#Nazi SS Science

[savage-kult-of-gorthaur]

"...AN ASSASSIN AND THULE SOCIETY MEMBER, RENOWNED FOR HIA SPORTSMANSHIP..."

PIC INFO: Resolution at 965x1400 -- Spotlight on a promotional shot of Nazi SS scientist, member of the occult Thule Society, and comic book movie villain, Karl Ruprecht Kroenen (played by Czech actor Ladislav Beran), from the American sci-fi/comic book/action movie "Hellboy" (2004), written & directed by Guillermo del Toro.

MINI-OVERVIEW: "Director Guillermo del Toro created a significantly expanded biography for the character, to appear as a villain in the 2004 film adaptation. In the movie adaptation of "Hellboy," Kroenen's character is altered to have him as an assassin and Thule Society member, renowned for his swordsmanship and using signature swords of his design. Guillermo Del Toro provided an expanded biography, which appeared in a series of comic panels in the book "Hellboy: The Art of the Movie," as well as in the special features of the film's DVD."

Source: www.reddit.com/r/Mortalkombatleaks/comments/m3s5nw.

[whencyclopedia]

Josef Mengele

Josef Mengele (1911-1979) was a Nazi doctor who performed horrific pseudo-scientific experiments on detainees in the Auschwitz concentration camp where he was a medical officer from 1943 to 1945. Thousands of Mengele's victims endured bizarre and unnecessary operations without anaesthetic, and the 'Angel of Death', as he was known, killed thousands more using lethal injections.

Mengele literally had the power of life and death over the inmates of the Auschwitz complex, specifically at the Birkenau camp. Obsessed with genetics and creating a master race, it is important to note regarding Mengele's experiments on humans, "that very little, if any benefit to science was achieved" (Shirer, 979). Mengele escaped identification immediately after the war, but as awareness grew of his crimes, he fled to South America where, although obliged to move countries several times, he managed to escape justice. Mengele's remains were exhumed and identified in 1985; he had died of natural causes in 1979.

Early Life

Josef Mengele was born on 16 March 1911 in Günzburg, Germany. Josef's father, Karl, owned a factory producing agricultural machinery. The factory was a success and curiously, given later events, there was a branch in Argentina. Josef studied philosophy in Munich and then took a medical degree at the University of Frankfurt. He joined the fascist National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP), or Nazi Party for short, in 1937. Mengele worked in the Nazi Institute of Hereditary Biology and Race Research and further developed his interest in racial theory by studying the works of such Nazi ideologists as Alfred Rosenberg (1893-1946). When the Second World War (1939-45) began, Dr Mengele joined the Waffen-SS and became a medical officer. He served on both the Western and Eastern Fronts – winning two Iron Cross medals – but also continued his research into race theory and particularly genetics. In 1943, Heinrich Himmler (1900-1945), head of the SS, appointed Mengele to the staff of the most notorious of all Nazi concentration camps: Auschwitz.

Continue reading...

[djuvlipen]

Wanna learn about women history and WWII? Here is a non-exhaustive list to get you started

German women and the Nazi regime

Mothers in the Fatherland: Women, the Family and Nazi Politics, Claudia Koonz

Female SS Guards and Workaday Violence: The Majdanek Concentration Camp, 1942-1944, Elissa Mailänder

Zwangssterilisation im Nationalsozialismus: Studien zur Rassenpolitik und Frauenpolitik, Gisela Bock

Hitler's Furies: German Women in the Nazi Killing Fields, Wendy Lower

"Backlash against Prostitutes' Rights: Origins and Dynamics of Nazi Prostitution Policies," in Journal of the History of Sexuality Julia Roos

"German Women and the Holocaust in the Nazi East," Wendy Lower, in Women and Genocide, Elissa Bemporad & Joyce W. Warren

Frausein im Dritten Reich, Rita Thalmann

Women as victims or perpetrators of the Holocaust (general)

"Women and the Holocaust: A Reconsideration of Research," in Signs, Joan Ringelheim

Women in the Holocaust, Dalia Ofer & Lenore J. Weitzman

Das KZ-Bordell: Sexuelle Zwangsarbeit in nationalsozialistischen Konzentrationslagern, Robert Sommer

SS-Bordelle und Oral History. Problematische Quellen und die Existenz von Bordellen für die SS in Konzentrationslagern, Christa Paul & Robert Sommer

Sexual Violence during the Holocaust—The Case of Forced Prostitution in the Warsaw Ghetto, in Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies, Katarzyna Person

"Gender: A Crucial Tool in Holocaust Research," Marion Kaplan, in Women and Genocide, Elissa Bemporad & Joyce W. Warren

Different Voices: Women and the Holocaust, Carol Rittner & John K. Roth

Resilience and Courage: Women, Men, and the Holocaust, Nechema Tec

« Reframing Sexual Violence as a Weapon and Strategy of War: The Case of the German Wehrmacht during the War and Genocide in the Soviet Union, 1941–1944 », in Journal of the History of Sexuality, Regina Mühlhäuser

Sex and the Nazi soldier. Violent, commercial and consensual encounters during the war in the Soviet Union, 1941-45, Regina Mülhäuser

Romani women during the Holocaust

« Krieg im Frieden im Krieg: Reading the Romani Holocaust in terms of race, gender and colonialism », Eve Rosenhaft

« Hidden Lives : Sinti and Roma Women », Sybil Milton

« Romani women and the Holocaust Testimonies of Sexual Violence in Transnistria », Michelle Kelso

"No Shelter to Cry In: Romani Girls and Responsibility during the Holocaust," Michelle Kelso, in Women and Genocide, Elissa Bemporad & Joyce W. Warren

Jewish women during the Holocaust

Jewish women's sexual behaviour and sexualized abuse during the Nazi era, in The Canadian Journal of Human Sexuality, Beverley Chalmers

Sexual Violence against Jewish Women During the Holocaust, Sonja M. Hedgepeth & Rochelle G. Saidel

Persecution of lesbians by the Nazis

Days of Masquerade: Life Stories of Lesbians during the Third Reich, Claudia Schoppmann

Nationalsozialistische Sexualpolitik und weibliche Homosexualität, Claudia Schoppmann

“This Kind of Love”: Descriptions of Lesbian Behaviour in Nazi Concentration Camps, from Nationalsozialistische Sexualpolitik und weibliche Homosexualität, Claudia Schoppmann

Queer in Europe during the Second World War, Regis Schlagdenhauffen

Ravensbrück

Ravensbrück. Everyday Life in a Woman’s Concentration Camp 1939-45, Jack G. Morrison

Ravensbruck: Life and Death in Hitler's Concentration Camp for Women, Sarah Helm

Women and the Memory of WWII

Women, Genocide, and Memory: The Ethics of Feminist Ethnography in Holocaust Research, in Gender & Society, Janet Jacobs

