If you’re struggling with rent, or you’ve been evicted from your own home, then always remember that the only true lord of the land is the Land Wight, and not some person with a piece of paper that says they own a few walls, a roof, and a patch of dirt.

The Land Wight is the keeper of the soil and the air, and they’ve been planted there by the Aesir and the Vanir who are the rulers of the entire universe. And we live with these Gods as the caretakers of this world, since they gave us our Wyrd.

Only the one who lives somewhere and makes use of that place is its true owner. And everyone who gives to their Land Wight, who respects them and gives sacrifice and takes care of their land - they enter a sacred and unbreakable bond with that God which can never be broken by any human law. It will live on for as long as they give sacrifice, and it will then live on forever after they die.

So if you’ve lost your home because of money, know that it is just as if vikings showed up at your doorstep and kicked you out. It’s not fair at all, it’s conquest! They take and take and always ask for more, while getting rich off of your hard work. But the Land Wight, the true lord of the land, only asks for the bare minimum of respect and friendship and nothing more than anyone can give. They don’t threaten you with a lease. They don’t demand rent, because they don’t take the fruits of your hard labor, and they don’t make any money off of you. They don’t exploit your valuable work, the one that actually makes the world turn round. They don’t want to exploit you for their own benefit in any way at all. The only thing they ask in exchange for their blessing is your kindness as you share the land with them. Even the simplest gift is enough for them, and their price never gets any higher than that.

But if you’ve lost your home, then take your landvaettir with you, just like Pious Aeneas did when his city was destroyed and he fled to Italy! Be like the first Icelanders and the Faroese who were banished from their homes by Harald Fair Hair, who took their Gods with them and worshiped the Wights in the new lands they discovered. The Wights will continue on with you, and the God in the new place you find will also be with you.

And remember what Odin said:

Better to have a home,

Even if it's little.

Everyone should call somewhere home.

Even if you own just two goats

Beneath a faulty roof

That's still better than begging.

Better to have a home,

Even if it's little.

Everyone should call somewhere home.

Your heart will be wounded

If you have to beg for every meal

From somebody else.

Hávamal stanza 36 and 37.

https://www.reddit.com/r/AntifascistsofReddit/s/IPfvSRe7sY

Right now we can clearly see how fascism creeps its way into a society. I say “Fascism has won” because that’s how I see it at least. It’s not something that’s soon to come or just around the corner, it’s already started and only gets worse from here.

Most people don’t seem to want to understand why this is happening, and just resort to saying that the far right supporters are crazy, and they’re winning out right now just because the world is evil or people are naturally evil, or some other uncritical explanation. But living at this moment, you don't need any sort of history book to tell you how these things have happened before.

Most people in our society look back to Germany and Italy and wonder how these entire countries could become so evil. And school education and popular media (purposefully, I believe) do not help at all in teaching people the reasons. They make it obscure, they make it a detached philosophical question, and not the clear social and political phenomena that it actually was.

I already had some of these thoughts since I first started learning about anarchist and communist theory, but now we can see it clearly happening before our eyes. When people have no class consciousness, when they solely rely on their leaders for any change, and when they have no resistance to relying on the will of their ruling class - that’s when society is lost. Many people have just completely given up (or they never even put up a fight anyways) and are just hopeless and apolitical. They just think there is no hope for change, so they let the system take its course. Some people are a bit more proactive, so they think that elections and supporting the right candidate or party will solve the problem. But even though these people do want change, they still fall for the trap of the state, and without knowing end up contributing to the problem of the servile state of life.

I’m not saying I’m completely against voting. What I am saying is that relying on elections as a catalyst for social change is a complete distraction created by the ruling class. Sometimes voting may lessen the harm created by a more right wing candidate in the short term, but in the long run it will NEVER change anything. What this entire system has created is a society where people feel that they are completely at the whim of the state, and the only solution is somehow getting the right ruler for the state, or changing the state from within. And for others, they don’t even care about doing anything political at all, and they’re just apathetic to the state of the world because they see their own helplessness - though they don’t understand who or what created that helplessness in the first place.

I don’t distinguish here liberal from conservative, because not only are they both wrong, but also I see them both as reacting to the exact same things that leftists and communists react to. Working people of all political ideologies are all in the same boat actually, reacting to the exact same impressions.

What people really want is an end to the problems of their lives that have been created by hierarchies. They want health, they want a home to live in, they want security, they want a life for their children and their families, and they hate rent and inflation and everything else that makes life hard. And ultimately, I think everyone just wants freedom. But through all these constraints, they’ve been easily manipulated into supporting exactly what oppresses them in the first place.

Conservatives deep down actually want the same things we want. They just want a better life. But because of bigotry, they’ve completely lost their critical thinking, their respect for others, and their very own self respect. And liberals are closer to our way of thinking, in that they seem (at least seem) to have more empathy for wider society outside of their own closest interests. But they’re completely passive and ready to adapt to whatever new constraint the government will concoct to make our lives even worse, and many of them don’t see how they aren’t so “progressive” afterall, and will often end up siding with bigotry sooner than egalitarianism.

Both the conservatives and the liberals are servile: They’re ready to go back to work, turn a blind eye to injustice in society, and just wait for the next election to try to make things a bit better - from their perspective of what “better” is. Or they even hope to participate in the system of oppression, to climb up some ladder and benefit themselves either out of self interest, or not having even questioned why that would be a bad thing. They want to be cops and soldiers because they think that’s a good thing for society. And of course everyone is taught about getting richer some day. And none of these things can be questioned without fierce opposition - they’ll bend over backwards to defend all these concepts as if it were their own lives, and call any sort of criticism ridiculous. That’s how small the resistance is among the working class nowadays, and how tight the chains are over everyone's minds.

