A crucial part of the Anabaptist reign of terror was their decision, again prefiguring that of the Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia, to abolish all private ownership of money. With no money to purchase any good, the population became slavishly dependent on handouts or rations from the power elite. Accordingly, Matthys, Rothmann, and the rest launched a propaganda campaign that it was un-Christian to own money privately; and that all money should be held “in common,” which in practice meant that all money whatsoever must be handed over to Matthys and his ruling clique…
After two months of unremitting propaganda, combined with threats and terror against those who disobeyed, the private ownership of money was effectively abolished in Münster. The government seized all the money and used it to buy goods or hire workers from the outside world. Wages were doled out in kind by the only employer: the theocratic Anabaptist State.
Food was confiscated from private homes, and rationed according to the will of government deacons. Also, to accommodate the host of immigrants, all private homes were effectively communized, with everyone permitted to quarter themselves everywhere; it was now illegal to close, let alone lock, one’s doors. Compulsory communal dining halls were established, where people ate together to the readings from the Old Testament.
The compulsory communism and reign of terror was carried out in the name of community and Christian “love.” This communization was considered the first giant step toward egalitarian communism, where, as Rothmann put it, “all things were to be in common, there was to be no private property and nobody was to do any more work, but simply trust in God.” Somehow, the workless part never seemed to arrive.
[…]
Totalitarianism in Münster was now complete. Death was now the punishment for virtually every independent act. Capital punishment was decreed for the high crimes of murder, theft, lying, avarice, and quarrelling. Death was also decreed for every conceivable kind of insubordination: the young against the parents, wives against their husbands, and, of course, anyone at all against the chosen representative of God on earth, the government of Münster. Bernt Knipperdollinck was appointed high executioner to enforce the decrees.
The only aspect of life previously left untouched was sex, and this deficiency was now made up. The only sexual relation now permitted by the Bockelson regime was marriage between two Anabaptists. Sex in any other form, including marriage with one of the “godless,” was a capital crime.
But soon Bockelson went beyond this rather old-fashioned credo, and decided to enforce compulsory polygamy in Münster. Since many of the expellees had left their wives and daughters behind, Münster now had three times as many marriageable women as men, so that polygamy had become technically feasible. Bockelson convinced the other, rather startled preachers by citing polygamy among the patriarchs of Israel, reinforcing this method of persuasion by threatening any dissenters with death.
Compulsory polygamy was a bit much for many of the Münsterites, who launched a rebellion in protest. The rebellion, however, was quickly crushed and most of the rebels put to death […]
The rest of the male population also began to take enthusiastically to the new decree. Many of the women reacted differently, however, and so the Elders passed a law ordering compulsory marriage for every woman under (and presumably also over) a certain age, which usually meant becoming a compulsory third or fourth wife.
Since marriage among the godless was not only invalid but also illegal, the wives of the expellees became fair game, and they were forced to “marry” good Anabaptists. Refusal of the women to comply with the new law was punishable, of course, with death, and a number of women were actually executed as a result.
Murray N. Rothbard, “Karl Marx as Religious Eschatologist”, Mises Institute, 2009-10-09.
November 3, 2019
QotD: The theocratic Anabaptist State of Münster
November 2, 2019
Notepad++ release 7.8.1, also known as the “Free Uyghur” edition, draws unfriendly Chinese attention
I’ve been using Notepad++ as one of my text editor options for a long time. It’s a very useful tool, and I heartily commend it to anyone needing a Windows text editor that can do a lot more than just edit text. I hadn’t downloaded the most recent version, so I was unaware that the developer was under attack from Chinese government supporters for his explicit designation of version 7.8.1 as the Free Uyghur edition:
On Tuesday, Don HO, the developer of Notepad++, a free GPL source code editor and notepad application for Microsoft Windows, released version 7.8.1, prompting a social media firestorm and a distributed denial of service attack.
