|
See
also: Hitler-Buddha-Krishna
– Presentation
Book review by Prof. Manuel Sarkisyanz
Hitler, Buddha, Krishna
An unholy alliance from the
Third Reich until the present day
(Victor
and Victoria Trimondi, HITLER, BUDDHA, KRISHNA, EINE UNHEILIGE ALLIANZ VOM
DRITTEN REICH BIS HEUTE, Wien, Ueberreuter, 2002)
This book can be considered as marking an
epoch in the intellectual history of cross-cultural links of Neo-Fascism.
It deals chiefly with Himmler, Tantric "Buddhism" and Krishna, a "blockbuster" surpassing in
geo-cultural scope by far previous continental books about
"aryosophic" esoterics. (1)
In discussions about "political
religion" of "National Socialists" their notions about India's "primeval Aryan wisdom" had
not yet received sufficient attention of historians. These were supposedly
"archaic" esoterics within SS occultism of the so-called
Ancestral Heritage "Ahnenerbe") - a particular concern not so
much for Hitler (who pragmatically preferred to follow English models (2)
but very much for Heinrich Himmler who headed the SS: In contrast to the "Semitic"
associations of Christianity, a primeval "Aryan" religion was to
be "more appropriate to Germanic nature". Thus Himmler's
"Ahnenerbe", the central institution for systematic construction
of an "Aryan" faith, apparently was meant to receive its "SS-Vatican"
in the castle Wewelsburg, Westphalia (p.1 00).
An intellectual father of it became the
Dutch philologist Herman Wirth (18851981). Having initiated, in 1919, the
"National Socialist" movement in the Netherlands, he propagated ever since 1920 the
Germanic-"Aryan" Swastika. Insisting that the Aryans descended
from the polar "Hyperboreans" (who had allegedly inhabited first
the lost Continent of Atlantis and then the Nordic Thule,
("aryosophic" and supposedly Runic notions, inherited from the
Theosophy of Elena Blavatska), Wirth maintained that the primordial wisdom
from Atlantis had been preserved (by the "Mahatmas") in Buddhist
Tibet. Such Theosophy was combined even further with Nordic mythology from
the Edda (and with "Runic wisdom") by Rudolf Gorsleben
(1883-1930) - to the effect that in Tibet was to have been preserved
something of the occult abilities to dominate nature, abilities once
in the possession of the Arctic "primordial race" (Urrasse) of
Aryans. And this became gospel truth for the occultist faction of Himmler's
SS-"Ancestral Heritage". In particular the
SS-"Sturmbannführer" Karl Maria Wiligut (1866-1946), an
Austro-Hungarian colonel (locked up in a psychiatric clinic in 1924-1927),
had - under the pseudonym of "Weisthor", that is "Wise
[Nordic God] Thor", - influenced Himmler to believe that the refuge of
Aryans from "northernmost Thule", with parapsychological
medium-life "memories" about their inheritance was to be sought
-below the earth- in Buddhist Tibet. Thus, to "early Buddhism"
were attributed particularly "Aryan qualities" (p. 1 00, 90).
Nevertheless, it came to be doubted that Buddha's ethos of self-renunciation
could possibly be considered "Aryan". Accordingly, Buddhism was
assumed to be a degeneration of the genuinely Aryan Vedic religion of
Power. Meanwhile the warlike Vedic Aryans had become the pride of certain
anti-British Indian nationalists - after British images of subjugated
Indians had attributed to them effeminate qualities and pragmatically
irrelevant otherworldliness.
Because of pragmatically obvious
successes, far greater prestige than India had in Himmler's Germany triumphant Japan of the Samurai with their Bushido ethos.
(In private Hitler counted the Japanese among the ‘lacquered half monkeys
who want to feel the knout’. [3]) And victorious Japanese militarism had
instrumentalized a particular Zen school of meditation to drill devaluation
of life, discipline, will power and the suppression of emotions. (This went
much further than the British models for strenghtening the will power
-admiration for which had a much longer history in Germany (4) Thus Himmler himself recommended the
model of Japan's Samurais to his SS, the "Samurais
of Hitler", the elite of the elites, swayed by lower middle-Class
upward mobility. (And the children of Germany's post-war Economic Miracle
there were - still in 2000- recommended "the Road of the Samurai"
for professional and private "success": pp. 194-195).
