Gnosticism and Marcionism are Chaotically used terms

Marcion is one of many Christian Heretics who's name has become shorthand for just one particular idea he taught and thus Marcionism as a label will be applied to people or belief systems that are maybe even the opposite of Marcion on everything else.  In Marcion's case that is teaching that the God of the Hebrew Bible, YHWH, is not the same entity as The New Testament God who is The Father of Jesus.

I have recently learned that Marcion didn't even believe YHWH was Evil per se but more like Lawful Neutral to use some Gamer lingo. 

Others who separated the OT God from the NT God were even less hostile to the OT God.  Cerinthus separated them while still being a Legalist who said Christian should still keep The Torah.

Using Gnostic as a catch all term for everyone who believed anything even kind of like this or other related ideas was not being done at the time.  Irenaeus in Against Heresies used the word Gnostic only of the Valentinians and even that was not as a term to describe anything about their Theology or metaphysical world view but simply as his way of calling them pretentious.  Gnosis was a Greek word for knowledge, so you could translate calling someone a "Gnostic" as "know it all".

That's why I find it silly when modern Neo-Gnostics talk about "Gnosis" being the point of Gnosticism and anyone claiming to be a Gnostic who doesn't get that point is doing it wrong.  None of ancient groups actually that what defined their self identity. 

My past desire to define Gnosticism as simply the most extreme end result of 2nd Century Christians being too influenced by Middle Platonism and Neopythagoreanism is hindered by Wikipedia giving that label to Epiphanes who was clearly the opposite of that being more like a Zenonian Stoic.

The first theological system that tends to enter my mind when I think "Gnosticism" is primarily that of the Sethians.  So for example on my other blog in Gnosticism in Anime and Video Games the Sethian system is mainly what I had in mind when I suggested that SSSS.Gridman, Serial Experiment Lain and Revolutionary Girl Utena could perhaps be considered Reverse Gnosticism, using a Gnostic Mythological Framework but to actually convey the exact opposite attitude towards the material world.  

There are few topics where I'm more susceptible to Godwin's Law then the subject of nominally Christian theologies that reject YHWH.  Thomas Carlyle had expressed a similar sentiment though he didn't go in-depth on it mostly not seeing himself as Christian at all anymore.  Volkish Antisemitism began doing this with Paul de Lagarde in the late 1870s.  Houston Stewart Chamberlain gave it a more refined expression in Foundations of the Nineteenth Century in 1899 followed by Rudolf Jung in 1919 and from there it was incorporated into the writings of NSDAP Propagandists like Alfred Rosenberg, Ludwig Muller, Ernst Bergman and Walter Grundmann (the brains behind "The Message of God" a Nazi version of The Bible) in forming their "Positive Christianity".  And in post-War Neonazism we see it even in how George Lincoln Rockwell describes the Old Testament in his Autobiography, but for him it lead to rejecting Christianity entirely.

However I have grown uncomfortable with calling this tendency "Nazi-Marcionism" as I have in the past, partly because of the above but also because I know plenty of others do not connect their rejection of the Jewish God to any hostility to Jews themselves.  There is definitely a kind of Antisemitism in viewing The Jews as the ultimate victims of a cruel evil god who Jesus came to save them from rather then for.  But that would be distinct from Nazi Antisemitism.

If I were to compare any ancient Anti-Yhwists to those Nazis it would be the Cainites.  They were the ones who were explicit that the followers of the Evil God were also Evil.  And they also loved identifying themselves with those YHWH was seemingly hostile to in The Hebrew Bible.  

Houston Stewart Chamberlain argued Jesus was an Aryan by arguing he was a Canaanite, this and a few other ideas of his imply he felt the Aryans were Biblically Hamites, an idea that wouldn't hold up to historical scrutiny but I know a few still try to argue it in the obscure corners the Internet to this day.

Meanwhile Cain and his descendants are presented as the first violent warmongers in my reading of Genesis 4 making them natural people for Fascists to identify with.  Cain is the perfect Biblical Symbol for the Nietzschean conception of Master Morality.