Now do you see why fascism has won? Because these people would easily bend the knee to a dictator, an absolute monarch, if that person was born tomorrow. There’s not much of a difference between many people sharing our stolen wealth and just one person or one gang having it all. The only difference is that in a democracy, at least there might be some hope of a push back against extremely draconian laws, and there will be periods with a bit of stability for the country. But at the end of the day, democracy will always turn into authoritarianism, and capitalism will always turn into fascism. All these politicians in a democracy are constantly fighting each other to win the whole prize for themselves, and once some group wins it’s the end of the game: Now they can do whatever they want with little opposition. As long as the common people don’t do anything at least.

My point is that though many fascists are completely evil, completely stupid, and many of them are truly bad people, the truth is that it’s not an overabundance of bad people that has created our current day. That’s the hopeless narrative liberals and some misguided leftists seem to want people to believe in. And conservatives of course deny there is any sort of fascism going on anyways. But the truth is that it is actually this servile society that the state has created, by bludgeoning everyone so harshly down into servitude, that naturally brought about fascism. People nowadays are hardly any different than medieval peasants in their way of thinking - nothing has changed over centuries of rule, despite the shift from monarchies to republics. And class consciousness hasn’t really grown since the 19th century, or it has regressed in places where revolutions formerly took place.

I think it’s right to say that the world has gone a bit insane, but it’s not because the number of crazy people has increased. Fascism slipped its way into the world both now and back then because of the sheer monotonous, boring, and oppressive lifestyle the hierarchies put in place. These same people who don’t question the abuses they see in their day to day lives, who are obsessed with their favorite candidate, who don’t want to hear about any political discussion and shut down criticisms of things that are considered commonplace, who just want their media to be apolitical and comforting, who think the world is going to end soon and just don’t care - these same people could easily kill each other if you just threw a gun into their hands. That’s why society has collectively let fascism win: Because slowly things that were horrible became acceptable, and now bit by bit freedom is taken away from workers and political dissidents.

The worker is so alienated from one another, that all they can see as the “light at the end of the tunnel” is a political leader (or even a corporation!) that will solve their problems, and because of this they don’t see themselves and their peers as active agents with any power. That’s why they think that voting is everything: Because to them that’s the only means of exerting any sort of will.

.

In this year there will be important elections in many places in the world. Where I live it’s not an election year yet, but it’ll come soon enough. And just like everyone else in the world, here we are confronted with two lovely options: The lesser evil neoliberal, and the fascist neoliberal.

Wherever you live, when those elections come, vote or don’t vote. Definitely don’t vote for the WORSE candidate, that is for sure, but I don’t think you are under an obligation to vote for the “good” one either. I do think sometimes voting can be useful if the other option is truly going to cause a lot of harm to people compared to the other. This is especially true for local elections, which are probably the most significant elections to actually participate in. I’ve voted in a local election before because the conservative candidate was running on an extremely bigoted anti-trans and anti-LGBT agenda. I’m glad I voted and that the liberal candidate won, because that gave this city some peace for a while and hopefully was a blow to the hype of the reactionary movement that might have thought it was winning ground here. This liberal candidate has also shut down some public services, hasn’t fulfilled many promises they made (that were already questionable since before the election anyways) and in general is a lot more talk than action. But it was either all of these same things and worse + a lot of bigotry, so I thought this was the better choice. In a case like this, voting seems to be useful. If there is an even better option, like say a leftist local candidate who has a chance of winning, then even better I think. But never be infatuated with someone who is trying to enter the system, because of the same problem I’ve been speaking of in this whole post. These people have gotten into power before, and they never fix anything. Definitely don't go doing "campaign work" for a candidate, because that's an absolute waste of time and energy.

What’s more important is to forget about elections. People in many places right now are frightened because they think their country is headed into fascism if the good liberal candidate doesn’t win - or conversely, the bad right wing candidate has already won where they live, and now they're angry that their preferred liberal didn’t win. But the truth is that whether the fascist neoliberal wins or not, fascism is here already, and a lot of things that are in place right now will only continue regardless of who is in power. So rather than relying on voting and panicking over coming elections, realize the state the world is already in, and get involved in political action now and not when it’s too late. Organize where you live, get involved with local groups, educate people, and protest. And in general, do what you can with what you have.

With fascism everywhere, now is the most important time to do everything we can for the fight against capitalism, and against all hierarchies. What society actually needs is a strong opposition to the power of the state, and not open collaboration with the systems in place. Workers themselves need to organize and stand as a barrier against state power, and once the state reacts to this growing movement, the workers cannot fall for concessions when they inevitably come along. That’s what’s happened in many social democracies which emerged by the strength of unions that historically once held some power, but ultimately failed to create true change because they gave up their more extreme demands and radicalism when social democratic parties won out and implemented a few preferable social policies. But these changes were small, never good enough, and inevitably all these countries have regressed to neoliberalism - and like everywhere else, fascism is also creeping its way in these places. Just look at Scandinavia now.

People need to see the state for what it truly is: Our enemy. We need to negotiate with it, and not beg and participate. And when negotiating with it, there should be no illusion that they have our good interests in mind, and there should be no satisfaction when all they offer is breadcrumbs. What people need to realize is that this state does not represent us, it represents them. It represents itself. This democracy is only representative in the sense that it represents capital. And so that’s why we need to create the force to pressure the government and not just accept whatever they give. This will only happen when people realize that the entire society rests on their shoulders and their hard work, and that if they organize they will be even more powerful than the state itself.

What I’m saying here of course is sort of a basic radical leftist idea, one that anarchists and communists have been saying since the beginning. But my point specifically is that organizing and creating class consciousness isn’t solely something that will hurt capitalism and benefit workers, but that it is actually direly necessary if we want to prevent the ultimate harm of fascism. It’s not just a “good” thing to create class consciousness and to organize - it is the most important thing. Fascism is the threat of what happens when people stay in their regular servile modes of life, because it is exactly this very servility which gives birth to fascism, and not extraordinary villains. The state itself is nothing more than a ticking clock waiting to turn into fascism, and that’s why the only solution is leveling its power through the power of the people.