It had been the Count Karl Friedrich
Dürkheim (no stranger to killing a family of squirrels for pure joy) who
contributed Zen "Buddhist" ethics to make contempt for life and
death in Hitler's Germany intellectually respectable. Japanese
models of sacralization of power through Shinto mythology impressed Karl
Haushofer, the mentor of Hitler's deputy Rudolf Hess.
However, for practical purposes, there
sufficed the Lutheran notion that all governing authorities
("Obrigkeit") came from God... It was in spite of this that SS
Chief Himmler promised to get rid of Christianity ("We must finish
with Christianity. This great plague..., which has weakened us for every
conflict.” [5]) But Nietzsche's declaring that "God is dead" was
not enough: Alternatives to the Christian religion, so "alien to the
Nordic race", were required to give notions inculcated into the SS a
metaphysical foundation:
A sacralization of the warrior caste's
duties was expected from the caste ethos of the Bhagavad Gita, the
sacralization of race purity through the Brahmanic Code of Manu. For this
the rational findings of Indology were put "into the service of the
irrational" (p. 524), indological findings of seriously qualified
specialists into the service of Himmler to elaborate an esoteric mythology
for his SS. Thus Wilhelm Wüst (1901-1993), prominent in the philology of
Indoeuropean languages, became Curator in Himmler's "Ahnenerbe"
("Ancestral Heritage") after 1936, 1939 SS-Standartenführer
(Lieutenant Colonel) and the man of confidence of the SS Intelligence
Service (SO) at the University of Munich -in 1941 its Rector. His kind of
indologists made essential contributions to the "Aryan religion"
of the SS as the central Order of Warriors, acting as if the Aryan faith
were both inherited and constructable (“machbar”). It was to provide
cosmogonic bases for Leadership through archetypes of Vedic gods like Indra
and Varuna.
Consistently with this, Himmler's
expedition to Tibet (in 1938/9) was interested more in its
pre-Buddhist religion (Bon) than in Tibetan Buddhism. It sought proofs that
Tibet once sheltered a high "Aryan" culture
and that its Lamas were administering something of primeval Aryan wisdom
(p. 158). Nordic remnants, supposedly going back to "Thule" of the mythic North, to the
Hyperboreans and the "Continent" of Atlantis, were looked for in Tibet by Himmler's men. And yet this SS
("Ancestral Heritage") expedition to Lhasa was directed by the qualified
Tibetologist Ernst Schäfer (1910-1992) - who had previously participated in
an American Tibet expedition. He too was impressed by the four Swastika
ornaments on the throne of Tibet's Regent Reting Rimpoche. Impressive for
the SS expedition was Tibetan furniture made from parts of human bodies,
particularly bones (p. 152f. : Skulls and skin from the corpses of
Concentration Camp prisoners of the SS were subsequently made into
"gift articles" [Geschenkartikel].) Buddhist reminders of the
impermanence of all life, of the world of Suffering to be overcome by
non-attachment, were "understood" (that is misunderstood) to suit
a "morality" for the Survival of the Fittest, to suit the will to
create a world where the weak would have no right to survive. Thus
the SS race specialist Bruno Beger was deeply impressed by the Tibetan
procedure of cutting dead bodies into pieces for birds' prey, "one of
the most impressive experiences in Tibet's mysterious capital". (Later Beger
organized a collection of skeletons of extermination Camp victims from Auschwitz, Central Asian Red Army prisoners of war.
For participating in at least 86 murders he was sentenced to just three
years -and that not before 1971 p.135f). What Hitler stopped was Himmler's
plan to use the Tibetans -after the model of Lawrence of Arabia - for a
military attack on British India (p.122). His decision resulted from insight into the impracticality
of this (and from his admiration for the British Master Race).
Hitler was obviously not impressed by
alleged military potentialities of occult abilities to dominate nature -
allegedly preserved in Tibet - nor by the "polar powers
centred there". This, precisely this, came to be believed, in Neo-Nazi
literature, just after Hitler's "right of the stronger" turned
out to be an illusion of the weaker. Such Fascism -which according to the
Law of the Survival of the Fittest had lost all rights to survive- did
survive by virtue of esoteric mvthology, a consolation for failure
of biology (of social Darwinism).
