ZGram - 11/11/2003 - Prisoner of Conscience Letter # 35

[zgrams at zgrams.zundelsite.org]

Zgram - Where Truth is Destiny :  Now more than ever !

November 11, 2003-11-13

Good Morning from the Zundelsite:

Today's Prisoner of Conscience letter is a fairly new one, dated 
29.10.03, written to some friends in France:

[START]

This is cell #5 reporting to you, my dear and loyal friends across 
the ocean!  Jean P. kindly sent me a book I had not yet heard of, and 
for which I was interviewed at great length in the 1990s. The author 
told me [then] that he had available some funds and spent several 
years criss-crossing America and Canada interviewing people. He spent 
several days, and many, many hours interviewing me on a far range of 
topics, of which precious little found its way into his book.

The title is: "Gods of the Blood. »  [Its] author is Mattias Gardell, 
which I believe is a pen name.  It was published by Duke University 
Press in 2003, in the U.S.A. In my isolation, I did not know that the 
book actually had come out in the United States!

[It} is largely a "fluff" book, suitable for North America's 
dumbed-down public, still able [but] ever less willing to read. In 
German, we would call the book a "Sammelsurium", a grab-bag or 
smorgasbord of information and tidbits - not unlike the stuff a 
housewife tips into the garbage can out of her vacuum cleaner bag 
after sweeping the house.  [It comes] replete with the usual spin, 
deprecations and smears-by-association to get past America's ever 
watchful « guardians » of Political Correctness, which in a more 
honest age would simply have been called the American censors.

Having said that as a preamble, I still consider the book helpful and 
useful for the student of alternate views on various religions.  It 
gives a pretty comprehensive overview of "what is out there" in this 
vast North American intellectual wasteland.

The people interviewed range from the interesting to the fascinating, 
[their comments] all the way from the sublime to the ridiculous. 
Nevertheless, the ideas show a desperate search by the few remaining 
"unshackled", religiously inclined dissidents left in this conformist 
society of acceptors - a search for a compatible faith.

Some of the concepts and views might sound off the wall, but they do 
reveal a willingness to think "outside the box" and to go beyond the 
perimeters of accepted shibboleths.  They even show attempts to 
re-connect to, or to re-interpret, some of the ancient concepts and 
beliefs, in the process marrying an acceptable faith relevant to our 
people in this confused age to the traditional or currently in-vogue 
religious ideas and notions. Much is amazing stuff, and there is many 
a flight of fancy, to be sure, to shock the staid and those 
imprisoned by conventionality!  However unfamiliar or esoteric the 
ideas and beliefs expressed by some of those interviewed [might be, 
they] show at least that there is life out there, and religious and 
cultural ferment. What is even more important and significant is the 
willingness by these religious dissidents to go out on a limb, to 
risk ridicule, to think the almost unthinkable, and to have the 
courage to actually speak or write about their "ruminations".

This unusual religious quest once again sets these rebellious or 
renegade Aryans apart from the other mainstream religions of the 
world - from Christianity to Judaism, Islam and other faiths. 
Compared to this far-ranging search, theirs are mere "tempests in 
teapots » - controversies that are tame and predictable about topics 
like "gay marriages »,  "homosexual priests" or even "queer bishops".

The quest embarked on by Aryan Pagans, Christian Identity people, 
Wotan worshippers and space cults sets it miles apart from the other 
religious debates and schisms in the world today. Here is a 
willingness to kick open new doors and walk in and explore new 
terrain, to question the past and probe the new order of things - ALL 
things, not just details like the Holocaust or other aspects of WWII 
and even more recent history.  No, [this quest] probes the very 
purpose of life! One more proof, if more proof were needed, that the 
Aryan world is far from intellectually dead.

I was surprised by the vigor, the lucidity and earnestness, however 
misguided some of these folks might be, with which they present, 
espouse and ardently defend their "home truths", arrived at far more 
painfully and honestly than all the "regurgitators" of outdated 
dogmas, stifling and non-productive as they are [with its maddening 
hairsplitting] that has left hundreds of millions of Christians the 
world over disappointed, disaffected, disgusted - rudderless, in 
fact! - without a spiritual home or mooring in any faith, bewildered 
and adrift like cast-aways. What we are seeing before our very eyes 
is one more field for "Revisionism" to tackle !

I am fairly familiar with the European scene. I have not nearly 
detected the wide scope and varied concepts discussed and reflected 
in "Gods of the Blood", nor [have I] seen the same vigor and virility 
with which these concepts are presented and  defended. It could be 
that Europe is hampered by more repressing legislation and state 
financed churches, as in Germany and Austria, a relic of Hitler's 
"Concordat" with the Catholic church in the 1930s, which is still law 
in those lands. There are, of course, thinkers and even advocates of 
Paganism in France, Italy, England and Scotland, but many of those 
have a more folkloric flavor and are more cultural-heritage type of 
attempts, connecting to Celtic and Druid sites like Stonehenge.  One 
would not call  them "revivals of the old religions".

