Sunday 25 September 2011

A quotation from Alfred Rosenberg

The following is a quotation from Alfred Rosenberg's turgid classic The Myth of the Twentieth Century.

In typical Nazi style, Rosenberg was fundamentally opposed to modern liberal civilisation.  He was against civil rights and parliamentary government, which he thought were of use only to Jews and capitalists.  A nation could not be properly governed on the basis of elections, so it was necessary to replace democracy with dictatorship.  He was also anti-feminist, and saw the liberal state as a female or feminised entity.

"Just as the Jews everywhere call for equal rights and by this mean only their own privileges — so the emancipated woman must eventually face the fact she is really not demanding equal rights, but a parasitical life at the expense of male strength. Moreover, she wishes to have social and political privileges. The man of the 19th century infected with liberalism has simply not understood this. The chaos of the present is the revenging angel which punishes liberal man for such forgetfulness.

Today, the awakening individual sees that the god of the ballot paper is an empty scrap of rag without importance. The universal, identical, secret yet direct, voting right is not a magic wand but a tool of disintegration in the hands of folkish-hostile demagogues. Is this universal right to vote then to be taken away from women? Yes! But also from men! A folkish state will not undertake to make major decisions through anonymous male and female voting masses. Such decisions will be made by responsible personalities.

Liberalism taught freedom of movement, free trade, parliamentarianism, emancipation of women, equality of men, human equality, equality of the sexes, and so on. In this, it sinned against a natural law that creation only arises through the release of polar conditioned tensions. That is, a high degree of energy is necessary to perform work of any kind, to create culture. Today, in the midst of the collapse of the feminised old world, the German idea demands strength, type forming, restriction, discipline, protection of racial character and a straightforward recognition of the eternal polarity of the sexes....

Today the people can only rarely see a great man directly. To achieve this, catastrophes are necessary. Following a crisis, one breaks out of a shell and struggles forth. Therefore in ordinary life, the choice of President or King, as chosen directly by 70 million, is only determined by money bags. It follows from this that in 99 out of 100 cases no real folkish Leader arrives at the head. Therefore, in the coming first German folkish state, there must finally be a break with this deceitful democratic demand. Democracy spawns only as a tool of capitalism and the moneyed classes.

It also follows that a true parliamentary government may come into existence through the intoxication of the masses. Such is the case in the immoral Democratic parliamentary systems. Beyond the borders of the village community, of the medium sized town, the average man loses sight of any measuring rod for his judgements. It is self evident that he is then able to evaluate a personality as to its value only if he is in a position to judge the latter’s effect on the spot. This is impossible where party groups influence the elections of mostly unknown men. It therefore follows that in democracies, party lists, not personalities, are decisive in the elections. For this reason in a German Reich of the kind we long for, the present form of election must gradually give way to the principle of appointment of responsible leaders through the Leader by folk and state. Those appointed to the highest posts will then appoint those in the lesser posts. As a result every group will be considered in relationship to the whole in the manner appropriate to it. In this respect, freely creative activity can appear and be provided for without divisive separatist outbreaks."