I reckon it's one of the best depictions of what life was like in "affluent" Berlin during the Weimar years. The Berlin celebrated in movies such as Cabaret. It's very good.
Berlin was a cesspit of degeneracy and vice power primarily by the demand of rich and middle class patrons who had their services supplied by the poor, who chose this option due to their desperate poverty. Anyone wanting to get a measure of the moral squalor of Germany during those years should look at the magazine Simplicissimus which would make comment of the social problems of Germany at that time through the medium of art. Long term sufferers of this blog will know that I am a huge fan of the work of Otto Dix and George Grosz, men whom I wouldn't of shared political affinity with but men who were nonetheless disgusted at the moral abyss which Germany had fallen into after the First World War. Their work is profoundly disturbing, disgusting and degenerate until you realise that that was what they were trying deliberately get across in their work. Berlin, especially was a morally destitute city.
It's easy to see how the moral revulsion generated by the antics of Berlin would engender a lot of sympathy for a man like Hitler. Purging the filth, regardless of the details, becomes very appealing.
However, I think the important point to remember here is that the solution to Left wing degeneracy is not Right Wing Degeneracy. The Left may be all for permissiveness and degeneracy but the evil Right can push very hard in the opposite direction, and regard life too cheaply and push moral purity with the venom of a zealot. I think that if a man wants to do God's work, he's got to do it within the framework of God's laws.
Just saying.
Berlin got bombed by the Allies pretty badly during the Second World War. Hamburg--another cesspit of vice vying for pre-eminence with Berlin--was firestormed, in an operation rather eerily called Operation Gomorrah. Thinking about the comments of Jordan Peterson on the subject of Hurricane Katrina, I couldn't but help to think that Bomber Command was the hand of God.
Just saying.
Interesting documentary, but obviously one done in support of the degeneracy. The people interviewed smile, and their eyes light up when they recount the sexual depravity. The narrator has that especial narrator skill of sounding approving and happy when he discusses the prog supported degeneracy, and then disapproving when any opposition to such is brought up. He does this masterfully with ever so slight changes of tone. And the lesson we're supposed to take? That anyone who opposes depravity is a nazi.
ReplyDeleteAnd of course, all the degenerates fled Berlin and settled quite happily in places like Hollywood. Their brethren from Frankfurt came also. Much to our detriment.
This upwelling of vice, crime, drugs, sex, and political leftism had to come from a damaged society. Things like this don't happen overnight, without decades of rotting out from within. Something was very very wrong with Berlin, and Germans for this to pustulence to erupt. And something is very very wrong with us, for the same thing to be happening now, as the progs happily narrate documentaries into previous societal convulsions.
Mr. Pathologist -
ReplyDeleteThe carpet-bombing of Germany was from the hands of Satan, not God. Among other things, you most certainly left out what group was behind the degeneracy that permeated of the Weimar Republic.
That eruption of pustulence that made Berlin the "Sex Capital of the World" during that era was not caused by ethnic Germans, nor appreciated by them either. Not only destroyed by war, the reparations extracted by the Treaty of Versailles completely destroyed the German economy and unleashed a hyper-inflation then before unseen in world history. Note that when the armistice was declared, Germany was promised there would be no loss of territory and no reparations demanded. "We" treated them as was done to North Americn Indian tribes - We lied.
Try to "follow the money" for change. Then you shall find the guilty parties, and it wasn't "ethnic Germans."
I think what you wrote about twenties Berlin is apt, doctor, although I guess I would question whether the destruction of Berlin was God's wrath. (What about Warsaw, for instance, or even Budapest?) While there was a genuine cultural flourishing during the decade, much of life in the city was pretty shallow and dreary, after all. Berliners were not seeing "Metropolis," but what we would today call B-films with lots of technology (the autobahn phenomenon started during Weimar, not later under Hitler). For every German going to a Brecht performance, many others were spending time in what were basically glamorous stripclubs that seem to have been pale imitations of their French counterparts. Basically, I think there was a worship of Modernity with a capital M, perhaps an understandable reaction to imperial Germany which in turn - needless to say - sparked an even greater response in the next decade. I suppose it required another war for Germany to finally become sane under Adenauer.
ReplyDelete@Augustina
ReplyDeleteThis upwelling of vice, crime, drugs, sex, and political leftism had to come from a damaged society. Things like this don't happen overnight
Germany, especially the regions around Berlin and Hamburg had lots of social problems. The collapse of the economy and the loss in the war produced a profound malaise which made things far worse. But a lot of similar stuff was happening in the other major cities of the world at time.
