Category Archives: Neo-Marxism

On Nationalism and the Christian Religion

Posted on by

Karl Barth writes the following as he is tailing off on a development on God’s power: “’The Almighty’ in abstracto [in the abstract] has probably more to do with that revolutionary and tyrannical spirit than with God. The constitution of the Swiss Confederacy is right when it begins with the words: ‘In the name of God, the Almighty.’”[1] Barth is identifying the problem of conflating divine power and right with state power and right; and he is right. We don’t want to engage in any sort of natural theology that would divinize the state, and evacuate God of His rightful place as God Almighty. I see people sloppily worrying over nothing in this regard. They seem to think that Americans who are pro-Trump and nationalist/populist in orientation have engaged in the sort of natural theology that Barth rightfully is decrying. Barth is decrying the sort of nationalism that we see in Hitlerism, ultimately. But that is not what is happening in America currently; even if leftists, ironically, would like to construct this sort of psychedelic vision. Trump is not Hitler, the globalists are.

The fact that educated people, and it is typically educated people, cannot make this all-critical distinction illustrates the sort of education they are receiving. They aren’t learning how to think critically; instead they are learning to think by way of indoctrination. Many of us can see this, but they mostly cannot. I am educated, and I can see this; and there are others who are so-called, educated who can see this. But the sub-culture of the educated is the culture that has been targeted for cooptation by the very sinister coup currently underway in the world; largely driven by the CCP and their globalist collaborators. This tells me that many in this sub-culture are more concerned with being part of their group rather than with the truth. This is particularly troubling when it comes to the Christian educated. Theologians, pastors et al. are supposed to be the vanguards for truth in the world, pointing people to the kerygmatic truth of Jesus Christ, and all the entailments of His life as that implicates all truth in this world. But by and large, even among these folk, there is an abject silence; or there is a knuckling under to the mainstream narrative that has no correspondence whatsoever to the preponderance of evidences.

I simply wanted to register this distinction for folks. Fighting for the fidelity of our nation as Americans is not, of necessity, a matter of natural theological idolatry. Instead, it is an attempt to bear witness to the truth insofar as that can be discerned in the complex that nations represent in toto. I am not violating Barth’s critique of national socialism; instead I am affirming it by making the proper identification of who in fact is embodying the national socialist mode—viz. the globalists, the leftists, the oligarchists, the crony-corporatocratists, antifa&BLM, and the go-along-with-the-group-people. This, in fact, is why I am so passionate about all of this. I am anti-natural theology to my core, and I see the globalists attempting to make the “state,” their globalist utopia, as Lord. They want to prop up the system of the Beast in a Babel sort of way wherein they identify themselves as the gods and masters of the universe. Does it make sense to you now? Can you see why I am pro-Trump? It isn’t about Trump so much, as it is about defeating a grotesque form of natural theology that absolutely is Antichrist. Is Trump antichrist? I don’t ultimately know. But maybe despite himself he has ironically become the figurehead of a movement that is wrought on defeating a darkness in the world that has gained an insidious reach, even as an angel of light, into the lives of billions of people worldwide; sadly, even into the lives of many non-discerning Christians. Just know that if you read here you will always get a theology that is funded by an anti-natural theological position.

[1] Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics II/1 §31: Study Edition Vol 9 (London/New York: T&T Clark, 2010), 88-9.

Frogs In A Kettle and Boomerangs: The Great Repression, In Our “Backyards”

Posted on by

I just came across this quote over at Cynthia Nielsen’s blog Per Caritatem; it represents a great caution for any nation state, and I can see its critique of Nazism as applicable to many other nationalist movements that occur within states and countries in the world (including the United States). The quote comes from Aimé Césaire (1913–2008), a black socio-critic who used and surpassed Marxist theory to provide the critique of Nazism that I found in the footnote from Nielsen’s article from which I take the following quote:

“First we must study how colonization works to decivilize the colonizer, to brutalize him in the true sense of the word, […] a gangrene sets in, a center of infection begins to spread; and that at the end of all these treaties that have been violated, all these lies that have been propagated, all these punitive expeditions that have been tolerated, all these prisoners who have been tied up and ‘interrogated,’ all these patriots that have been tortured, at the end of all the racial pride that has been encouraged, all the boastfulness that has been displayed, a poison has been distilled into the veins of Europe and, slowly but surely, the continent proceeds toward savagery. And then one fine day the bourgeoisie is awakened by a terrific boomerang effect: the gestapos are busy, the prisons fill up, the torturers standing around the racks invent, refine, discuss. People are surprised, […] they wait, and they hope; and they hide the truth from themselves, that it is barbarism, […] the crowning barbarism that sums up all the daily barbarisms; that it is Nazism, yes, but that before they were its victims, they were its accomplices; that they tolerated that Nazism before it was inflicted on them, that they absolved it, shut their eyes to it, legitimated it, because until then, it had been applied only to non-European peoples; […] they have cultivated Nazism, […] they are responsible for it” (Discourse on Colonialism, 35–6).

Nielsen develops the boomerang effect throughout her short article, you should read it in full! What this reminds me of is the proverbial frog-in-the-kettle syndrome; that is, we become so comfortable with the status quo, that we loose the ability to be able to discern the impact that our own nationalist interests are having upon us (e.g. American exceptionalism) ; maybe, and probably usually in the name of patriotism. This “effect” helps to explain how it is that something as horrific (finally) as Nazism could have, and did happen. What this should do, for us, is caution us about thinking that we are immune or above the Germans who eventually became Nazis. Do you think it is possible to be complicit, by silence, in enabling the same kind of atrocities that happened in the back yards of the World War II Germans? Let me be more explicit by way of application—this is something I have really been contemplating lately—do you think that, as Americans, it is possible that our back yards are China, Africa and various other repressive and oppressive regimes wherein the exploitation and brutalization of whole people groups and nations is taking place; while we sit comfortably by, continuing to consume [and thus enabling and endorsing] (off of the backs of these people in the world ‘out there’) from the produce of these “Nations” (in our back yards)?

I think Aimé Césaire’s critique is highly applicable today.