Hitler was incontestably a populist leader and the uglier aspects of unrestrained populism in this country are a murderous disgrace.  From the Know-nothing riots through World War One and on to our totalitarian Patriot Act, mob passions are to be deplored in all their manifestations.

Paul,
Well stated and nuanced. It is doubly unfortunate that TAC decided to confide
PJB’s latest volume (which I have just finished) to Lukacs. TAC will most assuredly
lose subscribers and raise legitimate questions about motives; I had just renewed
(I am a charter sub), but I may well not continue. This was an obvious and intended
affront to Pat (whom I have known since 1986, serving as his NC state chairman in
1991-92), and it did Lukacs’ reputation no good, either. It was blatant and made little
pretense to be other than that. As such, it will be remembered, and will most likely
come back to haunt to the present owners/editors.

Slightly OT but still about John Lukacs.

I have a pamphlet from the American Immigration Control Foundation written by John Lukacs. It was published in 1986 and is called Immigration and Migration: A Historical perspective.

Given that opposition to open borders usually comes from people designated as ‘populists’ and ‘nationalists’ (those being the least offensive terms used to describe them) I’m wondering if Lukacs has said anything about immigration in the last couple of decades. (The most recent books of his on my shelves do not discuss the issue, though those are about European history so it is understandable).

It is highly unusual for people of Jewish background who attack nationalism and populism to be in favour of immigration control as Lukacs evidently was during the 80s. In another thread I pointed out that he doesn’t seem to have changed his mind on any issue since the 1940s, but given his recent work it wouldn’t surprise me if he saw danger in an ‘anti-immigrant’ movement. Anyone know where he stands on immigration these days?

John Lukacs is not antagonistic to the demos, he merely thinks that it is better off when represented and led by a responsible elite.

Matra, Prof. Lukacs wrote this four years ago: “But even before the collapse of the Soviet Russian empire it should have been evident that the greatest danger to the United States was no longer the presence of Russian power but the emergent expansion and aggressiveness of the so-called Third World...and neither Republicans nor Democrats gave thought to the actual consequences of the continual invasion of the United States from the south by masses of legal and illegal immigrants across a large desert frontier that was unfortified, largely unprotected, and undefended.”

I wasn’t aware of Lukacs’ Jewish background. That, too, would explain his minimizing of Jewish Bolshevism’s epic crimes against humanity. (It also sheds light on Lukacs’ hostility towards Pat Buchanan.) I don’t mean to suggest by this that all Jews are incapable of objective thought in the area of Communism (Gottfried proves otherwise), but I have seen too many Jews soft-pedal Communism’s crimes to dismiss the pattern. And the Jewish Neocons that finally turned on Communism with a vengeance did so mostly after Communism turned on the Jews. While it was merely killing off Christians, they took no issue.

I think it is fair to say that there is an authoritarian component to Judaism that shows through in Jewish-formulated public policy. I believe if America had been properly educated as to the decisive Jewish role in Communism, it would have noticed the decisive Jewish role in Neoconservatism and been less likely to get behind the Bush administration’s Soviet-like foreign and domestic policies because it would have recognized Zionism (Jewish nationalism) as one of the driving forces behind the Iraq war enterprise, and seen that the nascent Security State was modeled largely on the Jewish state and also on the Soviet Union.

Luksacs may have good (personal) reasons for hating Germans, but if he is going to play by those rules and carry his vendetta into his work, he should recognize that victims of Communism might have good (personal) reasons for hating Jews and carrying a vendetta into theirs.

Is either one rational? Let’s just say neither one is entirely irrational. But let’s not pretend that victims of Communism or of Nazism are likely to be objective in the area of their victimizers. I also might add that Jews have yet to come to terms with their people’s role in Communism, whereas Germans came to terms with the innate Germanic characteristics that contributed to the rise of Nazism a long time ago.

Mr. Moore,
There is nothing rational about blaming Jews for communism, which from MArx onwards has been anti-Jewish.

The presense of people, whose first hatred is towards their own religion and ethnicity, in a movement dedicated to destroying Judaism along with every other religion, does provide a rorschach test for those unable to see anything but Jew.

Thank you Michael Mercury. That is a reassuring quote from John Lukacs. Where is it from?

I wasn’t aware of Lukacs’ Jewish background.

I read Confessions of an Original Sinner back around 1994 and was surprised to read the single line in the otherwise very detailed book referring to his Jewish background.

I disagree with Lukacs’ stand againt Pat Buchanan - whose book on the subject just arrived at my house a few hours ago so I haven’t had time to read it.

But as much as I welcome a critical analysis of Lukacs’ work - and I’m in general agreement with everything I’ve read thus far from Taki contributors such as Messrs. Gottfried and Spencer - I’m reluctant to be too critical of Lukacs given his very different upbringing from my own and his important role (around the end of the cold war) in opening my eyes to some of the problems with modern day American ‘conservative’ views on foreign policy.