Notepad++ v7.8.1 was designated “the Free Uyghur edition,” in reference to the predominantly Muslim ethnic group in western China that faces ongoing human rights violations and persecution at the hands of Beijing.
“The site notepad-plus-plus.org has suffered DDoS attack from 1230 to 1330 Paris time,” HO said in an email to The Register. “I saw the [reduced] amount of visitors via Google analytics then the support of my host confirmed the attack. The DDoS attack has been stopped by an anti-DDoS service provided by our host [Cloudflare].”
Previous politically-themed Notepad++ releases have focused on Tiananmen Square and the terrorist attack on French satirical publication Charlie Hebdo.
A post on the project’s website explains HO’s decision to criticize the Chinese government, something companies with business interests in China generally try not to do for fear of retribution.
From the Notepad++ website:
Human rights in China is always a hotly contested topic. Since 2017, numerous reports have emerged of the Uyghur people being detained in extrajudicial “re-education camps”, subjected to political indoctrination, and sometimes even torture. 2018 estimates place the number of detainees in the hundreds of thousands.
The Uyghurs are not ethnically Chinese but live in China’s so-called autonomous Xinjiang region. The region’s name suggests the Uyghurs have autonomy and self-governance. But similarly to Tibet, Xinjiang is a tightly controlled region of China. After the recent Xinjiang conflict, Beijing has recast the Uyghur ethnic group as a terrorist collective. This has allowed Beijing to justify its transformation of Xinjiang into a surveillance state. There has also been a marked rise of Islamophobia across China.
At least 120,000 members of Kashgar’s Muslim Uyghur minority have been detained in Xinjiang’s re-education camps which aim to change the political thinking of detainees, their identities, and their religious beliefs. Reports from the World Uyghur Congress submitted to the United Nations in July 2018 suggest that 1 million Uyghurs are currently being held in the re-education camps.
October 29, 2019
Building Angkor – A Clash of Gods – Extra History – #3
Extra Credits
Published 26 Oct 2019Join us on Patreon! http://bit.ly/EHPatreon
Jayavarman VII, a Buddhist pacifist, was forced to give up his pacifism and rise to the throne at the age of 60. But once seated on the throne, he built Angkor Thom. The architecture was a fusion of buddhist and hindu stylings and included a comprehensive medical system. But will Angkor be able to stand after Jayavarman VII has passed?
Jayavarman VII the Great may be known as the greatest ruler of the Khmer, but he also wins the award for history’s best son. Making your mom the face for the goddess of wisdom is quite the Mother’s Day gift.
(Since folks have been asking for the metric conversions on our videos, 9 miles = 14.5 km at 4:52)
October 26, 2019
History Summarized: Byzantine Beginnings
Overly Sarcastic Productions
Published 25 Oct 2019It’s Rome! It’s Greece! It’s… The Byzantine Empire! Check out how late Imperial Rome transformed in the centuries from Constantine to Justinian, as it evolved into a new and unique iteration of Roman civilization. Watch as Byzantine craftsmen revolutionize artwork by throwing a megaton of gold onto every last mosaic in the Mediterranean, and radically reimagine architecture by asking “But what if *dome*?”
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October 21, 2019
Building Angkor – Temple City – Extra History – #2
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Published 19 Oct 2019Join us on Patreon! http://bit.ly/EHPatreon
Let’s take a little tour around Suryavarman II crowning achievement, the temple that took only 33 years to complete, while Europeans were taking centuries to build their cathedrals. With a two mile long wall, gates large enough to allow elephants to pass and steps so steep that the average person needed to climb them like a ladder, Angkor Wat’s every feature was made to be impressive. But what lies at the heart might be surprising…
October 18, 2019
Colonel Daniel Stepaniuk’s one-man campaign to wipe out (some) religious observance in the Militia
Christie Blatchford on the oddly partial actions of the officer in charge of more than a dozen Ontario militia regiments as far as religion is concerned:
The Lorne Scots (Peel, Dufferin and Halton Regiment) on parade in Brampton, Ontario on 24 September, 2016.