And then there is the bizarre Islamophilia of the Nazis which would lend itself to identifying with the Arabian antagonists of Israel, Ishmaelites, Midianites and Edomites/Amalekites.  Meanwhile modern Palestinian nationalists often falsely claim descent from the Philistines and Canaanites. 

Now a lot of people online talking about the Nazis and Gnosticism tie into it some Conspiratorial belief in an unbroken continuity between Ancient Gnostics and groups active today.  That is obviously not the case, the Cainites died out during Late Antiquity. The Manicheans survived into the "Middle Ages" in the East but even they eventually died out.  Only the Mandeans survived to today but as isolated communities in the Middle East with no connection to any "Secret Societies" in The West.

The Symbiotic relationship between the Ku Klux Klan and the Nazis.

Step Back History did a video once about the relationship between the KKK and Neo-Nazis that claimed up until the end of the Vietnam Era they were always two separate strains of White Supremacy that were if anything hostile to each.  And he even says that is partly because many Klansman were WW2 Veterans and WW2 Vets didn't like Nazis for "obvious reasons".

Sure would be embarrassing for him if any research at all would have shown that the founder of post-War American Self-identifying Nazism was a WW2 Veteran named George Lincoln Rockwell, and the first American Holocaust Denier was a WW2 Veteran named Eustace Mullins (see also Revilo P. Oliver and Willis Carlo).  You see a lot of the kinds of people who become Soldiers have a mindset that actually makes them inclined to respect and even admire the enemies they fought against, it's more the people back home cheering on the war effort from the sidelines who buy into propaganda that completely dehumanizes the enemy.  And in general the Warrior mentality inherently feeds into Nazism and Fascism.  So no fighting on the Allied side in WW2 didn't inoculate anyone agaisnt Nazism or Fascism.

But even leaving that point aside, the tendency towards partnership between the Klan and the Nazis goes back to way before WW2 and thus certainly before Vietnam.

In some of my recent posts I've gotten into the sticky question of how to define Nazism and Fascism, but for this post I shall use the strictest definition for what makes a Nazi, before and during the War it refers to documented confirmed members of the NSDAP or derived organizations like the SA (Stormtroopers/Brown Shirts), SD and SS, and groups in other countries openly operating as extensions of that Party like the German American Bund. I have another definition of Nazi that essentially includes groups like the Klan, and well this post is part of arguing for that really, and even that is more narrow then how I use Fascist.

The main philosophical difference that does exist is the Klan favors Anglo-Israelism to reconcile their Racial Antisemitism and White Supremacy with believing in a Bible entirely about Semites being God's Chosen people.  While Nazis, if they are actively Christian at all, favor the Marcionite route.

And it's important to remember that the Second Klan's main focus was never on Anti-Black Racism (The Segregationists had already won in The South, when they Lynched Black People they did it openly no Hoods necessary.)  It was opposition to Immigrants, Catholics and Jews, the same things that animate Nazism.

Lothrop Stoddard was a known member of the Second Klan, he'd been exposed as one as early as 1923 and his books were required reading for Klan members.  His books about White Supremacist Social Darwinism alongside Madisen Grant's work were an important influence on Alfred Rosenberg's Myth of The Twentieth Century.  In 1939 and 1940 he was a in Nazi Germany as a journalist and received preferential treatment.

The Detroit chapter of the Klan was founded in 1921, the year after The International Jew began serialization, which I don't think is a coincidence. A key player in the origins of those articles was Boris Brasol a Russian Emigre who was a member of the Reconstruction Organization along with several other key early Nazis like Alfred Rosenberg and Max Erwin von Scheubner. Another key player was Ernest G. Liebold who was from a family of German Immigrants whose Antismeitism was derivative of the Volkish Proto-Nazism already forming in 19th Century Germany. William J Cameron meanwhile went on to become a proponent of Anglo-Israelism which was also very popular in the K.K.K.  The articles were also translated into German in Germany where they where promoted by the Nazis resulting in Hitler praising Henry Ford in Mein Kampf.

I also don't think it's a coincidence that Gerald Burotn Winrod founded his "Defenders of The Christian Faith" organization Kansas in 1925 the same year Kansas banned the KKK.  Winrod went on to work with the Nazis via Ulrich Fleischhauer's Welt-Dienst/World-Service/Service Mondial.  1925 is also the year the Black Legion was formed in Detroit. 

