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New Age victim-blaming, antisemitism.

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Barnaby_McEwan:

--- Quote ---One of the things they mentioned on the program was that people at the KC believe the Holocaust was the fault of the Jews.

I thought that was interesting in that so many New Agers think that what the euros did to us was in some way our own fault.

"Blame the victim" and all that.
--- End quote ---


It's not hard to find that kind of poisonous élitism mixed into the warm 'n' fuzzy 'unconditional love' stuff. Now I think of it, that 'unconditional love' thing implies élitism:

'How spiritual I am; look, I even treat Jews and Indians well. We're just human beings, after all; it's just that some are more evolved than others. Who knows, perhaps a Jew or an Indian could, after many lifetimes of arduous endeavour, become as spiritually-advanced as I am'.

In my experience victim-blaming is a common way for Newagers to deal with people or events that don't fit into their world view. It saves them having to think about anything difficult.

Not healed of your cancer by some magnet-waving quack? It's your fault: you're not trying hard enough. You must want to have cancer. Not enough money to feed and clothe your kids? It's your fault: you're not tapping into universal abundance. You must want to be poor. Indians murdered by Europeans? It was their destiny: Indians could not advance spiritually and so had to die out so that mankind's spiritual mission could proceed. The Holocaust? The Jews are too materialistic. They brought it on themselves.

A prominent (but dead) New Ager, Alice Bailey, blames Jews for the Holocaust:

http://www.pinenet.com/~rooster/bailey.html

Bailey still has followers today; here's one defending her against charges of antisemitism by insisting that there really was a 'Jewish problem' and repeating other antisemitic themes ('Jews dominate the media' etc):

http://www.esotericastrologer.org/EA%20Essays/AABHPBHR4.htm

And then there's Rudolf Steiner...

Barnaby_McEwan:
Rudolf Steiner called his system of occultism Anthroposophy. It is the theoretical basis for biodynamic agriculture and Waldorf education.

Steiner believed that the five 'root-races' of the current age spread outward from Atlantis, first going east to Africa and Asia, then west again through Europe and on to America. (I think that's what he meant; the book I'll quote from is contradictory and obtuse. He also says that American Indians are descended from Atlanteans who went west straight from Atlantis.)

At various places on the Earth's surface, people are affected by mysterious emanations which are somehow connected to the planets; these emanations determine the character of each 'root-race'. Thus African racial characteristics are related to childhood, Asian to adolescence, European (surprise surprise!) to adulthood, and American Indian to senility. All quotations from Steiner, Rudolf. The Mission of Folk-Souls in Connection with Germanic and Scandinavian Mythology. London: Anthroposophical Publishing House. New York: Anthroposophic Press. 1929. (The phrase ''Folk-Souls" in the title of this book is perhaps better translated from German as "Race-Spirits"; that phrase is used along with 'Folk-Souls" and "Folk-Spirits" throughout the authorised English translation I've quoted from):

"If we continue this line [of mankind's spiritual evolution], we come far to the West, to America, the region where those forces are active which lie on the other side of the middle third of life. [...] This line, which is laid down by law, really does exist, it is a reality, a real curve, and it expresses the law according to which our earth acts upon man. The forces which determine man with respect to race take this course. The American Indians did not die out because it pleased the Europeans that they should do so, but because they had to acquire those forces which lead them to die out." [p. 50]

Barnaby_McEwan:
Here Steiner seems to be saying that American Indians are visibly ossifying under the influence of the strange Saturnian emanations that his supposedly infallible clairvoyance had revealed to him:

"Finally, what we may describe as the abnormal Spirits of Form who have their centre in Saturn, act upon the glandular system, but in a roundabout way through all the other systems. Therefore in all that we must describe as the Saturn-race, in everything to which we must attribute the Saturn-character, we must look for something which draws together and embraces that which leads again to the evening twilight of humanity, whose development brings humanity in a certain way to a real conclusion, to a dying away. The expression of this action on the glandular system is seen in the American-Indian race. From that action comes its mortality, its disappearance. The Saturn influence acts through all the other systems finally upon the glandular system. It separates out the hardest parts of man, and we may therefore say that this dying-out consists in a sort of ossification, and this may also clearly be seen in the outer form.

