Frederick Augustus Voigt Quotes

Marxism has led to Fascism and National-Socialism, because, in all essentials, it is Fascism and National Socialism.

Believing as he does in force and determined to secure nothing by peaceful means that can be secured by violence, the Marxist lives in hope of wars and crises that will so unbalance the social order and so loosen the restraint imposed by law and custom, that violence can achieve a maximum breadth and intensity. The situation then arises which the Marxist terms ‘revolutionary.’ It is the situation he desires because he believes that only then is the ‘final and decisive battle possible.’ To Lenin —as to Hitler—the Great War was welcome because it promised to fulfill the revolutionary dream.

Christianity is never safe, but where there is one atom of Marxism or National Socialism left, Christianity is in mortal danger—and so are Marxism and National Socialism wherever there is one atom of Christianity left.

But Germans are not interested in freedom as the English understand it. When they say freedom, they do not mean the liberty of the individual to do what he likes within the limits imposed by the written and unwritten law, but the liberty of the nation to do what it pleases in defiance of international law.

Socialism is always destructive of liberty unless it be adulterated and restricted. The Germans who supported the Revolution of 1918 and made the Republic possible wanted freedom and Socialism, not realizing that they could not have both. They wanted Socialism the more of the two, but failed, because they were unable to command sufficient power. But they had freedom—the freedom that enabled a new form of Socialism, namely National Socialism, to establish itself.

That the individual has any rights of his own, even the right to live, has no meaning at all to Lenin or Hitler.

Lenin is a would-be destroyer of religion, Hitler a corrupter of religion. The National Socialist attack, accepting as it does much of liberal theology and natural religion, is far more dangerous to Christianity than the godlessness of its decay. Lenin would destroy the altar or at least promote its decay. Hitler would preserve the altar while replacing the Cross of Christ by the Swastika.

The Marxian and National Socialist conception of history is not ‘historical’ at all, nor ‘scientific,’ nor ‘objective.’ It is sectarian and dictatorial. The myth, the ‘theory,’ the ‘ideology,’ or the ‘Weltanschauung’ is imposed upon the past, and ‘ideological’ dictatorship is established, all history being pressed, bludgeoned, and trimmed until it becomes a record of the transition from the primitive state of nature to the apocalypse that inaugurates the Millennium and brings history to an end.

The Russian Socialism of the German Communists, the liberal Socialism of the Social Democrats, the national, and therefore German, Socialism of the National Socialists—Socialism, in one form or another, was desired by the vast majority of Germans. In the end, Socialism prevailed.

For the ‘little man’ the Marxist feels far greater hatred than for the capitalist. The ‘little man’ is worse than counter-revolutionary.’ He is unrevolutionary, and to be unrevolutionary is, in the eyes of the Marxist, to be a kind of leper. Marxists are habitually contemptuous of the ‘petit bourgeois mind’ as not a mind at all, but something reptilian, something infinitely mean and ignominious.

Marxism would be a phenomenon of little more than historical interest, seeing that it has failed even in its principal stronghold, were it not so closely akin to National Socialism. National Socialism would have been inconceivable without Marxism.

There were never so many who believe in nothing as there are today. The super-abundance of false beliefs has led to unbelief. But today the way to belief has led to unbelief. There is no other way.

He who is never ashamed of his country has as little patriotism as he who is never proud of his country.

Lenin and Hitler are haters of freedom and—in so far as they are capable of love at all—they are lovers of intolerance. They wanted freedom to establish unfreedom.

We have referred to Marxism and National Socialism as secular religions. They are not opposites, but are fundamentally akin, in a religious as well as in a secular sense. Both are messianic and socialistic. Both reject the Christian knowledge that all are under sin and both see in good and evil principles of class or race. Both have enthroned the modern Caesar, collective man, the implacable enemy of the individual soul. Both would render unto this Caesar the things which are God’s. Both would make man master of his own destiny, establish the Kingdom of Heaven in this world. Neither will hear of any Kingdom that is not of this world.