Burdens of Belief: The Foundational Myth of Holocaustianity

Stories We Tell Ourselves, or Stories We Are Ourselves, Part 13

“For scapegoating to be a success, the community must consent unanimously to the guilt of the victims. Even the accused must enthusiastically endorse their own destruction. These ancient strategies, evident in the Book of Job, anticipate modern propaganda.” —Cynthia L. Haven, paraphrasing Rene Girard, All Desire is a Desire for Being (p. 151)

Scapegoat of the Century

Let’s start with an awkward and contentious statement of what I would nonetheless say is a statement of fact: Adolf Hitler was the scapegoat of the 20^th century.

This is not meant to imply that Hitler was innocent. Only that he was turned into a symbol of ultimate evil, independently of any rational or sober understanding of WW2 history or the man himself.¹

Since the 20^th century was the first period in history in which a communications system engulfed the entire planet, that makes Adolf Hitler the scapegoat of all time.

When God was killed, the Devil’s incarnation became inevitable, and imminent. Nietzsche was both the pallbearer and midwife in this “transference.”²

Enter Adolfus? Ecce homo.

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In my twenties, I caught wind of the conspiratorial rumor that Hitler (along with other high-ranking Nazis) faked his death at the end of World War 2, and moved to Brazil or Paraguay or wherever. When I told my (six years older) sister about it, she countered that it was too much in Hitler’s nature to have suicided on witnessing his grand Nazi vision failing. I didn’t think to ask her, at the time, what she based her psy-evaluation of Adolf on.

Everyone in the West has strong, clear opinions about Hitler, and could probably come up with a dozen adjectives to describe him, as well as maybe twice as many “facts” about his actions and beliefs. Yet how many of us have read even two books to base such opinions on?

Our ideas about Hitler, the National Socialists, and the Holocaust are filtered down—or laterally passed across—to us, either from lay-people who believe and opine with blind confidence, or from alleged experts who may or may not be honest, much less reliable.

Of course, we have the footage. But how accurately can we “read” Hitler’s character (especially if we don’t understand German) if we are looking at it with eyes already firmly persuaded that they are watching the vilest (if not the greatest) mass murderer in history?

Writing My Way Back to Reality

“(Two thousand years ago Aristotle explained that when something is unlikely and unbelievable, let it happen offstage.) . . . A rule of the genre seems to be that we are allowed only one major Incredible Thing. Given this, everything else will, surprisingly enough, seem to be logical (if still wholly improbable). . . . Given this one Incredible Thing, everything else in the story should actually be logical, even over-logical. This is what produces tension: because all of the associated circumstances are strictly rational, we the audience cannot reject the nonsensical elements without rejecting everything else” —Alexander Mackendrick, On Filmmaking

“The great masses of the people will more easily fall victims to a big lie than to a small one.” —Adolf Hitler

About halfway through this current series (which I had no idea would be such a long and demanding series when I started it), I read an article at Neoliberal Feudalism, called “Deeper Societal Trends Predating the Central Banks: Part 2.” The article cites an idea about WW2 being the “foundational myth” of our time. I was curious enough about this idea that I followed it to the source, and found myself at a literal Neo-Nazi website run by someone called Cesar Tort.

Nonetheless, like NF, and despite my feeling of unease, I considered the argument solid enough to cite it, regardless of its author’s ideological leanings.

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According to Tort’s thesis, a foundational myth, first of all:

comports and provides an origin, framework and superstructure for society and how it interacts with the world and itself. Second, it defines what is the ultimate good and conversely, ultimate evil for the reasons of defining values and from those to justify who holds power. And third it determines and defines what is held sacred in a society. For the modern West . . . the narrative of the Second World War has become our new foundation myth [because] it fulfils all three functions.

Tort’s explanatory model not only struck me as true but as useful, even essential, to understanding why I felt compelled to try and take apart this myth, as the latest iteration of my own “mapping Hell”/self-deprogramming/spiritual-autolysis practice of writing my way back to reality.