In the mid 1920s there was a Klan offshoot operating in northern Germany founded by American Immigrants to Germany called The Knights of The Fiery Cross.  Information about it online is mainly through old Newspaper Articles, there really should be more research into it.  But it seems there is known to have been members of this Klan who were also SA (the SA was temporarily officially banned for a time in the 20s).  However the main German political party it was tied to was the German Social Party founded and lead by Richard Kunze, that party's platform was essentially the same thing as the Nazis and by the end of the 20s they like a lot of other rival Volk Nationalist Parties had been absorbed into the NSDAP including Kunze himself who joined in 1930. [Update 2026: This group has a Wikipedia Page now where I learned one of it's founders did claim direct contact with the Klan in America.]

The founder of Canada's first Nazi Party the Canadian Nationalist Party William Whittaker had previously been a Ku Klux Klan organizer, yes the Second Klan did expand into Canada.

In the 1930s Britain had a Klan imitation group called the White Knights of Britain that operated out of the same building as the Nordic League.  The Nordic League was founded by agents of Alfred Rosenberg's Nordische Gesellschaft and Archibald Ramsay for the purpose of networking between different Nazi Sympathizing groups and politicians in Britain.  Oswald Mosley wasn't a member because he intended to model his Fascism more after Mussolini, but he did allow other BUF members to participate.  It had stronger ties to Arnold Leese's Imperial Fascist League which despite it's name actually hated Mussolini style Fascism and got into Street Fights with Mosley's Black Shirts.  The Nordic League was mainly lead by Archibald Maule Ramsay but the President of it's Liberty Restoration league front group was Lord Arthur Wellesley the 5th Duke of Wellington.

La Cagoule were a Klan style Right Wing terrorist group formed in France in the 1930s many of whom became collaborators during occupation.

George W. Christians is another link between the Second Klan and actual Nazi Spies, by working with Klansman C. A. Hester and Nazi Spy Oscar C. Pfaus.

In 1938 The KKK sent a letter to the House Unamerican Activities Committee informing them of how it had their full support. This form of the Committee was already primarily doing what we would later call McCarthyism, what nominal effort it did put into investigating Nazi sympathizers was half hearted and came to naught.  Instead it's fixation on Communists resulted in it going after the Hollywood Anti-Nazi League, they considered being Anti-Nazi the same as being Communist.

Theodore G. Bilbo was an admitted KKK member and he also openly praised Nazi Race Laws.  (He was also closely associated with Earnest Sevier Cox co-founder of the Anglo-Saxon Clubs of America and future ally of Post-War SS survivors like Leers and even sent a letter of support to George Lincoln Rockwell.)

Eugene Talmadge was a Klan linked Governor of Georgia who bragged about reading Mein Kampf seven times.

But don't forget the Second Klan had Republicans too, like Oregon Senator Rufus C. Holman who expressed admiration for Hitler.

If you go to the Wikipedia Page for the man who was Grand Wizard of the KKK during WW2 James A. Colescott, it will talk about how the Kan had fought alongside Nazi Sympathizers in Race Riots like the one in Detroit in 1943. The National Workers League was the key front group for their collaboration.

Tyler Kent the American Ambassador to Britain who committed Treason helping Archibald Ramsay spy for the Nazis, went on to work for a KKK linked Newspaper in Florida.

Samuel Green based in Georgia was arguably the first leader of the Post-War Klan, and he worse a Hitler Mustache. In the late 40s the Klan in Georgia had beef with am Atlanta based Neo-Nazi group called the Columbians, but it was not because they were Nazis but because they saw them as rivals and didn't like their methods. There are regardless still believed to be some people in Atlanta who were members of both.

In Chile in 1964 Franz Pfeiffer's Nazi party also founded a Chilean branch of the KKK.

Wesley A. Swift was a KKK recruiter who died in 1970 his associates included Neo-Nazi Oren Petito, Silver Shirts like Gerald L.K. Swift and Richard Girnt Butler who founded the Aryan Nations.  He also claimed to have gotten his Anglo-Israelist ideas from Gerald Burton Winrod the "Jayhawk Nazi".