In a way, you’ll see that this is not only ultimately what’s better, but also the less frightening and demoralizing way of viewing the world. Because things have already gone all wrong, so there’s no need to worry about them getting much worse just because a different name is in office. Rather, the worst thing is for people to continue staying blind.

Basically: The working class needs to create its own base of power to affect change, and not rely on the state. People nowadays are so reliant on the state, so reliant on begging for change from power from above, and so accepting of what the ruling class grants them, that it has inevitably created this current chaotic state in the world. And it will surely only stay this way as long as there is no class consciousness and active resistance.

I think about this video a lot. magic as a catalyst for political action really interest me and it's something I think the secular liberal American civic religion in particular fails at this spectacularly.

What kind of political magic would you like to see done more?

I'm so sorry it's taken me so long to take action. I'd be happy to add a new mod. Dm me if you're interested.

Since people are using this subreddit right now I just wanted to share my thoughts on anti-capitalist Pagan theology. Specifically the how I feel that Liber, Libera, and Ceres are connected to the Proletarian class.

In ancient Rome, there was a very significant event called the Secession of The Plebs. Essentially, Rome had two classes of citizen. Plebeian, and Patrician. Plebeians were the "common man" or "peasants", while Patricians were aristocracy. In the early days of the Republic, the wealth disparity between these groups was very large, and the Plebeians had far fewer rights than Patricians. They could not hold many public office positions, they had major debt burdens, and most of the land belonged to the Patricians. Furthermore, Plebeians were not even allowed to know the laws of Rome. But of course, they would still be punished for breaking them.

The rampant injustice and power imbalance in the city led the Plebeians to "secede" from Rome. They left the sacred boundary district of the city, and made camp on a hill. Leaving the Patricians to fend for themselves, to sweep their own streets, cook their own meals, farm their own grain, and defend their own walls. It was essentially the first general strike. The Plebeians refused to return to the city until changes were made to the laws. They would go on to do this five separate times in Rome's history, each time gaining more equal rights and privileges.

The concessions made to the Plebeians had several major benefits. One, the laws of Rome would be posted in a public forum for all to read. Two, a new office would be created, the Tribune of the Plebs, who would have political power to advocate for the interests of the Plebeians, and it would be an exclusively Plebeian office. And three, the Plebeians would be given the right to make their own state-funded temple and priesthood to worship distinctively Plebeian Gods.

And they did! They formed a triad of deities called the Aventine Triad. It was made up of Ceres, Goddess of grain and agriculture, Liber Pater, God of wine and freedom, and Libera, his consort or sister; a Goddess connected to liberation of slaves, patronage of freedmen, and the embodiment of Liberty itself.

Over time, as Rome became Hellenized, the Aventine Triad was reinterpreted around the cult of Demeter and Persephone. Libera became syncretized with Persephone under the name Proserpina, and Liber became syncretized with Dionysos, usually under the epithet "Bacchus". But these deities remained the Patron deities of the Plebeian people for centuries.

Now, obviously, the Plebeians and Patricians are gone, but interpreting these events through a dialectical materialist lens, the conflict between Plebeian and Patrician was simply on iteration of an endless class struggle. Seeing things in that light, I view Liber, Libera, and Ceres as the patron deities of the Proletarian class. Ceres represents the toil of the working class, and also the abundance that labor can produce. Liber Pater provides relief and freedom from the harsh realities of the world, and Libera is a patroness of freedom from oppression.

Constant spam of memes and such on EVERY single small leftist subreddit, to the point it even feels nauseating.

I know he might have problems, but dont let your insanity clog every other subreddit in existence.

Seeking names. I’m an eclectic Pagan and substitute teacher.

Before entering into the field of education I had been a solar panel sales person (MLM unfortunately), warehouse worker (back-breaking), food delivery driver (different kind of back pain), customer service representative (boring sleepy office job), and restaurant manager/server/bartender. The restaurant job was the best money I ever made but Ms. Rona killed that job in March 2020.

In education, I’ve been an ESL instructional aid, a teacher of business English at the adult level, and a substitute teacher across four school districts including over 20 K12 public schools in California.

I was late to work today, something bad hasn’t happened a whole lot since the shift to education, but which used to be a source of immense stress, when working in other industries are. I used to console myself and with the idea that labor for a capitalist is exploitative for various Marxist reasons. I cannot console myself as such in the field of education.

I seek to know a deity, of work, of labor, of duty, of job so that I might pledge myself to their domain, and seek their guidance and power in doing what I need to do for these teens and children.

What I wrote here ended up being obnoxiously long, so this post only has the beginning of the full text. It's long because I couldn't make my points without building up on previous important ideas which had to be kept in. You can read the actual whole thing on this google doc: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1kMXGX8zwUXKEjH_kMmZ8E-E7p8TkXAvHjeUYlR4HSXE/edit?usp=sharing

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“At the hour when he discovers the succession of generations, when he envisions the line of fathers and of mothers that had led up to him. He perceives then what commingling of individuals, what confluence of blood, has produced him, what round of begettings and births has called him forth. He senses in this immortality of the generations a community of blood, which he feels to be the antecedents of his I, its perseverance in the infinite past. To that is added the discovery, promoted by this awareness, that blood is a deep-rooted nurturing force within individual man; that the deepest layers of our being are determined by blood; that our innermost thinking and our will are colored by it. Now he finds that the world around him is the world of imprints and of influences, whereas blood is the realm of a substance capable of being imprinted and influenced, a substance absorbing and assimilating all into its own form. And he therefore senses that he belongs no longer to the community of those whose constant elements of experience he shares, but to the deeper-reaching community of those whose substance he shares.”