Thus Baron Giulio Evola (1898-1974) did
derive from the Vishnuite Bhagavad Gita a sacralization of Sadism in terms
of the divine will of destruction of everything mortal, the Endlessness of
the Divine meaning the perennial destruction of everything temporal: Thus
the sacralized sadism of the Kshatrya warrior celebrates the Blood
Sacrifice of Life -transcending the mere perversions of "profane"
sadism. Accordingly, Murder becomes a holy sacrifice (246). Evola's
publications of 1953 and 1961 made him the chief "philosophical
authority", the Guru of today's Black Order of spiritual fascism
(257), of the New Elite proclaiming anew more than merely Hitler's New
Order: It is more explicit about the destruction of modern society.
Evola was calling for precisely this ever since his main work, "The
Revolt against Modernity" of 1935. Nevertheless, in spite of this
admiration for the 55, the Kshatrya Warrior Order, he is but rarely
mentioned in its literature of the 55 although he did influence its
self-image (particularly the "Ancestral Heritage" of the
"Grail Mystery" of the Templars). Better known is his influence
on Fascism's "afterthought", the Italian race legislation since
1937.
Evola's "L'Uome come Potenza"
("The Male as Might") is a glorification of power generated
through sexual energy, following models of Indian Tantric cults, associated
particularly with the Female Energy (Shakti) of Shiva Rudra and Kali,
Indian deities of destruction and regeneration. Among Evola's
"applications" of them was killing – sacrificing - the Female
(the female principle comprising both Compassion and Bolshevism...) -as its
energy is to strenghten the Male, the Aryan Masculinity (p.234) which
accumulates its own power by sacrificing the "Other".
These notions Evola derived from the
Vajrayâna School of Tantric Buddhism. And with concepts from Tantric texts
concludes his most influential work: The concept of Shambhala, symbolized
by the Swastika pointing to, a center of Hyperborean traditions "of
Aryan origins." Images of this mythic realm derive from the Tantric
Kalachakra tradition. Its main texts have been made accessible in the
post-war period, also by Jean Marquès Rivière, a French Sankritist,
specialized in police persecution of secret societies, Masons and Jews in
the semi-Fascist France of 1941-1944.
Of more popular influence in Latin
esoteric post-war Fascism was the Chilean Miguel Serrano (born in 1917):
Since 1938 he joined Chile "National Socialists" - and
subsequently became their Fuehrer (after experiences as Chile's ambassador
in India and in Communist Balkan states). In 1978, under the dictatorship
of Pinochet, appeared his book "Hitler esotérico" -and, in 1982,
"Hitler el último Avatar", then, in 1991, "Manu por el
hombre que vendrá". These he called expressions of "esoteric
Hitlerism". To Serrano is attributed the culmination of SS-mysticism.
He assimilated most notions from Himmler's Ancestral Heritage and the
writings of Evola. Serrano's books are reported to circulate now among Skin
Heads, Satanists, and Nazi Metal Music fans. Hitler's birth in 1889 meant
for him the beginning of a new Era (p. 425); Hitler was for him more than
only a Superman but the Nordic god Wotan and also Kalki, the last
incarnation of Vishnu - and the "Manu of the Future". For, as an
archetype, according to Serrano, Hitler could not possibly die - and was
carried away on an "UFO" (Unidentified Flying Object) to "Shambhala"
(where reside his God-Men: pp. 436, 438). Behind what this Chilean Nazi
offered is essentially Tantric instruction (p. 493). Indeed, he was, - like
Evola and Marquès-Rivière - practicing Tantric rituals. And Tantrism meant
for Serrano the main "wisdom" of the Hyperborean (Polar Nordic)
Warrior Caste. Following Tantric "ethics" he supposed the deeds
of the SS to be "beyond Good and Evil" -justifying the
extermination of "Lower races" as fulfilment of "cosmic
laws" .(Not effect but motivation matters in Tantrism - the motivation
of most terrible deeds in it can be "Enlightenment" -which is
potential Power (5A.) And the will to (absolute) Power of the
"Aryan" is -according to Serrano too- generated by erotic
vitalism. In fact, Tantric sex magic is considered to be the
"mystical center" of Serrano's fascism (p. 441) - including the Tantric
sacrifice of the Female: Woman was to be killed (at least
"symbolically": p.442). In the Tantric context killing may result
to be "unreal". (About the seeming "unreality" of modem
racial genocide on the Black Continental Hannah Arendt noted: "Native
life anyhow looked a <mere play of shadows>, so that when European
men massacred them [these shadows, the natives], they somehow were not
aware that they committed murder.) (5a)
And the living woman Serrano venerated he
associated with the Nordic god Odin. She was Savitri Devi (Maximiliani
Portas, daughter of an Englishman, born in France in 1905), venerated in
the international Nazi subculture as Hitler's high priestess,
"Prophetess of Aryan Revival". She had evolved from Greater
