Debate on Christianity

^[1]5,247 words

Translations: Polish ^[2], Spanish ^[3]

Editor’s Note:

This is the complete text of the debate on Christianity between Jonas De Geer and Greg Johnson in Stockholm on April 18, 2015. De Geer’s opening statement is reprinted from here ^[4]. Johnson’s is reprinted from here ^[5]. The rest of the text is a transcript by V.S. from the YouTube audio of the debate here ^[6].  

Opening Statement by Jonas De Geer

“Is a strong Christian identity a necessary condition for the future cultural and political life of the European peoples?”

I shall for the purpose of this discussion focus on the sociological benefits of Christianity to our societies in general and the nationalist resistance in particular. This is not be understood as though I have a functionalist approach to the Faith or would reduce it to some sort of psycho-political tool.

Also — when I refer to ”European” or ”Europeans” I include the European descended in America, Australia, South Africa, etc.

There is no doubt whatsoever that the Churches of today, at least in the western world, with no significant exception, are in a most pitiful state. They have become intellectually and spiritually deformed beyond recognition by that mental virus we call political correctness; by their imbecile, pathological urge to find a place within a modern paradigm inherently and fundamentally hostile to Christianity.

Not least the modern Catholic Church. The Catholic Church has — theological and ecclesiological issues aside — without comparison been the main cultural, intellectual and political force in Christianity (by the way, not long ago, in civilized times, “Christianity” was synonymous with “the Western World” or “the White World”).

In the words of T. S. Eliot, who was not a Catholic:

When we consider the Western World, we must recognize that the main cultural tradition has been that corresponding to the Church of Rome. Only within the last four hundred years has any other manifested itself; and anyone with a sense of centre and periphery must admit that the western tradition has been Latin, and Latin means Rome.

It is an indisputable, but in nationalist circles often little understood, fact of history that the implosion of the Catholic Church is simultaneous with, or indeed just precedes the moral, social and ethnic self-destruction of the European World. This is no coincidence.

The Catholic Church was in many ways destroyed in the early 1960s, with the Second Vatican Council, a church-meeting under the Pope’s auspices, attended by all the bishops of the World, held in the Vatican 1962–1965. This did not come as a complete surprise to knowledgeable Catholics. In fact the history of the Church during the 1800s and early 1900s was very much about fighting of attempts at infiltration of the Church Hierarchy by Jewish and Masonic forces, and the ideologies they promoted: “modernism” and “liberalism.”

There is a vast literature from the 19th century, mainly in French, but also in English, about this conspiracy against the Church, and it is well documented stuff, not fanciful speculation.

Nevertheless the Conspiracy eventually triumphed in the early 1960s, which, given the influence of the Catholic Church, had disastrous cultural and social consequences for all of Western Civilisation, indirectly also for those parts that were predominantly Protestant.

It is immediately after the Second Vatican Council that the cultural revolution,  the so-called sexual revolution, divorce on a large scale, institutionalized abortion, mass-immigration, proclamations of “multicultural societies,” etc., etc., are introduced, with full force, since the last bulwark of European integrity —  the Church — had just been eliminated by the powers that be. Now the floodgates were opened wide and the European population could be reduced to a mass of degenerate, brain-dead consumers.

It all happened so amazingly fast. No ten years in the history of our civilization have seen such drastic social and moral change as those between 1965 and ’75.

One very telling example of what has happened since the reshaping/destruction of the Church is  how Hollywood could abandon the MPPC (Motion Picture Production Code) or Hays code. After having been threatened by boycott from American Catholics, the major film studios had grudgingly adopted a moral code for film production in the early 1930s, which stated that there was to be no ridiculing of the clergy, no foul language or nudity, but also no miscegenation on the screen. This system was in use until 1968 when it was deemed obsolete. Of course it was then needed more than ever, and ever since the Jewish film studios have had a green light to bombard generations of hapless westerners with all sorts of propaganda and all kinds of filth. Perversely enough, generations of westerners have enjoyed this psychological warfare against them as entertainment, the effects of which can hardly be overestimated.