Photo by Nicholas Russon.
An army brigade commander has told the 14 Ontario reserve regiments under his charge that they must cancel any “church parade” they have planned.
Despite a lack of complaints about the parades, which see soldiers march to their regimental church, Col. Daniel Stepaniuk urged his commanding officers to stop participating in “any event where the primary purpose is liturgical, spiritual or religious … even if the service is non-denominational.”
A custom in the Canadian Army since the time of Confederation, the parades aren’t as common as they once were, though many units still have at least one a year, often tied to Remembrance Day ceremonies.
[…]
First of all, there is the glaring contradiction with Stepaniuk’s harsh stand on church parades and a parade that happened in Toronto last April.
A group of soldiers — I counted between 15 and 20 — were issued weapons, allowed to march in their military uniforms and were escorted by an armoured vehicle in the annual Khalsa parade for Canada’s Sikh community. It is considered a holy day.
The soldiers were from the Lorne Scots, one of Stepaniuk’s reserve units based in Brampton. The CO of the unit said at the time that he signed off on the weapons only after his commander (that would presumably be Stepaniuk, or perhaps the brigadier-general above him) approved the soldiers’ participation.
So weapons worn at a Khalsa Day parade good, though against the rules (The Canadian Armed Forces Manual of Drill and Ceremonial), according to army spokeswoman Karla Gimby.
But soldiers going anywhere near a church, bad, and against rules five years old that no one cared to enforce until now.
But most of all, in such small incremental strikes, does Canadian history and tradition lose strength.
October 13, 2019
Building Angkor – Monsoon Metropolis – Extra History – #1
Extra Credits
Published 12 Oct 2019Join us on Patreon! http://bit.ly/EHPatreon
Let’s lay down the foundations for one of the architectural marvels of the ancient world: At its height, the city of Angkor was, by several measures, the largest city of the medieval era. With a million people and a footprint larger than modern-day New York, it was arguably the world’s largest pre-industrial city. And at its center lay the magnificent Angkor Wat.
October 12, 2019
History Summarized: Ancient India
Overly Sarcastic Productions
Published 11 Oct 2019Go to http://www.audible.com/overlysarcastic or text
overlysarcasticto 500500 to get a free audiobook, 2 free Audible Originals, and 30-day free trial.In the first of what is sure to be a multi-part series, let’s take a look at the history of Ancient India, from the earliest civilization through the development of Sanskrit literature and all the way to the great Maurya Empire!
FURTHER READING: The Discovery of India, by Jawaharlal Nehru (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Discovery_of_India)
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October 11, 2019
QotD: Religious hysteria
It is with us now; there has been a sharp rise in strongly evangelical sects in this country in recent years, some of which hold beliefs theocratic in the extreme, anti-intellectual, anti-scientific, and anti-libertarian.
It is a truism that almost any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so, and will follow it by suppressing opposition, subverting all education to seize early the minds of the young, and by killing, locking up, or driving underground all heretics. This is equally true whether the faith is Communism or Holy-Rollerism; indeed it is the bounden duty of the faithful to do so. The custodians of the True Faith cannot logically admit tolerance of heresy to be a virtue.
Nevertheless this business of legislating religious beliefs into law has never been more than sporadically successful in this country — Sunday closing laws here and there, birth control legislation in spots, the Prohibition experiment, temporary enclaves of theocracy such as Voliva’s Zion, Smith’s Nauvoo, and a few others. The country is split up into such a variety of faiths and sects that a degree of uneasy tolerance now exists from expedient compromise; the minorities constitute a majority of opposition against each other.
Could it be otherwise here? Could any one sect obtain a working majority at the polls and take over the country? Perhaps not — but a combination of a dynamic evangelist, television, enough money, and modern techniques of advertising and propaganda might make Billy Sunday’s efforts look like a corner store compared to Sears Roebuck.
