Ecofascism is a Problematic term.

The problem with Ecofascism discourse is that we use the term Ecofascism to describe two distinctly different bad Environmentalist ideologies.  Only one of which was ever actually a part of any Fascist movement and that was a specific sub-type of Fascism that some do argue doesn't really qualify.  They only have in common that they're Malthusian.

The first is what should really be called Eco-Nazism, the explicitly White Supremacist Environmentalism of Madisen Grant and other conservationists who were close to Teddy Roosevelt who in turn had a strong influence on Hitler and Alfred Rosenberg.  

Interestingly what a certain YouTube Channel keeps calling "Fossil Fascism" is also actually Nazism and also has it's roots in the influence American White Supremacists held over German Nazism principally in their idolization of Henry Ford who's International Jew essays were translated into German and very popular over there in the early 1920s.

The other "Ecofascism" is really Eco-Nihilism or Eco-Misanthropy, this is the bad Environmentalism sometimes believed by people who think they qualify as Leftists as well as what certain people keep falsely accusing Degrowth of being a disguised version of.

The problem with associating that second ideology with Fascism is that Fascism is a fundamentally Anti--Nihilist and Pro-Human worldview.  Mussolini style Fascism doesn't tend toward being Environmentalist at all (and Mussolini ultimately rejected Malthusianism) but when they are it's a form predicated on belief in Man's Dominion over Nature.

And the thing is even among Nazis it has today become far more common for the Far Right to believe we actually have a declining birthrate problem.  The Overpopulation delusion has become almost exclusively the delusion of Liberals and Pseudo-Leftists.

Socialism and Third Positions

Arguing that the Socio-Economic aspects of the ideologies of Italian Fascism and the NSDAP legitimately qualify as types of Socialism is usually done for the purpose of condemning Socialism, (or more rarely to defend Fascism like Povl Riis-Knudsen).  I however am a Socialist who is still willing to say not all Socialisms are good.

In my Fascism is Heroarchy post on my main blog I was talking about the core Psychology of Fascism in a way that mostly transcends any actual policies.  That definition of Fascism can apply to more than just the kinds of Socialism I shall define as Third Positions here but can also manifest as Capitalist like in the fiction of Ayn Rand or among Marxists like what Stalinism eventually became.

People arguing against the equation of Fascism with Socialism can’t agree on how.  To Progressive Liberals it’s more about proving Progressive Liberalism isn’t Fascist since Conservatives think Progressive Liberalism is Socialism.  And then Breadtubers don’t just want to distinguish their Socialism from Fascism but want to make Fascism somehow a type of Capitalism.

And then of course Conservatives and Libertarians and whatever TIK is don’t actually understand what is and isn’t Socialist about any kind of Socialism because they just think it's anytime the Government does anything.  

At its core Socialism originally just meant Collectivism with the goal of making Society more Equal, and generally involved critiquing Capitalism with a forward rather than backward looking perspective.  It was always a much broader concept than Communism.  Marx himself wrote about how he prefers to use the term Communism because "respectable" Socialism had become associated with "Middle Class" tendencies he didn't like.  I'm going to argue that some of those Middle Class Socialisms of the 19th Century are the Grandparents of National Socialism and Fascism.  Even Thomas Carlyle was considered a Socialist at the time, even though the core of his ideology was Reactionary.

Today self described Socialists with a notable platform are mostly people identifying as either Marxist or Anarchist.  The thing is as much as Marxism and Anarchism seem like such diametrically different kinds of Socialism in that context, they actually have two maybe three things in common that were not Universal among those called Socialists in the 19th Century, or even all that common in the first half of that century.

First is that even Anarchists are Marxists in the sense that Anarchists also believe the goal of Communism is a Classless Society, since Class is also an unjust hierarchy.  So Marxists and Anarchists are both supposed to oppose Class Collaboration.  Class based rhetoric is often associated with Marxism first because Marxism is strictly speaking not a political ideology at all but an analysis of History as being driven by Class Struggle, Anarchist philosophers mostly agree with the Marxist analysis of history even if they sometimes try to be less strictly economically determinist about it.

Now Class Collaboration is not about denying the lower classes have it bad and need to be treated better.  Rather they see the answer to Class Conflict as reconciliation rather than abolition.  Class Collaboration is often associated with Nationalist rather than Internationalist forms of Socialism, but H.G. Wells' political ideology was absolutely a Globalist Class Collaborationist Socialism.

The classic silent film Metropolis is one people love to give their Marxist readings of, but the ending of the film is in fact Class Collaborationism with the protagonist becoming the mediator between the owners and the workers.  Most forms of Class Collaboration intend the mediator to be The State, but Fascist Class Collaboration often sees the State as principally embodied in a Strongman Leader.  That’s the real reason Metropolis is part of the Caligari to Hitler thesis.

It’s possible to see a mild Statist Class Collaborationism is Keynesian Liberalism and Social Democracy.  But to me a true Class Collaborationist Socialism has to go further than that, it still sees society as in need of massive restructuring, not merely tweaked by Social Safety Nets and allowing Unions to exist.

However I also feel an Anarchist Class Collaborationism existed in the Anarcho-Mutualism of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon.  Today Proudhon’s legacy is fought over between Anarcho-Capitalists and Anarcho-Communists but in my view both should disown him for his Misogyny and Anti-Semitism (the contemporary Frenchman who Libertarian-Communists should claim as a forbearer is Joseph Dejacque).  Proudhon was also a direct influence on French Proto-Fascism via both Georges Sorel and Charles Maurass’s Integral Nationalism (Georges Valois then synthesized those two ideologies while still citing Proudhon himself), and on Nazism via Houston Stewart Chamberlain.  Proudhonian Anarchism is also probably what Tolkien meant when he described himself as an Anarchist but I’m not sure he knew that.

Sadly many of the people called Christian Socialists in the 19th Century were a type of Class Collaborationist.  The Denominationally more High Church Types wanted the Institutional Church of wherever they were to be the mediator.  But others took a more Christianized form of Proudhonian Mutualism sometimes called the "Community of Love".  Thing is Jesus was clear The Rich can't enter His Community until they are no longer Rich.