Greece - through Theosophy - to the race cult of the "genuinely
Aryan", that is to the "only surviving Aryan culture":
Brahmanic India. There the Brahman Srimat Swami Satyananda, President of the
Hindu Mission of Calcutta, revealed to her that Hitler would become the
next incarnation of Vishnu. Similarly, the Pandit Rajawade of Poona
identified Hitler with the Chakravartin of the Vishnu Purana scripture,
destined to rule the world, the god Vishnu previously incarnated in Krishna. And Krishna Mukherji married Savitri
Devi. He recognized the Kshatrya tradition of the Indian epic Mahabharata
in the militancy of Hitler's Germany. Upon its collapse of 1945, Savitri Devi
called upon Kali, the Goddess of Destruction, to destroy those who
destroyed Nazi Germany (p. 346f). To this "priestess of Hitler"
the hymns to Kali's fearsome consort Shiva, the male divinity of
"creative destruction" I merged as a "Mantra" with
"Heil Hitler" (pp. 347, 349): For Hitler was to become the coming
Kalki (pp. 351, 358), destroyer of those who caused the degeneration of the
World Age. And, in 1958, Savitri Devi came to attribute the sacralization
of the extermination of Jews to the Bhagavad Gita (p. 356) -years after Austria's Lanz von Liebenfels, "the man who
gave the ideas to Hitler", demanded that the Jews become a human
sacrifice (p.334).
From occultism derived such
"Aryosophic" predecessors of Nazism as the Thule Society of the
Bavarian capital. And towards the Occult tends what survives of SS-mythology.
The crisis of world economy promoted Nazism from obscurity into mass
politics. And the prosperity that followed its military collapse pushed it
back into obscurity of present day SS occultism.
Post-war SS mysticism of the Evolas and the
Serranos derives its "Aryanism" more from Indian and Tibetan than
from Teutonic sources. In the wake of the French Revolution the appeal to
the Germanic (that is pre-medieval) past had been directed against
the absolutist restoration -and the encouragement of Indologv, of
studies about the wisdom of the Brahmans, served against Democracy.
For mass consumption, Hitler pretended to defend the Occident against the
onslaught of the Asiatics. After this military "defence of the
Occident" collapsed, what survived of the SS-Ancestral Heritage took
refuge in the Occult, increasingly borrowed from Southern Asia: Present day esoteric Hitlerism is
Tantric (p. 441). After Hitler -as if by "meta-electric" energy-,
having excluded the left, included Austria, switched on all the mass media,
isolated Germany, ranged the whole of Europe into maximal tension, and
finally brought: about his short circuit (5 B), he was made to mutate into
an archetype of something like divine energy. Hitler has been converted
esoterically into a myth, to be rooted in the transcendental - beyond all
History. And up to the present day such esoteric Hitlerism is reported to
grow (p. 526). In its subculture the SS is symbolized by the Black Sun.
And its Sieg Heil ("Hail Victory"), after ending in defeat, was
projected into becoming the chief Mantra of occult Power (p. 399, 411, 442)
of the Black Sun, symbolizing the end of the World in the Nordic Edda,
converted into the Solar Power of the "New Age".
At present, in the mysticism of the
traditionally necrophile SS -with its Skull emblem, associated with
mountains of corpses- are venerated the icons of Violence and Death. Some
of the Rock music groups in this international subculture of Neo-Fascism
have CD of 100,000 copies. And among their titles are: "Born in order
to hate"; "Gospel of Inhumanity". Some of their bands are
named "Spear of Longinus" [killer of Christ] and "Blood
Axis", something of Satanism evolving into Pop culture, into the Rock
music of Skin Heads (p. 451). According to Goodrick-Clarke, the Neo-Nazi
Satanists and their Heavy Metal Rock groups among the Skin Heads in Europe and America are associated with "Kshatrya"
notions about "Aryan" India's warriors. The song "Hitler as
Kalki [future incarnation of the god Vishnu]" was created by the
composer and rock music star known as "David Tibet": He calls
himself "sympathizer of the Devil" in the context of Tantric
"Buddhism" (p. 451f). In the Satanist literature the Nordic
"Thule" and the SS Ancestral Heritage have
become metaphors of the Underworld -with Heinrich Himmler as a Satanist
adept. (A political joke from the Third Reich prophesied that-after its
final victory- Himmler would become Underworld Marshall when Goering, the
Reich’s Marshall, shall have been promoted to world
Marshal.) According to Trimondi, even in purely Satanist circles have been
absorbed ideas of the Fascist myth makers, of Evola, Miguel Serrano and
Savitri Devi. After all, the place of Satan came since more than two
centuries to be occupied by nefarious secret societies. And the book
"Secret Societies and their Might in the 20th Century" by Jan van
Helsing , appearing in 1993, was banned in Germany within three years -
under a law against inciting the public ("Volksverhetzung").