You might expect that this quote was found among the deranged ramblings of a neo-Nazi Folkist, buried away in some corner of the internet. Or maybe it’s from the poorly aged writings of a 19th century Austrian philosopher who was a proponent of Scientific Racism.

Well the latter is the correct answer. But what may come as a surprise is that this Austrian philosopher was not speaking of the Völkisch ideals that would later inspire the Nazis. Instead, this quote comes from the first chapter of the book On Judaism by Martin Buber, one of the most famous Israeli philosophers, and an important early proponent of Zionism. Here’s another quote later in the same chapter, which is essentially the conclusion to the earlier paragraph:

“Whoever, faced with the choice between environment and substance, decides for substance will henceforth have to be a Jew truly from within, to live as a Jew with all the contradiction, all the tragedy, and all the future promise of his blood.”

Later on in the book:

“But to comprehend the one thing that could bring about the change of which I am speaking, we must recall what this Judaism is whose renewal we desire. When we view it as a religion, we touch only the most obvious fact of its organizational form; we arrive at a deeper truth when we call it a nationality;”

Is it an accident that these words sound eerily similar to what you may have heard from a Folkist writer in the 19th century—and especially in the case of Martin Buber, who wanted to blend the religion of Judaism with the Zionist ideology—that it sounds like something a Neo-Pagan Folkist may believe in? Well, I'm going to argue that this is no coincidence, no accident - but rather a core feature.

And it's not a core feature only because they both seek the same thing—though certainly that's a great part of it—but even more than that, both ideologies originated in the exact same place and time, from the same social class with the same ideals. These two ideologies were born together, not by any mere coincidence.

“If His Majesty the Sultan were to give us Palestine, we could in return undertake to regulate the whole finances of Turkey. We should there form a portion of a rampart of Europe against Asia, an outpost of civilization as opposed to barbarism. We should as a neutral State remain in contact with all Europe, which would have to guarantee our existence.”

From Der Judenstaat by Theodor Herzl, the document that basically founded Zionism. If you think this was a one-off statement or just a product of its time since this was written in the late 1800's, then please keep reading, because I do not believe this to be the case at all. What Herzl said here, in this infamous book that has started these 75 years of war, still stands as the one true statement of this ideology.

“They knew that they would be their own descendants. For this reason they established families and estates for, by preparing for the future, they were actually providing for themselves. Therefore they exercised loyalty and maintained this loyalty to the death, for they knew what they were creating for themselves through this loyalty both in the primeval state [Urstand] and in the next incarnate life. Ultimately it is for this reason that they held women and marriage in such high, divine reverence and issued such strict laws against mixed marriages and bastardization, since they also recognized that the strength of the race was founded only on its unity and purity.

Dark times have come, but in spite of this we have not yet reached a twilight of the gods [Gotterdammerung] and even today we have no reason for doubt-filled pessimism, for the Wihinei of the Aryo-Germanics is too deep -- even if unconscious and latent -- rooted in every Aryo-Germanic soul and it awaits only the call to awaken which will and must catch fire in order to instill the flame of inspiration in the Aryo-Germanic sensibility”

From “Religion Of The Aryo-Germanic Folk” by Guido Von List. Did you even realize this wasn’t a Zionist quote until the whole “twilight of the gods” thing showed up?

I’m not saying that Zionism is like Folkism to just say “the bad thing in another religion is like the bad thing in ours.” For example, I don’t think Christian Fascism is similar or has the same roots as Folkism, and nor do I think the Islamic fundamentalism of ISIS or Al Qaeda is like Folkism. Those things have completely different histories and aspects to them. But when it comes to Zionism, I do not call it the “Folkism of Judaism” as an insult. I say it because it’s a fact.

One last time before I start, I want to say something which may be completely pointless but I'll say it anyway, and I'll keep saying it every time I ever bring this up. Many people will be so angry with my entire premise that they won't even read any of it. And this is actually funny, because in reality the only way of reading what I'm about to say is that I'm actually DEFENDING the name of Judaism right now. I'm defending Judaism against a terrible accusation - that it is synonymous with Zionism. Because anyone who realizes what this conflict is really about will know very well that the apparatus of the state of Israel is not a figurehead for the Jewish people in any way. To say otherwise, I believe, would be the greatest possible insult to them.

Actually, I respect a lot in Judaism, and I believe there is no other lesson to take from history other than that there should be friendship between Jews and Pagans. In the ancient past this was actually often the case, far more often than people think - aside from some bad things in the Bible, and a few Romans and Seleucids here and there. And for the past 2000 years we have both been the targets of Christians, oftentimes side by side. So I don’t see Paganism as being at odds with Judaism.

The Jewish philosophers and mystics made incredible insights, and so have Jewish people in general made great contributions to the culture of the world. And I revile, completely revile, any sort of conspiracy that says that there is a single cabal that rules the world behind the shadows. The reality is that Israel can only commit their crimes because they do so at the behest of infinitely more powerful countries in the West that are ruled not by Jews, but rather by Capitalist Christians. And they’re right in the open - none of them hide anywhere. It’s not Israel ruling the world: It’s Capitalism, and America is the figurehead of Capitalism. Israel completely relies on them. Not the other way around.

But I'm sure none of what I said even matters, because plenty of you would rather believe that Judaism has now killed, let me check my numbers here, because the numbers have already changed a couple times since I’ve been writing this: 4000 children, 17,000 people in total, and are killing even more as I currently write this. If that sounds better to you then be on your merry way.

(POLITICAL) FOLKISM AND (POLITICAL) ZIONISM

Zionism and Folkism are not religious movements - they are political ideologies. What I would say is that they are both sort of “pseudo-religious.” They get their followers under a state of mind that is very similar to that of a cult, and they imbue in them a ridiculous sense of self-importance. But still, they are both not inherently religious, and this is very important to understand. Because when people don't understand this, they start making very stupid claims about the whole subject.

