The source of fascist ideology
Lucy Hughes-Hallett at the Guardian in 2014 reviews a book on the pope’s sinister pact with Mussolini.
In 1938, Pope Pius XI addressed a group of visitors to the Vatican. There were some people, he said, who argued that the state should be all-powerful – “totalitarian”. Such an idea, he went on, was absurd, not because individual liberty was too precious to be surrendered, but because “if there is a totalitarian regime – in fact and by right – it is the regime of the church, because man belongs totally to the church”.
Attaboy, that’s putting it out there.
The Pope told Mussolini that the church had long seen the need to “rein in the children of Israel” and to take “protective measures against their evil-doing”. The Vatican and the fascist regime had many differences, but this they had in common.
Naturally. I doubt that Mussolini came to the idea entirely independently – the Catholic church has been steeped in anti-semitism all along.
Kertzer describes something more fundamental than a church leader’s strategic decision to protect his own flock rather than to speak up in defence of others. His argument, presented not as polemic but as gripping storytelling, is that much of fascist ideology was inspired by Catholic tradition – the authoritarianism, the intolerance of opposition and the profound suspicion of the Jews.
Quite so.
To be continued.
Christopher Hitchens expressed the view that right now, the most dangerous religion is Islam, on account of jihad and terrorism &c, but that through the mid-20th C, the most dangerous religion was the Roman Catholic Church, on account of its alliance with European fascists.
And much of fascist Catholic tradition was inspired by the Biblical Christian God — the authoritarianism, the intolerance of opposition, and the profound suspicion of the worldly.
The fascist Biblical God was probably inspired by some of the darker elements of human nature. It caught on for a reason.
Absolutely. The One True Boss Man – it’s the human ideal.
Steven @# 1:
I have spent some time in the Islamic world, as has my wife, independently and prior to our marriage. (She is a Presbyterian, and regards Islam as a “terrible religion”, and I agree.) It is entry-level fascism and Islamic civilisation is fascist civilisation, with its clerics in control of education, and thus largely of ideas and ideology. If you don’t believe me, just buy yourself a one-way ticket to any Pakistani city, stand on the first street corner you come to and yell out “down with Islam!” You will soon enough find out why you had no need of a return ticket.
Liberalism, and their attitude to it, is the true test of the ideologues of the world. In every case, they are either presently down on it, or have a history of as much ideological repression as the time and circumstance would allow.
The popes have not in recent times had any trouble entering into tolerant dialogue with those they regard theist heretics, though in times past they had their issues with people like Giordano Bruno, whom they cheerfully had burnt at the stake; because they could get away with it. But they have rarely bothered trying on public debate with scientific atheists, like say, Hitchens or Dawkins; and when Dawkins publicly debated the world’s third-ranking Catholic cleric (Cardinal George Pell) it was His Grace Pell who disgraced himself, tangled himself up and publicly displayed his ignorance of the propositions of neo-Darwinism. As someone (Cicero?) once said, the first rule of debating is to know your opponent’s case better than they do. I think any half-way competent lawyer would have told Pell that.
Clerics and all other ideologues discourage the teaching of free and critical thought to the young (witness the fate of Socrates) lest the skills so acquired be turned on the religion. Their censoring betrays where they are conscious of their own vulnerability.
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https://theconversation.com/bloody-pell-qanda-stoush-with-dawkins-fails-to-bridge-the-gap-between-faith-and-science-6411
Pacelli, the future Pius XII, negotiated the Concordat with Nazi Germany. He’s the subject of ‘Hitler’s Pope,’ but the apple didn’t fall very far from the tree.
The second rule is, if you don’t know your opponent’s case, use the Gish Gallop.
That too.