However, in 1998 he published "The Mysteries of the Black Sun".
Thus, mainly through him Esoterics have become "the most important
route of penetration for extreme rightist cosmovision" (p. 398).
Thus the claim that the Third Reich had
been conceived by German Templar Knights - as well as by Tibetan lamas - is
no longer news. News is that the "gasoline" for the Neo-Nazis
UFO's (Unidentified Flying Objects) shall henceforth consist of
"Vril" [Virile?] Energy. Indeed, "Vril" is meant to be
the "Metaphysical Gasoline" from the Atlantis, the lost
Continent, particularly for the UFO's from a "National Socialist"
engineering firm...: All this according to Wilhelm Landig's creation,
titled "Idols against Thule, a novel full of reality". His Thule
Trilogy (from the Vienna of 1971, 1980 and 1991) elaborated
notions of Elena Blavatska and of Evola. It is considered a mixture of
science fiction, pseudo-scholarly monograph and "National
Socialist" history on a mythical pattern (p. 392f). In contrast, more
recent publications of SS mysticism are indebted more directly to Tibetan
Tantric notions (pp. 402f). "Notions about Might and Supermanhood
(Maha Sidha) from Tantric Buddhism... could supply attractive doctrines for
a world wide <Kshatrya> culture. sacralized techniques... to convert
a soldier into a <holy killing machine>. This is why the SS Ancestral
Heritage and surviving "SS mysticism" attempt to give themselves
points of support in Tantric notions (p. 531). It is Tantrism that had been
called -by its English advocate- "The way to Power'.
Particularly in regard to such present day
SS esoterics the Trimondi's brilliant book has unusual scope. It takes the
place of an entire library. Its bibliography alone would be worth the price
of the book. To read it is a genuine intellectual experience. The authors make
rich use of Tantric texts of the Kâlachakra School.
Yet, it has to be reminded that the
Kâlachakra System remains marginal even in Tibetan Lamaism -just as Lamaism
remains marginal in the Buddhist world as a whole. Helmut Hoffmann
(otherwise cited in the book) has pointed out Tibetan historical resistance
against Tantrism; the rise of Tibet's dominant "Yellow Church" did involve reactions against it.
Hoffman had called attention to Iranian dualist -that is non-Buddhist-
origins of precisely the Kâlachakra. (6) Although the authors rightly point
out the primacy of compassion in the social ethics of Buddhism and
themselves mention that "the Kâlachakra Tantra is in sharp
contradiction to the originally pacifist tradition of Buddhism" (p.
513), they generalize from the Tantric Kâlachakra about Buddhism as a whole
(p. 254). Thus in the heading "Buddhism as a doctrine of Power"
(p. 254) -as well as in the reference to militarist Buddhism -by
"Buddhism" is meant its Tantric degeneration. Unfortunately,
Volker Zotz's (author of a book about Buddhism in German culture)
attribution of "amorality" to Buddhism "from its very
beginnings" is repeated uncritically (pp. 456ff), particularly in the
unfortunate subtitle "Foundations of Buddhist thought and the ideology
of National Socialism" (p. 454).
Thus the main problem with the book is its
attempt to characterize Buddhism as a whole - its conclusions from
particularities of SS mystery literature to generalities about Tibetan
culture. In reality, the qualities attributed by "National
Socialist" thinkers to Buddhism are no basis for its characterization
-no matter how convincing points of departure Fascism finds in Tantric
phenomena of Buddhism's decline. In fact, the Kâlachakra similarities to
esoteric Fascism (p. 463) came about by Fascist imitations of
Tantric categories of Vitalism and Power - which in themselves had been
inherent in Nazi sentiment (not without impacts from Bavarian
folk-vitalism). Even the famous [Fascist] Tibetologist's, Tucci's
rhapsodies about "heroic Buddhism" (p. 193) cannot be accepted
uncritically -just as War Sermons (usually on the text of Christ bringing
not Peace but the Sword) could never characterize Christianity as a whole.