Dan Burros was a Klan Leader who worked with Organizations and died in 1965. 

Looking into the National States Rights Party will bring up even more connections between Neo-Nazis and Klansmen all through the 50s and 60s.  After all they are a group founded in 1958 whose flag is a fusion of Confederate and Nazi imagery.  It was founded by two men, Columbian veteran Ed Fields and J. B. Stoner who recharted a Klan chapter in Tennessee in 1942.

There's also the Christian Defense League. 

The Platonist Pentateuch

 The Platonist Pentateuch

Timaeus = Genesis

Republic = Exodus

Gorgias = Leviticus

Critias = Numbers

Laws = Deuteronomy

When I criticize much of Mainstream Christianity for being more Platonist then Biblical, most of the Platonist ideas I have in mind are pretty much laid out in those five dialogues.  "Conservative" Christians of course want nothing to do with Symposium or Phaedrus.

The extent to which Christians are Platonists varies in explicitness more so then how Platonist.  For many it's all indirect and plenty are in outright denial of how much their beliefs come from Plato, some Full Preterists on Facebook had the gall to suggest it's us teaching a Bodily Resurrection and Soul Sleep who are the Platonists.  Some simply think it doesn't hurt to apply methods learned from Philosophy to your Faith, some believe Plato somehow simply is compatible with The Bible both Old and New Testament.  Some fall just short of full blown Marcionism in their attitudes towards the Hebrew Bible and basically wish they could replace the Old Testament with Plato like David Bentley Hart.  The people who are explicitly Modern Marcionites are sometimes also in denial of the Platonist roots of their Theology, I've yet to see someone who actually does explicitly replace the Old Testament with Plato, but if I ever do it won't surprise me.

I listed those five in that order not because that's their chronological order, Timaeus sets itself up as a sequel to The Republic and Critias in turn is explicitly a sequel to Timaeus.

Timaeus is the counterpart to Genesis because it contains the Pythagorean Creation myth, and it references Atlantis giving it a Flood Legend as well.  A Cosmology that after being filtered through Philo, Plutarch and Numenius of Apamea would give rise to the Gnostic Ialdabaoth, the Arian view of The Logos and Neoplatonist cosmologies.

Republic has some narratives but is basically Plato's major political Constitution.  While Exodus is named for it's most well known narrative more of the text is actually about laying out Israel's Constitution.

Gorgias is one of the five mainly because it's the Chief origin of the modern idea of Hell.  Leviticus doesn't contain any explicit references to Sheol, but that's not really where modern "Hell" comes from, to the extent it's Biblically justified at all it's largely a misunderstanding of what the purpose of Leviticus's Sacrificial system was.

Critias is most well know for being the fuller account of Atlantis.  And the Purpose the Atlantis myth is supposed to serve in relation to the Republic is seeing such an Ideal Republic in action.  But what many forget is that's actually Athens, Atlantis is the Evil Empire so it in this proposed Numbers comparison could be Balaac's Moab or the Amorites under Sihon and Og.  And the Amorites did exist this far south only because of Imperialism, their homeland was the Beqqa Valley by Mount Hermon but they kind of ruled the entire Levant by this time.  Also the Baal-Peor episode is one of The Bible passages abused by Anti-Miscegenationists, and the story of Atlantis has a proto-eugenicist subtext in the degeneration of it's Kings.

Deuteronomy means ""Second Law" because much of it is Moses repeating Laws from earlier, The Laws is likewise Plato's second hypothetical Constitution.   Both books are traditionally the last their traditional author wrote. Deuteronomy is believed by secular scholars to not have the same origin as the rest of The Pentateuch, and likewise Robert H. Allen argues that Plato's Laws isn't authentic Plato.

Deuteronomy is actually the most quoted book of the Pentateuch in the New Testament, with even some NT references to the Decalogue being based on it's version. A fact which I think fits in with the NT's theme that The Law should change.  The Laws of Magnesia however are reactionary and dystopian.

The Joshua to Plato's Moses wound up being Emperor Theodosius I.