It is true that the Church as institution, as it has been known for centuries, well over a millennium, has been hijacked by its enemies, but it is not dead, it can not die, its tradition, the deposit of Faith are intact, the apostolic succession unbroken.

It is also true that the European World as a whole is becoming more and more secularized. Sure, but that is part of our programmed self-destruction.

In the long run, no people can survive without religion, and a viable religion can never be constructed. It can be man-made, of course, but never contrived in order to suit a political agenda.

The attempts that have been made at creating new religions or recreate old ones in certain nationalist circles have been hopelessly futile, to put it mildly.

Another important thing here is that we today find ourselves in a situation where Europe insanely has imported tens of millions of Muslims, who in most cases take their religion quite seriously. Regardless of what one thinks about the 9-11 and Charlie Hebdo episodes, and although it is true that the architects of multiculturalism have been mainly Jews, hardly any Muslims, the Muslim colonization is none the less a ticking bomb. What most secularized westerners do not understand is that both Muslims and Jews still regard us as Christians, albeit decadent Christians that have lost their Faith and through that their morale. They don`t think for a moment that Christianity made us weak, in fact they know it is quite the opposite, that we are pathetically weak without Faith, without traditional morals and values. This is one of the reasons organized Jewry has done its utmost to undermine the Church for centuries. That, and of course a very old, very deep running hatred of Christ and His Church. People will not fight and die for some notion of having a precious DNA, or some nationalist interpretation of sociobiology. You can only resist those fueled by religious fervor with religious fervor, with Faith; this is as true today as it was at Poitiers, Malta or Lepanto.

So it makes very much sense to tap in to the religious Tradition of the West, a Tradition that, in spite of what has happened to the established churches during the past fifty years, is still unbroken and alive.

Also for those who do not have a personal belief in God, it would certainly be wise and wholesome to, if not embrace the Faith, at least acknowledge the fundamental, vital role that Christianity has played in our history, in molding our mentality and our values throughout the centuries, to rediscover that Traditional, Christian European culture from which, by now, several generations have been alienated.

Europe is the Faith, the Faith is Europe, as Belloc famously put it. This is truer than ever. The implosion of the Catholic Church and its indirect effects on all of western culture in the early/mid-sixties left the European world defenseless, and since then it has been rapidly dissolving — morally, intellectually, socially and ethnically.

There are, of course, other factors behind this universal tragedy, but this is the most important one.

If we are to rebuild our civilization in one form or another we need to reconnect with its roots.

If the future will not be based in western Tradition, to which Christianity is essential, there probably will be no future for western man.

Opening Statement by Greg Johnson

^[7]What is the relationship of Christianity and European identity? I do not say “Western Civilization,” because I wish to speak of the whole of Europe, East and West, and the whole of European history and prehistory, not just the civilized bits.

There are two perspectives we can take on this question. One looks back at history. The other looks forward to the future.

Looking back at history, we see that Christianity played an important role in Europe for more than 1700 years. It might have been otherwise. Many wish it were otherwise. It might be different in the future. But even if there comes a day in which Europe is no longer Christian, there will never come a day when Europe has never been Christian. In that sense, Christianity will always be part of European identity. Just as pre-Christian religions and cultures stretching all the way back to the last Ice Age will also always be part of European identity.

But although there was a time when Europe was Christian, Christianity was never European. I am not referring to the Jewish origins of Christianity, although that should never be forgotten. From the start, though, Christianity was as Hellenic as it was Jewish. Moreover, it defined itself in contradistinction to Judaism, just as Judaism has defined itself in opposition to Christianity.

What makes Christianity essentially non-European are the doctrines it shares with the ancient Greeks and Romans, and not with the Jews, namely the idea that a universal truth is the foundation of a universal community; if Christianity is true for all men, then it is a universal religion, not an ethnic religion. Because of its nature as a universal religion, Christianity is not tied to any particular race or people. Christendom is not and never has been co-extensive with Europe. European folk believed in Christianity, but Christianity was never a European folk religion. Many Europeans believe in the cause of Christianity, but Christianity has never believed in the cause of Europe. For the Christian cause is the salvation of all mankind.