The second is that ultimately Marxists are also Anarchists, they also see the long term goal of Communism as a Stateless Society. Communists who are considered Anarchists in contrast to Marxists simply have no Faith in the Marxist belief that the State will wither away on its own, and also tend to have a very “Power Corrupts and Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely” attitude towards the very concept of trying to use the State to achieve Socialist aims.

This is often the core of arguing Fascism can’t be a kind of Socialism. Anarchists and Marxists are so used to arguing with each other about when the State should be abolished that they have lost the ability to imagine a Socialism that says it shouldn’t be at all.  

However almost all Pre-Marx Secular Socialists believed the State shouldn't be abolished at all, such as Louis Blanc in France who was the first person to criticize Capitalism by that name and was an apologist for the Jacobin dictatorship (his ideas also already contain the gist of Corporatism).  And then contemporary with Marx in his own country there was Ferdinand Lassalle who was a very vocal Statist, but I won’t accuse Lassalle of Class Collaborationism.  In England Henry Hyndman and the Fabian Socialists including H.G. Wells were also Statist Socialists.

The third is that Marxists and Anarchists are also generally Internationalist rather than Nationalist.  But there is some nuance on that. First there is a type of Nationalism that is considered compatible with Internationalism, Nationalist Resistance/Liberation movements for Colonized and Marginalized peoples.  And then there’s National Bolshevism which originally referred to Nationalists who saw themselves as still qualifying as Marxist-Lenninists before it became a generic insult for any Communist who seems Socially Conservative on some issues.

There are a lot of different kinds of Nationalism just based on how you define what makes a Nation.  The Volkish Nationalism of the NSDAP as well as the Christian Identity Anglo-Israelism of certain American White Nationalists are both Nationalisms where Citizenship is determined by Biological Race, but there are others that define it by more abstract cultural factors.  The more exclusivist the Nationalism is the more inherently Reactionary it will be.  But there’s also the matter of scale, people assume all Nationalists oppose the European Union because of its conflict with the Nationalism of more specific European countries, but there is also a Paneuropean Nationalism that supports the E.U. or at least forming something like it, Fascists and Nazis were considering Paneurpeanism already even before WW2 and today the E.U. is supported by Richard Spencer.

During the 19th Century Nationalism was considered an inherently Left Wing ideology even though tensions between Nationalists like Mazzini and Marxists were always there, and yes even Mazzini was sometimes considered a Socialist.  The formation of the Second International in 1889 was when mainstream Marxism decided Nationalism shouldn’t be tolerated anymore.

On all three of these I agree with Marxists and Anarchists which is why I feel I qualify as a Communist, yet on where Marxists and Anarchists disagree with each other I'm still a bit torn between them.

The first two of the three things I just talked about are the core of what a Third Positionist Socio-Economic ideology breaks with Marxism and Anarchism on, and even then needs to be combined with the Heroarchy to fully qualify as either Nazi or Fascist.  The third is the one that’s optional.

But most Breadtubers feel the opposite, because they’re obsessed with the flimsy Palingenetic Ultranationalism thesis and really want to insist that Fascists are just taking a modified Capitalist position on Economics, while also accusing Anti-Government Conservatives and Libertarians of being Fascist.  The same Breadtubers will often base much of their criticism of Capitalism on saying it’s a relatively new development in Human history so can’t actually be Human nature.  But if Capitalism is indeed New in the grand scheme of things then it is absolutely possible to be Anti-Capitalist in a Reactionary way.  But not even all Fascists see themselves as Reactionary, Nazism often does, but proper Mussolini and Mosley style Fascists did not.

My problem with treating Nationalism (or some other Exclusivist Identitarianism) as the most nonnegotiable characteristic of Fascism is that it precludes the possibility of a Globalist Fascism.  Now I don’t think a truly Globalist Nazism is possible (unless Extraterrestrials actually started migrating to Earth, then you could have an NSTAP), but again H.G. Wells' ideology was a Globalist Socialism with both my requirements to be an Economic Third Position, it just as far as I'm aware lacks the Heroarchy.  In Modern Hero Myth making Heroes who save and/or unite the entire World not just one tribe are increasingly becoming the standard.  So the pieces are already in place for a Globalist Fascism.  A government doesn’t need to be based on any specific bigotry to be authoritarian and oppressive. 

Mussolini’s Intellectuals: Fascist Social and Political Thought by A. James Gregor is a very interesting and well researched book.  It's early chapters document how the Italian Fascist ideology of Mussolini and Giovani Gentile evolved organically out of developments happening in Italy in the late 19th Century, where Mazzini style Nationalism and Syndicalism (which in Italy was already using the language and imagery of the Roman Fascio) were influencing each other in an increasingly fully symbiotic relationship while also taking influence from Sorel.

I’m someone who is interested in the differences between Fascism in the sense Mussolini intended and Nazism.  It has been common, (including by me earlier in this post and other recent ones I’ve made) to use Fascism as the umbrella term and National Socialism (what Nazi is short for) as the more specific subtype.  But this book has made me consider that maybe they should be switched, because it has quotes on pages 52 and 54 where the term “National Socialism” is used by Italian Proto-Fascists in 1914 before it ever was in Germany in 1918, including by Mussolini himself.  The particular kind of National Socialism associated with the NSDAP and some other German Parties should be labeled Volkish National Socialism.

Indeed there were a lot of groups popping up calling themselves National Socialist during this era, not all of them even fit the definition I’ve given for Third Positionist at all.  But another one that could be considered a Third Position was the National Socialist Party founded in Britain in 1916 by Henry Hyndman.  Hyndman was like Mussolini in how he left the Socialist Party he was previously in because he supported WW1.  But he was also a promoter of Anti-Semitic Conspiracy Theories related to the Second Boer War, and after the Russian Revolution he became very Anti-Bolshevik.  

In France a "Parti socialiste national" was founded in 1919 by Gustave Herve who like the founders of Italian Fascism had previously been a Pro-War Leftist.  But before that Maurice Barrès in 1889 used the phrase "Républicain nationaliste et socialiste".