(Logically Fascists have rejected its message while emulating its institution:
the Church with its Hierarchy and Discipline.) Obviously the SS's-film
about its expedition to the Dalai Lama's realm (pp. 155f) showed only what
its chief desired to be seen -just as the exiled 14th Dalai Lama's Buddhist
messages to the democratic world leave out what has been undemocratic in
Lamaism. T 0 such present day uncritically unilateral images of exclusively
humanitarian and pacifist Tibet this book is a most healthy corrective.
Thus the authors point out that a public discussion about the Buddhist
Tantrism of Tibet by the Dalai Lama would prevent its misuse and distortion
by SS esoterics. But they can be easily misunderstood to the effect that
there was nothing humanitarian and nothing pacifical about the Dalai
Lama's realm, considering that among his friends was the SS auxiliary Jean
Marquès Rivière as well as Guru Shoko Asahara who (in 1995) caused poison
gas injury to more than 5000 victims in the Tokyo subway -as sacrifice to
Shiva Rudra-Chakrin, apocalyptic world ruler in the Kâlachakra Tantra (pp.
505, 518). Such an "Aryan Priest-King" of post-war Nazi mysticism
(p. 469f) -and not the specifically Buddhist universal ruler (Chakkavattî)
is rightly compared with the Japanese Tenno -and wrongly with the ideal
Buddhist emperor Ashoka of the third century B. C. (pp. 469f).
Most absurdly, Himmler's indologist Wüst
and the Fascist Baron Evola as well as protagonists of postwar SS mysticism
saw precisely in Ashoka the great power political model... of "the
Aryan Priest-King". Their absurdities about Ashoka should have been
contradicted most definitely. After all, he recorded his unforgettable
regret even about "one thousandth part of those who were slain".
"And this has been recorded in order that... whoever they may be, may
not think of new conquests as worth achieving... through arrows." And
that the only "real conquest is a Conquest through Dhamma [force of
MoralitY1." Ashoka's pride was that he "achieved conquest through
Dhamma ,... a conquest flavoured with love” (7). And yet, with Ashoka
remaining unmentioned in the context of oriental ideals of universal
empire, the Chakkavattî/Chakravartin (prototype of Buddhist kingship)
appears under the subtitle "Apotheosis of the Führer" (p. 328).
Among the numerous references to this Indian embodiment of absolute power
remains unmentioned the Chakkavattî-Sutta, one of the earliest Buddhist
texts, starting that to the Chakkavattî the East, South, West and North
shall submit voluntary: He shall declare that no living being
is to be injured. (8) In contrast, the Chakravartin meant by the authors is
Kalki from the Brahmanic Vishnu Purana (with reference to whom concludes
Evola's "Revolt against Modernity"), Aryan world ruler,
symbolized by the Swastika (p. 256). In reality, Kalki in India and the Chakravartin in Buddhist Burma
had inspired politically opposite phenomena too:
It was precisely from Kalki that same
Pariah groups expected their emancipation against the caste
hierarchy. In same rural areas Gandhi was identified with such a
future incarnation of Vishnu. About the Chakkavattî Sutta's description of
the ideal future state reminded in 1959 U Nu (Burma's Prime Minister
1947-1958 and 1960-1962) - with reference to his anti-imperialist Buddhist
socialism. (9) In the name of the Chakkavattî (Burmanized as "Setkya
Min") repeatedly revolted Burma's peasants (as recorder after 1837). With
this ideal Buddhist ruler was identified the central figure of the Burmese
Peasant War of 1930-1932. (10)
This shows how much more correctly than by
Fascist indologists and their subsequent esoterics was Buddhism understood
by Hitler's inspirer, Houston Stewart Chamberlain, and the Führer's rival
Ludendorff. Chamberlain saw that Buddhism “was moved by humanitarian
reverie, proclaiming the equality of all human beings” (10a). Ludendorff
reminded that it "preached self-extinction..., spiritual and bodily
disarmament" (p. 295), both comprehending its ethos better than
Himmler's Professor Wüst and Mussolini's Baron Evola. A "Duce from Bengal" can be seen in Subhas Chandra Bose