Partly for this reason, I spent some time at the website, to see what a genuine neo-Nazi (or, if it sounds less pejorative and easier to relate to, a genuine Hitler-sympathizer) might have to say about National Socialism. After spending a day or two on it, I discovered that the discourse, while naïve and somewhat misguided, was not without insight. For example, I found this, from Irmin Vinson’s “Some Thoughts on Hitler”:

I consider Hitler less a model to be followed than an avalanche of propaganda we must dig ourselves out from under. Never in human history has a single man received such sustained vilification, the basic effect and purpose of which has been to inhibit Whites from thinking racially and from acting in their own racial self-interest, as all other racial/ethnic groups do. Learning the truth about Hitler is a liberating experience. By the truth I mean not an idealized counter-myth to the pervasive myth of Hitler as evil incarnate, but the man himself, faults and virtues, strengths and weaknesses. Once you’ve done it, once you’ve discovered the real Hitler beneath the lies and distortions that have buried his legacy, you’ll be permanently immunized against anti-White propaganda, because you will have seen through the best/worst the System has to offer.

More succinctly stated, and closer to the fiery core of this inter-generational psychological war zone: “The burden of thinking that Hitler was wrong is nothing compared to the burden of believing that Hitler was right.” (Greg Johnson, “The Burden of Hitler”)³

An Eye for an Eye, Or Turn the Other Cheek?

“The circumstances in which the victim is condemned vary, but not the functioning of the mechanism. It is the unanimous belief in the victim’s guilt, whatever the nature of the accusations against him, that allows the group to retain its unity. In retrospect, the victim will also be endowed with positive qualities, being perceived as responsible not only for the crisis, but for its resolution.” —Rene Girard, All Desire is a Desire for Being (p. 19)

The French philosopher Rene Girard believed that Christianity, specifically the synaptic gospels, contained a true solution for humanity, a mode of salvation. He believed they exposed what he called the Scapegoat Mechanism, by making the innocence of the victim a central and undeniable fact of the story.

All of this is encapsulated in the words attributed to Jeshua himself:

Resist not evil. Love thine enemies. Judge not lest ye be judged. He who is without sin, cast the first stone.

To stone a victim willingly, you have to believe that you are different from the victim, and I note that mimetic convergence is accompanied by an illusion of divergence. It’s the real convergence combined with the illusion of divergence that triggers what Jesus is seeking to prevent, the scapegoat mechanism [emphasis added]. The crowd precedes the individual. Only he who escapes violent unanimity by detaching himself from the crowd truly becomes an individual. Not everyone is capable of such initiative (Girard, ADIDFB, p. 177).

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From a Girardian-Christian perspective, the human social problem isn’t anti-Semitism or Zionism, fascism or cultural Marxism, neo-Nazism or wokism, organized Jewry or Anglo-American alliances. Every currency has two sides and the two sides complement one another by opposing one another.

The problem is scapegoating and mimetic violence. Placing blame, in lieu of accepting responsibility. Scapegoating binds a people together by redirecting the energy of blame from all-against-all to all-against-one.

This is the law of the tribe, or mob rule.

As yesterday’s taboo becomes tomorrow’s totem, and vice versa, the vicious circle of blood vendettas keeps on spinning.  

“Jesus dies to put an end to sacrificial behavior; he dies not to strengthen closed communities through sacrifice but to dissolve them through its elimination. When the death of Jesus is presented as sacrifice, its real significance is lost” (Girard, ADIDFB p. 147, emphasis added).

An eye for an eye leaves everyone half-blind, lost in a flatland (that quickly becomes a cartoon wasteland), seeing all of existence in two dimensions.

Girard’s “Jesus Solution” states that the only way to stop the vicious cycle is to cease to play the game, the Satan-Accuser’s game.

To turn the other cheek.

The Unseen Occupant

“The system consists of whitening the community by blackening the scapegoat; to consolidate it, the belief in this mythic blackness must be strengthened. The most effective means, obviously, is the victim’s confession, in due and proper form. Job must publicly admit his infamy, proclaiming it loudly and convincingly.” —Rene Girard, All Desire is a Desire for Being (p. 152)

Why does uncovering the many lies and distortions within the Holocaust narrative so often lead researchers to the position of denying it completely? Because the urge to find (and if we can’t find, to form) a closed community and a group identity within which to hide inside is as powerful as the instinct for self-reservation. (It is the same instinct.)