The first use of National Socialism in Germany predates the founding of the party Hitler would later take over and rename adding that term to it.  It was in late 1918 associated with the Anti-Bolshevik League.  So in Germany National Socialism was always somewhat fundamentally reactionary, a reaction to the Russian Revolution.  But again the core original definition of Socialism can still apply to a reactionary viewpoint, because reactionaries are not actually backward looking but being in someway the opposite of the progressives they're reacting to.  

[Update December 2025: Here's a video on the Czechoslovakia's role in the origins of National Socialism. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7z06tbx1GFk&pp=0gcJCSMKAYcqIYzv]

And the justification for more makin Fascism more specific in term is it's etymological roots in Syndicalism.

Within the NSDAP there was always a tension between those who took the Socialism part seriously like Feder and the Strassers, and the growing influence of German Industrialists who were financing the Party.  Hitler himself was actually more of a follower than a leader as far as this tension went, all he really cared about was hating the Jews and restoring Germany’s “Heroic” Pride.  

The Prussian Socialism of Oswald Spengler was another German Third Position.

France had Fascist movements emerge organically and independently of simply being influenced by Germany and Italy. In addition to Valois there was the Neosocialism movement, and in Belgium Henry De Man came from the same Belgian Socialist Party that produced key leaders of the Second International.

After the War new Third Positions continued to emerge.  Juan Peron in Argentina was perhaps the most successful implementation of Mussolini style Fascism.  In The Middle East we had Nasser in Egypt, Baathism in Syria and Iraq and then the Fatah Party in Palestine.  Chiang Kai-shek's Chinese Nationalism was originally a Third Positionist ideology but like the NSDAP gave way to Capitalist influence in Taiwan over time.  Then Juche and Dengism are both functionally Third Positionist even though they nominally still claim to be Communists.

Saying there is no true Socialism in National Socialism because they disagree with us on Class and The State and Nationalism is a blatant No True Scotsman Argument that a certain type of the Internet Reactionaries we’re arguing with have a long history of not tolerating from Christian Apologists in which context Secular Leftists agree.  So doing the same thing when it comes to Socialism isn’t a good look.

Communism/Communist is the term that applies to Marxists and Kopropkin style Anarchists and other Socialists who take the correct position on The State and Class Warfare rather then any Third Position.  But even Communism can be corrupted by Bad Actors.  We need to stop concerning ourselves with whether any given Dictator was a true Socialist or Communist and instead argue their moral, ethical and practical failings don’t mean Socialism and Communism can’t work at all.

Likewise a lot of Internet Leftists base their responses to calling Mussolini or Hitler Socialist on defining them based on what they did rather then anything said in their ideological Manifestos, and the problem is that's not how defining an ideology works.  Anarchists, non-Leninist Marxists and Trotskyists feel the USSR also failed to actually be Socialist in practice, but few would deny that Leninism is a Socialist, Communist and Marxist ideology.  The USSR also wound up crushing Unions when Unions become inconvenient for them.

A given regime's failure to do what it was supposed to do may or may not be a valid argument against an Ideology being correct, but it isn't an excuse to redefine one.

The Left was Anti-War even during the lead up to WW2 (and the Right was not)

At least in the English speaking world.  Also for the purpose of this post I am defining the Center as FDR and those mostly in agreement with him (both Democrats and Republicans) and thus principally the Left are those noticeably to the Left of FDR and the Right those significantly to his Right.

Emma Goldman, the standard-bearer of Anarchism in the United States during the first decades of the 20th Century (who was also Jewish and often a target of Judeo-Bolshevik conspiracy theorists) said that while she despised both Hitler and Stalin she would not support a War again either.  The same goes for Paul Goodman.  Another Anarchist who's Anti-Fascist credentials are unquestionable is Dorothy Day, she continued to stand by her Pacifist principals even after Pearl Harbor.

W. E. B. Du Bois, the leading Left Wing Black Civil Rights leader from the end of the 19th Century until the rise of MLK was also very vocal about opposing U.S. involvement in WW2.

The only person in either house of Congress who refused to vote in favor of the Declaration of War following Pearl Harbor was Jeannette Rankin, she was also a vital leader of the Suffragette movement being the first Woman elected to Congress ever.  And at this time she had recently regained her seat specifically to remove an actual Nazi sympathizer Jacob Thorkelson.

Another Left Wing Anti-Interventionist in Congress was Robert m. La Follette Jr who was carrying on the mantle of his father who was one of the most Progressive U.S. Senators of all time.  He was the Congressman removed from his seat by Joseph McCarthy who explicitly used Follette’s Pacifism against him the same way war loving Republicans do today.  Another Wisconsin Progressive enemy of McCarthy who was Anti-War was Alexander Wiley who voted for vital Civil Rights Legislation.  McCarthy himself had more actual Nazi sympathies then these Pacifists, his War time service was in the Pacific and he actually went out on a limb to defend defend Nazi Soldiers in the Malmedy scandal.  Robert's brother Philip La Follette was a vocal critic of the Fascists and Nazis after his trip to Europe in the 30s and criticized the Munich agreement, yet still opposed U.S. entry into the war in 1940, but also after Pear Harbor joined the military to the serve in the Pacific. 

Burton K. Wheeler a Northern Democrat who was La Follette Sr.'s Vice Presidential Candidate was the leader of the Non Interventionist Wing of the Democratic Party while also being an ardent New Deal supporter.  Accusations of Anti-Semitism were made against him but they were unfounded.  Another Northern Democrat Anti-Interventionist was David I. Walsh who was one of the very few Senators to vote against the Immigration Act of 1924, the most Anti-Nazi thing you could do in 1924.  Vic Marcantonio is also worth mentioning as is Louis Ludlow, both were leading Progressive Anti-Interventionists who also voted for the 1937 Anti-Lynching Bill.

Rearmament opposition in Brittan from 1933-1935 was primarily led by the Labor and Liberal Parties.  Conservatives like Stanley Baldwin always wanted Rearmament but were quite about it only because it was unpopular.  George Lansbury stood by his Pacifism even as it started to become unpopular within the Labor Party.

But I haven’t mentioned any Marxists yet and that’s where this shall get a bit complicated.