Throw in a Depression for good measure, promise a material heaven here on earth, add a dash of anti-Semitism, anti-Catholicism, anti-Negrosim, and a good large dose of anti-“furriners” in general and anti-intellectuals here at home, and the result might be something quite frightening — particularly when one recalls that our voting system is such that a minority distributed as pluralities in enough states can constitute a working majority in Washington.
Robert A. Heinlein, “Concerning Stories Never Written”, Revolt in 2100, 1953.
October 5, 2019
Losing our religion
Arthur Chrenkoff found another report on the inverse relationship between development and religious belief:
A few weeks ago I wrote a longish blog post arguing that for many people in the developed world environmentalism has become a religion, filling up the gap in spirituality left by the decline of Christianity. I don’t claim any originality or new insight in this observation; it has been noted many times before, including by my friend, former artilleryman and now man of God, Rev Donald Sensing, and it has made an appearance quite a few times subsequent to my piece, a propos Greta Thunberg’s performance at the United Nations and the reaction it inspired around the (developed) world.
Today, I chanced upon another interesting analysis by Pew Research Center, about religious belief and commitment around the world. Results are not surprising but are nevertheless interesting, including this world map:
Unfortunately, Pew does not provide additional data on those for whom religion might be “important” or “somewhat important” so as to paint a slightly fuller picture of religious sentiment, but the results illustrated above are probably quite indicative. The developed world is well and truly secular now, with the United States and Greece being the only outliers (and by a long mile), while most of the developing world (with the notable exception of China after seven decades of communism) remains extremely religious. Thus, Pew notes that “if current trends continue, countries with high levels of religious affiliation will grow fastest. The same is true for levels of religious commitment: The fastest population growth appears to be occurring in countries where many people say religion is very important in their lives.”
As the main topic of this Pew study is the age gap in religious faith around the world, it should be noted that the younger generations in the developed world are even less religious than their elders, often significantly less, putting the already low rates across the West in an even starker perspective (by contrast, throughout most of the developing world, there is little, if any, gap in religious commitment between the young and the old).
October 3, 2019
The Puritans, then and now
Severian thinks on churchiness and churchianity in our times:
The most striking fact about the Middle Ages from a modern perspective is their love of lists, categories, forms. This is partly practical — Church art all looks the same because it has to communicate a consistent message to the aforesaid illiterate peasantry — but lots of it isn’t. They were simply obsessed with forms, with outward order, to the point that even the few true individuals were hard to tell apart — William of Ockham and Thomas Aquinas were as different as two thinkers could possibly be, but unless you’re a subject matter expert, their writings look identical.
“The Crucible” by Len Radin is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
“Individuality,” on the other hand, comes from inward experience. What, if anything, did the medieval peasant believe when he went to Mass? Impossible to say, but one of the reasons that’s so is because the form of his “piety” was so all-encompassing. Some years back, a Jew wrote a funny book about trying to live his life by the letter of the Mosaic law. One could do the same thing with medieval Catholicism. Take a gander at the liturgical year — hardly a day goes by without a feast, a commemoration, a celebration. Do all of that, and you’ll hardly have time for anything else. They were so focused on the outward show, at least in part, because there was so much showing to do.
When the Reformation shitcanned all that, piety turned inward. There are zillions of sources for what the Reformed believed (or, at least, said they believed), because the Reformation was a middle-class pursuit and the middle classes were literate … and, crucially, had the free time to be literate. I’m guessing here, but since people are people and always have been, I’m pretty sure that your medieval peasant loved the show of his religion, because it gave him a little much-needed time off from his hourly grind of back-breaking, ragged-edge-of-survival physical labor.
Your middle-class incipient Calvinist, on the other hand, was bored to tears with stuff like “creeping to the cross” — all those billable hours lost (surely no one is surprised that Calvin, Knox, et al were all lawyers or merchants). In their vanity, they insisted it wasn’t enough to seem pious; you actually had to be pious, which meant putting the time you would’ve spent doing public penance into contemplating the state of your soul. Check out The New England Mind — once you fight through prose, you’ll see that the vaunted Puritan piety was little more than Special Snowflakism with a New Testament twist. They’re “individuals,” all right, but only because they’re as obsessed as Tumblrinas with their very own pwecious widdle selves.
