure and to give.
Perhaps She is challenging us to /go on/ worshipping Her /with love/ after She has made these things happen, or allowed them to happen.
> 12. Kali overcomes the demon by consuming and including the demon.
By this interpretation, the Nazi's could be regarded as Kaali's Shit; and that seems a very good place to leave 'em. Gotta go now.
JAI MAA!
ArchD'Ikon Zibethicus
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