From the aftermath of the Russian Revolution through most of The Cold War generally speaking political Parties with Communist in the name were either taking their marching orders from Moscow or at least considered themselves some other type of Bolshevik/Leninist (like Trotskyist or Right Opposition).  While parties with Socialist in the name were usually not Leninist but absolutely were still Marxists (except the SPD in Germany which was always more Lasallian), they were the Mensheviks, the Luxemburgists, Kautskyists or Bernsteinists of their countries.  Internally everyone in these parties understood they support both of those words, but for branding purposes you only lead with "I’m a Communist” if you wanted to be seen as a Bolshevik.

So Communist Parties were incapable of having ideologically pure positions on Foreign Policy, their position on what their countries Foreign Policy towards Nazi Germany should be could change every time Nazi Germany’s relationship with the U.S.S.R. changed, even Foster and Browder in-spite of their many disagreements still agreed on following Stalin's line on Foreign Policy.  As far as the central claim of the title of this post goes which really refers to different time periods depending on the country, their most Anti-War period was after the War started in Europe but before it had for the U.S.  In fact the only U.S. Presidential Election where this was even kind of a divisive yet important issue was 1940 during this period.  

The American Trotskyists were pretty consistent actually, James P. Canon's SWP and the Workers Party (Shachtmanites) and the Revolutionary Workers League all opposed the War.  It was the American Right Oppositionists (Lovestoneites) that had a schism over it with Jay Lovestone and Louis C. Fraina being the only American Socialists in 1940 who supported intervention while Bertram Wolfe broke with them to oppose Intervention.  Both of them soon stopped being Communists altogether, though in fairness so did Bertram Wolfe and some of the Shachmanites.

Non Bolshevik Marxists like the Socialist Party of Great Britain and the Socialist Party of Canada and the World Socialist Party of the United States and The Socialist Labor Party of America and A. J. Muste were each consistently Anti-War, up to a certain point on the timeline at least.  Meanwhile the Socialist Party of America under the leadership of Norman Thomas was Anti-War up until Pearl Harbor and some members still were even after, that Party was always more popular then the CPUSA.

And here’s the thing, both Left Wing Pacifists like Norman Thomas and Conservative Pacifists like Robert Taft were among the few actually calling out and condemning the Internment of Japanese citizens at the time.  Those who modern pundits keep ignorantly condemning for their lack of enthusiasm to oppose Racist Tyranny overseas were the ones actually standing up to Racist Tyranny at home. 

Likewise Republican Isolationists like Robert Taft and Hamilton Fish and Everett Dirksen were still among the leading advocates in Congress for Anti-Lynching Legislation, as was Democrat Isolationist Bennett Champ Clark.  While it was Anti-Isolationist Conservatives like Republican James Wolcott Wadsworth Jr..and the Southern Democrats led by Harry F. Bird, Richard Russel Jr., and Carl Vinson who were the ones opposing Anti-Lynching legislation on “States Rights” grounds.  

Yes you heard that right, most of those notorious Openly Racist Southern Democrats actually supported Roosevelt's Foreign Policy, John E. Rankin went further being one of the few Southern Democrats interested in Anti-Asian Racism he was enthusiastic to go to war with Japan and wanted even more Japanese Americans rounded up into camps, and he was also Anti-Semitic.  Hugo Black was a known KKK member who also supported the War while opposing Anti-Lynching Legislation.  FDR's friend Joseph Daniels was actually among the Red Shirts who did Fascism before anyone in Europe did in 1898. 

There were a few rare exceptions, Robert Rice Reynolds was the only Southern Senator to vote against Lend-Lease and only he and John Overton voted agaisnt repealing the Arms Embargo.  Theodore G, Bilbo and Ellison D. Smith are Southern Democratic Senators who are sometimes referred to as having obstructed the War effort even though they voted for Lend-Lease, so they're difficult to classify.  But that's it for Southern Democrats who can even arguably be classified as Anti-War.

Al Smith who had been political face of the American Liberty League opposing the New Deal during the 1930s strongly supported American Intervention in The War.

The Enemy being undeniably Evil is not an excuse to be a War Monger, it wasn’t for Saddam and it shouldn’t have been for Adolf.  The Holocaust could have been avoided peacefully if all the Allied countries had welcomed Jewish Refugees like Norman Thomas wanted them to.  

Gerald Nye helped Herman Stern bring Jewish Refugees into the U.S during the 30s and 40s.  He also supported the Republicans during the Spanish Civil War and tried to get the Embargo repealed.  And his objective in the Nye Committee in 1934-36 was to get the Arms Industry nationalized, the businessmen he was going after were largely the same ones doing business with the Nazis at the time as well as running the American Liberty League, J.P. Morgan and DuPont.  The fact that modern Leftists demonize it for increasing Non-Interventionist sentiment at the "wrong time" is shameful.

Obviously there were people who opposed the War because they liked Hitler, they were a larger percentage of the Anti-War movement in Britain then they were in the U.S.  But I’m less concerned about weirdos with a fetish for a foreign dictator than I am the more homegrown American versions of what Nazism and Fascism are.  And WW2 isn't the only time that enemy sympathizers have wiggled their way into legitimate Pacifist movements, in fact some of these Germanophiles who supported the Nazis during WW2 had already support the Kaiser during WW1 like George Sylvester Viereck and Ernst G. Liebold.

War tends to be good for Fascism even War against foreign Fascists because at its core Fascism is the cult of Heroism and placing your national pride in your military prowess.  Douglas McArthur and George Patton were American WW2 Generals who it’s not even controversial anymore to say had Fascist tendencies themselves (it is still a bit more controversial to acknowledge the Fascist tendencies of Charles DeGaulle).  And then some younger WW2 veterans went on to found post War American Neo-Nazism, George Lincoln Rockwell, Eustace Mullins, Willis Carlo, Revilo P Oliver, William Potter Gale and Bryant Bowles, lots of WW2 vets were in the 3rd and 4th Klans, and Strom Thurman was a WW2 vet as well.