Lessons Learned from Gentle Heroism: Women's Holocaust Narratives, in The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Myrna Goldenberg

« An Austrian Roma Family Remembers: Trauma and Gender in Autobiographies by Ceija, Karl, and Mongo Stojka », Lorely French

Beyond Survival: Navigating Women's Personal Narratives of Sexual Violence in the Holocaust, Roy Schwartzman

Comfort Women and imperial Japan

Comfort Women: Sexual Slavery in the Japanese Military During World War II, Yoshimi Yoshiaki

The Comfort Women: Japan’s Brutal Regime of Enforced Prostitution in the Second World War, George Hicks

The Japanese Comfort Women and Sexual Slavery During the China and Pacific Wars, Caroline Norma

Lola's House: Filipino Women Living With War, Evelina Galang

Soviet Women during WWII

« “Girls” and “Women”. Love, Sex, Duty and Sexual Harassment in the Ranks of the Red Army 1941-1945 », in The Journal of Power Institutions in Post-Soviet Societies, Brandon M. Schechter

Soviet Women on the Frontline in the Second World War, Roger D. Markwick & Euridice Charon Cardona

Soviet Women in Combat. A History of Violence on the Eastern Front, Anna Krylova

[cursedreverie1945]

Martin Bormann, to me, was a lot more interesting in death rather than alive. Bormann was honestly just a nazi thug that just got lucky.

He used that luck to control a lot of things, however, that could be said for a lot of the damn nazis.

At around 11:00 pm on 1 May, Bormann left the Führerbunker with SS doctor Ludwig Stumpfegger, Hitler Youth leader Artur Axmann, and Hitler's pilot Hans Baur, part of one of the groups attempting to break out of the Soviet encirclement. Bormann carried with him a copy of Hitler's last will and testament.[99] The group left the Führerbunker and travelled on foot via an U-Bahn subway tunnel to the Friedrichstraße station, where they surfaced. Axmann decided to leave the others and go in the opposite direction. When he encountered a Red Army patrol, Axmann doubled back. He saw two bodies, which he later identified as Bormann and Stumpfegger, on a bridge near the railway shunting yard. He did not have time to check thoroughly, so he did not know how they died. Since the Soviets never admitted to finding Bormann's body, his fate remained in doubt for many years.

During the chaotic days after the war, contradictory reports arose as to Bormann's whereabouts. Sightings were reported in Argentina, Spain, and elsewhere. Bormann's wife was placed under surveillance in case he tried to contact her, but she died from cancer not long after the war.

Jakob Glas, Bormann's long-time chauffeur, insisted that he saw Bormann in Munich in July 1946.

Bormann was tried in absentia at the Nuremberg trials and would be executed if he was ever found.

Sightings were reported all over the world, including Australia, Denmark, Italy, and South America. In his autobiography, army intelligence officer Reinhard Gehlen claimed that Bormann had been a Soviet spy and had escaped to Moscow. Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal believed that Bormann was living in South America. The West German government declared that its hunt for Bormann was over in 1971.

On 7 December 1972, construction workers uncovered human remains near Lehrter station in West Berlin. To the best of their ability, with the technology of the time. The remains were identified as Bormann's.

The remains were conclusively identified as Bormann's in 1998 when German authorities ordered genetic testing on fragments of the skull. The testing was led by Wolfgang Eisenmenger, Professor of Forensic Science at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. Tests using DNA from one of his relatives identified the skull as that of Bormann.

[littlefankingdom]

As someone who is a leftist, who was raised by leftists, who calls themselves a "revolutionary", who is loud about when stuffs aren't fucking okay and people rights aren't respected, I cannot explain how much I dislike the panels of Oliver Queen calling his colleagues "nazis" or "fascists" when they don't agree on something. Like, it doesn't make me want to read his comics, because he sounds like a self-righteous whining bitch, not an actual activist that knows what he is talking about. Your colleague refusing to listen to you doesn't make him a fascist, rich white man. And I don't think anyone would want to have a discussion with someone who insults them of being Nazi when they aren't happy.

Nazi and fascist are important words with meanings, historical and scientific (history and sociology are sciences) meanings. The more you use them without respecting their meaning, the less they mean shit. And like, I have seen enough to realize USAmericans barely know the meaning of Nazi, which is not simply being a white-supremacist or a fascist. Nazism is the ideology that there's an aryan race, which fits mostly GERMAN traits, superior to everyone else, with a ton of eugenics. It isn't just antisemitism, it isn't just white-supremacy, the Nazis did not like most of white people, they destroyed historical and cultural objects from european cultures for not being "aryan". My grandparents' trauma from the occupation shows that quite well. So, Oliver Queen calling Flash "a nazi" because he disagree with how to handle a situation isn't funny or cool, it's tiring and wrong. No, your red-haired, probably doesn't know a word of german, colleague isn't a Nazi. And he isn't a neo-nazi ever, which are more open to white people without tie to German culture but still use the symbolism, because he is still not doing Nazi shit.

Again, these terms aren't insults, they have meanings. Marine Le Pen, a French politician, is a Nazi because her party was created by her father and his Nazi and SS friends, and she sees Hitler as family. I am not a Nazi for wearing all black (yes, this did happened), supporting Palestine (also happened), or telling people that not voting isn't helping at all (just last week).

I would have no issues with Oliver criticizing his colleagues being controlling and abusing their power or authority, I would love that, I'm big on criticizing abuse of power and authority, but he needs to be written doing that, not just calling them "nazi" and "fascist". That's not what they are doing. And also, if you think one of your colleagues is a fascist or a nazi and the JL is letting them in control, WTF ARE YOU STILL WORKING WITH THEM??? (That's my point that he's using these terms like insults)

I can hear y'all: "You're just mad he called Batman a fascist, because you love Batman!" And like, there's a lot to talk about on Bruce's and Batman’s morality, but at the end of the day, DC is an usamerican company. Of course fascist points are going to be encouraged, this is the USA we are talking about. They cannot write a story without it, it's taught to them since birth from the imperialism and nationalism combo. And also, a good written Batman isn't a fascist, he is literally against the death penalty or even letting criminals die, which is supported HEAVILY by fascism. Like, call him out for thinking he is always right, go for it, but that's not fascism.

[mariacallous]

(JTA) — France’s mainstream conservative party may join forces with the far right, shattering a decades-long political norm to shun a party with a history of antisemitism.

Eric Ciotti, president of the right-wing Republicans (known in French as Les Républicains), called for a country-wide alliance with the National Rally (or Rassemblement National) during a television appearance on France’s TF1 on Tuesday.