In fact, there has only been Hitler's attempts at bringing about a 
new European/Aryan-based religion since Charlemagne beheaded the old 
Saxon gods with the slaughter of the defeated Saxon chieftain 
Widukind and his 5,000 headmen and paean shamans [with the help of] 
his religious zealots in Verden on the Aller in 800+ A.D.  The 
Christian church persecuted the Pagan remnants for centuries until 
knowledge of [Aryan people's] own gods and religious expression faded 
into virtual oblivion. Hitler's attempt, although recognized only by 
his most ardent enemies, was his tentative, cautious effort to phase 
in gently and imperceptibly a new religion of "Race, Blood and Soil" 
- and not by fire and sword, like Charlemagne had done, to be sure!

Hitler's attempt was to span several generations, and [this approach] 
was typical for him, the great social conciliator, who had 
successfully [neutralized]  the false religion of Marxism and won 
over and siphoned off the best elements, who had been misled by Karl 
Marx's false gospel, into his own creation and instrument for 
salvation, the National Socialist movement. Although outwardly and 
for the immediate emergency task of saving the German nation and its 
people from the allure of Marxism, the Hitler movement was structured 
as an ideology behind a political party.

There can be no doubt to those with a wider or more cosmic view, and 
people with a spiritual and religious bent, that National Socialism 
was well on its way to absorb into its own ranks the personnel and 
many of the institutions of the churches, such as all the charitable 
functions.  Teaching seminaries were sure to follow. The established 
churches already were virtual arms of the state, depending on the 
state's "church-tax-collections" for survival. Ministers and priests 
were expressly forbidden to meddle in temporal affairs. Political 
sermons were to be taboo under the provisions of the Concordat. Youth 
groups of the churches were losing members by the millions - not 
because of pressures, but because the National Socialist Youth 
movement was more exciting, more modern, had nice looking uniforms, 
great spectacles, inspiring music, flags, banners, parades and a 
healthy, natural, modern "catechism" called a "party program".

There is no doubt that the Nuremberg rallies and other festivals like 
the Thanksgiving Festival on the famous Bückeberg, where millions 
gathered [much like] in vast outdoor revival meetings, celebrating in 
fact the rebirth of the German nation.  [These festivals were] 
stylized "high masses" celebrating the Race, the Nation and the now 
unified State.  It was no coincidence that they met in the great 
stadium in Nürnberg, surrounded by a thousand glistening beams of 
searchlights projected above them into the starlit sky like a vast, 
ethereal gothic cathedral. It was also no coincidence that they would 
all sing with gusto and, yes, near religious fervor the joyful, 
vibrant, uplifting and all-uniting battle songs of the Party, which 
had led it to victory over its deadly enemies.

A new earthly, and at the same time eternally cosmic [religion] in 
its roots and in its aims was forming before the world's eyes into a 
new, never before seen, much less articulated modern religion about 
to transcend its cocoon like a pupa transforms into a magnificently 
beautiful, brilliantly colourful butterfly - before it takes flight 
and soars away.

Compare that vision, which to 100 million Germans was already a 
living, tangible, visible, daily experienced reality, to the vision 
offered by those other "religious" reformers or "rekindlers" of 
Paganism!  It was then no different than it is today, in this contest 
of those searching for meaning and spiritual fulfillment in their 
lives.  Could the hundreds of thousands of young men and women, and 
the older generations who were present and witnessed those 
magnificent "religious » services, affirming the greatness of the 
nation as a creation of God Almighty, have found anything satisfying 
in a book or a creed which showed on its cover and had as its central 
theme an unkempt, wild-eyed, mean and fierce looking, bearskin-clad, 
horned-helmeted, sword-swinging Viking-Norseman warrior - who, riding 
his billygoat-pulled, heavenly chariot across the clouds in the sky, 
circled by black ravens, caused thunder and lightning below?  There 
was not then, in the 1930s, and is not now, in the new millennium, an 
Aryan man or woman alive who can claim with a straight face that 
those ancient tales, fables or beliefs have any meaning or relevance 
to their life's experiences or the world around them in any way 
whatsoever!

The same goes for the Greek and Roman fables and their gods, the 
whole plethora of them! These ancient gods were more capricious, 
arbitrary, vicious, depraved and vindictive, immoral and cruel - more 
so than the most imperfect humans of their ages, and even more so of 
[most] people in our own age.  They presented no god-like perfection 
in conduct.  Therefore, they are useless as instillers of values or 
worthy of emulation!