Fascinatingly at this time American Nazi Sympathizers couldn't help but continue to express their hatred for Pacifism as a concept even while American Pacifists had the same short term goal.  Elizabeth Dilling who was tried under the Smith Act for her Nazi collaborating in her book The Red Network referred to "Radical Pacifists" as being part of the Communist Conspiracy.

At the very least Leftists who believe it was right to go to War with Hitler should stop using the "Appeasement" as a derogatory term strategy.  That originated with Conservative opponents of Appeasement not The Left but it got adopted by the Left later when we naively decided anything that's "Anti-Fascist" must also be Leftist.  It comes from the inherently Right Wing impulse to equate not wanting War with Cowardice.  That Churchill was a Conservative isn't exactly ignored by Liberals when they lionize his opposition to Appeasement, but they do try to make it sound like he was alone within the Conservative Party, the truth is not even every British Conservative named Chamberlain supported Appeasement.  These are the kinds of British Conservatives who if they'd been around during the American Revolution would have called people wanting to concede anything to the Colonists Appeasers, and today they'd call it Appeasement to end the Embargo on Cuba.  Opposition to the Munich Agreement should be framed in terms of how it wronged Czechoslovakia not how it "appeased" anyone.  These British Conservatives were not motivated by the moral outrage at Hitler that makes us view that conflict in Black and White terms however much they may have paid lip service to some of them, what they truly cared about was a fear that letting Germany get away with violating the Treaty of Versailles would make Britain look weak even though some disagreed with it's harsh terms back when it was being debated.

Isolationism is a concept that means more then just your specific position on one specific war, it also includes opposition to Free Trade deals and so on.  Thomas E. Dewey is someone whose Internationalist position on foreign policy over all are well known so no one tries to label him an Isolationist even though he also opposed intervening in the War until Pearl Harbor. But for so many others their positions on other foreign policy issues are obscure enough to get labeled an Isolationist for no other reason.  The Wikipedia page for Philip La Follette says he "became an Isolationist" after the war started in Europe but became Internationalist again after Pearl Harbor, this is incoherent nonsense. No Isolationists stopped being isolationists because of Pear Harbor, there is no contradiction between Isolations and retaliating when you've been attacked.

Ernest Lundeen is a key player in the Conspiracy Theory that Rachel Maddow has helped popularize. Lundeen was a leader in the Minnesota Farmer-Labor Party during the 30s that party was basically satellite of the CPUSA, there are official CPUSA propaganda texts from time telling people to support that party. So it's not a coincidence that Lundeen's time meeting with Nazi Agents was during the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact.  His was loyalty to a foreign government it was Moocow over Berlin, but his German name makes it easy to assume the opposite.

I'm not interested in arguing the U.S. shouldn't have entered the War, but I'm tired of  people who are otherwise Pacifists playing along with this common War Monger tactic of accusing disloyalty only where this War is concerned.

A lot of Internet Leftists really want to go on about how people DID know about the Holocaust at the time, they can't claim ignorance. What was known to be going on at the time was Bad but not special, remember Leopold II of Belgium's atrocities in the Congo were still recent memory. And it was also a time when people remembered the recent debunking of massive exaggerated and outright false accusations of War Crimes during WW1. Also I should remind that many of the people condemning these 1940 Pacifists on these grounds refuse to believe that Fatah would genocide all the Israelis if they had full control of "Palestine".

It was the footage shown during the Nuremberg Trails that cemented the Holocaust's status in pop culture as the uniquely worst atrocity of all time. No one being a Pacifist in 1940 had any way of knowing The Worst Thing Ever is if what that war was actually about. 

Plato and Fascism

A lot of people have talked about how Plato can be considered a Proto-Fascist, and I somewhat agree but there is nuance to this that I feel needs to be acknowledged.

Plato’s discussion of the “Five Regimes” in Republic Books VIII-IX uses most Greek Political terms with different meanings then Aristotle used them, (with Aristotle’s meanings usually being the default meanings used by modern scholars and Wikipedia).  Plato’s Five Regimes were Aristocracy which was how things should be in his view, Timocracy which was a corruption but still preferable to any state Athens was in during Classical Antiquity, Oligarchy, Democracy and Tyranny.

While you can define Plato’s Aristocracy as Fascist based on which traits of the Philosophy of Mussolini and Giovanni Gentile one prioritizes in deciding what the defining traits of Fascism are, in practice Mussolini’s regime was more Timocracy and Nazism was definitely more Timocracy.  But again I’m not referring to Aristotle’s definition of Timocracy (land ownership as basis of citizenship) which the Wikipedia page for Timocracy cites as the default.  I’m gonna quote a sentence from Wikipedia’s page for Plato’s Republic. “In a timocracy, governors will apply great effort in gymnastics and the arts of war, as well as the virtue that pertains to them, that of courage.” This definition for Timocracy is also essentially a part of what I meant by Heroarchy in a recent post I made on my main blog.

While on this subject I’d like to point out that some YouTube criticism of the Philosopher King concept is kind of missing the point.  Plato was not arguing that the kinds of people doing Philosophy as their profession in then contemporary Athens are inherently the kinds of people best fit to rule. He’s going back to the core Etymology of Philosopher to say that an ideal ruler should be bred, raised and trained their whole life from birth to be a Wise King. Think about the A Song of Fire and Ice Books and why Varys believes Young Griff will be an ideal King, that’s what Plato means by a Philosopher King.  I’m not pointing this out to defend the idea, I think it is misguided especially when combined with the other aspects of how Plato’s Aristocracy is supposed to work, but I do feel it’s important to know what he meant.

Another thing people are often confused by is how Plato speaks about the Five Regimes as a sequence as if that’s what history especially in Athens has demonstrated when it doesn’t fit our understanding of the history of Athenian Democracy. But the key is that Plato and most Athenians in his time believed certain things about the history of Athens modern Historians know are probably mostly not entirely true.  

Part of the whole premise of Timaeus-Critias is that it’s claiming Athens was this Ideal Aristocracy in the very distant past, that’s the Athens that defeated Atlantis and is probably meant to correlate to the Golden-Silver ages of Greek Mythology.  And then I would guess that the Timocracy period of Athens was supposed to be the Athens of the Heroic Age, the Athens of Theseus, then the Oligarchy was the Athens of Draco, and then the tension between between Democracy and Tyranny was how Plato saw the Classical history of Athens he was living in.