Defenders of both Europe and Christianity point to the fact that, in the past, the Church supported the defense of Europe from Islam. But the Church was defending Europe only incidentally. What she was really defending was Christendom, which at the time was centered in Europe, but even then extended into Ethiopia, the Middle East, and as far away as China. And the Church has always been willing to shed European blood to defend and extend Christendom, from the Crusades to liberate the Holy Land on to centuries of global missionary work that continues to this day. Far from being an example of the harmony of Christianity and the ethnic-genetic interests of Europeans, the Crusades are an example of how the Church led Europeans to shed their blood to recoup lost Christian territories in the Middle East.

Let us now look to the future. If present trends are not reversed, European man will cease to exist. I do not fear for the artifacts of European civilization, since Bach and Rembrandt would continue to be prized by Jews and Orientals. I fear for the race that created these glories, and can create new glories. Our race is facing simple biological extinction ^[8] due to below-replacement fertility, miscegenation, and the loss of our homelands to non-white invaders. If European man is to survive, we must exclude all non-whites from our homelands and adopt policies that cause our birthrates to rise, particularly the birthrates of the genetically best-endowed. In short, we need White Nationalism with pro-natal policies, preferably eugenic ones.

Is Christianity likely to help or to hinder White Nationalists in preventing the biological extinction of our race? To answer this question, we must first look at the actual behavior of the existing churches. All of the mainstream Christian denominations are opposed to White Nationalist policies. Instead, they provide intellectual and institutional support for ongoing white dispossession that is at least on a par with the support of the organized Jewish community, their senior partner in crime. Regardless of the views we may hold about “true” Christian teaching, if the white race is to be saved, we will have to fight the existing churches every step of the way.

Naturally, this battle will be aided if we have sympathizers inside the churches. All too often, White Nationalists who are also Christians spend their time battling against non-Christians in our ranks rather than against anti-whites in their churches. To prove that their White Nationalism is in good faith, they must instead take the battle to the churches. I wish them the best, but I also caution them. Political entryism within the churches will be no easy matter, since the churches were long ago subverted in just this manner, and the existing clergy are Old Masters in that particular black art. They will see you coming.

The battle within the churches will be aided if White Nationalists can find resources from the Bible and the traditions of the Church that support rather than oppose ethnonationalist politics. I have no doubt that such resources exist. Mobilizing them is an important metapolitical project, and it will be credible only if carried out by believers.

However, the battle within the Church is not likely to be successful unless our movement makes progress in the larger social realm, for the simple reason that the Church follows secular opinion rather than leads it. The church has a long history of supple accommodation to secular power, simply because its kingdom is not of this world. Its ultimate goal is the salvation of the soul. Thus, if White Nationalism achieves political power, the churches will hunt for Biblical precedents for our policies and reinterpret, downplay, or ignore contrary tendencies. The Church knows how to render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s. Our job is to become Caesar.

Many defenders of Christianity argue that societies and individuals need religion, and they recommend Christianity simply because of its illustrious past and the fact that it is still here. Of course, this argument is somewhat premature, because the white race first has to survive before we can worry about how we might best organize a future white society.

Furthermore, in the last century, Christianity has been dramatically declining in Europe. Indeed, I have argued in New Right vs. Old Right (here ^[9] and here ^[10]) that for three centuries now, liberalism, not Christianity, has been the de facto civil religion of Europe. I see no reason to believe that Christianity will be more significant in the future than it is at present. It may revive; it may continue to decline; it may persist in diminished form; or it may cease to exist altogether.

Thus the mere fact that Christianity is here does not recommend it, if we are choosing a religion based merely on social utility. Indeed, if that is our primary concern, I have argued that we would be better served by trying to reform liberalism in a race-realist, non-individualist direction, since liberalism dominates everything today, even Christianity itself.

