National Socialism and Cultural Renewal
ANOTHER MOST POSITIVE contribution of the National Socialist régime to the renaissance of Germany — and of Europe — lies in its effort to cleanse the press, as well as all forms of art and literature, and to build a new healthy and beautiful culture upon the ruins of the decadent, pseudo-culture of the capitalistic world; its effort to raise the moral as well as intellectual and aesthetic standard of the adults, no less than of the young men and women. No aspect of National Socialist rule (save, perhaps, our struggle against Jewry) has been more bitterly and more foolishly criticised, not only by our deadly opponents but by “public opinion” in the world at large. And yet that stubborn fight for truth, and for the triumph of whatever is the healthiest and the best in the Aryan race, is something of which every Nazi can be proud — even if, for the time being, we failed.
Without a thorough purging of the press, no renaissance would have been possible after 1933 — no renaissance ever will be possible. For, so long as the journalist writes just to get paid — regardless by whom, and on behalf of whom, and for what ulterior purpose — and not because he feels the urge to enlighten or uplift his readers, then, I say, the “clever” ones, of whatever race or creed, who are in control of the money will remain, also, in control of people’s minds and, to the extent the “masses” have a say in national and international affairs, in control of the destiny of nations. For the reading masses are foolish — pre-eminently gullible — and the knowledge of the conventional symbolism of script has never made them less so. On the contrary, it has given them the dangerous illusion of free thought while enslaving them to the written word more than they ever had been to any tangible power. No one has pointed out more brilliantly — and sarcastically – than our Führer the evil influence of that self-styled “intellectual” or “enlightened” press, controlled by Jewish money. “The Frankfurter Zeitung,” states he (and this is only one instance among many), “always writes in favour of fighting with ‘intellectual’ weapons, and this appeals, curiously enough, to the least intellectual people” (Mein Kampf, I, x). “It is just for our semi-intellectual classes that the Jew writes in his so-called ‘intelligentsia’ press” (Mein Kampf, I, x).
There were only two ways of dealing with the plague: either eliminate the press altogether, or else, use the incurable propensity of the newspaper readers to believe all that is printed for the triumph of the National Socialist Idea, by allowing the papers to print nothing but what was conducive to the strengthening of the new spirit, or at least, what was in no manner opposed to it. Of the two courses, the second was undoubtedly the easiest at the same time as the most profitable. One cannot teach people to think for themselves in a day. But if, while they are learning to do so, they must have something to believe, let that be the truth rather than lies. So the second course was taken. The press was not eliminated, but controlled, as foreseen by Point Twenty-Three of the Party Programme demanding, “legal warfare against conscious political lying and its dissemination in the press.” All editors of newspapers in German and their assistants had to be “members of the nation,” i.e., to be of German blood. Papers in other languages, or even foreign papers in German, could be published with the permission of the Government. But no non-German was allowed to influence the German press, either financially or otherwise, the penalty being (if any such transaction was found out) “the suppression of the newspaper and the immediate deportation of the non-German concerned with it.”
Dresden after Allied saturation bombing.
It is easy to criticise such a policy, advocating the “right of the individual to express himself freely,” and what not. But one should first realise that, had a similar national press policy been applied in England (from the English point of view, that goes without saying) England never would have declared war on Germany in 1939; there would have been no bombardments, no ruins, no millions of dead — nothing of that immense misery that everyone deplores — but a happy Europe in which the two great Aryan nations, Germany and England, would have collaborated in a friendly spirit for the welfare of both of them and of the whole Aryan world. Such a result — at least I believe — would have been well worth obtaining at the cost of a little less liberty to lie. And then, also, I cannot help knowing that those Democrats who blame us for not having allowed the German papers to publish propaganda against our views, when we had power, are the self-same…
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https://nationalvanguard.org/2019/03/national-socialism-and-cultural-renewal/