But in the long term Platonism isn’t just defined by Plato himself.  One theory I’ve entertained on this blog already is that The Laws was maybe not an authentic writing of Plato but a Pythagorean Pseudepigrapha.  The Laws does seem to have a similar yet different underlying Political ideology to it from The Republic, so can the hypothetical State described in The Laws be considered more of a Timocracy?  The Gymnasium having an important status in the center of The City alongside The Temple of Zeus is one clue that it could be thought of that way.

When people seek to trace the roots of Fascism back to Ancient Greece Plato isn’t the only source, they also look to Sparta, but more specifically Sparta as it was imagined by Athenian Laconophiles.  Plato and Aristotle are often placed among those but they both did have criticisms of Sparta, even in The Laws where the unnamed Athenian blames Sparta for all the Gay stuff he hates.  But I do think what both Plato and Aristotle’s conception of Timocracy have in common is that they were in part thinking of Sparta.  The principal true unqualified Athenian Laconophile was Xenophon.  Xenophon also wrote the Anabasis which very much fits into the kind of Militaristic Hero Myths I talked about in the Heroarchy post, and perhaps his Cyropaedia laid the seed for the Great Man Theory of History since it would be the first Greek History text to be written as a Biography.

Middle Platonism is in my view the actually most influential period of Platonism.  It was during this period that the Greek Church Fathers started allowing Platonist ideas to influence them and lead them away from the generally more Stoic perspective of The New Testament.   And then there’s Plutarch, again since I see a symbiotic relationship between the Great Many Theory and Fascism it’s notable that Plutarch was perhaps unintentionally a key influence on that theory, his most well known work is The Parallel Lives, and many don’t know this but before him writing history in the form of Biographies was not the standard.  In particular his Biography of Alexander can at points seem like Thomas Carlyle’s Heroarchy thesis almost fully formed.  I don’t know if any smoking gun proof Carlyle was a fan of Plutarch exists, but I would be surprised if he was not.  Plutarch also had a lot of interest in Sparta.

I feel like Late Antiquity and Early Medieval Christianity is the closest thing we’ve had to a real life attempt to implement Plato’s Aristocracy, with The Emperor as the Philosopher King and The Monastic Church itself as the Guardians.  But perhaps a more Secular Version of it would be the “Socialism” of H.G. Wells in his non Fiction writings.

Plato’s definition of Oligarchy applies pretty well to Conservative Capitalism while his definition of Democracy applies to both Liberal Capitalism in its various forms and many forms of Socialism.  While Tyranny is probably how Plato would view Marxist-Leninist Regimes.

The Herodians were the Essenes

This post is meant to add some context to The Sects of First Century Judaism.

I'm not the first to suggest the Essenes of Josephus were the Herodians of The Gospels.  The objections to that claim are dependent entirely on the assumption that the Dead Sea Scrolls were written by the Essenes.  Since those scrolls are very seemingly the product of a separatist sect that wanted nothing to do with any Government ruling in Jerusalem.

But objections to that identification are common, I own the DSS translation done by Michael Wise, Martin Abegg JR., and Edward Cook.  Their introduction lays out many of the flaws in that theory, but their own theory is that the Qumran community were a sub-sect of the Sadducees which I'm not sold on either, in fact their clearly not being Torah only contradicts them being Sadducees.

There is also the theory that those caves were simply used to hide scrolls from many different origins as the fall of Jerusalem in 70 AD approached.  I'm sure you can find online articles about all these theories.

I think they could have been Essenes, but if they were they were a peculiar group not representative of the whole.  The biggest problem with the Essene theory to me is that Josephus clearly tells us the Essenes did not marry, while the Qumran community clearly did marry.  But Josephus does at one point refer to a group of "marrying Essenes", maybe those are the Essenes who wrote the DSS, I don't know.

What I do know is Josephus divides the Jews of pre 70 AD Judea into three major sects,  The Pharisees, the Sadducees and the Essenes.  (And then later the Zealots sprung from the Pharisees, and the Sicari from the Zealots).

The Gospels mention often the Pharisees and Sadducees, but by that name at least never the Essenes.  However Matthew 22, Mark 3 and Mark 12 seem to similarly depict the Jews of Jesus day as having three major sects, those two and the Herodians, with no group known by that name mentioned in Josephus.  So the Clark Kent rule tells me the Essenes are probably the Herodians.

Josephus account of the rise of the Essenes revolves around a fellow named Menahem, in Antiquities Book 15, Chapter 10 Section 5.

Now there was one of these Essens, whose name was Manahem, who had this testimony, that he not only conducted his life after an excellent manner, but had the foreknowledge of future events given him by God also. This man once saw Herod when he was a child, and going to school, and saluted him as king of the Jews; but he, thinking that either he did not know him, or that he was in jest, put him in mind that he was but a private man; but Manahem smiled to himself, and clapped him on his backside with his hand, and said," However that be, thou wilt be king, and wilt begin thy reign happily, for God finds thee worthy of it. And do thou remember the blows that Manahem hath given thee, as being a signal of the change of thy fortune. And truly this will be the best reasoning for thee, that thou love justice [towards men], and piety towards God, and clemency towards thy citizens; yet do I know how thy whole conduct will be, that thou wilt not be such a one, for thou wilt excel all men in happiness, and obtain an everlasting reputation, but wilt forget piety and righteousness; and these crimes will not be concealed from God, at the conclusion of thy life, when thou wilt find that he will be mindful of them, and punish time for them." Now at that time Herod did not at all attend to what Manahem said, as having no hopes of such advancement; but a little afterward, when he was so fortunate as to be advanced to the dignity of king, and was in the height of his dominion, he sent for Manahem, and asked him how long he should reign. Manahem did not tell him the full length of his reign; wherefore, upon that silence of his, he asked him further, whether he should reign ten years or not? He replied, "Yes, twenty, nay, thirty years;" but did not assign the just determinate limit of his reign. Herod was satisfied with these replies, and gave Manahem his hand, and dismissed him; and from that time he continued to honor all the Essens. We have thought it proper to relate these facts to our readers, how strange soever they be, and to declare what hath happened among us, because many of these Essens have, by their excellent virtue, been thought worthy of this knowledge of Divine revelations.