I look forward to a spirited and civil debate free of intellectual expulsions.

Matra, The quotation is from the final chapter of “A New Republic”, a reissue of Lukacs’ 1984 book, “Outgrowing Democracy.” The final chapter was written for the new edition.  It’s an overview of trends in American history from 1984-2004.

I don’t seek to blame ALL Jews for Communism any more than I seek to blame all Jews for Neoconservatism or Zionism. Indeed, I think Neocon Jews are today highly distinguishable from Communist ones, even though they both came out of the Communist milieu; I am simply observing some common ethnic characteristics towards authoritarianism, and behavioral patterns.

Even though America is a melting pot, Americans still seek out information on the ethnic backgrounds of each other because they inform their heritage, and even their behavior. It seems to me silly that it is acceptable to publicly observe ethnic characteristics of Jews (or any ethnic group, for that matter) when they are flattering (ie Thomas Cahill’s bestseller The Gifts of the Jews) but not when they are more controversial, although this is changing. Indeed, some Jews are coming to terms with Ashkenazim authoritarianism the same way Germans have come to terms with Germanic pugnaciousness. Noteworthy is Jewish scholar Joachim Martillo: Judonia Rising: The Israel Lobby and American Society
http://members.aol.com/ThorsProvoni/JudoniaComplete/JudoniaCompleteA.htm

He blogs at Ethnic Ashkenazim Against Zionist Israel
http://eaazi.blogspot.com/

Lukacs has been able not only to survive-- but thrive-- making a career of hating things German. Compare that to free-lance historian David Irving, whom fair-minded Establishment academics have praised for his encyclopedic knowledge of the Third Reich, who has expressed doubts about a certain impregnable taboo of modern European history. The double standard is interesting, isn’t it?

If you had read his books as I have then you would know that John Lukacs has not made a career of “hating things German.” I’m not so sure that this web site has not become dedicated to hating John Lukacs.  The sheer ignorance of it is a shame because he is one of the most profound historical thinkers of our time if for no other reason than he realizes that Adolph Hitler and Naziism was profoundly more destructive to Western Civilzation than was Stalinist Russia!

@nbf---if you think that, then you should read THE BLACK BOOK OF COMMUNISM. That very
scholarly tome is recognized as the paramount source on Communist barbarity, and it
conservatively estimates the number of persons killed by Communism at at least 100
million. While I deplore Naziism completely, to make the statement that it was
“profoundly more destructive” than Stalinist Communisim, I find utterly ludicrous.
Perhaps you should be writing for THE WEEKLY STANDARD or THE NATION....

I am completely aware of the global depradations of the various and sundry communists regimes, as I might add is John Lukacs.  However my statement was that Hitler was more destructive of Western Civilization and I will stand by it.  Hitler was directly or indirectly responsible for something on the order of 50 million deaths in 12 short years which is unmatched by any communist regime.  And he wreaked his havoc primarily in the center of Europe, most notably in Germany, which had previously reached pinnacles of achievement in art, music, literature, and science unapproached by feudal and semi-Asiatic Russia.  A Russia which, as Lukacs points out, was increasingly nationalist rather than idealogically Marxist as the 1930’s wore on.

Thank God for Winston Churchill!  After all, he was able to save half of Germany.

PS - Unlike TWS, The Nation is a fine magazine with many insightful articles.

@nbf: we must disagree quite profoundly on this point. I think Lukacs fundamentally
misunderstood the Soviet threat (due, perhaps as Richard Spencer and Paul Gottfried
have pointed out on these pages, to his myopic view of Germany). Additionally, I think
your figure of “50 million” is exaggerated--you apparently blame all casualties from
the 2nd World War on Germany, an arguable point, indeed. On the other hand,the effect of Soviet Communism,
in particular exercized through the Commintern and tight control over most Communist
regimes and parties worldwide, was markedly greater and lasted nearly six times longer
than Naziism. Ernst Nolte’s classic THREE FACES OF FASCISM is quite good on the inherent
weaknesses and contradictions in Naziism, and such classics as DARKNESS AT NOON and Rafael Gambra’s EL SILENCIO DE DIOS detail Communism as a unique totalitarian all-inclusive force, something only the most
dedicated Nazi might wish for (and which was never really achieved in Germany, where the
trappings of Wilhelmine Germany and middle class society continued in large part in tact
up until at least late 1944).

But that is not the subject of this thread, so I’ll stop. Admire THE NATION, if you wish…
I can think of lots of other things I’d rather do.