It is under both of their wider tents that there exist religious communities, and these groups are the ones who endorse Religious Zionism and Religious Folkism—and for the part of Religious Folkism, as we will see in a bit, there is a remarkable quality of being able to bring several different religions under it’s one banner of imperialism, with the only exception I’d think to be Judaism. Zionism is the opposite, and I think there are only two religions which ever meaningfully identify with it: Judaism, but also Christianity.

These Religious communities may argue with the rest of the movement, but in the end they can all put their differences aside to defend the true purpose: Sustaining ethnic hegemony over a land.

When Capitalism is in peril, Nationalism is born. This ideology was a product of the uneasy European bourgeoisie of the 19th century, who lived uncomfortably between the lower classes and the old aristocracy. On one hand, they were frightened by workers who spoke about “seizing the means of production.” On the other hand, they had the old money families that thought that these up and coming Capitalists didn’t quite match up to them. The bourgeois class needed to change things towards their best interest.

There was an intersection of several ideas which had emerged within academia at the time: Theories of evolution—and its misappropriation as Social Darwinism—which led to Scientific Racism, studies in linguistics that were revealing the old language families of Europe, and an interest in folklore and the history of ancient pre-Christian Europe—seen in things such as the collection of fairy tales by the Brothers Grimm, and the new studies of the Eddas. All of these things, lit by the spark of the uneasy bourgeoisie, led to the creation of Nationalist movements across Europe, which saw themselves as an option between the old dying ways of the Aristocracy and the new ways of Communists.

Nationalism promised that a people's blood was tied to the land they lived on, and that certain people of one language and culture all descended from a mystical race in the past who had given the people their land. One of these ancient mystical races were the so-called “Aryans.” The hierarchy between rich and poor wasn't really relevant: Everyone was of one race, and the real problem were those who betrayed their race, and foreigners who didn't belong. This idea spread across all over continental Europe, and a bit to Britain too—though the situation there was historically different. In Germany, it emerged as German Nationalism.

The word Volk—which simply means “Folk” in German—used to have lower-class connotations which were undesirable to the German nobility of the past. But now in this age of German Nationalism, as the rich desperately needed the working class on their side, a movement emerged that sought to put a good spin on the idea of the Volk—though this movement certainly did not emerge among the “Volk” themselves, but rather their richer superiors. These bourgeois, with aspirations of replacing the aristocracy, were able to convince themselves and their followers that they all belonged to one same race and common cause. Afterall, we are all “Aryans” right? What’s the matter that I have an estate for all my descendants, while you work to death in the factories? This is a great way of mobilizing millions of people to your cause.

The Völkisch movement didn't offer workers and peasants any sort of material benefit - but it did celebrate their culture. Now, common festivals and songs that used to be considered "hickish" were being applauded by rich people. Old stories grandmother's told village children were given the prestige to sit alongside classics. And old abandoned ruins, that had long been considered useless, were now deemed to be "landmarks of heritage.” We’ll name poets and philosophers, who used to be just individuals, as “heroes of the nation.” One language was made the "official language" over a country that had several ways of speaking, to crush any sort of diversions. A flag was made to represent the “Volk” - and don't forget the national anthem. And let's build a lot of stupid modernist architecture for some reason.

The folk were not elevated in status - but they were elevated in culture.

One thing the early Völkisch movement also stressed was that some day a great leader would arrive to crush the Communists and the aristocrats—who basically played the part of being the "bad rich people," while the Nationalist bourgeois were the good rich people. This leader would bring back all the "traditions" and expel anything new and bad, and they would be the savior of their race. A strong man. A big man. A mustache man. This person was called the "Führer."

It's important to recognize that the original Völkisch movement was not really “Pagan” in any way, despite what many have claimed. Two things are true: The movement was intensely interested in ancient Germanic art and aesthetics. That is absolutely true - that was the “Germanicist” Romantic movement, and it was pretty central to the entire narrative. And It is also true that from this movement there emerged the earliest examples of modern people attempting to incorporate aspects of ancient Germanic religion into “ritualism” and occultism. But this was just a small group of eccentric types, spurred on by the alternative religious climate of the whole 19th century - which saw the birth of Spiritism, Theosophy and Thelema in Europe, Baha'i in Iran, Mormonism, Adventism and Jehovah’s Witnesses in America, and probably countless other examples across the world. Actually, this isn’t really ever discussed, but Freemasonry was the largest influence on the initiatory and hierarchical ideas of the Ariosophists and Odinists. Rosicrucian stuff also impacted them, and Theosophy might have played the biggest part of all in shaping their creed - which itself is a whole fucking can of racist shit from what I know.

The true original Folkism was mostly Christian, German Protestant Christian to be exact, and there was—and to a certain degree still is—such a thing as “Folkish Christianity,” which was called Positive Christianity during the Nazi regime. For those Folkists who were religious, it seemed that the obvious goal was to bring Christianity under a “Germanic” identity, by going back to the Protestant movement which had emerged in that land. Some proponents also claimed that Jesus was actually an Aryan. This movement also rejected Catholicism, and other Christian denominations which they deemed to be too problematic for whatever reason.

At the same time, German academia had also become very secular by the 19th century, and was basically Europe’s bastion of atheism in those days. It was there where Nietzsche lived after all. The Atheist and agnostic thus had their own interpretation of Folkism which could appeal to a more secular crowd. From this group, there were people interested in occultism and “Oriental Religions,” and so they went down a road of mixing alternative spiritualities with Folkism. Some of these went to their own interpretations of Hinduism and Buddhism, like one Savitri Devi (born Maximiani Julia Portaz) who apparently thought Hitler was an incarnation of Vishnu. (yes this is real). One could also suppose that the fascist movement in Japan that allied themselves so strongly with Nazism could be called a sort of "Buddhist Folkism," and one may even be so inspired as to call the modern Hindutva "Hindu Folkists."