“We say the same things so let’s stop making up imagined opposition,” said Ciotti, becoming the first establishment leader in modern French politics to seek an alliance with the National Rally, led by three-time presidential candidate Marine Le Pen.

Ciotti said he hoped to hitch the increasingly “weak” Republicans to the success of the National Rally, which won a historic victory in the European Parliament elections on Sunday, scoring over 30% of the vote and crushing President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist alliance. France’s results matched a surge of far-right parties across the continent, including gains in Italy and Germany.

In response to the defeat, Macron dissolved parliament and called a snap election for June 30 and July 7. But his gamble on stalling France’s lurch to the far-right may backfire: The National Rally has already been forecast to win the election.

In the past, France’s establishment parties have joined to block power from the anti-immigration, Eurosceptic National Rally, long known for its antisemitic roots. The party was founded in 1972 by Jean-Marie Le Pen, Marine Le Pen’s father, as the National Front. Jean-Marie Le Pen, 95, has been repeatedly convicted of antisemitic hate speech, famously calling the Nazi gas chambers a mere “detail” of World War II and saying the Nazi occupation of France was not “particularly inhumane.”

Another founding member of the party was Pierre Bousequet, a former commander in the Nazi Party’s Waffen-SS.

Since Marine Le Pen took the helm in 2011, she has attempted to scrub the party’s past and win mainstream acceptance. She distanced herself from her father’s antisemitic rhetoric and expelled him from the party in 2015. Meanwhile, she has honed in on Muslims — who make up 11% of the French population — as a threat to the country.

But even as Marine Le Pen has publicly denounced antisemitism, her supporters still disproportionately harbor antisemitic attitudes, according to Nonna Mayer, a political scientist at Sciences Po university.

“Every time we do our surveys, we see that people who are voters or sympathizers of the National Rally are the most antisemitic of all, even though their first target is Arabs, Muslims, Maghrebis,” Mayer told RFI last year, using a term referring to people from North Africa.

Ciotti’s offer to unite with the far-right risks splitting his own party, as he was quickly rebuked by several high-ranking Republicans who demanded his resignation.

Olivier Marleix, the party’s leader in the lower house of parliament, said on X, “Eric Ciotti only speaks for himself. He must leave the presidency of the Republicans.”

Gérard Larcher, another Republican leader and president of the French Senate, also said that Ciotti “can no longer chair our movement and must resign.”

Interior minister Gérald Darmanin, a former Republican who left for Macron’s party, compared Ciotti’s announcement with the 1938 Munich Agreement — in which France, Britain and Italy attempted to appease Hitler by allowing Germany to annex part of Czechoslovakia one year before the outbreak of World War II.

Ciotti “brings dishonor to the Gaullist family,” said Darmanin. He referenced the Republican party’s line of descent from a right-wing party founded by former President Charles de Gaulle after World War II, when de Gaulle fought against Nazi Germany and the Vichy collaborationist regime.

The Union of Jewish Students of France called a snap rally on Tuesday in response to Ciotti’s announcement. “Let’s be numerous. No to compromise,” the group tweeted before dozens of people demonstrated outside the Republicans headquarters, carrying signs that said, “De Gaulle is not Le Pen.”

[lil-gingerbread-queen]

I'm losing my fucking mind.

In the last years, my university has been tagged multiple times with racist and neo-nazi symbols. The local of our union against racism and pro lgbtq+ was destroyed multiple times. Nothing was done, but a bit of paint to cover it up. No investigation. No punishment. And when I vocalised my discomfort, I was told it was nothing, just "immature young people trying to get attention".

Last year, the prefect of Paris authorized a Neo-Nazis' protest. Neo-Nazis walked in Paris, freely, as if it's not illegal to express racism or nazi rhetoric in this country. People weren't happy, so the prefete said it would not happen again.

Well, for the 21st of April, multiple protests against racism were organized all around France, and, they were not authorized by the authorities. The same prefect that let, a year ago, Neo-Nazis in the street of Paris, refused to let a protest against racism walk those same streets. He said "It's antisemitic. They support Palestine, they are antisemitic.". Yeah, take us for idiots, the protest against racism is going to be too antisemitic but not the Neo-Nazis you let walk around (and we know he would do it again).

And now, we have Sciences Po, one of the most reputable universities in our country, joining the movement the USAmerican students have started. The Sorbonne, another reputable university, followed. The French gov and media cried about it, called them "terrorists", "uneducated", "revolutionaries" (this one is crazy and really shows the fascism behind it all. We are in France, being revolutionary is NOT a bad thing in our culture. Wtf would you use "revolutionary" negatively in France, unless you are an oppressor?!!!) Students who are calling for the end of Genocide and just sitting on the ground! The cops were sent and dragged them out. For information, the cops CANNOT intervene in an university in France without the authorization of the president of this university. Not even the gov can make the cops enter an university, it's illegal. When students protest inside an university, people don't like seeing the cops being send after them. Two reasons: 1- students have often protest and help for the quality of life of everyone in French history, 2- WWII's trauma, Nazis stormed French universities because they were hiding Jews and resistants. Like, they are straight up acting like the Nazis, again. And the city of Paris wants to cut the budget they give to those two universities to punish them for not keeping their students in line. So, freedom of speech? GONE.

Students are protesting against a massacre, and they are calling them antisemitic. People standing against racism is antisemitic. But not the people branding Neo-Nazi symbols and chanting Neo-Nazi slogans. They don't move if you are branding a swastika, which is illegal, but will if you are branding Palestine's flag, which is not (yet). They let a political party founded with a SS go around and act nice, but the ones asking for the end of a massacre are the Nazis. Make sense.

So, I'm fucking pissed. I'm fucking pissed because I was told to "calm down" when I couldn't stand the antisemitism paint on my university, when I couldn't stand being friendly with the students that did or support that (because I did meet one). I was told to ignore antisemitism and I refused, and now, they call me antisemitic for standing with Palestinians?! How dare they when they tried to gaslight me so I would ignore the antisemitism in front of me?!

They don't care about jewish people! It's not about jewish people or the jewish faith, it's about white supremacy!

The people have already planned to protest during the Olympic Games, because the French gov is going full fascism lately (everyday, we wake up to more bs), and I hope with all my heart that we ruin the event at least (which would harm them financially), and at best, we get rid of the government and this 5th republic.

[declan-castle]

Star Wars and the Vietnam Connection

Trigger Warning: Mentions of Nazis, SS, Perpetrators of the Holocaust, and mentions/pictures of the Vietnam War.

For my first post, I wanna talk about something that many Star Wars fans are aware of, but something that I still think is cool and a good starting point!

