HYPOTHETICAL regarding Hitler

[giblets]

The gas chambers weren't particularly Christian.

Adolf Hitler, Munich speech of April 12, 1922:

I say: my feeling as a Christian points me to my Lord and Saviour as a fighter. It points me to the man who once in loneliness, surrounded only by a few followers, recognized these Jews for what they were and summoned men to the fight against them and who, God's truth! was greatest not as sufferer but as fighter. In boundless love as a Christian and as a man I read through the passage which tells us how the Lord at last rose in His might and seized the scourge to drive out of the Temple the brood of vipers and of adders. How terrific was His fight for the world against the Jewish poison. Today, after two thousand years, with deepest emotion I recognize more profoundly than ever before—the fact that it was for this that He had to shed His blood upon the Cross. As a Christian I have no duty to allow myself to be cheated, but I have the duty to be a fighter for truth and justice. And as a man I have the duty to see to it that human society does not suffer the same catastrophic collapse as did the civilization of the ancient world some two thousand years ago—a civilization which was driven to its ruin through this same Jewish people.

Looks like he found Christian excuses for it.

[SlowwHand]

The mere fact that he called himself Christian is enough for you? So if Mr Fun says he's a Plutonian, does that make him one?

[giblets]

Mein Kampf:

Hence today I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord.

Slowwhand- You can argue that his interpretation of Christianity is wrong, but I think you're committing a "no true scotsman" fallacy here by trying to claim that people who do bad things aren't really Christians.

[SlowwHand]

I disagree. You don't have to look too far to see people who try to invoke Christ to suit their agenda.

[MrFun]

A "Christian" who commits atrocities against humanity is not a Christian.


EDIT: damn x-post

[SlowwHand]

What he said.

[giblets]

You might as well claim the spanish inquisition wasn't christian. I don't see how that flies.

[SlowwHand]

OK, while we're at it, let's include the Spanish Inquisition.

[Al B. Sure!]

Gribbler:

1922... Mein Kampf... You're quoting real early Hitler, assuming 1) that he wouldn't change and 2) that he wasn't just saying things to increase his popularity and get into power.

The SA was filled with homos, just that mean the early Nazis were pro-gay?

[giblets]

Albert- okay, here's a later quote, from october 1942.

Originally, Christianity was merely an incarnation of Bolshevism the destroyer. Nevertheless, the Galilean, who later was called the Christ, intended something quite different. He must be regarded as a popular leader who took up His position against Jewry. Galilee was a colony where the Romans had probably installed Gallic legionaries, and items certain that Jesus was not a Jew. The Jews, by the way, regarded Him as the son of a whore and a Roman soldier, which in christianity is not a belief. The decisive falsification of Jesus's doctrine was the work of St. Paul. He gave himself to this work with subtlety and for purposes of personal exploitation. For the Galilean's object was to liberate His country from Jewish oppression. He set Himself against Jewish capitalism, and that's why the Jews liquidated Him. Paul of Tarsus (his name was Saul, before the road to Damascus) was one of those who persecuted Jesus most savagely. When he learnt that Jesus's supporters let their throats be cut for His ideas, he realised that, by making intelligent use of the Galilean's teaching, it would be possible to overthrow this Roman State which the Jews hated. It's in this context that we must understand the famous "illumination". Think of it, the Romans were daring to confiscate the most sacred thing the Jews possessed, the gold piled up in their temples! At that time, as now, money was their god. On the road to Damascus, St. Paul discovered that he could succeed in ruining the Roman State by causing the principle to triumph of the equality of all men before a single God and by putting beyond the reach of the laws his private notions, which he alleged to be divinely inspired. If, into the bargain, one succeeded in imposing one man as the representative on earth of the only God, that man would possess boundless power.

Jesus is portrayed heroically, Jews are cast as evil Christ killers.

[Al B. Sure!]

gribbler:

That's not Christian at all. That's Nietzscheanism.

[BeBMan]

Albert- okay, here's a later quote, from october 1842.
.

WTF?

[Al B. Sure!]

Nietzsche greatly admired Christ but felt Paul had corrupted Jesus's message with Judaistic ressentiment.

[giblets]

gribbler:

That's not Christian at all. That's Nietzscheanism.

The portrayal of Jews as evil Christ killers seems to have been very common among Christians in the past. Maybe Hitler's anti-semitism can be traced back to Christianity?

edit: oh but I forgot, no true Christian is a hateful bigot

[Al B. Sure!]

From wikipedia:

In The Antichrist, Nietzsche fights against the way in which Christianity has become an ideology set forth by institutions like churches, and how churches have failed to represent the life of Jesus. Nietzsche finds it important to distinguish between the religion of Christianity and the person of Jesus. Nietzsche attacked the Christian religion, as represented by churches and institutions, for what he called its "transvaluation" of healthy instinctive values. Transvaluation consists of the process by which one can view the meaning of a concept or ideology from a "higher" context. Nietzsche went beyond agnostic and atheistic thinkers of the Enlightenment, who simply regarded Christianity as untrue. He claimed that the Apostle Paul may have deliberately propagated Christianity as a subversive religion (a "psychological warfare weapon") within the Roman Empire as a form of covert revenge for the Roman destruction of Jerusalem and of the Second Temple in 70 AD during the Jewish War of 66 - 73 AD. Nietzsche contrasts the Christians with Jesus, whom he regarded as a unique individual, and argues he established his own moral evaluations. As such, Jesus represents a kind of step towards his ideation of the Ãœbermensch. Ultimately, however, Nietzsche claims that, unlike the Ãœbermensch, who embraces life, Jesus denied reality in favor of his "kingdom of God." Jesus's refusal to defend himself, and subsequent death, logically followed from this total disengagement. Nietzsche goes further to analyze the history of Christianity, finding it has progressively distorted the teachings of Jesus more and more. He criticizes the early Christians for turning Jesus into a martyr and Jesus's life into the story of the redemption of mankind in order to dominate the masses, and finds the Apostles cowardly, vulgar, and resentful. He argues that successive generations further misunderstood the life of Jesus as the influence of Christianity grew. By the 19th century, Nietzsche concludes, Christianity had become so worldly as to parody itself — a total inversion of a world view which was, in the beginning, nihilistic, thus implying the "death of God."

See, just like your Hitler quote. Hitler clearly knew his Nietzsche, which makes sense since the Nazis were very fond of Nietzsche's ideas.