But of course, one appealing suggestion was to revive the "Aryan" religion. These Atheists, who already disliked Christianity for very Nietzschean reasons, went so far as to call the religion a “Jewish religion.” They also imagined that the ancient Aryan religion was one of strong straight men who embodied entirely the ideal they wanted for the Völkisch society. This gave birth to a thing called "Ariosophy" and later "Odinism," and this in turn gave us our lovely neo-Folkist pals of the present.

What's interesting is how we can see that Folkism was able to bring so many people under their one big tent - they could put religious differences aside, all in the name of racism. Christians, Theosophists, Odinists and Ariosophists, Spiritualists, Buddhists, Hindus, hardcore Atheists and just people who didn't care about religion at all - everyone could be on the same game as long as they weren't Jewish.

The outcome of European Nationalism was the targeting of Jewish people as the enemy. Jewish Emancipation had arrived across Europe over the course of the 18th and 19th centuries—the walls of the old ghettos were torn down, and now Jews were (on paper) equal to their Gentile peers.

The Nationalist movements took this as a great opportunity to fashion their target. Jews had already been seen as the enemy of Christians for two thousand years, so it wasn’t hard at all to label them as the enemy once again, and as “Orientals” who did not belong with the Aryans—this is where the terms “Semitic” and “anti-Semitic” come from. Remember this concept, because I’ll bring it up again later on.

Folkists from the 1890s onward thought that there was a Jewish conspiracy at the heart of every single imaginable thing which they hated: Communism, immigration, feminism, disabled people, gay people, trans people, any queer people, bad weather. This hatred, which was just the latest stage of the centuries of Christian oppression of Jews, would later culminate into Nazism, when the defeat of Germany in the First World War and the Bolshevik Revolution were both added on to the conspiracy and blamed on a supposed international "Jewish cabal."

Faced by these conditions, a certain group of Jewish intellectuals in Western Europe envisioned the project of Zionism. As Theodor Herzl said himself in Der Judenstaat:

“Everything tends, in fact, to one and the same conclusion, which is clearly enunciated in that classic Berlin phrase: “Juden Raus!” (Out with the Jews!)”

What is Zionism? Zionism is not simply Jews emigrating away from Europe. And in the beginning, it wasn’t even about going to Palestine—other places had been proposed, like Africa and Argentina. I’ll speak more about this later.

Zionism isn’t just harmless immigration. It is instead the idea that Jews need to have an ethnic state for themselves. For the Zionists, anti-Semitism is simply a fact of the world that cannot be dealt with in anyway. People will always hate Jews, so there’s no reason in trying to solve the issue - the only solution is leaving Europe, and creating an ethnic colony somewhere else. This is a “solution” similar to what people who hated Jews had been wanting to do for a long time - the Nazis even tried to deport all Jewish people before deciding on the Holocaust. For most of the early Zionists, there was the added idea that all races are at odds with each other, and that races must be kept separate. The Zionists were eager to emulate the exact same nationalism seen in the Germans. They were just “looking out for their own people,” while the Folkists were looking out for theirs.

Again, this quote comes from Der Judenstaat:

“The creation of a new State is neither ridiculous nor impossible. We have in our day witnessed the process in connection with nations which were not largely members of the middle class, but poorer, less educated, and consequently weaker than ourselves. The Governments of all countries scourged by Anti-Semitism will be keenly interested in assisting us to obtain the sovereignty we want.”

This quote is an especially strange one, and has fueled all sorts of comments ever since. Theodor here seems to be implying the very truth that his plan is perfectly in line with what anti-semitic countries want: The expulsion of their Jewish population. The most obvious and damning example of this was the Haavara Agreement that the Zionist Federation Of Germany made with the Nazis in 1938. This Zionist group was the singular Jewish organization in the entire world that by this point still had affiliations with Nazi Germany, while the rest had all cut off ties many years before. Zionists now will certainly say that this was a necessary action to take. That’s how everything works for Zionists: The ends justify the means.

Outside of being a response to the Nationalism of Gentile Europeans, it was also equally the outcome of European Colonialism. The Zionists had the same colonial interests as the other European countries of their age. In their mind, they would create a colony in the same way as the other European nations. There were British colonies, Dutch colonies, French colonies, Portuguese colonies—even Scandinavia got in on all the fun, though this fact is often hidden these days. Within these colonial empires, certain minorities had been able to build their own ethnic colonies under the crown of their respective nations. This was the case for a few Scottish and Irish colonies that had existed in the Americas. And so this is what the British Empire imagined when it became the early benefactor of Zionism: A Jewish colony would be built by the British, either in Africa or the Orient.

One of the most important moments in the history of Zionism was the Balfour Declaration of 1917. With this one short paragraph, the British Empire promised to establish a “national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine, and thus set the grounds for the future of Israel. This document was not published in Arabic, so that the natives would take longer to find out about it—it took independent Palestinians who knew English to bring the news to their people in the following years.

Edwyn Samuel Montagu was the third Jewish person to ever have served in the British Cabinet, and the only one in government at the time of the Declaration. He was completely against Zionism, and had these words to say when hearing about the Declaration: “I wish to place on record my view that the policy of His Majesty’s Government is anti-Semitic and in result will prove a rallying ground for Anti-Semites in every country in the world. [...] It seems to be inconceivable that Zionism should be officially recognised by the British Government, and that Mr. Balfour should be authorized to say that Palestine was to be reconstituted as the "national home of the Jewish people". I do not know what this involves, but I assume that it means that Mahommedans and Christians are to make way for the Jews and that the Jews should be put in all positions of preference and should be peculiarly associated with Palestine in the same way that England is with the English or France with the French, that Turks and other Mahommedans in Palestine will be regarded as foreigners, just in the same way as Jews will hereafter be treated as foreigners in every country but Palestine.”