Many people know that the Galactic Empire in the Star Wars franchise was, from a design perspective, based off of Nazi Germany. This is evident all throughout the original 1977 film, written and directed by George Lucas. The uniformity of the grey officers’ regalia is reminiscent of the infamous uniforms of Nazi SS Officers. Peter Cushing’s antagonistic character and the face of the Empire in this film, Grand Moff Tarkin (below), represents this connection, and his fellow Imperial Officers share similar clothing (While I will picture Tarkin below, I do not feel comfortable posting a picture of an SS officer on here). Another similarity would be the use of “Stormtrooper” to describe the Empire’s soldiers, a term which developed to describe special forces of the German Empire in World War One and became the common identification for Nazi troops.

While these more surface-level similarities are worth talking about, there is a different connection beneath that surface. George Lucas was not making Star Wars in the 1940s, he was making them in the 1970s, and he was an American man with a strong distaste for the recent events of the Vietnam War.

In James Cameron’s limited docuseries, James Cameron’s Story of Science Fiction, the acclaimed director behind sci-fi hits like The Terminator, Aliens, and Avatar sits down with Lucas to discuss his space opera. Cameron asks him about his choice to depict the noble Rebel Alliance as a group of rag-tag freedom fighters, and how they are similar to what the US Government might call terrorists today. Lucas qualifies his point, specifying that he was thinking of the Viet Cong, the guerrilla fighters of North Vietnam who warred against the United States for many years, of which Lucas refers to as the “American Empire.” The clip of the interview will be pasted at the bottom of this post if you want to watch! The Rebels (top left) fought against a major technological power in the Galactic Empire (top right), in a similar way to the Viet Cong (bottom left) ending up in a war with one of the world’s military superpowers (bottom right).

Ultimately, while Lucas was putting forward an anti-authoritarian message in general, comparing the Nazi-inspired villains of his film to America’s actions in historical events very recent to him was a biting commentary, especially when McCarthyism was still fresh in Hollywood’s memory. Although a simple message, that simplicity of the “little guy” standing up to the “big guy” trope is one that works, and is likely why Star Wars has been immortalized in every generation since its release.

I hope you found this connection as fascinating as I did, and I hope that you enjoyed reading! If you want to suggest me to cover something, feel free to mention it below! I have lots of other ideas, but I'm always open to new ones as well!

[delpasado]

Spanish Archaeology under the Franco Regime

During the regime of Francisco Franco, Spanish archaeology, and the sciences as a whole, experienced a period of isolation, which allowed Franco to exercise a great amount of ideological control. While the fascist regimes of Nazi Germany and Italy relied on the misrepresentation of pre-historical archaeology to support their ideas of racial superiority, the Francoist regime affirmed it’s nationalist superiority with the theoretical reunification of the Spanish state under the Catholic Monarchs during the Middle Ages (Díaz-Andreu, 75). Spanish nationhood was understood as an imperialist project undertaken by the Catholic Monarchs, and Catholicism was understood to be its backbone. As with all fascist projects, attempts were made to “prove” or trace the origins of the Spanish state into the Bronze Age, or more commonly, the age of Rome, although these projects were largely owned by individual archaeologists, rather than the regime itself (Díaz-Andreu, 76). 

The Francoist regime’s apparent disinterest in archaeology did not prevent the field from being impacted by Francoist forces after the Civil War. Several archaeologists of prominence were killed in action during the fighting, made political prisoners, or fled from Spain during the war and refused to return. The Civil War led to the destruction of several regional archaeological institutes, as they were affiliated with ethno-national identities in Basque Country, Galicia, and Valencia (Díaz-Andreu, 76). As with most aspects of Spanish life during the post-Civil War Period, Madrid became the center of archaeological research and academic production, assisted by the destruction of regional institutions. The newly developed institutions in Madrid were quickly populated by Franciosts and falangists, the most notable being Julio Martínez Santa-Olalla. 

Martínez Santa-Olalla occupied the lead role of the Comisaría General de Excavaciones Arqueológicas, Franco’s new administrative body of Spanish archaeology, and served as the chair of Ethnology and Prehistory at the University of Madrid. Martínez Santa-Olalla’s position as head of the Comisaría General and Department Chair in Madrid, granted him broad control over a variety of publications, all of which espoused Francoist beliefs. Martínez Santa-Olalla had fought on behalf of Franco during the Civil War as part of the falangist faction (Díaz-Andreu, 77). He visited and was invited to several conferences and universities in Germany, and spent time visiting with Nazi-affliated professors of prehistory. Martínez Santa-Olalla even attended excavations led by the Schutzstaffel (SS), during their attempts to connect German prehistory to the Nazi mythos of Aryan excellence (Mederos Martin, 9). 

In addition to Martínez Santa-Olalla’s appointment, the directors of other departments and museums were quickly replaced with pro-Franco professionals, who worked to embed Spanish nationalist ideas into institutions that were once deeply committed to their regional identities. As these professionals worked to insert Francoist and fascist ideology into their works, post-Civil War Spanish archaeology became characterized by strong centralization and poor funding. Archaeology became a method by which fascists could support and endorse fascist ideas about human evolution, societies, and ethnography (Díaz-Andreu, 80).The evolution of Spanish archaeology into a vehicle for fascist ideology was only hampered by the Franco regime's preference for the Middle Ages, but it nonetheless dutifully occupied its role under the fascist government. 

The emphasis on prehistoric archaeology was no coincidence. Some archaeologists used their expertise to argue for a prehistoric unified Spain, in order to support the work of Franco to diminish ethno-nationalist movements and to encourage the superiority of a Spanish national identity. While the Franco regime spoke of a deep interest in the Middle Ages, their interest was more deeply rooted in self-interest, as the Francoist story of the Spanish Middle Ages was better adapted to support Spanish nationhood. For Francoists, the Spanish nation was created when the last Christion monarchs in the north began a series of conquests, pushing Muslim leaders further and further south. These efforts culminated in the reign of the Catholic Monarchs, Isabel and Fernando, and their conquest of Granada, the last Muslim taifa. The story of conquest, or reconquest (reconquista) became a popularized method of understanding Spanish history and nationhood. Francoists were entirely uninterested with the Muslim kingdoms, which were present for the majority of Spain’s medieval history, and therefore, did not fund excavations or archaeological studies on the topic. For Spanish archaeologists, the prehistoric time was far more likely to receive funding or attention, whereas anything after the Islamic conquest in 711 was unprofitable (Valor and Gutiérrez, 6). 

Under the Franco regime, Spanish archaeology was heavily centralized and focused on Spanish prehistory, in order to support Francoist ideas of national identity. It remained isolated until the 1970s, when universities began expanding. More positions became available, allowing some new ideas and theoretical frameworks to be introduced, although no institutional changes occurred until after the end of the regime. The introduction of new perspectives was slow, as author Margarita Díaz-Andreu remarks in her 1993 article Theory and Ideology in Archaeology: Spanish Archaeology under the Franco regime, “We will still have to wait for Spanish archaeology to show an effective change in the theoretical field”.