The point of this isn’t just to bash Puritans, fun as that is (and as richly as they deserve it). The point is that, as Current Year America is a thoroughly Puritan nation, we have to realize just how historically contingent Puritanism really is in order to beat them.
Puritans desperately wanted to be individuals in a world that couldn’t support very many individuals. You need a lot of free time to be a Puritan, and in the 16th century free time was almost inconceivably expensive. Whatever else it was, Puritanism was gross conspicuous consumption — Puritans announced to the world that they alone had the free time to indulge in expensive educations, books, Bible study, and the endless hours worrying about whether or not it’s Biblically justified to paint the altar. In a world where most everyone still knows someone who knows someone who starved to death, that’s one hell of a statement.
The Crimean War – History Matters
History Matters
Published on 7 Apr 2019Twitter: https://twitter.com/Tenminhistory
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/user?u=4973164This episode covers the Crimean War (1853-1856) between the Russian Empire and the Ottomans, the British, the French and the Sardinians. It began largely out of Russo-Ottoman rivalry and because French Emperor Napoleon III had been appointed the protector of Christians within the Ottoman Empire, at the expense of the Russian Emperor Nicholas I. The war really kicked off in 1854 with the British and French invasion of Crimea and largely ended with the capture of Sevastopol in 1855, after which the Russians sued for peace.
September 27, 2019
A visual masterclass in trolling
For all that Donald Trump is known for trolling his opponents on Twitter, he’s certainly not the only one, as these makeshift posters in Massachusetts illustrate:
The locals are outraged, but as Alaa Al-Ameri describes, they’re not quite sure how to safely express their fury:
Think of Posie Parker’s billboards quoting the dictionary definition of the word “woman”. The power of such acts comes from two things. First, they acknowledge – usually with irreducible simplicity – that something that went without saying a moment ago has suddenly become unsayable. Secondly, the outrage they provoke does not come from any epithet, caricature or insult, but rather from having the nerve to draw the viewer’s attention to an act of cognitive dissonance that we are all engaging in, but would rather not acknowledge.
The result is that those who attempt to explain why the act is offensive end up simply tying themselves in knots, while revealing that they have never given a moment’s thought to the position they find themselves defending. This seems to generate even more anger, with the inevitable online mob quickly joined by politicians, journalists and other public figures, eager to see that the heretic is made an example of.
At their best, these acts of public disobedience are examples of real-life Winston Smiths pointing out to the rest of us that “Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four”. Their persecutors, like his, are those who know and fear the truth of Smith’s next sentence: “If that is granted, all else follows.”
The example of perfectly crafted dissent that I’d like to submit here appears in this video from Massachusetts local TV news, showing some reactions to the fly-posting of white sheets of paper bearing the statement “Islam is right about women”. The reactions are deeply revealing. Nobody can clearly point out why they object to the statement – indeed, nobody seems to object to the statement at all on its face. Yet most seem to express offence at it – if a little unconvincingly.
The reason for their dilemma is obvious enough to anyone who has been paying attention. Western society has managed to convince itself (at least in public) that any statement criticising any aspect of Islam is, by definition, bigotry. As a result, Western societies have effectively decided to enforce Islamic restrictions on blasphemy, and called it “tolerance”.
The strain of conforming to this lie is evident in the fumbling attempts by the interviewees to explain their objections. Do they believe that Islam is right about women? If so, why the objection? Do they believe that Islam is wrong about women? If so, in what sense is the statement an attack on Islam or Muslims? Do they believe that the author of the poster is saying that “Islam is right about women”, but doing so ironically? In which case, the objection can only be that the author is guilty of a thoughtcrime by stating that “two and two make five” with insufficient sincerity. Or do they worry that they are guilty of thoughtcrime for noticing the irony?