John Lukacs is a traditionalist Catholic who happens to have had Jewish grandparents.  His animus against Buchanan has nothing to do with being descended from Jews but rather because Buchanan is a nationalist and a populist.  Lukacs is an elitist and a reactionary, both qualities to be admired an any true conservative.

“Lukacs is an elitist and a reactionary, both qualities to be admired an any true conservative.”

The Neocons are both elitist and reactionary. I’ll cast my lot with the populist instincts of the Christian rabble any day over the scheming (usually money-motivated) treachury of snops and back-stabbers. We were lied into the Iraq war by that type.

“ I’ll cast my lot with the populist instincts of the Christian rabble”

The populist instincts of the Christian rabble are what got us into and is keeping us in Iraq.

Interesting posts about nationalism, populism, reaction, and elistism.
Historically, it was the “reactionary” and highly Catholic “populace”
of the Kingdom of Naples and Sicily that ran out of Italy Napoleon’s
(modernising) legions in 1799 (the Sanfedisti); it was patriot Andreas Hofer’s
band of Tyroleans who kept thousands of French troops tied down
in the Tyrol. Throughout the 19th century it was Carlist Catholic populace
in Spain, LED BY THEIR local “elite” nobility, who waged a “Civil War” for
the Faith, the legitimate king, traditional rights, and regionalism
against a centralizing liberal monarchy---and it was just such a populace,
imbued with Faith and allied to a large portion (but certainly not all)
of the Spanish Army that launched a “Cruzada” against a Marxistoid Republic
where thousands of priests, nuns, and bishops were martyred, not to mention
hundreds of churches torched, countless assassinations, and other depravations
to numerous to mention.

I could go on; but it seems to me that the issues are not as clear cut
here. As Lenin proved (and perhaps Hitler, too) an “elite” cannot succeed
unless it somehow enlists vast popular support, in some form, eventually.
Many of the dozens of counter-revolutions of the 19th and 20th centuries
against the depradations of classical liberalism and centralization, then
socialism and Marxism, have been waged by conservative and religious populations,
oftimes lead by local notables (e.g. Rochejacquelain and de Charette, in the
Vendee; Zumalacarregui, in the First Basque War; Cardinal Ruffo in Italy; and
the list can be extended), but sometimes with a popular leader emerging from the
lower ranks.

Most of the “nationalisms” exhibited on the part of the above-mentioned
groups is not the same variety as the xenophobix form we have seen in the
20th century; rather, as in Italy, it was FOR the restoration of the legitimate
Kings of Naples and the Faith, nothing more. In Austria, FOR the restoration of Austrian lands
to the rightful, God-given monarch in Vienna. In Spain, what began as a dynastic
war to restore the legitimate king, soon developed into an ideological battle
between the traditionalist, regionalist, and very Catholic Carlists, opposing
a centralizing, classically liberal monarchy, under which historic regions (formerly
kingdoms and principalities) were shorn of rights, customs, and usages, in favor
of power emanating from Madrid. Liberalism equaled standardization, total laissez-faire,
and the imposition of new “laws” by a new financial oligarchy, neither endowed by birth
nor by Providence with any special quality, other than the ability to get wealth and
hold it (often by force).

In the 20th century, in France (e.g., Maurras), in Spain (e.g., Vazques de Mella,
Victor Pradera, etc.), in Austria (e.g., Vogelsang, then Othmar Spann, and later
Dollfuss), in Portugaal (e.g., Saldinha), etc., you have mostly Catholic writers
and philosophers writing about subsidiarity, authority, the derivation of power
directly from God to the sovereign, plus the defense of the family, of historic
regions and institutions, and the Church. Most of the popular and counter-revolutionary
movements took place in Catholic lands, although there were certainly intellectually
rightwing currents in Prussia in the 1820s-40s (von Radowitz) and even in England
(e.g., perhaps Disraeli?).

Populism in the US is of a different sort, of course. Of groups and movements that could
be termed “populist,” well, there are the Jacksonians, the “know-nothings,” the prohibition
movement, the formal Populist Party, and later the Progressives (e.g. LaFollette), and even
the “dixiecrats” of 1948 and maybe Wallace in 1968. I think it is certainly difficult to
pen terms “right” and “left” on these movements with any great degree of accuracy. My great-
grandfather, Hill Ennett King, was a North Carolina Populist Party leader, a newspaper
editor, a (former) Democratic legislator, candidate for Congress, and finally State Commissioner
of Agriculture; he later became (and remained) a Republican (after Populist defeat in 1900).
Yet, his philosophy, if I may call it that, was pretty complex, at least looking back at it.
He favored what he called a “just wage” for a day’s work, but he also sounds like an English
“distributist” in much of his writings---encouraging farmers to stay on the land, favoring
small business, the family farm. He opposed liberalisation of the suffrage, whether for women
or blacks. He wanted the state to officially recognize Christianity in its laws. He opposed
what he called “foreign adventures” outside the USA. A Confederate veteran (at age 16), he
gloried in the South’s military heritage, but felt that war was a horrible bane to be avoided.
In sum, he felt that the American (and North Carolina) government had become “too big and too
modern” for the lives of the citizens, and should be “reformed back to the days when a man
could live on his land and make a living there.”