Citations:

Díaz-Andreu, Margarita. “Theory and Ideology in Archaeology: Spanish Archaeology under the Franco Régime.” Antiquity 67, no. 254 (1993): 74–82. doi:10.1017/S0003598X00045075. (requires subscription)

Julio Martínez Santa-Olalla. (n.d.). Real Academia De La Historia. https://dbe.rah.es/biografias/27622/julio-martinez-santa-olalla

Mederos Martin, Alfredo. “The National-Socialist Mirage. The Relationship between Two Professors of Prehistory, Oswald Menghin and Julio Martínez Santa-Olalla (1935-1952).” Trabajos de Prehistoria 71, no. 2 (2014): 119–220. doi:10.3989/tp.2014.12131. (requires subscription)

Valor, M., & Gutiérrez, A. (2014). The study of Medieval Archaeology. In The Archaeology of Medieval Spain, 1100-1500. Equinox Publishing Ltd. (requires subscription)

[pattern-recognition]

liberals will write a damning retort of nazi phrenological pseudo science, monstrous SS war crimes, and and the contradictory logic of recruiting foreigners the reich saw as subhuman into the SS, and then be like “but in many ways this was the lesser of two evils compared to the judeo-bolshevik soviet barbarians”

[mona-vainy]

🌙 “Fue el tiempo que pasaste con tu rosa lo que la hizo tan importante” El Principito AZUL #idaKHAN HH 🤴 the Little Prince SuntVerbaRerum Latin Are Words Things 📍🎲 ... Alea Iacta Est‼️⭕️ Chaos 🌹idaEco in The Name of the Rose idaBond UmbertoEco SeanConnery 🎴 DIvina Commedia L'Inferno Dante Alighieri WILST il SOMmo POE PoETA eta beta gamma Delta ♥️♣️♦️♠️ TIME COSMIC virtual Tragedy tragi-comedy patom Tragedia Comica Virtuosa Global COOK chef Miso Soup tweety bird YukiMiaki99 Sushi TheGodfather Stark Mona New York Taiwan Korea Japanese cusine Epicurean Epicurus Spinoza idaSPINOZA idampan s father MarioPan taught us CQFP ♡◇♧♤ Come Quando Fuori Piove = Cuori Fiori Quadri Picche No CARD or Video Game CASINO theGambler 🎱 #WordsInLineSpaceAndTime 🚀 Mona x Mon AMI 🗨 idamariapan idampan ⚖️ panidamaria idapan 🩸mariapan 🚀 idealeconcepts 🎨 idealistamagica IMPan I m PAN am #ART MonaCoion💡 #idaXFiles #Words #Magic ☕️ one more cup of coffee #BobDylan DylanIMP idaTesla Elon Musk ABC 123 Maga Meme 🍒 MDBXyz #idaEINSTEIN zero #Einstein #ATOMIC 💣 explosive idaHUXLEY idaORWELL #AldousHuxley #GeorgeOrwell #idaByrne 🔥 Fire onDe #Waters Meta H20 XYZ Virgin Con #CERN r #Galactic idaVirgin #NASA #SpaceX idaZiggy DB Stardust idaNewton 1st name was Issac NEWTON 🕸 WEB James Webb #Space between me & you InFinite ♾️

Fazza WATTS doYou THINK 🤔 & HH His Highness the Aga Khan #AKDN #AgaKhan the AgaKhan Development Network #Fazza #Faz3 GroupFazza Elon Musk (weNeed2Talk 1on1) noFUN idaNietzsche Dragon Rocket Ss blow FLAMES #FFFxyz MonStreSS Monsters (*) Will write Downey what i found on Twitter yesterday: PRETENDERS not Ismaili w LIES religious IMPostors impostoring & insulting any common decency @fazza3hamdan @groupfazza

#AFRICA #BW #CHiNA #RUSSIA #Ukraine #Syria #IRAN #ISraEL is RA E L im no Engineer have 0 #POWER #UN I worry KANT Usee people R dying WAR Hunger Children Sex Trade Sad NEWS 😔 EU humanitarian Crisis no bricks #LEGO Put in #Putin together = #LAW lex LeGis Legge Law Supreme Court #HumanRights #Justice #Truth Veritas iCC inertnational Criminal Court the Judge KHAN force Giustizia nobody's above theLaw Mann idaMann Thomas idaBIG told Me Isa BIG jobs UTOPIA + #TheodorAdorno #Disney #Marvel #Facebook #FakeNews I get DE #PRESS ed Ted plus Blue cause all these FASCISTS und NAZI right Left n center ... everywhere Fascism I Dispise DIs Di Spies ciencia Science Idiots believe dei are GOD DC gods have la Scienza InFusa in Fusa come quelle che fa il GATTO 🙀 CATASTROPHE idaPicasso idaDALI CAT astrophysicists Fromm d Star 🌟 t Anyhow idaCohen member Leonard COHEN Euler Leo Leonardo Da Vinci b4 asking AreYouVincent ass in ARTIST Vincent Van Gogh EXPERIENCE x MaryCBeal Ally McBeal or Douglas Coupland ... auction Sotheby's Christie's exhibition up COMEY coming Komehini

In FORM pubic OPS Public + readers DATA idaWEI came to Be tube Tubi idaKAPOOR best Friend Sunday Morning idaREED Lou Reed Velvet Underground idaWarhol Andy Warhol shall show share Al Jazeera

Can art change society? - Ai Weiwei and Anish Kapoor | Studio B: Unscripted

From: Studio B: Unscripted

Can art change society? – Ai Weiwei and Anish Kapoor

Artist and activist Ai Weiwei and abstract sculptor Anish Kapoor on the changing role of art in today’s world.

Ai Weiwei is one of the world’s most influential living artists and activists, known for addressing human rights and freedom of expression issues through his work. His memoir, 1000 Years of Joy and Sorrows, shares his family story of growing up in China.

Sculptor and installation artist Anish Kapoor has created large-scale artworks across the globe that challenge us to engage subjectively with them, including Cloud Gate in Chicago and the ArcelorMittal Orbit in London.