The need to take a position, any position, in the swamp of falsifications and mythologizing around WW2 leads to a flipping back to before the Holocaust (ever?) happened, to a placing of blame on the victims, and to exonerating the persecutors.

The Holocaust narrative then becomes: a) the Nazis didn’t do anything like the evil they have been accused of doing to the Jews; b) whatever they did was justifiable as an act of war, or of self-defense, as an attempt to get free from the yolk of an occupying power.

And suppose this should turn out to be true? True enough that day turned out to be night, and black to be white? Put that terrifying question on hold, if you dare, because it wouldn’t make any difference, either way, to the larger point I wish to make:

To believe that any occupying power we need to get free of is located outside of us is an inherent contradiction and a deadly misapprehension. It is the surest way to become fully possessed—occupied—by the same evil (or “evil”) we are struggling to get free of. By casting the stone, we shatter our own houses.

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The mind virus is that of chosenness, on the one hand, and of accusatory scapegoating of an “other.”

We scapegoat the other for threatening our chosenness. Nazism vs Zionism. Master Race vs Chosen People. Mimetic rivalry = mimetic violence = mimetic contagion.

Unless we are talking of small children, no victim is 100% innocent (a Christian view might argue even against children’s innocence). A more responsible (and accurate) alternative to saying that the Jews (or the Nazis) only became oppressors because they were themselves oppressed, is to say that, if they were oppressed, it is only insofar as they themselves had already become oppressors (because they were oppressing themselves).

What goes around, comes around. Simply stated, the only evil that we really, truly ever need to be concerned about is our own evil. He who is truly without sin would never cast a stone at another.

Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord.

A Vanishing Scapegoat & Nature Abhorrent

“[T]he critical mind gives way to the literary tradition. . . . Certain texts, whatever the source of their prestige, come to serve as models. And, from that moment on, all questioning stops.” —Rene Girard, All Desire is a Desire for Being (p. 16)

The need for a scapegoat (what Lloyd de Mause called a poison container) is so strong, so instinctive and so unconscious, however, that the instant the absolute guilt of our scapegoat (e.g. Hitler and the Nazis) is brought into question—by inconvenient facts mounting up before our eyes—we seize upon another to take its place.

Also: if and as any apparent holes in the Holocaust narrative become undeniable, one conclusion that seems inescapable (besides that we have been lied to for our whole lives) is that Hitler and the National Socialists were besmirched (“grimed,” as David Irving put it) by the Allies’ wartime propaganda and/or the Zionist agenda.⁴

This realization can create a powerful sense of injustice, the kind most of us feel for an innocent person who has been framed and punished. Or, perhaps more accurately, our feeling of indignation and resentment at being lied to leads to a shift of allegiance, from the liars to the thing being lied about.

Sympathy for the devil.

This 180 degree polar shift takes some researchers (such as Irving) from condemnation of Hitler to concern for Adolf, from antipathy to solidarity. The vacuum created by the vanishing scapegoat is then automatically (as if by an actual psychic process of two poles reversing) filled by the apparent culprits in the frame-up job, be they Allies, Zionist forces, or whoever.

Since Hitler and the National Socialists were accused of genocidal Anti-Semitism, and when new evidence starts to indicate that their attitude towards certain groups of people (practitioners of Zionism and Judaism) was neither quite so murderous nor quite so unjustified as we were told, a shift in alliance—away from the “victims” and towards the “persecutors”—is further assured.

When all this coincides with an explosion of visible, undeniably genocidal, atrocities being commited by these former “victims” against a targeted scapegoat class, the whole powder keg is ready to blow.⁵

Needless to say, this is all in the nature of Psyop. And, like any good Psyop, it is happening primarily at an unconscious, emotional, pre-rational level, and not at a deductive, rational, or cognitive one.

Our beliefs are burdens because we only think we are choosing them.

(Behind the Paywall: Don’t worry, there is nothing but being a free post prevents it getting in the “top posts” area, or so I am told.)