“I deny that Palestine is to-day associated with the Jews or properly to be regarded as a fit place for them to live in. The Ten Commandments were delivered to the Jews on Sinai. It is quite true that Palestine plays a large part in Jewish history, but so it does in modern Mahommendan history, and, after the time of the Jews, surely it plays a larger part than any other country in Christian history. The Temple may have been in Palestine, but so was the Sermon on the Mount and the Crucifixion. I would not deny to Jews in Palestine equal rights to colonisation with those who profess other religions, but a religious test of citizenship seems to me to be the only admitted by those who take a bigoted and narrow view of one particular epoch of the history of Palestine, and claim for the Jews a position to which they are not entitled.”

As we can see from these words, he was definitely aware of the existence of the native Palestinian population, and was worried about the implications of this new “home for the Jewish people.”

If you take some offense to me calling Israel a colonial state, then please read the words of its founders themselves. Because you surely have no idea what the original intentions for Israel were in the first place.

“Zionism is a colonizing adventure and therefore it stands or falls by the question of armed force. It is important to build, it is important to speak Hebrew, but, unfortunately, it is even more important to be able to shoot — or else I am through with playing at colonization. [...] Zionist colonisation must either stop, or else proceed regardless of the native population. Which means that it can proceed and develop only under the protection of a power that is independent of the native population – behind an iron wall, which the native population cannot breach."

This wonderful quote comes from the 1923 book The Iron Wall, written by Ze'ev Jabotinsky (born Vladimir Jabotinsky) who was one of the main architects for the military ethos of the later state of Israel, and also the founder of the Irgun - an underground militia that existed in Mandatory Palestine and which superseded the earlier Haganah. These two groups were formed while the British still owned Palestine, and participated in several early killings and intimidations of the native population. Their members later constituted the first army of Israel, and as such they are honored as heroes by most Zionists. Fun fact about Ze’ev: He took a lot of inspiration from Mussolini’s fascism of the same era, and even suggested allying with them instead of Britain. He also once said:

“If you wish to colonize a land in which people are already living, you must provide a garrison for the land, or find some rich man or benefactor who will provide a garrison on your behalf.”

This passage alludes to the early purchasing of land and the expulsion of the fellahin from the countryside, in what was first Ottoman Syria and later Mandatory Palestine. One organization that helped finance this goal was the Jewish National Fund, which still to this day funds illegal settlements in the West Bank. Menachem Usishkin was their chairman during the 1920s and 30s, and was one of the first Zionists to strongly suggest Palestine as an option for colonization after he visited the country in the early 1900s. He was not particularly religious, as far as I know. He once said:

“What we can demand today is that all Transjordan be included in the Land of Israel. . . on condition that Transjordan would either be made available for Jewish colonization or for the resettlement of those [Palestinian] Arabs, whose lands [in Palestine] we would purchase. Against this, the most conscientious person could not argue . . . Now the [Palestinian] Arabs do not want us because we want to be the rulers. I will fight for this. I will make sure that we will be the landlords of this land . . . . because this country belongs to us not to them . . . “

The argument about whether Israel is a colonial state is not between the anti-Zionist and the Zionist. It’s between the liberal Zionist and the extremist Zionist - or at least someone who knows their history vs one who does not.

All original sources on the founding of Israel mention in perfectly clear terms the word “colony” because in those times there was no shame in doing this. The “National Bank” of Israel, though now mostly in private hands apparently, was originally called the “Jewish Colonial Trust” when it was first started in 1902. Since then and until now, this bank has been directly involved in financing the illegal settlements of the West Bank. Another organization existed called the Jewish Colonisation Association, which is now known as the Jewish Charitable Association. Early on in the Zionist movement, Theodor Herzl had proposed that there should be a company to operate their business in Palestine on the same lines as the British East India Company or the Hudson’s Bay Company, and that it would be called the “Jewish Chartered Company.” This just didn't happen because they couldn't find enough funding to get it started.

“If I were an Arab leader, I would never sign an agreement with Israel. It is normal; we have taken their country. It is true God promised it to us, but how could that interest them? Our God is not theirs. There has been Anti-Semitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They see but one thing: we have come and we have stolen their country. Why would they accept that?”

A quote from David Ben-Gurion, the first Prime Minister of Israel. (Quoted by Nahum Goldmann in Le Paraddoxe Juif, pp. 121).

“Let us not ignore the truth among ourselves … politically we are the aggressors and they defend themselves… The country is theirs, because they inhabit it, whereas we want to come here and settle down, and in their view we want to take away from them their country. … Behind the terrorism [by the Arabs] is a movement, which though primitive is not devoid of idealism and self sacrifice.”

Another quote from David Ben Gurion. (Quoted on pp. 91-2 of Chomsky’s Fateful Triangle, which appears in Simha Flapan’s Zionism and the Palestinians pp. 141-2 citing a 1938 speech.)

He said this, while also committing the Nakba: The great expulsion of 700,000 Palestinians, and the massacre of countless others—the event which founded the state of Israel.

The argument of Zionist colonialism is between the liberal, who wishes to whitewash the issue and make it sound nicer than it all truly is - and the conservative, who recognizes very well this colonialism, and instead tries to justify it somehow.

ZIONISM EMERGED IN THE SAME ENVIRONMENT AS FOLKISM

Zionism was far from the only response by Jewish people to the issue of Folkism and European Nationalism. The oldest opposition to Zionism actually came from other Jews, and especially those who were deeply religious. (I'll speak more about this later). In fact—and I must stress this fact—the origin of Zionism lay in the exact same social class in which Folkism was born: The bourgeoisie, and not among the “Volk” themselves, whether they be Jewish or Christian.