The two global icons compare notes on freedom of expression, how art can challenge power, and what subversive art looks like today. PoST SCRIPTUM photograph Screen shot 25.03.23 Someone pretending 2be Elon Musk had been messaging MonaVainy on Pinterest Telegram FOTO below is a sample. Kind to ask about my son... I had mentioned he was suicidal, brought by the POLICE 911 to a psychiatric hospital Now HELD in Emergency CARE @elonmuskfans

Ah ah Joker Sarcastic... Me send Money to his Manager ? ... Not likely Honey Principe AZZURRO EM (Keanu Reeves know also) - whoever YOU Are - i really like ElonReeveMusk Elon Reeve Musk BUTT @elonmuskfansgossipblog TRUST is KING in my not WHITE HOUSE Il Diavolo fa le pentole ma non I coperchi Italian PROVERB Let's see if Richard Branson Picking UP Women Girls Chicks Ducks Ducklings ... Knows the meaning #idaPACINO #idaDENIRO Al Pacino Robert DeNiro help so it Dose dos does not knot get LOST in TRANSLATION comme INA film movie Sofia Coppola (The Godfather Francis Ford Coppola's cop pola s daughter) Star ring Starring 💴 💃 Jojo Rabbit 🐰 Scarlett Johansson in Japan ttss Tokyo Tom Waits link me to RB @richardbransonpickingupwome-blog #photoIMP photography by MonaVainy all copyrights ida maria pan ideale concepts MAGNETIC FIELDS AURORA borealis Global Spectacle ... SCI-TECH daily Notification Invasion ALERT: Disease Fears raised over New Mosquito Spices Species Reported Inn FlorIDA ... SOS VITAMINS I need VITA MINE 🍋 citrus yellow green 🥗 Le mon LEMON Lime oranges 🍊 orange juice 🥤 minerals intake of IRON man my Bones ache sto male Tristezza Triste Elle Amal a mal Male partout ovunque Pain HURT chotto matte okudasai idaSAN Kiki 🤙 call Matte idaMATTA MATTA Mata Matte MATTI Mattel Matan MataHari Doso idaKADOKAWA Kadokawa TentoChito Watashi WA OnnaMusha Ichi Ban SunTzu blind Let's Meditate Focus on Confucius LaoTze Pray LOVE PRACTICE w Dalai Lama Put compassion into Action Dov'e l'AMORE L'Amour QUIBUS qui qùo qua topp Topòlino Paperino Paperne Nonna Papera Duffy Donald Duck n TRUMP Quo Vadis CarpeDiem Iger Ike Fox WB Discovery Co. FunKo POp Oprah PHANTOM of the Opera Ora pro Nobis Pater Noster OMA AMA io Remo REM a anche Tu Verbal Diarrhea idaSARTE idaBARTHES idaCAMUS SHIT idaCATTELAN Maurizio Cattelan ho la Nausea come JP Sartre I feel it coming ind theweeknd VOMITO MUORO emmit Christopher CRISTO Chris Bloomberg Boom Bloom ElstonGunn Robet Allen Zimmerman A Series of Dreams ... HighWater Mississippi MK mark Knopfler note was sweet. Yes Angel Angels 'IBelieve InYou' Don Raffae idaBrando idaDeANDRE Marlon Brando, Fabrizio De Andre' 'Don't Fall Apart on Me Tonight' ... 'Volta La Carta' idaKEANU trovi pricipino KeaNu Castello Angelina Jolie ahah Aditya makes the Gioconda SMILE monaLisa Lisa Joe Gio G Johnny Cash or NoCASh 'Era gia' tutto Previso' EraTutto già Scritto Detto Ripetuto e Ribadito. Trascritto, fotografato, archiviato, Cancellato, bruciato, messo rimesso od omesso dal FeSSO ... a Roma se dice 'o fammo Mori ner FOSSO' ma Bruce lo sa Il fiume The River ... la Alma el Karma e poi la CURA tra il DESERTO, la pianura, le Valli ed I Monti... le come le LaMontagne... Neve, ghiaccio, gelo poi laggiu' la tundra, la steppa e nuovamente ilDESERTO erso la sabbia, I serpenti, ragni, scorpions, hawks Falcons avvoltoi ed il Tramonto nell'oasi col cammello O eDAI dimmi ... Dam IA N Elephant un Elefante Dumbo Forse? DONNO dontknow idaDerrida may be she k nows iq GPS Jacques Derrida Algeria Paris Albert Camus Cammo Affa Che si fa ? NESSUNO -come Ulisse- lo sa. Eneide, Iliade, Odessa ne' Virgilio, ne' James Joyce Ne er matto de me figlio SAN dirmi a chi m'appoggio, dove cazzo m'Appiglio U2 Angel XII dove se nascosto Michelangelo

“Fue el tiempo que pasaste con tu rosa lo que la hizo tan importante”.

[captmccoy]

A New Deployment

Above: Twilight in Gaza City – (that’s a person by the way) The Derliwanger Brigade was a Nazi SS group made up of prisoners and mental patients. The unit was named after it’s commander Oskar Derliwanger. Derliwanger had a doctorate in political science from the University of Frankfurt. Like many wealthy members of the Third Reich he was a murderous psychopath. Derliwanger was a convicted…

[brandonwayneb]

‘spelling with Brandon’s family’

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[shalomelohim]

Sciences nazies - La race, le sol et le sang | ARTE (Bande-annonce) 

Documentaire complet YouTube (et sur le site Arte) de David Korn-Brzoza (France, 2017, 1h38mn) - disponible jusqu’au 6 mai 2023 (Version en allemand sur Artede)

Notes : Très bon documentaire quoique glaçant.

Il est à noter les parallèles entre les années 30 et notre époque. Hitler n’était pas une erreur ou le coup du hasard, son parti a été financé, sa candidature appuyée. Une société fragilisée par une crise économique permet de faire émerger des tendances extrémistes comme c’est le cas actuellement. La démocratie se décompose progressivement depuis plusieurs années jusqu’à ce que le terrain soit favorable à une prise de pouvoir autoritaire.

Il est question de Famine, de Guerre, de Peste : fléaux décrits dans la Bible que Dieu utilise pour châtier le monde afin que, dans la détresse, il crie à Lui pour être délivré.

De nos jours, le transhumanisme fait resurgir la notion de “sur-homme” et de “sous-homme”. L’eugénisme qui permet de penser qu’une catégorie de personnes n’a plus le droit d’exister et doit être éliminée peut ainsi se déployer. A mettre en rapport avec la loi récente sur “l’aide active à mourir” et ce qui s’est passé durant le Covid bien-sûr (sans oublier le personnel “suspendu” qui sans aide ou reconversion vit une totale exclusion sociale).

Le début du documentaire explique comment un homme politique inconnu et élu modestement prend le pouvoir à un moment stratégique en tant que “Sauveur”.

Falsification et réécriture de l’histoire, corruption, professions clés qui participent activement, mises en scène, propagande, manipulation, ésotérisme, mythologie, science et médecine sont utilisés dans la méthodologie du processus qui n’a plus aucune limite.

