john eden

male pale and stale
Not really read him but he seems more progressive than neoliberals and your “end of history” lot who thought that their particular brand of capitalism would go on forever.

 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
The most common criticism seems to be that he's racist, which is kind of understandable when you can cherry-pick quotes like (paraphrasing here from memory, but only slightly) "The wars between Negro tribes in Africa are of no more import to World-History than the struggle of two rival ant colonies" - until you consider that he thought exactly the same thing about (say) warring Germanic tribes, i.e. his own ancestors, during the Migration Era. And he certainly admired the achievements of the various 'great cultures' that didn't arise in Europe, which is most of them.

In fact he goes so far in the "biological race doesn't exist" direction as to make some very strange statements, including the prediction that 'soil' (land/landscape) is so vital in the formation of the people that arise from it that the descendants of European settlers in the Americas would eventually come to physically resemble the native people they'd largely displaced, which was self-evidently bollocks a hundred years ago and is still bollocks today. And his dismissal of Darwinian evolution, which I can't remember in detail, isn't a lot better than "if people came from monkeys then y r there still monkeys".

Perhaps the biggest stain on his reputation at present isn't any inherent racism in his writing but the fact that racists tend to like him. Which in itself is odd, and makes me wonder how many of them have really read him closely. He was adamant that the West was on its last legs in 1918 and would be all but over by the present age, which makes him an odd figurehead for people who want to lead this great rebirth (which he insisted had never happened in any previous culture, and was intrinsically impossible) of a white "race" (which he didn't believe in).

But this isn't new, as the Nazis also tried to bend his work to their ends, without much success.
 
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luka

Well-known member
In fact he goes so far in the "biological race doesn't exist" direction as to make some very strange statements, including the prediction that 'soil' (land/landscape) is so vital in the formation of the people that arise from it that the descendants of European settlers in the Americas would eventually come to resemble the native people they'd largely displaced, which was bollocks a hundred years ago and is still bollocks today. And his dismissal of Darwinian evolution, which I can't remember in detail, isn't a lot better than "if people came from monkeys then y r there still monkeys".

I don't think those things are bollocks. I don't believe in Darwinian evolution and I think there's more truth in the first statement than you'd be willing to credit, although I'll admit the average American seems nothing like chief sitting bull or whatever
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
I wonder if he'd have felt vindicated, if he were somehow still alive, at the rise of post-Soviet Russia? I recall that one of his predictions was that a genuine Russian culture (not a "Western pseudomorphosis", either Tsarist or Communist in nature) was still yet to come.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
I don't think those things are bollocks. I don't believe in Darwinian evolution and I think there's more truth in the first statement than you'd be willing to credit, although I'll admit the average American seems nothing like chief sitting bull or whatever

I think he really meant that people descended from Brits and Germans and Irish and so on would actually acquire coppery skin, straight black hair and so on.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Oh really?

Yeah, fairly sure. Might try and find the relevant quote when I get home.

And even so, I can't really see how modern Americans resemble Sitting Bull in non-physical ways, either. Pretty much diametrically opposite in most regards, I'd have said.
 
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version

Well-known member
In the spring of 1936 (shortly before his death), he prophetically remarked in a letter to Reichsleiter Hans Frank that "in ten years, a German Reich will probably no longer exist" ("da ja wohl in zehn Jahren ein Deutsches Reich nicht mehr existieren wird!").[28] He died of a heart attack on 8 May 1936, in Munich, three weeks before his 56th birthday and exactly nine years before the fall of the Third Reich.
 

version

Well-known member
Perhaps the biggest stain on his reputation at present isn't any inherent racism in his writing but the fact that racists tend to like him. Which in itself is odd, and makes me wonder how many of them have really read him closely. He was adamant that the West was on its last legs in 1918 and would be all but over by the present age, which makes him an odd figurehead for people who want to lead this great rebirth (which he insisted had never happened in any previous culture, and was intrinsically impossible) of a white "race" (which he didn't believe in).

His talk of 'blood' seems easily twisted for their ends despite it apparently having little to do with ethnicity from his perspective.
 

version

Well-known member
Blood

Spengler sees blood as the only power strong enough to overthrow money, currently the dominant power of our age. Blood is commonly understood to mean race-feeling, and this is partially true but misleading. Spengler's idea of race has nothing to do with ethnic identity, indeed he was hostile to racists in that sense. The book talks about a population becoming a race when it is united in outlook. Possibly diverse ethnic origins are not a concern. Crucially, Spengler talks about the final struggle with money also being a battle between capitalism and socialism, but again socialism in a special sense: "the will to call into life a mighty politico-economic order that transcends all class interests, a system of lofty thoughtfulness and duty sense." He also writes "A power can be overthrown only by another power, not by a principle, and only one power that can confront money is left. Money is overthrown and abolished by blood. Life is alpha and omega ... It is the fact of facts ... Before the irresistible rhythm on the generation-sequence, everything built up by the waking–consciousness in its intellectual world vanishes at the last." Therefore, if we wanted to replace blood by a single word it would be more correct to use "life-force" rather than "race-feeling".
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Well yeah, it's complicated. Not really an attitude in tune with 21st-century shiny happy multiculturalism, but its denial of any biological element in favour of something much more rarefied and spiritual is incompatible with the racist pseudoscience of the Nazis and their modern equivalents, too.
 

luka

Well-known member
Yeah I talked about this stuff before. the conspiracy sites were all over it. I'll see if I can find it. Ceasers palace.
 

version

Well-known member
The first thing that comes up on DuckDuckGo when you type in "spengler caesar" is an article from a site called "The New Modern Man" which markets itself as "The Truth About Women and The World | Politically Incorrect Facts and Analysis for Men".

:eek:
 
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