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1. ⚗️⚗️⚗️ pnathan ⚗️⚗️⚗️ (pnathan@mastodon.social)'s status on Sunday, 23-Jun-2019 18:01:55 EDT ⚗️⚗️⚗️ pnathan ⚗️⚗️⚗️

   Reading through Susannah Heschel's Aryan Jesus- it's about the efforts of Nazis to Nazify the Protestant church in the Third Reich.

   This topic is, to date, the hardest thing I've ever studied, in terms of personal horror of the subject.

   1. Nate Cull (natecull@mastodon.social)'s status on Sunday, 23-Jun-2019 18:25:23 EDT Nate Cull

      in reply to

      @pnathan I've just been reading a bunch of 1920s Spiritualist material and, although much of the scene was quite left-wing, it was fascinating to see everyone just throwing around swastikas like they were pancakes. Love and light and swastikas. And they certainly weren't Nazis, it was just a... 1920s vibe.

      Its... really jarring actually.

      Very little to do with actual Nazism but weird to see the wider cultural currents.

      Eg: The International Psychic Gazette, 1919.

      http://www.iapsop.com/archive/materials/international_psychic_gazette/international_psychic_gazette_v6_n71_aug_1919.pdf

   2. Nate Cull (natecull@mastodon.social)'s status on Sunday, 23-Jun-2019 18:26:23 EDT Nate Cull

      in reply to

      @pnathan I've just been reading a bunch of 1920s Spiritualist material and, although much of the scene was quite left-wing, it was fascinating to see everyone just throwing around swastikas like they were pancakes. Love and light and swastikas. And they certainly weren't Nazis, it was just a... 1920s vibe.

      Its... really jarring actually.

      Very little to do with actual Nazism but weird to see the wider cultural currents.

      Eg: The International Psychic Gazette, 1919.

      http://www.iapsop.com/archive/materials/international_psychic_gazette/international_psychic_gazette_v6_n71_aug_1919.pdf

      1. Nate Cull (natecull@mastodon.social)'s status on Sunday, 23-Jun-2019 18:29:02 EDT Nate Cull

         in reply to

         @pnathan It's almost like... swastikas had been picked up by the post-WWI socialist anti-war movement, alongside which the spiritualist and theosophical movements ran? As a symbol of hope or some kind of rebellion against traditional religious symbols and the nationalism that had caused the big war?

         And then fricken Nazis came in and turned that symbol into something quite different.

         But at the time... it would have been a little maybe like a revolutionary party using the Peace Symbol.

         1. Nate Cull (natecull@mastodon.social)'s status on Sunday, 23-Jun-2019 18:43:35 EDT Nate Cull

            in reply to

            @pnathan I wonder what the Institute for Study and Eradication of Jewish Influence on German Church Life thought about Jakob Boehme, who kinda kickstarted a whole stream of German mysticism and was also all about Kabbalah.

            1. Nate Cull (natecull@mastodon.social)'s status on Sunday, 23-Jun-2019 18:46:23 EDT Nate Cull

               in reply to

               @pnathan These wonderings of mine aren't really academic; a long-running accusation of Evangelical Christians against Spiritualism and Theosophy has been that 'they led to Nazi thought' and, well, that's not 100% inaccurate. But I wonder how much.

            2. Nate Cull (natecull@mastodon.social)'s status on Sunday, 23-Jun-2019 18:47:15 EDT Nate Cull

               in reply to

               @pnathan These wonderings of mine aren't really academic; a long-running accusation of Evangelical Christians against Spiritualism and Theosophy has been that 'they led to Nazi thought' and, well, that's not 100% inaccurate. But I wonder how much.

               (Blavatsky's Theosophy MUCH more so than the Christian Spiritualists... Blavatsky didn't much care for Jews, as far as I can gather.)