National socialism as a political religion

Burleigh, Michael

doi:10.1080/14690760008406930

Cited by 16 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 9 publications

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“…Interpretive comment about fascism as a political religion goes back, at least among Italians, to the 1920s, includes an assessment of the politics of the Lateran Pact with the Pope, and even permits reinterpretations of Mazzini's ideas and their relation to the Risorgimento. This and other literature makes firm distinctions between the Italian fascist and Nazi and Soviet forms of a 'political religion' (Burleigh, 2007).…”

Section: (C) Symbolic Symbiosesmentioning

confidence: 76%

Re-thinking comparative education and religion: temptations, traditions, and politics

Cowen

2019

REEC

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This article opens by refusing some traditional ways to approach the theme of comparative education and religion-and-education. Partly, this is because some topics, in terms of religion and education, have been well covered. More generally, there is an explicit refusal of the clichéd assumption that ‘comparative education articles’ compare (e.g. education systems in Argentina and Australia, or in Brazil and Bolivia; and so on), juxtaposing narratives on any-old-topic which interests the writer, provided the narratives are about two or more different countries. Fortunately, some current changes in the ‘epistemic gaze’ of comparative education create new levels of theoretical difficulty and permit a break from the classic political equilibrium problem of the liberal secular state juggling education policy choices and juggling competing religious groups. Starting from a different axiom, a sketch of new possibilities is offered. The sketch is theoretically clumsy but it opens up a strategically different way to tell comparative education stories, of the kind which traditionally we have not tried to tell. The conclusion of the article makes a guess about why religion and education might again become a major topic in comparative education.

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Section: (C) Symbolic Symbiosesmentioning

confidence: 76%

Re-thinking comparative education and religion: temptations, traditions, and politics

Cowen

2019

REEC

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“…Many cultured Germans distrusted, for example, the “soulless” science of “Jewish” modern physics (Wessely 2013, 166). Hitler spoke to and for such Germans when he insisted repeatedly that his fight and his Reich were compellingly “spiritual” (Redles 2005, 65) and promised that the coming German empire would embody “the greatest of scientific knowledge and its spiritual expression” (cited in Burleigh 2000, 11) free of the poison of the Jews who were incapable of being “spiritual” (Koehne 2014, 775-776). As Nazi “scientists” explained, after all, Jews were parasites by nature because they were not endowed with proper souls (Schneider 1943, 8-9).…”

Section: Section 2: the Late German Imperial Consensus: Germanentum Amentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The picture of people living in “the immanent frame” as a peculiar new “race” arriving in our world as a “victory for darkness” is troubling. Characterizing particular groups of people as alien others lacking otherworldly transcendence and thereby associated with the forces of darkness is not (as seen in section two above) an approach clearly recommended by a good historical track record (Koehne 2014, 763, 775-776; Kurlander 2017, 132, 143; Wessely 2013, 166; Redles 2005, 65; Burleigh 2000, 11; Schneider 1943, 8-9). I will also add that the early 21st century does not look like a good time to experiment with such talk.…”

Section: Section 3: the Taylor–williams Consensus: “Religious Diversimentioning

confidence: 99%

Immodest proposals: Learned liberal consensus as a cannibalistic theological system

Ricker

2020

Critical Research on Religion

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This article considers imperial Roman and German forms of liberal elite consensus on “proper religious diversity” to set the stage for an examination of the contemporary form of liberal consensus discernible in a recent public talk given by Charles Taylor and Rowan Williams. In each case, attention is drawn to the ways in which “proper religious diversity” is defined to serve ideological and theological agendas. Romanitas, Germanentum, and the Taylor–Williams consensus are cannibalistic theological systems: each uses a public stance of reasonable openmindedness regarding “proper religious diversity” to build and police a theological position that arrogates the perceived value of selected “religious” traditions by re-making them in its own image. Imperial Romanitas and Germanentum served in this way to absorb a diversity of traditions deemed palatable and digestible into overarching theological visions which were convenient to those in power. When Taylor and Williams use the platform of Religious Studies to promote the modern liberal view of “diversity in (true) religion” as a source of pro-social order, their efforts serve a similar crypto-theological and imperialist project.

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“…The phenomenological approach to ‘political religion’ fits very well in this academic imperative. Complex and elusive to grasp, scholars like Michael Burleigh who applied ‘political religion’ directly to the question of perpetrators' motivations emphasise ‘the deeper metaphysical context, which shaped these appalling actions at the highest level’ (Burleigh , p. 14). Michael Ley furthermore describes the Nazi project of extermination as a manifestation of homogenous acts of killing where Nazism understood as a political religion portrays the Holocaust not as an event of ‘social, economic or mass psychological nature, but one with a religious theoretical background’ (Ley , p. 166).…”

Section: IIImentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Indeed, the debate around ‘political religion’ in Holocaust studies has been one of the most extensive in the last decade of research on Nazi perpetrators, all related to the methodological issue of maintaining the disbelief that surrounds the Holocaust and avoiding a simplification of the enquiry into the motivations of the perpetrators. On the one hand, Burleigh stressed the way ‘political religion’ stood in stark contrast to old images of the perpetrator as ‘less than fully human […] degraded into instruments of ideology and radically divorced from the plenitude of human spiritual destiny’ (Burleigh , p. 21). On the other, Gregor has argued that the concept ‘shoehorns into a crude single mould a social, political and ideological movement whose essential characteristic was in its incredible heterogeneity’ (Gregor , p. 13).…”

Section: IIImentioning

confidence: 99%

Between Sacred and the Profane: Holocaust Collaboration and ‘Political Religion’

Wennberg

2014

Religion Compass

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This article interprets the genealogy of the concept of 'political religion' in Holocaust research from the fundamental division between 'sacred' and 'profane' understandings of traditional religions. It argues that 'political religion' is understood as 'sacred' and unique when associated with Nazism, whilst its application to European fascism more generally has had a character of understanding religion as comparative and measureable from a 'profane' set of criteria. Yet, in light of research on Nazi ideology and fascist collaboration in the Holocaust, which effectively imply an interaction between Nazi and fascist agencies, the article finds that 'political religion' needs a re-theorization that can accommodate for the integration between the sacred and the profane.

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National socialism as a political religion

Cited by 16 publications

References 9 publications

Re-thinking comparative education and religion: temptations, traditions, and politics

Re-thinking comparative education and religion: temptations, traditions, and politics

Immodest proposals: Learned liberal consensus as a cannibalistic theological system

Between Sacred and the Profane: Holocaust Collaboration and ‘Political Religion’

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