(pp. 93) only disregarding that a Soviet alliance would have been
his first choice: As vanished Redeemer he "is biding his
time... Millions of Indians believe... he is hiding in Moscow, being instructed in the principles of
revolution... Eagerly they await[ed] him..." (11)
And archetypically less remotely from
Communism than from Fascism led historically that "Gnosis",
Satanizations of which are inherited in Political Science since Eric
Voegelin (and echoed on p. 537): By "Gnosis" is usually meant its
Manichean current. In fact, its vision of all material world, with all
established institutions, being in the power of Evil, stimulated revolt
rather than conservation of the established order. And that class
distinctions and hierarchies have no meaning at all for the truly Initiated
is among the messages of the Bhagavad Gita too: In the Brahman and in the
[despised] cook of dog meat the wise ones behold the same. Already here [on
earth] is Heaven won by those whose mind rests upon this Equality... That
they are rich and noble think those blinded by ignorance. (12)
That the SS Chief invoked one passage from
this <Song Divine> is no more a reflection upon this scripture (that
was being invoked again and again by India's social reformers -not only in pacifist
Gandhism (13) but also in "Hinduized Communism” (14) than the
"socialist" name of Hitler's party is a reflection upon
Socialism. It was not so much that Savitri Devi found in the
Bhagavad Gita principles that lend themselves for a convincing integration
into SS ideology (p. 360); it was rather that she insisted on having
found them: Her conclusions are not covered by the texts she quoted
(p.357), about fulfilling duty without regard for the outcome, about a just
fight, about Heaven for the fallen warriors and the Earth for the
victorious ones. Actually, the texts this "Priestess of Hitler"
emphasized lend themselves in general to hopeless, heroic resistance
against powers of this world, resistance that has been much less offered by
Fascists (under whom the weak had no claim to survival) than by
anti-Fascists with their faith in a world that shall belong to the weak.
(15)
On the other hand, not to every Professor
is given the character of professinq convictions: Thus it is more
the adjustment of certain German indologists to financial incentives
offered by 88 institutions than "affinities" of the Gita and of
Buddhism to Fascism that is proved by 88 appropriations of
"Oriental" thought.
The weakest text in the book might be that
"a Buddhist dissolves his Ego for the 'Liberation' of all suffering
beings and a National Socialist for <Nation and Race>, but
this could again and again in the history of Buddhism mean the precept of
killing out of compassion and wisdom"(p. 458).
SOURCE
REFERENCES
1) Jean-Michael
Angebert, The Occult and the Third Reich (New York, 1974); François
Ribadeau Dumas, Hitler et la sorcellerie (Paris, 1975); RR Carmin,
"Guru" Hitler, Die Geburt des Nationalsozialismus aus dem Geist
von Mystik und Magie (Zürich, 1985); Jean Robin, Hitler, I'élu du dragon
(Paris, 1987)
2) Hitler's speech of 28. April 1939:
Deutscher Kurzwellensender; Hitler, Monologe im Führerhauptquartier, edit.
W. Jochmann (Hamburg, 1980), pp. 48, 62 f.; W. Maser, Das Regime. Alltag
1933-1945 (Manchen, 1983), p. 259; J.H. Voigt, "Hitler und
Indien": Vierteljahreshefte für Zeitgeschichte, IX (1971), pp. 33, 49
3) Hitler,
Speech of 22. August 1939 to the supreme commanders; L.P. Lochner, What
about Germany? (New York, 1942), p. 3
4) Gerwin
Strobl, The Germanic Isle. Nazi perceptions of Britain (Cambridge, 2000), pp. 41, 42
5) Heinrich Himmler, Geheimreden und andere
Ansprachen (Frankfurt, 1974), p. 159: Speech of 9th. June 1942
5a). Hannah Arendt, Elemente und Ursprünge
totaler Herrschaft (Frankfurt, 1955), pp. 307, 313
5A). S.B.
Dasgupta, An introduction to Tantric Buddhism (Calcutta, 1958), p. 179 f; John Blofeld, The Way
of Power (London, 1970)
5B) "Die Linke ausgeschaltet, Osterreich
eingeschaltet, die Massenmedien gleichgeschaltet, Deutschland isoliert, ganz
Europa in Spannung versetzt und schließlich den Kurzschluss erzeugt."