How would I characterize him? Was he a “liberal” or “conservative”? A “leftist” because he
opposed giant corporations and monopoly?  A “rightist” because he favored turning back the
clock to an earlier America of small farmers and independent yeomen?

He was a populist, like Marion Butler (one of the most prominent), and yet is quite difficult
to make the kinds of statements about him that have been made on these threads in recent days.
He was a “nationalist” in the sense of his belief in a strong America, but also a “regionalist”
and believer in states’ rights (as a Confederate veteran). He was a “populist” in that he worked
to mobilize poorer farmers and small businessmen to take power from increasingly removed elites.

In any case, perhaps this example doesn’t do the conversation justice, but it causes me to pause
when I hear such terms brought up. I think such terms require nuance and study in depth.

In my previous message I mispoke; I should have said: “Zumalacarrequi in the
First Carlist War.” It was fought, in some degree, in the Basque regions, but
it was not strictly a Basque war....

“The populist instincts of the Christian rabble are what got us into and is keeping us in Iraq.”

This is an outright lie. Don’t try to scapegoat average Christians for the Iraq war. Jewish and “Christian” Zionists and money-grubbing secular elites are the ones who propagated the false evidence that connected Saddam to WMD and 9/11, and then their media and politicians sold that evidence to the masses through repetition and innuendo month after month. Even inside-man McClellan has admitted the Neoconservative ideology, not US national interests, motivated the Bush administration’s war. And part of the Neoconservative agenda is Straussian elitism; another part is war profiteering.

Average Americans and Christians have been horribly betrayed by their shameless, treacherous, unprincipled elites, and everyone knows it. There might have been a time when the American elite had the country’s best interests at heart, but those days are long gone. The people who hold that position today are money-worshippers and low-life’s of the first order.

Lie?  The lies are the ones you are telling to yourself.  The “average Christian” had blood in his eye and what little brains he has out of gear after 9/11.  There was absolutely no evidence that Iraq had any complicity in the attack.  generic fear of WMD’s was all the Bush regime had as justification for our immoral agression.  Willful ignorance on the part of the American public is no excuse.

BTW, this unleashing of mob sentiment is just the sort of evil that John Lukacs wisely counsels us against.

“Willful ignorance on the part of the American public is no excuse.”

What about “willful ignorance” on the part of the “elite” in the White House, Congress and media? They’re the real rabble that Lukacs should worry about. But then again, that’s the kind of rabble that can get him a publishing contract, so it’s easy to see why he targets the others, who can’t fight back. Just like the Bolsheviks targeted the Christian peasantry. Some things never change.

It is precisely the leaders who exploit mob sentiments that Lukacs reserves his greatest contempt for.  You know, people like Adolph Hitler, Josef Stalin, Mao Tse-Tung, Pol Pot; even more than Joe McCarthy and Pat Buchanan.  :-)

You should actually read him some time rather than erecting straw man arguments and tilting at windmills. 

And what’s with all this whining about the manipulation and oppression of the Christian peasantry?  It’s 2008.  Western man has the requisite education and information and is perfectly capable of “fighting back”.

“Western man has the requisite education and information and is perfectly capable of “fighting back”.”

That’s exactly what is going on on the internet today, and what you are criticizing, all in defense of the “elite” that lied America into the Iraq war.

I will close by quoting Pat Buchanan on the Neocons, wondering if conservatives “hadn’t made a terrible mistake when we brought these ideological vagrants in off the street and gave them a warm place by the fire.”

Indeed, as it turns out, it was a fatal mistake. But what else but a disaster like the Iraq war would you expect from “elite” vagrants that had made their way from “Josef Stalin, Mao Tse-Tung, Pol Pot” to the heart of Washington DC and the media centers of New York and L.A.?

So much for Lukacs’ elitist theory. I guess he never contemplated that Christian-haters could ever have so easily infiltrated Western (Christian) civilization and leveraged it against itself and the rest of the world. On the other hand, in many ways he helped them do it by waging a rear-guard war against authentic conservatives like Buchanan, who has been issuing prophetic warnings for years.

Both Lukacs and his nemessis Irving are respectable historians.  What is not respectable is fighting over which elite has the true account of history.  Some taki writers want control, not the truth.  TAC was right to publish Lukacs, instead of playing power-games, like the Franciscans on this site.  There is only one truth, and one true elite.  That is God and his sole representative on earth.