The early Zionist movement can’t be thought of as something unique that emerged in a vacuum from Christian Europe. It was an intellectual movement that began among upper class academics in the West, who were dissatisfied with most of the same things that Folkists were dissatisfied with. In fact, they were both looking at the exact same problem from two different sides: The “Jewish Question” - the real name given at the time to the question of what should be the fate of the newly emancipated Jewish people.

Among those on the receiving end of Nationalist and Folkist hatred, the Zionists came in as just one of several responses. Zionists thought of themselves as savior figures for both the rich and the impoverished Jewish people of the world. But despite the deep and revolting anti-semitism of the time, that didn’t mean that these educated Jewish bourgeois studied and lived in a wholly separate world from those same people who wanted to kill them.

Think about the fact that they went to the same colleges, were bumping into the same types of people, and reading the same philosophers and political theorists. They had the same understanding of the world: The view of the 19th century European bourgeoisie, who walked a fine line between liberalism and fascism. They viewed the entire world through the lens of Europe, and they put the “West” on a pedestal above everything else. And this would certainly play a massive role in the situation we now see - because they did not view the native Arabs as people worthy of any consideration. This was the same view held by all European Imperialists about the whole rest of the world outside of their continent.

From Theodor Herzl’s article on Wikipedia:

“In his youth, Herzl was aspired to follow the footsteps of Ferdinand de Lesseps*, builder of the* Suez Canal*, but did not succeed in the sciences and instead developed a growing enthusiasm for poetry and humanities. This passion later developed into a successful career in journalism and a less-celebrated pursuit of playwrighting.* According to Amos Elon*,* as a young man, Herzl was an ardent Germanophile who saw the Germans as the best Kulturvolk (cultured people) in Central Europe and embraced the German ideal of Bildung, whereby reading great works of literature by Goethe and Shakespeare could allow one to appreciate the beautiful things in life and thus become a morally better person (the Bildung theory tended to equate beauty with goodness). Herzl believed that through Bildung Hungarian Jews such as himself could shake off their "shameful Jewish characteristics" caused by long centuries of impoverishment and oppression, and become civilized Central Europeans, a true Kulturvolk along the German lines.”

As we can see here, in his earlier days he was all in on what was at the time fairly standard German ideas of what it meant to be “cultured.” Even though he later became prouder of his Jewish identity, do you really think this sort of attitude of intellectual superiority ever completely left? This is just a small thing, but it shows how the education received by the Zionists was the same as the Folkists.

For the conservative European, the problems of society would be won through militarism, a return to tradition—though that “tradition” is whatever the ideologue finds useful at any given moment—and certainly the destruction of whatever enemies stand in the way of their goal. This is the Folkish and later Nazi approach, and everyone knows who they blamed as the enemies of society. But since the people who formed the ideology of Zionism belonged to this very same circle of intellectuals, it shouldn’t be surprising that they held similar ideas about how they would build their own nation-state.

“Everything tends, in fact, to one and the same conclusion, which is clearly enunciated in that classic Berlin phrase: “Juden Raus!” (Out with the Jews!)”

I think it’s funny that Herzl said this in Der Judenstaat, just to prove this terrible point. The Folkists said “Out with the Jews!” and the Zionists answered “Sure thing!” While those who tried to make things better in their homeland, or those who tried to just immigrate without colonizing a land, were deemed by Herzl to be Mauschel: "No true Jew can be an anti-Zionist; only Mauschel is one."

What does “Mauschel” mean? It’s an old German slur towards Jews, which corresponds to those types of words you can imagine from English. Herzl clarified what the word meant to him:

“Who is this Mauschel, anyway? A type, my dear friends, a figure that keeps reappearing over the ages, the hideous companion of the Jew and so inseparable from him that the two have always been confused with each other. [...] These irreconcilable, inexplicable antitheses make it seem as though at some dark moment in our history some inferior human material got into our unfortunate people and blended with it. [...] Strong nations are judged by their best sons; the weak, by their worst. The Germans are a nation of poets and thinkers, because they have produced Goethe, Schiller and Kant. The French are brave and brilliant, because they brought forth Bayard and Duguesclin, Montaigne, Voltaire and Rousseau. We, on the other hand, are viewed as a nation of hagglers and crooks.”

“In our own day, even a flight from religion can no longer rid the Jew of Mauschel.* Race is now the issue - as if the Jew and the Mauschel belonged to the same race! But go and prove that to the antiSemite. To him, the two are always and inextricably linked. [...] Then came Zionism, and both Jew and Mauschel had to take a stand on this question. [...] We'll breathe more easily, having got rid once and for all of these people whom, with furtive shame, we were obliged to treat as our fellow tribesmen. [...] Mauschel, watch out! Zionism might proceed like Wilhelm Tell did in the legend. When Tell prepared to shoot the apple from his son’s head, he had a second arrow in reserve. Should the first shot miss, the second will serve the cause of vengeance. Friends, the second arrow of Zionism is meant for Mauschel’s chest!”

And that's all I can write here! I made a whole google doc (though its more like a very long essay at this point) about all the parallels that can be made between Zionism and Folkism. After this part, it continues on the section "Jewish Opposition To Zionism" where I talk about how Jewish people, especially the religious community, have historically opposed Zionism, and how the movement was originally very unpopular.

Since Christmas is based on a pagan holiday I googled its origin and found out it was called Julfest/Jolfest and basically celebrated the sun. But I also found out that the Nazis tried to reestablish the Julfest to get rid of Christianity in Germany and some extremist groups still try to establish it. So I got a bad feeling about it and it kinda ruined it for me.

So my question how do you handle this connection? I don’t want to look like a Nazi.