6) Helmut Hoffmann, Die Religionen Tibets
(Freiburg B, 1956), p. 58 ff., 119 f., 163; Hoffmann, "Das
Kâlachakra, die letzte Phase des Buddhismus in Indien": Saeculum,
XV/2 (1964), p. 128
7) Ashoka's 13th Rock Edict: D.R Bhandarkar,
Asoka (Calcutta 1925), pp. 300-303; J. Bloch, Les inscriptions d'Asoka
(Paris, 1950), pp. 125-132
8)
Cakkavatti-Sîhanâda-Sutta, Diaha Nikâva, XXVI, 6: Translation by
Rhys Davids, Sacred Books of the East, IV (London, 1957), p. 63f
Monier-Williams,
Brahmanism and Hinduism. (London, 1889), p. 114; Bharatan Kumarappa, introduction
to: M.K. Gandhi, Hindu Dharma (Ahmedabad, 1950), p. VIII; U Nu's Speech of November
16th, 1959
before the Anti-Fascist People's Freedom League (Burmese typescript given
by U Nu to the author), pp. 17f, largely reprinted in Bama-hkit of
17. XI 1959, p. 8; Sarkisyanz, Buddhist Backgrounds of the Burmese
Revolution (The Hague, 1965), p. 224
10) Cf.
Maurice Collis, Trials in Burma (London, 1938), pp. 129, 273f.
10a) Houston
Stewart Chamberlain, Briefwechsel mit Kaiser Wilhelm II (Munich, 1929), Vol. 11 p.152
11) J. A.
Michener, Voice of Asia
(New York, 1952), p. 265; of. NA Chadhuri, "Subhas Chandra Bhose, his
legacy and legend": Pacific Affairs (1955), p. 356. All italics
are mine.
12) Bhagavad
Gita, V, 18f; XVI; 12-17; XIII, 29: translation by R Garbe (Leipzig, 1905), pp. 94, 140f, 132
13) W. Roland
Scott, Social ethics of modern Hinduism (Calcutta, 1953), p. 109:
"Gandhi maintained that non-violence was... a central teaching of the
Gita" (sic); "the Gita ... does not teach, according to his
opinions, violence": Wilhelm Mahlmann, Mahatma Gandhi, der Mann, sein
Werk und seine Wirkung (Tabingen, 1950), p. 140
14) H.S.
Sinha, Communism and Gita, A philosophico-ethical study (Delhi, 1979), pp.
264, 262: "The Gita would always ... shake hand [sic] with communism
and bring out a workable synthesis...", "a valuational synthesis
of these two systems can save humanity..."
15) There was
no Nazi Leningrad that held out against a siege lasting nine hundred days
of near starvation (in 19411944). On the Fascist side there was no Madrid
that withstood more than two years of almost daily bombardments by aviation
and artillery (in 1936/8); no [Basque] fishery launch !hat resisted an
enemy battleship during an entire hour (on 5. March 1931) before sinking
itself (having received about 200 impacts of naval cannon): It was but the
Ocean that extinguished the fire of its last machine gun. (Sarria, De
arrantzales a gudaris del Mar [Bermeo, Vizcaya, n.n.], p. 108)
Manuel Sarkisyanz (born 1923) had been a subject of the
Shah of Iran. He studied at the University of Tehran and then at the University of Chicago. There, he wrote his first book, “Russia and the Messianism of the Orient”. Upon
its publication in German he was immediately invited to Germany – initially as visiting professor in Freiburg und then in Kiel. Hs main interests lie in the comparative
history of independence movements. Among his dozen of books are “History of
the Oriental Peoples of the Russian Empire” (in German), “Rizal (national
hero of the Philippines) and Republican Spain”, “Buddhist
background of the Burmese Revolution”. His publication on historiography as
apology for British rule in Burma (Ohio University Press) has also appeared
in the Burmese language. The books of Sarkisyanz on the “American
Resurgence in Peru” and on “Felipe Carrillo, the ‘Red’
Apostle of the Mayas” were published in both German and Spanish. The latter
is now being translated into the language of Mayas of Yucatán (Mexico) where the author now lives most of the
year.
See
also:
Hitler-Buddha-Krishna
– Presentation
Fascist Occultism and
it’s Close Relationship to Buddhist Tantrism
Asia as a topos of Fear and Desire
for Nazis and extreme rightists in the case of Asian Studies in Sweden http://orient4.orient.su.se/personal/tobias.hubinette/asianists.pdf
|