Très peu de responsables nazis ont été jugés et condamnés, la dénazification ayant été un échec puisque la majorité a bénéficié d’aide de personnes hauts placées.

Tous les nazis ont été reclassés et ont contribué à la reconstruction de l’Allemagne.

(Livre en téléchargement gratuit : “Les racines nazies de l’Union Européenne de Bruxelles” par Paul Anthony Taylor, Aleksandra Niedzwiecki, Matthias Rath et August Kowalczyk)

Voici les propos du Docteur Yves Ternon, Médecin et Historien en conclusion du documentaire : “Ces hommes étaient totalement pervertis par le national-socialisme. Qu’on ne les prenne pas pour des fous, pour des monstres, mais que l’on comprenne que quand une idéologie s’installe avec tout l’aura qui pouvait y avoir autour du Führer, tout le monde est en danger. Ce qui s’est passé en Allemagne peut se produire n’importe où, dans n’importe quelles conditions, dans la mesure où le processus idéologique se développe.” 

Rappelons que ce qui va se passer dans les mois et les années à venir sera bien pire que ce qui a été fait durant la seconde guerre mondiale.

Tout est un éternel recommencement dans un monde qui rejette le Dieu d’Israël :

“ Toutes choses sont en travail au delà de ce qu'on peut dire ; l'oeil ne se rassasie pas de voir, et l'oreille ne se lasse pas d'entendre. Ce qui a été, c'est ce qui sera, et ce qui s'est fait, c'est ce qui se fera, il n'y a rien de nouveau sous le soleil. S'il est une chose dont on dise : Vois ceci, c'est nouveau ! Cette chose existait déjà dans les siècles qui nous ont précédés. On ne se souvient pas de ce qui est ancien ; et ce qui arrivera dans la suite ne laissera pas de souvenir chez ceux qui vivront plus tard. ” (Ecclésiaste 1:8-11)

============

Synopsis : Comment la science allemande s'est massivement ralliée au nazisme, légitimant ses crimes et y participant. 

Une page en partie méconnue de l'histoire du IIIe Reich. 

Si la médecine nazie et ses expérimentations monstrueuses ont été partiellement jugées à Nuremberg (la plupart des coupables étaient en fuite), le rôle assigné dès 1933 par Heinrich Himmler, le maître de la SS, à l'ensemble de la communauté scientifique allemande est moins connu. 

Obsédé par le désir de prouver la supériorité de la race germanique, le futur maître d'œuvre de la "solution finale" crée en 1935 l'Ahnenerbe (littéralement "héritage ancestral"), institut scientifique doté de moyens colossaux pour effectuer chantiers de fouilles et expéditions à travers le monde. 

Si l'archéologie – dont 80 % des représentants adhèrent au parti national-socialiste – et l'anthropologie sont en première ligne, toutes les disciplines vont travailler avec ardeur à la tâche qui leur est assignée : légitimer l’entreprise d’épuration raciale, de germanisation des territoires et de domination idéologique du régime. 

Beaucoup de chercheurs, membres de la SS, vont aussi participer directement aux crimes de masse du nazisme, soit au sein des commandos d'extermination sur le front de l'Est, soit en se livrant à des expériences barbares sur des humains, ou encore en organisant le pillage à grande échelle des territoires conquis. 

Objectifs délirants L'histoire de cette "science de combat", et la manière dont elle s'organise pour se plier aux objectifs délirants fixés par Himmler puis, après la guerre, pour échapper largement à la dénazification superficielle menée par les Alliés, est retracée par David Korn-Brzoza à partir d'archives en partie inédites et de témoignages de nombre d'historiens ayant contribué à mettre ces faits dans la lumière. 

Son film revient ainsi sur les élucubrations de Himmler, persuadé qu'en cherchant bien la science pourrait montrer que les Germains ont inventé tous les acquis de la civilisation. Il rappelle aussi comment, au camp de concentration Natzweiler-Struthof, choisi pour sa proximité avec la Reichuniversität de Strasbourg, l'anatomiste August Hirt a fait exécuter 86 déportés sélectionnés à Auschwitz pour constituer une collection de "squelettes juifs". 

Un épisode atroce et méconnu dans la longue liste des horreurs commises jusqu'aux dernières heures de la guerre au nom de la "science" nazie. 

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

“Can a frugal state be totalitarian? Or, in other words, is an anti-statist totalitarianism possible? These questions have been asked countless times during the era of triumphant neoliberalism: beginning in 1973 when Pinochet implemented the economic dictates of the Chicago School, passing through the various military regimes responsible for carpet privatizations (Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay, Bolivia, etc.), up to the discussions – no matter how wrongheaded – of the ‘sanitary dictatorship’ of neoliberal governance during the pandemic.

Totalitarianism requires a strong, ‘totalizing’ state, at least according to the doctrine promoted by Hayek in his 1944 Road to Serfdom, which in its redacted form, published by Reader’s Digest, sold one million copies. According to Hayek, a society sinks into totalitarianism as soon as the state begins to worry about the economic security of its citizens. The trajectory is irreversible; we start with social security and end up in concentration camps (or gulags). The omnipresence of the state is thus integral to ‘totalitarianism’ in the Arendtian sense.

A recent book, however, has planted in me a seed of doubt. Johann Chapoutot’s Libres d’obéir. Le management du nazisme à aujourd’hui (Free to Obey: Management, from Nazism to the Present Day [2020]), translated this year into Italian and German but, as is often the case, not English. Its central figure is Reinhart Höhn (1904-2000): a jurist, academic and SS general, sentenced to death for war crimes but subsequently pardoned. Höhn was part of a group of intellectuals that provided the theoretical framework not so much for Nazism itself as for the Gestapo, the SS and the occupation of almost all of Europe. His partners in this project included Werner Best (1903-89): a jurist too, but first and foremost a senior police officer in Hessen, then head of the political police, and finally plenipotentiary of occupied Denmark; Wilhelm Stuckart (1902-53), lawyer, jurisconsult to the Nazi party, member of the SS and formulator and compiler of the Nuremberg Race Laws; Franz Alfred Six (1909-75), a doctor of political science and member of the SS; Otto Ohlendorf (1907-51), an economic consultant and SS colonel who studied economics, held a doctorate in jurisprudence and commanded a unit responsible for around 90,000 deaths in Ukraine, before being sentenced to death at Nuremberg and hanged.

The presence of this educated élite at the head of one of the fiercest apparatuses of repression ever conceived, is a marked contrast with the hysterical image of SS officers in many American Second World War films: an image whose coarseness borders on the comical, and banishes the idea that a phenomenon like Nazism could ever repeat itself. We are typically reassured that such ghouls could never again implement such dangerous ideas. Not so in Chapoutot’s portrait. The author explains how these SS intellectuals were called upon to provide a conceptual framework capable of overcoming the enormous logistical difficulties by the conquest of practically the entire continent. 