After delving for decades into all these convoluted ancient tales, 
sagas, and religious beliefs and rites of Aryan people so long ago, I 
come away shaking my head in disbelief, asking myself over and over 
again :  « Can this be true? Can our ancestors, those no-nonsense, 
down-to-earth, infinitely curious and tough Nordic people have 
believed in these things? They, who in mere nutshells of boats braced 
the nasty, unforgiving Atlantic Ocean to see and discover the New 
World across the seas ? How could a genius, a political and military 
analyst like Alexander the Great, or any collection of famous Roman 
generals and emperors, not have seen through those chimeras [and 
realized] that these gods had feet of clay? How could millions upon 
millions of Aryans for thousands of years have bowed down to such 
flawed gods, thought of them and treated them as divine? The whole 
idea seems utterly ludicrous to me, the simple peasant, in 2003!

Compared to that, the militant Aryanized Christianity of the 
post-Roman gods was a well organized, easy to understand and to 
follow religion of simple faith, possible redemption and the promise 
of an eternal life.  I and hundreds of millions of Aryans in many 
countries and continents could not possibly be enticed into replacing 
Christianity with the even more imperfect gods of that bygone age of 
Greece and Rome, much less the Norse gods of Odin or Wotan, 
regardless of how many Walkyries were awaiting us in Walhalla with 
outstretched arms!

Hitler, like in so many other things, was right when he said that old 
religions, whose trail had gone cold, cannot be revived.  They are 
permanently dead and have entered the pages of history.  The nearly 
empty churches and beautiful cathedrals of Europe and increasingly 
America, with their dwindling and aging membership, is abundant 
proof, if more proof were still needed, that the Christian churches 
are becoming quickly irrelevant, except for the enthusiastic, 
emotionally hyped message of some of the fundamentalist millennialist 
sects, with their politicized agendas of « Christ's Return » after 
the battle of Armageddon in illegitimately born Israel. What keeps 
them around are the vast real estate holdings, the stock portfolios, 
the largesse of foundations and trusts, and the bequests from dying 
parishioners, who at death's door try to bribe themselves into heaven 
by one more big, last offering into the [collection plate] with 
signed-over stocks and bonds or wads of cash, paintings, rare coins, 
life insurance policies, etc.  That image of wealth and power should 
not deceive us, for it is proof of neither relevance or spiritual 
health.

If the church, as we know it today, survives another one or even two 
generations, we can count ourselves lucky. I say that because "the 
fear of the Lord" and his instant and  eternal punishment have been 
argued away by our Marxist/Jewish theologians.  Immorality, lying 
under oath, cheating, stealing and loose sexual behavior have 
dramatically increased in "Christian nations".  Situational ethics 
are now the order of the day!

All of us, Christian or non-Christian, white or non-white, are paying 
a steep price for being a society without a religious or moral 
compass and anchor. That was never more obvious to me than in my own 
treatment, which I received at the hands of the public, the media, 
the politicians and finally the courts in the last two decades in 
Canada and the U.S.A.  There is no more standard of honesty, no more 
truth in anything, no more public morality, not even fairness - and 
you can forget oaths by public servants, officials, policemen, 
senators, prime ministers and presidents! They violate their sacred 
oaths without care or caution, without shame, on an almost daily 
basis. If truth, justice, honour and loyalty mean nothing in a 
society, lies, injustice, dishonour and treason will reign. Never 
before have I felt it and observed it as keenly, as I began to feel 
it once the handcuffs and leg irons clicked shut around my wrists and 
ankles in Tennessee! This feeling has since deepened for me after my 
forced expulsion to Canada.

If we not only want to survive but to actually revitalize and achieve 
a renaissance for ourselves, our children, grand-children and kith 
and kin, it must include a religious dimension for our people 
relevant to their daily lives, their experiences, their hopes, dreams 
and aspirations.  It must fit them as comfortably as National 
Socialism [once fit] the German people and nation in the 1930s.  It 
must not be contrary to their own nature and being and chafe and 
grate like some ill-fitting hair shirt - or alien creed imposed by 
threat of damnation, fire or sword!

It must be uplifting and satisfying.  It must fill the spiritual 
hunger and craving, evident in so many areas as a missing dimension 
in modern life. It must celebrate life, health, and produce joy and 
happiness. Its music, hymns and message must stir the people's 
hearts, propel their minds into regions and raise them to heights as 
yet unknown!  It must not accept finite frontiers, whether in 
knowledge, time or space. Our new faith must be cosmic in scope and 
eternal in duration. Only a faith like that will be acceptable to a 
race of superman and superwomen - a new species of man waiting to be 
born and to be perfected on the anvil of life here on this earth - 
the beautiful blue planet.

Ernst Zündel

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