If you look at the pictures of the old American Indians, the process above described is palpable in the decline of this race. In a race such as this, everything which existed in the Saturn-evolution is now present in them, and that in a special manner; it has withdrawn into itself and left man alone with his hard bone system, and brought him into decline." [p. 78-79]

He continues, in one of the most mawkish passages I've ever read:

"One feels something of this truly occult activity, if one observes how, even in the nineteenth century, a representative of these old Indians speaks of how in him there dwells what formerly was great and mighty for man, but which could not possibly go along with further evolution. There is in existence a description of a beautiful scene, in which a leader of these Indians who are dying out, confronts a European invader.

Imagine what is felt in the heart when two such men confront each other, men who came across from Europe, and men who in the earliest ages, when the races were divided, went over to the West. The Indians then took over with them to the West all that was great in the Atlantean culture. What was the greatest thing of all to the Indian? It was that he was still able dimly to sense something of the ancient greatness and majesty of a period which existed in the old Atlantean epoch, in which the division of the races had hardly begun, in which men could look up to the Sun and perceive the Spirits of Form penetrating through a sea of mist. Through an ocean of mist the Atlantean gazed up at that which to him was not divided into six or seven, but which acted together. This co-operative activity of the seven Spirits of Form was called by the Atlanteans the Great Spirit who revealed himself to man in ancient Atlantis. The Atlantean had not taken into himself all that the Venus, Mercury, Mars and Jupiter Spirits brought about in the East, through which were developed all the civilisations which reached their zenith in Europe in the middle of the nineteenth century. In all this the son of the brown race did not participate. He clung firmly to the Great Spirit of the primeval past. That which the others had done, those who in a primeval past had also received the Great Spirit, passed before his eyes when a paper was laid before him on which were many little signs, letters, of which he understood nothing. All that was foreign to him, but in his soul he still had the Great Spirit. His speech has been preserved to us; it is worthy of note because it points to what we have explained, and it runs somewhat as follows: 'There, in the ground upon which walk the conquerors of our country, the bones of my brothers are buried. Why are the feet of our conquerors allowed to walk over the graves of my brothers? Because they are in possession of that which makes the white man great. The brown man is made great by something else; he is made great by the Great Spirit, Who speaks to him in the sighing of the wind, in the rustling of the forest, in the surging of the waves, in the gurgling of the spring, in thunder and lightning! That is the Spirit Who to us speaks truth. Oh, the Great Spirit speaks truth! Your Spirits,whom you have here on paper, and who express what to you is great, they do not speak truth.' Thus spoke the Indian Chief, from his point of view. The brown man belongs to the Great Spirit; the pale man belongs to the spirits who, in black shapes, as little dwarflike beings - he meant the letters - hop about on the paper and who do not speak the truth. That is a world-historic dialogue, which was carried on between the conquerors and the last of the great Chiefs of the brown men. Here we see what belongs to Saturn and his activity, and what originates on the earth from his co-operation with other Spirits, at such a moment as this, when two different directions meet." [p.79-80]

It's simple. Indians had to die out: but don't worry, the conquerors were simply following their cosmic destiny.

VHawkins:
Well I have news for that fella and his "cosmic destinies". I look at my home town. when I was a kid there wasn't a single Mexican, or Asian or anyhting ethinc Restaraunt here. Everyplace served black eyed peas, okra, corn, potatoes, chicken, grits biscuits and gravy, chili, and all kinds of beef and pork with corn bread and pintos -- all 100 percent Oklahoma foods. That was in the 60s. There are very few home restaurants that sell ALL those things I listed above anymore, or they are no longer the best selling items they offer.

Now the town (small about 30,000 pop) is about 20 percent Hispanic, and they are still arriving and growing. And many of these people are INDIAN, altho they themselves have a hard time digestin' that. I mentioned to a girl at work she looked more Indian than European and you'd have thought I had just insulted her -- "NO! She was Spanish!"

If this trend continues 40 years from now the town will be ar least half Hispanic.

Maybe this "cosmic destiny" in bringing back a Spanish speaking "Indian" -- not Whites who want to be Indian, but Indians who want to think they are White. There are Mexiacn people as much in denial of their Indian roots as there are whites who want to be Indian, maybe more.

Now that's poetic justice I suppose. Maybe the author of the above writings forgot to add cream of gall ladder into his tea leaves . . . or he'd a seen this, too.

vance

JosephSWM:
Here in Baltimore our Hispanic community has grown in the last 5 years from non-exitstent to neary 10,000. I am involved here with our Indian center and many young men have come in to sign up and become involved int he center. Some of the older folks on the board fight against this inclusion cause they say these people are not Indian. When I ask why they says its because they spek spainish, and Indians speak english.

So Vance, with your twist and my twist there we could start a braid of stupidity.

Joseph

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