European Christianity will have a future only if European man has a future. But the Church is at best indifferent to white survival, and today it is actively working against it. Thus my recommendation to White Nationalists, Christian and non-Christian, is to focus primarily on white survival, which requires that we be more concerned with battling the churches than preserving them. The Christians among us must be White Nationalists among them. They must be our fifth column, doing whatever is possible to weaken the Church’s opposition to us. They need not fear for the Church, which will survive even if whites do not. God will take care of His Church, but whites must take care of ourselves.

Reply by Jonas De Geer

First off, I re-emphasize that there’s no doubt that we have to fight the existing churches just in the same way we have to fight our own present governments. That is the situation. But the questions remains: to what point can we do without religion? And it is a fact, and a very compelling fact, that secularization has made us weak, has made us defenseless. Not the other way around as some nationalists have claimed in the past.

I would not say that the Crusades in any way were a mission of the Church as such. In fact, it led the European people to unite in a sense. That has never happened before or since. Now, this is something that we really should celebrate and try to emulate.

Christianity has historically defined us as nations. We are now in a country that still has a Christian cross for its flag. Some people in this country question that. They would rather have that done away with. Christianity is an object of both resentment and hate of the same people that are destroying us. This should tell us something. And it’s the same thing all over Europe. The cross is a symbol for towns, municipalities, etc. Now, what does this tell us? You say we can either look to the future or look to the past, but I think we need to look to the past or connect to the past in order to have a future at all. That’s the point.

So, I say it again, the enemies of Europe, the same people that try to completely destroy us racially, destroy our societies, have a profound hatred of Christianity. This is just a fact. They do their utmost to ban nativity scenes, to ban crucifixes from public places, etc. This is a part of the war against us.

I also stress again that I am not talking about people developing a personal faith, because such things can be very difficult. You can be a good, moral person without being a devout Christian or a believing Christian even. It’s not about that. It’s obvious though that the moral capital that generations of Christians have created is something that has benefited our societies. The word here is integrity. A people that has no basic concept of moral integrity will certainly have no integrity ethnically either. That’s kind of the point I’m trying to make.

I also want to thank you, Greg, for having such a polite tone in this debate. I’ve tried to do the same.

So, will ethnic integrity survive without religion? I don’t know. I find it unlikely and I definitely think that the historical evidence that we have speaks against it. This is something we have to consider very closely, because it’s a very serious question.

Reply by Greg Johnson

In replying to Jonas, I want to begin with several brief points, and then I want to develop something in more detail.

First, although Eliot is of course correct that the distinction between East and West was based on the Orthodox versus Catholic divide, East and West were both Europe and both Christian. So, Europe is bigger than the West.

Second, contra Belloc, Europe is not the faith and the faith is not Europe because European man and civilization are older than Christianity, and Christianity has always extended beyond Europe, and the aim of the Church has always been a universal church, the salvation of all mankind.

Third, it strikes me that the Second Vatican Council, which ended in 1965, is both too late in time and too parochial in scope to explain our predicament. The forces of decay are far older, and their field of action is far wider. I think that Vatican II is best seen as the Church’s capitulation to the regnant forces of liberalism rather than as a cause of their triumph.

Fourth, it is one thing to argue that religion is needed for society to function. I would argue that religion is needed for society to function. And it’s quite another thing to argue that this or that particular religion fits the bill. Christians that argue the second point on the grounds that Christianity has a long past and is still around, I think, are making a very weak argument, because Christianity today is at a very low ebb, especially in Europe. Every argument for religion based on social utility can be used to make a far stronger case for Islam than for Christianity, because Islam today is a growing, war-like, patriarchal and fecund religion, which is why certain European ultra-reactionaries and Traditionalists have actually become converts to Islam.

Now, my last point will require a little more development, but I’ve got plenty of time, so bear with me.