So Josephus paints a pretty clear picture of the Essenes being politically tied to Herod, or at least shows some saw them as connected.  Josephus had also said as much at the end of the section just before this.

This Menahem of Josephus is also thought to possibly be the same as the Menahem The Essene of the Talmud.  According to Mishnah Tractate Hagigah 16b he was the original Zugot with Hillel but left the Sanhedrin and was replaced by Shammai.  The Jerusalem Talmud says he left to be appointed to a position in the Government.

It may be they were called Herodians only by outsiders, and that label had gone out of use by the time Josephus started writing.

Another sect sometimes speculated to be the same as the Essenes partly on the grounds of both never showing up in the same source are the Beothusians. Apparently Talmudic sources only mention the Beothusians while Josephus only mentions the Essenes.  Of course as mentioned above a key Essene figure, Menahem, is possibly mentioned in the Talmud.  While the Kohen family linked to the Beothusians are talked about in Josephus.  But yet as a sect it seems only Josephus knows the Essenes and only the Talmud knows the Beothusians.

Well the relevance here is that the Beothusians are also not mentioned in the New Testament, and the Herodians are also not mentioned in the Talmud, at least not by those names.

The Family of High Priests linked to the Boethusians are also linked to Herod.  Simon ben Beothus was appointed by Herod, and was one of the longer lasting High Priests Herod appointed.  And Herod married his Daughter.

So perhaps the Boethusians can also be the same as the Herodians, and thus The Essenes were known by three names at least.  Perhaps only Josephus called them what they called themselves (he claimed to have spent some time studying under all three sects, so he could have had some inside knowledge of each even though he ultimately chose to be a Pharisee).  While other people tended to call them by the names of significant people they were linked to.  Like how Catholics don't call themselves Papists, and originally at least Protestants didn't call themselves Lutherans or Calvinists.

But, a key difference is that the Boethusians=Essenes connection is viewed as possibly supported by the DSS=Essenes connection, while as discussed above that is viewed as an obstacle for the Herodians=Essenes view.  Again, it may be that the DSS were written by a specific sub group of the Essenes not representative of the whole.

Simon ben Beothus came from Alexandria so his house could descend form Onias IV who is a possible candidate for the 'Teacher of Righteousness".

However the big problem with the Beothians being Essenes theory is that the Talmud presents the Beothians as basically Sadducees on the core no Resurrection or After Life issue, they were really just an internal division like that between Hillel and Shammai within the Phairsees though that internal disagreement was I can't find out.

Philo of Alexandria also depicts the Essenes as having the support of many "great kings".

The Essenes I think were largely Jewish Neo-Pythagoreans, their Metaphysics and Monasticism both fit, and the Pythagoreans were also supporters of Tyrants in Samos and Crotone.

The Disappearance of The Altar of Incense.

The Author of Hebrews (who I believe is Paul but I won't belabor the point here) in chapter 9 talks about the Menorah and the Table of Shewbread in the Holy Place, and then The Golden Censer and The Ark in the Holy of Holies.

There is a common claim that this is an error or contradiction because many people assume that by "Golden Censer" the Author must mean the Altar of Incense even though you would use completely different words for that. Revelation 8:3-5 and Hebrew 7:13 use completely different words for Altar.  The word for Incense is related to this word for Censor but distinct.

This is the only time this precise Greek word for Censer is used in the New Testament, Revelation 8 does use a different word. However the Septuagint uses this word twice in 2 Chronicles 26:19 and Ezekiel 8:11 where a Hebrew word for Censer is what it's translating.

The problem is the definition given to this word in the Strongs Concordance will say it means the Altar of Incense, but that's wrong, the Strongs is mistaken in this case.

Because the word or phrase "Golden Censer" doesn't appear in the Hebrew Bible anywhere some might mistakenly think there are no Golden Censers in the Pentateuch.  The Hebrew word for "snuffdishes" in Exodus 25:38 and 37:23 is the same word used for Censer in Leviticus 10:1 and 16:12.  Later 1 Kings 7:50 refers in the KJV to Censers of Pure Gold.

Now it is true that normally even Censers would not be in The Holy of Holies either, but one is taken into The Holy of Holies on Yom Kippur as made clear by Leviticus 16:12.  And I believe the rituals of Yom Kippur are the thematic focus of much of Hebrews especially in this section even if it's not being mentioned by name.

The main argument of those who refuse to accept this explanation, both among Bible Skeptics invested in seeing a contradiction here and Apologists who try to imagine some more creative explanation, is that if the Golden Censer is just the Golden Censer then why is the Altar of Incense completely missing?  

The simple answer is the Author didn't mention it because they didn't feel like it.

I honestly could just end it with that, but I'll continue.

I once noticed that the Arch of Titus depicting Titus and Vespasian's Triumph after conquering Judea in AD 70 shows the Menorah and Table of Shewbread as spoils of war but the Altar of Incense is missing.  Then I read Josephus's account of that Triumph in Wars of The Jews Book 7 Chapter 5 Section 5 and noticed that he likewise mentions The Menorah and the Table of Shewbread but not the Altar of Incense.

At the very least these other First Century depictions of the contents of The Temple show leaving out the Altar of Incense during this period was not unique to Hebrews.

However I now have a theory that an Altar of Incense was never in Herod's Temple.

The Books of Maccabees and Josephus describe an Altar of Incense being included in the Purification of The Temple that marks the first Hanukkah.  But Antiochus Epiphanes' plundering of The Temple wasn't the last one to occur before the New Testament era.

Josephus in Antiquities of The Jews Book 14 Chapter 7 describes Crassus's plundering of all the Gold in The Temple right before he's killed.  This plundering is in truth principally why Herod's renovation of The Temple was necessary.  I think for whatever reason the Herodian renovation neglected to include The Altar of Incense.

The Maccabees Books describe their Menorah as still having the Three Legged base that the Pentateuch describes, but the Menorah on the Arch of Titus has an Octagonal base showing it's Hellenistic influence.