In a 1941 text entitled Fundamental Problems for a German Administration of the Great Space, Werner Best wrote that ‘the rapid and powerful expansion of the territories on which the German people directly or indirectly exercise their sovereignty obliges us to review all concepts, principles and procedures through which this sovereignty has hitherto been thought and constructed.’ However much the territory under German dominion might increase, ‘the German people will never be able to afford doubling the number of public servants.’ More would have to be done with fewer personnel, not least because a large part of the male population was conscripted. The procedures of the state needed to be honed, made more flexible. In fact, Best had (unsuccessfully) proposed to Himmler that the public sector adopt a model of relativ lockeren Besetzung (‘relatively “loose” occupation’). The SS intellectuals thus became advocates of flexible management and streamlined protocols, at odds with the caricatured image of the Nazi dictatorship.  

Chapoutot charts the social trajectory of these characters following the defeat of Nazism. After his commuted twenty-year sentence, Franz Six became an advertising consultant for Porsche; Best worked as a consultant for the company Stinnes AG, then became an adviser to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the German Federal Republic. The most interesting story was that of Reinhart Höhn, who, having escaped the death sentence and spent years practicing homeopathy under a pseudonym, went on to found the Akademie für Führungskräfte der Wirtschaft (the Academy for Business Executives) at Bad Harzburg in Lower Saxony. By the time Höhn retired in 1972, around 200,000 German managers had passed through his institution; when he died, the number stood at 600,000. Professors at the school included other ex-SS officers, such as Six and Justus Beyer.

Bad Harzberg taught a style of management by target derived from Höhn’s reforms to the military chain of command. Under this system, the superior officer demands that his subordinates achieve their prescribed objectives, but leaves them free to decide exactly how, intervening only in exceptional cases (management by exception). Regrettably, Chapoutot does not investigate the relationship of the Bad Harzberg technique to the management styles now practiced in the United States. But his narrative shows how these hands-off methods were initially a product of German military expansion, which sought to reconcile a massive administrative operation with a reduced workforce.

The Nazi theorists were famously hostile to law and rights, viewed as creations of inferior Judaic and Latin cultures (Commandments of the Bible and Roman law codes respectively), and foreign to the proud German spirit which claims freedom from legal obligations. As such, they had a deep-rooted distrust of the state as a guarantor, responsible for the enforcement of law. The state was rather seen as a codified, ossified body which obstructs the flexibility and agility necessary for the expansion of Lebensraum. 

Nazis always talked of Reich (empire), never of Staat (state). Whereas Carl Schmitt saw states as bulwarks of political order, Best developed the idea of a Völkische Großraumordnung (popular order of the Great Space), in which the superior races would create zones of domination around themselves without fear of any normative restriction. Power was the only all-embracing source of political order. Aside from peoples (not, as per Schmitt, states), there existed no other normative points of reference that could be counterposed to the regime established by National Socialism.

For Höhn and his contemporaries, the state is unable to cope on its own when faced with the huge multiplication of tasks and responsibilities entailed by imperial expansion. It was precisely for this reason – to deal with re-armament, war preparations and the administrative challenges posed by the occupation of Europe – that para-state Nazi organizations began to surface, starting with the SS: a ‘private’ police force of 915,000 belonging to the party (even if Nazis always preferred to speak of a Bewegung – a movement – rather than a party). Likewise, Organisation Todt was born as a para-state company and ultimately employed 1.4 million foreign workers to meet civil and military engineering demands during the war. The state thus became one tool among many for achieving the Nazis’ domestic and overseas objectives.

Höhn believed that ‘legal theory has created an illusion, attributing to the state an “invisible personality”, transforming it in a perennial quest for sovereignty’, whereas in reality the state is nothing but an ‘“apparatus” at the service of power’, a tool which ‘the Nazi movement has captured, and to which it has ascribed other duties.’ In a chapter for the edited volume Grundfragen der Rechtsauffassung (Basic Questions for the Conception of Right), he elaborated on this argument: ‘The state is no longer the supreme political entity… It is rather an entity which limits itself to the execution of tasks assigned to it by the leadership (Führung), which operates in the service of the people. In this sense, the state is no more than a simple instrument . . . [to fulfill] the objectives it is assigned’.

It is this subordination of the state to externally-imposed targets and assignments that links Höhn’s theory to contemporary neoliberalism. Contrary to popular belief, neoliberals don’t seek to destroy the state; they know full well that without state there is no market. Rather, they want to invert the relationship of power between the market and the state. Not a market in the service of the state, but a state in the service of the market. Just as for Höhn the state is merely a mechanism equipped to achieve certain ends, so too for neoliberalism the state is a company that serves other companies – an entity that provides a service to be assessed in terms of the parameters of private enterprise (profitability, flexibility, best practices, benchmarking). None of this prevents a microscopic, pervasive control of citizenry, nor does it necessarily threaten the ability to stifle dissent. Just because war is outsourced to contractors (private mercenaries, that is to say) doesn’t mean it is less bloody, or lethal – or ‘total’.

The idea these Nazis passed down to us, then, is that of a heteronomous state, subordinated to external functions, designed to obey a logic which lies outside of it (and comes from a party or a company). This reverses the conventional wisdom. Totalitarianism doesn’t consist in enslavement by an omnipotent state; it rather wishes to impose a regime in which the state itself is enslaved as an instrument of an extrinsic omnipotence. A theory of management born to facilitate the advance of the Panzerdivisionen came to resemble the neoliberal project. We are thus able to resolve the Pinochet paradox, in which a brutal dictatorship violently imposes the free market. But if we were to think beyond 1973, it would be interesting to dwell for a moment on Paul Bremer’s 100 Orders, formulated in 2004 with the objective of instituting a neoliberal regime in Iraq, at the time occupied by the US Armed Forces. 

As Wendy Brown explains in Undoing the Demos (2015),

These mandated selling off several hundred state-run enterprises, permitting full ownership rights of Iraqi businesses by foreign firms and full repatriation of profits to foreign firms, opening Iraq’s banks to foreign ownership and control, and eliminating tariffs […] At the same time, the Bremer Orders restricted labor and throttled back public good and services. They outlawed strikes and eliminated the right to unionize in most sectors, mandated a regressive flat tax on income, lowered the corporate rate to a flat 15 percent, and eliminated taxes on profits repatriated to foreign-owned businesses.

- Marco D’Eramo, “Rule by Target,” New Left Review: Sidecar. October 15, 2021.

Translated by Francesco Anselmetti.