@Annon
Among other things, you most certainly left out what group was behind the degeneracy that permeated of the Weimar Republi
You mean some Jewish elements? Don't allude to it just say it. Certainly there were Jewish elements that pushed the degeneracy but the Thule society wasn't Jewish, and they were a bunch of freaks. Berlin, yesterday like today was full of weirdo's.
That eruption of pustulence that made Berlin the "Sex Capital of the World" during that era was not caused by ethnic Germans, nor appreciated by them either.
Rural Germans, especially Southern Germans were repulsed by life in Berlin but it was a battle between the urbane and the rustics, not Christians against the Jews. The point you miss about the post is that the degeneracy of libertines was countered by the zealotry of the Puritans, both of which were wrong. When the Natsocs came to power, they were degenerate in their own way. They replaced hedonistic sensuality with pitiless brutality.
And were the Germans treated badly by the Versailles treaty, you bet. No quibble with me on that issue.
@Jason,
As for the bombing being the "wrath of God", that's purely speculative, and came to that thought after meditating on some of Jordan Peterson's comments. But not committed to a defense of them.
My reading of the German social conditions of the time gives me the impression the lower classes were very destitute and doing it tough with a rapidly dissipating Christian social structure, leading to vice of all sorts. Think of life in the "Projects'.
And yes there was a worship of modernity, but this was thing seen across the world at the time.
As for Adenauer, I've been meaning to do a post on him for a long, long time. I think he is greater than Le Kwan Yew. He definitely did shore up Germany and it's cultural institutions.
An interesting German film made/set in Berlin in 1930:
ReplyDeletehttp://chicagoboyz.net/archives/48575.html
Reading about history I'm starting to think that health of society is not measured by amount of degeneracy in society, but by public stance toward it.
ReplyDeleteWhat's interesting to me is that pre-modern societies were even more degenerate than Weimar Germany. Pre-revolutionary France was a cesspool of things most vile. The rest of Europe was no better too, if one is to believe the accounts of Casanova. And Middle Ages, were they better? From Pornocracy to Reformation we had "Sacred Age" right? No. Peter Damien's Book of Gomorrah points out how widespread sodomy and pedophilia were among the priesthood. During High Middle Ages infanticide came to be commonplace (and during famines parents would even cannibalize their children), and even nuns would resort to abortion so that their lack of chastity would not be discovered. Blasphemous manufacture and sale of false relics was a lucrative enterprise (as was the profiteering from pilgrimages to those relics). Bishops were having harems of concubines. Etc. etc.
And yet during all those ages they got by, and things were getting better, not worse. The difference is, in those days everyone thought the bad stuff is bad, that vice is vice, and the change in Modernity is that bad stuff is celebrated as if it were good, and vice has now became virtue, while virtue is ridiculed.
MK
ReplyDeleteReading about history I'm starting to think that health of society is not measured by amount of degeneracy in society, but by public stance toward it.
Yep, particularly the stance taken by men. What has shocked me is the rapid slouch to Gomorrah over the past 20 years. 25 years ago the concept of gay marriage would a have been regarded as a joke, now it is an inalienable right. What has been staggering to watch is total lack of effective opposition to this push.
I'm telling you, there is a crisis of masculinity, particularly among the Christians out there.
You mean some Jewish elements? Don't allude to it just say it. Certainly there were Jewish elements that pushed the degeneracy but the Thule society wasn't Jewish, and they were a bunch of freaks.
ReplyDeleteJewish elements who used to be involved in war profiteering, the banking sector and speculation during the period of hyperinflation. Plus degenerate sex tourists with disposable income from abroad, particularly the US, many of whom were probably Jewish as well, who visited Berlin in search of cheap child prostitutes and whatnot. This is suggested by this article, which was linked in the comments to the youtube video. The comment section is pretty based and red-pilled, by the way.
darkmoon.me/2013/the-sexual-decadence-of-weimar-germany/
The documentary, by the way, is from a 3-part TV-series by CBC entitled Legendary Sin Cities from 2005. The other two parts deal with Shanghai and Paris. The fate of Weimar Berlin from 1933 onwards is well-known. The fate of those other two dens of degeneracy is also interesting. Paris fell to the German army almost without bloodshed in 1940, even though it was technologically and numerically inferior to the enemy. Those are the wages of degeneracy. Shanghai was destroyed in a terrible siege by the Japanese in 1937, and subsequently occupied. Before that it was ruled by that unscrupulous asshat Chiang Kai-shek, who hoped that he can elicit military support from the US by ordering his soldiers to defend the city to the last man. It didn't work, so he tried the same again in Nanking a few months later. That didn't work either.