In my book New Right vs. Old Right, I have a couple of chapters, one is called “That Old Time Liberalism,” and the other is called “Racial Civil Religion,” and the main ideas that I want to state here are found in those two chapters, particularly the latter one, “Racial Civil Religion.” I do think that every society needs religion, and I understand religion as a way of concretely expressing and honoring and propagating that society’s idea of the highest good. That is a definition of religion that encompasses both secular and civic religions. There are civic religions, including religions that are non-theistic such as Buddhism or Confucianism, and also supernatural religions like Christianity.

Now, why do we need religion? What do all of these religions have in common? They have in common narratives — stories, myths — which can appeal to anyone. Arguments are very hard to teach. I used to teach logic. It was very difficult to teach logic, especially in the United States. But any fool can understand a story. We start out with nursery stories. We understand stories even when we are very young. Religions have rituals, which are concrete actions that make real and palpable some ideal, just like narratives do, and religions also have authority. They command belief. They don’t just persuade or cajole.

Why do we need that in a society? We need it primarily for moral education and formation. I taught Kant. I taught the categorical imperative. And let me tell you, if society depended upon people reaching college age and then understanding Kant in order for there to be morality, we would be back in the jungle in no time. We need moral education starting very, very young, and rationality, arguments cannot provide it, but religious education and formation do just that. So, there is a very strong case, I think, for the necessity of some kind of religion.

So, what kind of religion? The kind of religion I think we need to aim at is a racial civil religion, the topic of my essay. I think that the conflict between Christians, pagans, and agnostics and atheists within the White Nationalist movement needs to be reframed in a larger context, because I think that the true dominant religion of our time is not Christianity. It hasn’t been dominant since the 17th century. Christianity bows to liberalism. Liberalism is the reigning religion. It is hegemonic. I think that if we are going to fight the reigning religion of our time, an anti-Christian crusade is not the way to do it. We need to strike at the real dominant power, a power that even the Jewish community pays lip-service to in order to enjoy the power that they have. It’s their handle on us. If they just appealed to naked Jewish self-interest we wouldn’t be anywhere near as amenable to their aims.

So, what do we need to do? I think that honestly there’s nothing wrong with liberal modernity — I’m putting this provocatively: There’s nothing wrong with liberal modernity that couldn’t be fixed with biological realism about the differences between the races and the sexes, and an ethos that’s somewhat more collectivist, meaning that the individualism that we all hold so dear should not be the highest value, and that when individualism conflicts with the health of the body politic we need to be willing to sacrifice individualism.

What would the results be if, through our efforts, those sorts of ideas became hegemonic, if racial awareness, racial pride, the values of racial preservation and flourishing became the hegemonic ideas? What would happen to the other religions?

What would happen, for instance, to Islam? Well, Islam would be banished to the Ummah. It would be gone from Europe.

What would happen to Christianity? Well, Christianity would have to contend with the new Caesar in town, but they’ve been very good at that. We’ve seen a long history of that. I would predict that Marcion, Origen, Swedenborg, William Blake, and Simone Weil would become the topics of theological discussion, because it would be imperative for the Church to try to erect the cordon sanitaire around its Jewish roots, and those particular thinkers have been very useful for that in the past.

What would happen to paganism, Nordic and Hellenic, under a racial civil religion? I think it would continue to grow and revive.

And what would happen to liberalism, our dominant religion? Well, I think liberals would basically be able to accommodate themselves to it quite well. The texture of daily life, their little micro-breweries and coffee houses and the like, would continue to function. There would still be foreign films to watch. They would still be able to fawn over dogs and cats. They just wouldn’t be able to import little Black children for the same purposes. In short, what they would lose would be more than compensated for, I think, by the glorious feeling that Whites as a race once more have a future.

So, that’s the vision that I have. I think that we need a racial civil religion that prizes racial survival and flourishing above all other things. And, like every religion, like every dominant discourse, it is intolerant of the opposing views. We will take the degradation and destruction of our race off the menu. It will no longer be a topic of polite conversation. It will no longer be welcome in polite society. But, like every other system, we will be tolerant and pluralistic on all matters that are unimportant. And I think that religion is fundamentally unimportant compared to racial survival.