All Christians are Christians (for the most part).

Ready to Harvest is a YouTube channel that seeks to as objectively as possible discus the differences between different Christian Denominations.  But they also did a video on the question of defining what it means to be a Christian.

He doesn't seek to definitely answer the question in the video, but there is a general sense that he feels "Anyone who follows Jesus" is too lose a definition, that at least within the Church there needs to be allowance for denying the status of Christian to Christians who are sufficiently heterodox.  The Problem is Scripture is more interested in what absolutely proves someone is a True Believer then insisting anything can prove someone is not.

First verse I want to bring up is 1 Corinthians 12:3.

"Wherefore I give you to understand, that no human speaking by the Spirit of God calleth Jesus accursed: and that no human can say that Jesus is the Lord, but by the Holy Spirit."

The last part of that verse is a pretty bold statement, Paul doesn't even consider it hypothetically possible for a person to say Jesus is The Lord if they don't have The Holy Spirit.

Now I am inclined to believe that every time The New Testament says "The Lord" it's meant to be understood as a reference to YHWH, in The Hebrew Bible Adonai is a title only for YHWH, and by NT times the Jewish habit of refusing to actually say the Name but say Adonai/The Lord instead was already being established.  So that can make what it means to say Jesus is The Lord a bit more specific then a plain English reading of this verse at first implies and would prevent this verse from applying to Marcionites or JWs.

But regardless the implication is any person saying that must have The Holy Spirit no matter what else they are wrong on and no matter how bad their behavior is.

A Second verse to bring up is 1 John 4:15.

"Whosoever shall confess that Jesus is the Son of God, God dwelleth in him, and he in God."

Again, anyone confessing that Jesus is The Son of God is a true regenerated Believer, no matter what other doctrines they are wrong on or what they actually do. Later 1st John 5:4-5 says that anyone who believes Jesus is The Son of God overcomes The World because they are Born of God.

The importance of that being the defining Confession is backed up by a number of passages, it's the first verse of Mark's Gospel and then what the Centurion proclaims in 15:39, it's what Peter confesses before he's given the Keys to the Kingdom in Matthew 16:19 (and again in John 6:69), it's Martha's confession in John 11:27, and what John 20:31 says we are given Life by believing, and it's the only thing the Ethiopian Eunuch has to confess before being Baptized in Acts 8:37.

Okay most of those verses also include believing Jesus is The Christ, Christ being the Greek equivalent of Messiah.  In the modern world what it means to believe Jesus is The Messiah has become a bit watered down as now any kind of prophesied Hero figure can be called a "Messianic Archetype" even if not from an Abrahamic culture, but back then that Language for a promised Savior was uniquely Jewish.  Believing Jesus is The Christ meant believing He was the instrument of the fulfilment of YHWH's promises to Israel, so again Marcionites and Gnostics putting Jesus in conflict with YHWH don't actually believe Jesus is The Christ no matter how much they appropriate that Language.

But let's get back to the Son of God issue. 

I do believe this requires believing in Jesus as The Son of God in a very unique distinct sense separate from how all Believers and ultimately all people are God's children.  In Brigahmite Mormonism Jesus is the Son of God only in being the Firstborn of humanity.  

I believe the statement that Jesus is God is Biblically supported, Colossians 2:9 says Jesus was the fulness of The Godhead made Bodily giving support even specifically to Homousianism, and in the opening verses of the Fourth Gospel The Word fits the modern definition of capital G God, the Uncreated Creator of the Universe.  I am also a Trinitarian having a post on this Blog about how even The Hebrew Bible is Trinitarian.

But Confessionally and Creedily speaking Jesus as The Son of God is the Biblical emphasis.  Romans was an Epistle Paul wrote to a community he hadn't known in person yet so it features his personal statement of Faith at the beginning and it never directly calls Jesus God but stressed Jesus as The Son of God. 

The Rule of Faith documented by Irenaeus and Tertullian and the Old Roman Symbol each emphasize Jesus as The Son of God not Jesus as God.

So I kind of am uncomfortable with how often modern Statements of Faith put all the emphasis on Jesus being God with His Sonship relegated to "The Son" as a title.

In 1 John and 2 John three things are defined as being Antichrist, denying that Jesus is The Christ, denying the relationship of the Father and the Son and denying Jesus came "in the Flesh".  The Qur'an is hostile to God having a Son in any sense, it utterly rejects the idea of God as a Father, so that's why Muslims can't count as Christians.  But they do believe Jesus was the Messiah and came in the Flesh so those who say Islam fits the Antichrist Heresy perfectly are wrong.

I have decided not to make a Physical Bodily General Resurrection or Universal Salvation requirements for truly qualifying as a Christian because of these Biblical observations, even though it is my opinion that those two doctrines are the definition of The Gospel based on 1 Corinthians 15 and thus definitely more important then any of the nuanced Greek semantical issues debated at the seven Ecumenical Councils or for that matter what the Protestant Reformation was originally about.

Now one might make an objection that a given group "doesn't mean the same thing we mean by Son of God", and that could be a valid argument if the Arians or Unitarians were the ones blatantly twisting the very definitions of those words.  But the truth is we Trinitarians are the ones departing from what it normally mean to call someone the Son of someone else by believing The Son and The Father are Co-Eternal.

Now my way of addressing that criticism of Trinitarianism involves my belief that Jesus became The Son during the Incarnation.  But most mainline Christians don't like that argument because they're bought into the Platonist Heresy of Divine Immutability, everything Jesus is He must have always been somehow, but that idea isn't Scriptural.

So yes any form of Nicene Christianity is real Christianity but also plenty of Non Nicenes could be as well.

Update January 6th 2025: So I've gotten pushback on this in a Facebook Group by someone citing Titus 1:16 to prove there are Professors who aren't "Saved".  That verse is about people Professing to Know God not that Jesus is The Son of God.   But also nothing there says they aren't Believers, it is because Believers are Temples that being "Pure" is a concern.

Also Galatians 1 with the "another Gospel" reference.  doesn't even deny these people are Christians, just calls them Accursed meaning they will suffer some Punishment for their bad doctrine.