QotD: Environmental cultists
Of course, back then it was global cooling that was going to kill us all, and do you see what I mean about True Believers? The very same people who were convinced that we were all gonna die in a new Ice Age in 1970 were certain we’d die of melted polar ice caps in 2006, just as they’re now positive we’re going to get killed by … whatever it is Thunberg is hectoring the UN about. Normal folks’ skulls would’ve exploded from cognitive dissonance, but the eco-freaks don’t suffer from cognitive dissonance. Because, for them, it never rises to the level of cognition in the first place. If “pulling a U-turn on your deepest convictions” is what it takes to stay in the group, well, start peeling rubber. The cult’s leadership will come up with a retcon in due time.
Two interesting effects flow from this. The first is the growing disconnect between the cult’s leadership and the True Believers. A cult with a big enough membership roster stops being a cult and becomes a movement. Movements beget organizations, which by universal law attract grifters, with predictable-as-sunrise consequences. E.g. Christianity. Back in the mid-first century, Christians were sure that Christ would return in their lifetimes — after all, He said so Himself. His comeback tour kept getting postponed, though, and these days you can be the leader of a major Christian denomination without ever bothering with that “Jesus” guy, much less any of the stuff He said.
This is why “global cooling” became “global warming,” which is now “global climate change.” We cognitively-normal folks assume that the eco-freaks keep changing the name to avoid cognitive dissonance. After all, the climate “changes” every day — we call it “weather,” but if you’re looking for evidence that your crackpot eco-doom theories are correct, well, just look at how much the temperature varies from noon to midnight!! But see above: Cognitive dissonance is actually a boon to the eco-freaks, because in cult psychology, disconfirmations prove that you were right all along. The eco-freaks would still trot goofy Greta Thunberg out there no matter what it’s called, and she, poor deluded little sod, would keep on doing her thing, because she’s in the cult. So: They, the eco-freaks, didn’t come up with “climate change;” the grifters in charge of Climate Shakedown Inc. did.
Severian, “What Happens if the UFO Actually Comes?”, Rotten Chestnuts, 2019-09-25.
September 25, 2019
Forgotten History: Violent Jewish Resistance to the Holocaust
Forgotten Weapons
Published 24 Sep 2019http://www.patreon.com/ForgottenWeapons
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I wrote this paper back in 2003 or 2004 for a college class I was taking (HIST 595 – The Holocaust And Genocide). Today, it sounds a bit amateurish — but I suppose that is to be expected of something written by someone barely out of their teens. I think it could be much better written today, and its subject matter deserves much greater depth, but I believe its conclusions are sound. In particular, I would not be so casual in identifying the perpetrators simply as “the Germans”, as this is an unfair simplification of the guilt for the crimes of the Holocaust.
Some people will interpret this paper though narrow political viewpoints today, which is unfortunate. I shouldn’t have to say it, but obviously such interpretations are certainly not reflective of my own beliefs.
Bibliography:
Ainsztein, Reuben. Jewish Resistance in Nazi-Occupied Europe. Paul Elek Ldt, London: 1974.
Arad, Yitzhak. Ghetto in Flames. Holocaust Library, New York: 1982.
Berenbaum, Michael. The World Must Know. New York: Little, Brown, and Co, 1993.
Donat, Alexander. The Death Camp Treblinka. New York: Holocaust Library, 1979.
Gutman, Yisrael. The Jews of Warsaw, 1939-1943. Indiana University Press, Bloomington:1982.
Mark, Ber. Uprising in the Warsaw Ghetto. Schocken Books, New York: 1975.
Novitch, Miriam. Sobibor: Martydom and Revolt. Holocaust Library, New York: 1980.
Rotem, Simha. Memoirs of a Warsaw Ghetto Fighter. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994.
Zuckerman, Yitzhak. A Surplus of Memory. University of California Press, Berkeley: 1993.
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