Nazism, Racism & Satanism - An Answer....

By Walter Grimwald (1994)

I first read Jeffrey Deboo's "Nazism, Racism and Satanism" in The Black Flame (Vol.3/Num.1 & 2), forum of the CHURCH OF SATAN. Since then, it has been reprinted in other Satanic forums more often than any other article which I can recall. Deboo is editing his own magazine - Dark Reflections - which he advertises as "Satanism without Fascist/racist/authoritarian nonsense."

Despite his anti-Fascist, libertarian obsession, Deboo manages to hang on to the coat-tails of the CHURCH OF SATAN, while declaring himself to be "independent", although CHURCH OF SATAN Magister Peter Gilmore has written in The Black Flame (Vol.4/Num.1 & 2):

"In as much as Fascism stands for an embracing of the Natural Order and a rejection of "anything goes" attitudes that have hindered our society, particularly since the 1960's, then Fascists we are."

CHURCH OF SATAN High Priest Anton La Vey has himself stated in The Black Flame (Vol.4/Num.3 & 4):

"If a neo-Fascist look - or outlook - makes for men who look like men and women who look like women, I am all for it."

Turning to Deboo's anti-Fascist epistle, he begins by quoting Mein Kampf, where Hitler states that the creation of a culture is predicated on the willingness of individuals to subordinate their selfish tendencies to the wider interests of the Volkish community.

Deboo's "Satanism" is the type of "Hyper-individualism" Hitler condemns as having been a weakening factor in Germany during the Weimar regime. Deboo states that Hitler recognized that the masses were sheeplike - but rather than deploring this, he applauded it...

But what is the use of deploring facts, rather than recognizing them when making State policy? It is Communism that tried to overcome nature, including human nature. Is not Satanism supposed to be the "carnal doctrine", recognizing the laws of nature (as Fascism did) rather than seeking to negate them with dogma? What of man as "just another animal", as La Vey put it?

Recognition of the herdlike nature of man is just a realization that man is tribal like other species, and has that "life collective" (as Friedrich Nietzsche put it) within, its natural outstanding leaders, who must necessarily be individuals themselves.

National-Socialism sought to harness the outstanding individual to the service of the Volk community (tribe), just as the best is selected in a herd to lead, rather than to let the outstanding individual waste and rot as democratic societies do.

To quote Hitler:

"The progress and culture of humanity are not a product of the majority, but rest exclusively on the genius and energy of the personality."

And indeed, it is the rootlessness of America which has caused its great artists either to exile themselves from the cultural sewer of America, or to die in rejection. While National-Socialist Germany was patronizing its great artists, T.S.Eliot, Ezra Pound, Hemingway and Scott Fitzgerald left those sterile shores, the latter returning to die of alcoholic poisoning. Other literary figures such as Hart Crane and Thomas Heggen committed suicide before their prime. Pound was caged in Italy then returned to America to be committed in a lunatic asylum for opposing the Roosevelt war-mongering regime, and denied literary honours on political grounds solely.

Yet Deboo still pontificates about how National-Socialist Germany killed or exiled its cultural elite. But who is he referring to? A bunch of Dadaist dabblers or some profit-driven pornographers?

Deboo has visions (or nightmares?) of Hitler as "the jackbooted pontiff whose mezmerizing voice holds his flock in his thrall" with "no La Vey challenging each man to live for himself..." Yet what La Vey writes of is of the Satanist coming forth in splendour "through his Satanic might" proudly proclaiming: "I am a Satanist. Bow down, for I am the highest embodiment of human life!" in The Satanic Bible.

Deboo then condemns racism in typical libertarian terms as a collectivism that confers automatic superiority or inferiority on an individual according to his race, regardless of his actual ability. But it is precisely the recognition of innate differences - not only between races but within races - that is the basis of National-Socialism. However, the National-Socialist regime saw as its duty the elevation of the humblest citizen to the highest possible cultural level. It also recognized that one cannot appreciate culture too well with an empty stomach, a destitute family and no secure income. Hence the pioneering social and economic reforms. This cultural elevation it set about to achieve by providing subsidized excursions to the humblest worker who was given opportunities to appreciate his nation's culture which had formerly been reserved for the wealthier classes. What do you think "Strength through Joy" was, Deboo? Compulsory weight-lifting classes?

Deboo illustrates his point:

"Indeed, Hitler's first followers, his Brownshirts, were recruited from the trash of Germany, the failures and the brawlers of the streets who resented the creative and successful people in their own country."

One wonders what episode of Hogan's Heroes Deboo has been watching! These "brownshirted scum" were for the most part war-veterans, many of whom had their livelihoods destroyed by the disastrous Weimar regime and the Versailles Diktat and who fought back rather than wimper as Deboo would prefer.

Deboo next compares National-Socialism with Medieval Christianity, both being held as "conformist" ideologies which killed or exiled "the most creative and independent minds". "Nazism was a revolt of the street-trash which wiped out or drove away the country's true elite", we are reminded again.

No, Deboo, Communism was a revolt of the street-trash, against which the Brownshirts laid down their lives fighting.

The National-Socialist State instituted a meritocracy based on talent rather than on the selection of rulers by head-counting; as in democracy. The Cabinet included such people as Dr. Walter Darré, minister of agriculture, whose advice as an agricultural expert had been widely sought after by European governments, Dr. Wilhelm Frick, minister of the interior, widely known throughout Europe as a patron of chamber music (yes, the street-trash!), Bernard Rust, minister of science and education, who had twice turned down an offer of professorship in favour of a more humble teaching position which he considered a more practical way to help German youth.

Indeed, looking at the 1938 Reich Cabinet, out of its twenty members, nine held doctorates, with others such as Rudolf Hess holding degrees and diplomas of some type.

It was precisely because Germany was reconstructing its cultural life that some of the greatest intellectuals and artists in Europe backed her. They saw the possibilities of a general European cultural renaissance.

Arno Breker's sculptures, and other neo-classical art and architecture adorned public buildings and parks. Intellectuals of lasting impact such as Heidegger, and writers of the stature of Pound and Knut Hamsen declared themselves supporters of the regime.

The democrats' answer was to bomb a defenceless open city - Dresden - primarily because it was a cultural centre; and to consign Europe's cultural elite to death, to jail, or to clean the streets as part of "denazification". And Breker's sculptures were sledgehammered by American G.I.'s.

The significance of National-Socialism for Satanists is more specifically that it tapped the shadow of the repressed European collective unconscious, releasing a great Dionysian or Wotanic creative urge, viewed favourably by Carl Jung.

Deboo goes on praising La Vey for having always rejected "with contempt" overtures from "neo-Nazis", thereby defending the "integrity of the Satanic philosophy". But what can we make of the association of Boyd Rice and Michael Moynihan (the former, if not the latter, belonging to the priesthood of the CHURCH OF SATAN) with the CHURCH OF SATAN? Or of La Vey's gift of an autographed copy of The Satanic Bible to National-Socialist ideologue James Mason, whose book Siege was heavily advertised in The Black Flame?

Deboo finally ends with a warning that any association with Nazism "will derail the Satanist movement into the junkyard of failed ideas and missed opportunities". Yet his own ideology, somehow masquerading as "Satanism", is just a rehash of the Nineteenth Century whig-liberalism with that dash of inanity that is typical of the Homo Americanus. Deboo, far from being a "Satanic adversary" of entrenched orthodoxy is just a low-grade promoter of the status-quo, an echoer of fifty-year-old System clichés against one of the most heretical movements in history.

This article appeared in The Burning Ground, Volume 1, Issue 4, 1994.