So, that’s my vision, I would say, of an alternative to a revival of Christianity, which I think is a quite old religion. I think that instead of working to revive or reform Christianity, we would have better luck focusing our energy on battling and overturning or reforming the really dominant religion, which is the religion of liberalism.

Concluding Remarks by Jonas De Geer

Well, I can just reiterate: liberalism has killed us. With all due respect, Dr. Johnson, but your vision is entirely speculative. I try to be realistic, and we have seen how Christianity has been necessary, how it has indeed saved Europe in the past.

Yeah, things are looking pretty bleak right now. I admit that. I’m not optimistic in any way. But you cannot create religions, and that is my main point.

And when you say that the Second Vatican Council is a bit too late . . . Yeah, it’s true that society started changing, but you cannot compare 1960 to 1970. It’s such a drastic change and it completely coincides with this change in the Church which actually sort of gave Catholics a green light to completely ignore or skip religion. So, I think definitely, absolutely there’s no coincidence there.

We need morality. We need to get our defenses together, and people are never going to be willing to fight or die for some notion of having superior DNA. It’s not going to happen. You need a religion and we need to tap into the faith of our fathers, because I can see no alternative, and I think history shows us that.

Concluding Remarks by Greg Johnson

Whenever a people faces a crisis, they have to reevaluate their priorities. They have to look at what they’re doing wrong. They have to try to get a sense of who they are. They have to go deeper. When superficial institutions and identities and solutions no longer work, we have to look deeper.

I think that in this crisis we do have to look to our past. We also have to look into our nature. I think that we will not come out the other side of this crisis by connecting to the Sermon on the Mount and its values. I think we will get out of this crisis by connecting with the pagan ethic that the Sermon on the Mount is basically designed to overthrow. I don’t think that it’s time to turn the other cheek. I think it’s time to get mad and shove back rather than just be shoved off the stage of history. So, I do think we need to reconnect with our past, with our deeper roots, our biological roots, if you will. I think we need to get in touch with the middle part of the soul that resides in the chest, the thumos, which is stigmatized in some ways by Christianity as the sin of pride. We need to get angry again. We need to start taking our own side. We need to start loving our own and realizing that there is nothing at all wrong with doing that, but that it’s natural, normal, and right for people to have a preference for their kin over strangers, for their nation over its neighbors, for their race over other races. I think that’s what we need to get in touch with.

I really have to question again the relevance of the Second Vatican Council. How important was Catholicism in Sweden in 1965? Or in Norway or in Finland or in Denmark? I think that it was practically non-existent, and therefore transformations in the bowels of the Vatican I just don’t think can really explain the trajectory of decline that we have found throughout the Protestant north in particular. So, I remain skeptical on that.

I do wish to reiterate, however, that there will never be a time in the future when Europe never had been Christian. It’s part of our past. It will always be part of our past. It cannot be undone. I think that the cross on flags and things like that may someday be about as relevant to our religious beliefs as the Norse gods in the days of the week. Namely, it will be there; it’s part of our history. I am a great lover of Greek mythology and Nordic mythology, but I don’t literally believe its truth, and I think there are many things in the Bible — especially the New Testament, let me make that perfectly clear — there are many things in the story of Jesus that are moving to me. There are many elements of Christian art throughout the centuries that are of permanent aesthetic appeal, and I do think, like Guillaume Faye who is not a Christian either, I would be there to fight against the bishops who want to hand over the keys to Notre Dame so it can be turned into a mosque someday. I’d shed some blood to stop that. So, I think we need to recognize that this is part of our past. But we’re not going to save it by reconnecting with the ethics of Christianity. We’re going to save it by reconnecting with our pagan roots and beyond that with our biological roots, our sense of destiny, our sense of identity, and also our capacity to get really, really fighting mad.