ReplyDelete
ReplyDeleteThis reminds me of something Richard Spencer has observed in some podcast a couple of months ago (bear with me). The main reason the Weimar Republic had no chance to endure were the structural "checks" built into it, namely that there were two powerful interest groups in Germany who weren't invested in the republican system at all: the tight-knit group of capitalist oligarchs (Krupp, Thyssen etc., who controlled all the large German companies and many of the banks) and the military leadership (who controlled the Army, and most of the right-wing paramilitary groups by proxy). Once the global financial crisis hit in 1929, both of these were mostly just looking for an opportunity to dismantle democracy and enact some sort of authoritarian dictatorship. But they couldn't do that without the support of major political parties. That's why Hitler's coalition government was put into power through backroom deals.
John Derbyshire has made a similar observation about communist China, of all places:
After the chaos they brought to China, Mao's radicals weren't popular. When Mao died, the whole radical movement collapsed. The moderates took power without much resistance.
johnderbyshire.com/Opinions/RadioDerb/2017-04-07.html#06
In other words, the political structures of the Weimar Republic and communist China both offered opportunities to rein the left-wing radicals in. That's how the insanity of the Cultural Revolution could be stopped and reversed. These were basically locomotives with functioning brakes. "Weimerica", however, is a locomotive without brakes. It's a society where nobody dares to rein the leftist crazies in. All that's left to do, to quote Richard Spencer again (in the spirit of triggering), is simply to see this all through the end. It'll have to run its course, and we'll have to suffer through it and survive.
Derbyshire continues:
There is no parallel with our situation. The anti-white, anti-male, anti-American radicals of our own time occupy all the commanding heights of American culture: the media, the academy, the judiciary, corporations, churches, even the military. Opposition to them is feeble and scattered. I can't foresee a collapse of radical power. There is no prospect of a return to rational principles, to honest meritocracy and traditional American values.
@HellsHound
ReplyDeleteGood comments.
n other words, the political structures of the Weimar Republic and communist China both offered opportunities to rein the left-wing radicals
With what? As Griffin and Gregor showed Natsoc was really Socialism v2.0. So the structural checks built into the Weimar constitution, didn't guarantee the escape from depravity. The shift from Weimar to Third Reich was the exchange of one kind of degeneracy for another. I'm mean what is the order of precedence when comparing a whore to a mass murderer. I think the whore less evil.
I can't foresee a collapse of radical power. There is no prospect of a return to rational principles, to honest meritocracy and traditional American values.
America, and the West in General, is far more cucked than Germany ever was. Our conservatives/rightists don't even know what it means to be "Right". When a leading figure like Spencer starts seeing socialism v2.0 as corrective mechanism to socialism v1.0, you know the the situation is seriously screwed. The problem with the "Right" in the West, is that it is so steeped in Modernism that any corrective solution never escapes Modernist metaphysics. The lack of a corrective mechanism in the West is cultural, not political.
Trump's election is proof that a renegade can still emerge from the system, the problem is that the renegades still operate within Modernism's frame, hence there is no way out.
The only hope will come from some non-cucked Christian conservatives. Otherwise we're screwed.
With what?
ReplyDeleteWith clear signals of disavowal and disowning. With violence, or threats thereof. With administrative and legal measures. Look at China after Mao's death. The radicals responsible for the horrors of the Cultural Revolution were purged from the leadership, many of them were even sentenced to prison. With Mao gone, they didn't have power anymore. Nobody had their backs, nobody was willing to egg them on any further. Nobody was going to stand up for them in any way. Nobody even complained when they were done away with. Compare this to America.
So the structural checks built into the Weimar constitution, didn't guarantee the escape from depravity.
Indeed. What they did guarantee was the opportunity to remove left-wing radicals from political life and society in general, to dismantle their influence. (Which is an opportunity that doesn't exist in America, as you noted.) It's also true, of course, that Weimar's elite merely wanted to use the Nazis as a convenient tool to dismantle leftist influence and install an authoritarian regime. That didn't work out.
@Hells Hound
ReplyDeleteWhat they did guarantee was the opportunity to remove left-wing radicals from political life and society in general, to dismantle their influence.
It was a sectarian battle. The National Socialists replaced the International Socialists but Socialism remained.