Frederick Augustus Voigt Quotes

Like Marx and Lenin, Hitler is an anti-capitalist. And as ‘capitalism ’ is evil, it is, in Hitler’s eyes, Jewish. Anti-Semitism and anti-Capitalism frequently go hand in hand—the Pan-German movement before the war and Austria’s anti-Semitism were strongly anti-capitalistic. Hitler made them indissoluble in Germany. He succeeded in bringing about a fusion of class hatred and racial hatred, of revolutionary socialism and revolutionary nationalism.

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.

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

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

Every enlightened, humane, and patriotic Englishman has been ashamed, upon occasion, of what his country has done and will be fearful of what she may do yet. He would be a Pharisee were he to assume that there is a separate England of evil-doers: that this England is not his England, the real England, but another England.

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.

It is said that only when the Germans are weak and disunited are they great—great, that is to say, in art and letters, in science, in speculative thought.

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.

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.

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.

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.

All National Socialist writers are obsessed with race, blood, and nationhood, just as all Marxist writers are obsessed with class and class-warfare. Just as there is no history for the Marxist that is not a history of class-struggle, so there is no history for the National Socialist that is not a history of racial conflict. Hitler demanded that the history of the world be rewritten so that ‘the racial question’ may be ‘raised to dominating eminence.’

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.

Lenin and Hitler are quite unashamed in their constant advocacy of ruthlessness, of the bloodiest wars and upheavals. Throughout all Marxian and National Socialist literature there is not a trace of pity, magnanimity, forgiveness, or of any generous feeling, not one word of respect for honor or for righteousness—not one trace of toleration, not the slightest appreciation for a foe who might be brave, or even right in his own way.