Political religion: Hitler Youth

In 2025 at Harvard, Madeline Levy presented her dissertation in progress in a graduate-student research workshop, which I was privileged to attend in my capacity as a research scholar at Harvard. She was presenting how the Hitler Youth program in Nazi Germany appropriated from religion politically, thus in a secular context yet with the aura of a religious cult. Interestingly, most of the kids in the program had been in church groups. Almost two decades earlier, I had audited a course on Nazi Cinema at another university; the course was taught by an 81-year-old German man who had been forced into Hitler Youth. Unlike Stalin’s cinema, which was blatant Soviet propaganda, Nazi cinema was escapist (not counting the anti-Jew propaganda “documentaries”). In contrast, Hitler Youth was hardly escapist, as the program was steeped in Nazi ideology. Although that ideology was secular, casting even Catholic Europe as an enemy, Levy was making the case that religious paraphernalia was incorporated in the program nonetheless. She brought up the element on ontology, or being, which in turn led me to draw on philosophy to explain the kids as becoming moral agents in a Kantian sense. Although philosophy and theology are distinct, both can be applied to political theory in a historical context.

In using the term, political religion, Levy related another expression, that of the “sacralization of politics,” which can include the appropriation of religious language, rituals, and symbols to the exclusion of traditional religions, and tying of these artifacts to secularization narratives.  That affect and motive are salient, according to Levy, is interesting because belief (a type of cognition) has been so salient in the Abrahamic religions. Even in Hitler Youth, there was a creed, and perhaps a “confirmation” event at which the kids, assuming agency, formally assented to the set of beliefs.

In thinking more generally of religious appropriation by the Nazi Party, I raised the question of whether Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will evinces religious-like ritual, as, for example, in showing the torch march, in which neo-pagan/druidic elements may be present. In showing an event—the annual Nazi party meeting—the film can be said to have a narrative structure, as does myth. Furthermore, regarding the Nazi flag with blood stains from the brief Nazi uprising in Munich in 1923, Hitler touching other flags with that flag in order to “sacralize” them treats that flag as a sacred object having a distinct, set-apart, ontological status powerful enough to “turn on” those other battle-flags. Images of Jews in a synagogue touching a wrapped Torah as it is led down an aisle may come to mind, to which Levy brought up the sacral object consecrated in the Christian Eucharistic liturgy and even processed.

Levy also claimed that Hitler was held up as a prophet in the sense of being an intermediary, and even as truth to power before 1933. In the Old Testament, the prophets tended to be thorns in the side of rulers, such as Nathan is to King David, whereas even before assuming power in Germany, Hitler’s role within the party, and later, Deutschland, was that of power. Therefore, it seems to be that Hitler’s intermediary role can be better labeled in terms of the divine right of kings, by which God sanctions absolute political (not divine!) power to human kings, who in turn can be thought of as partaking in a finite means of the divine attribute of omnipotence, without being divinized.

Unlike the practice of the ancient Romans, Hitler did not claim to be, and was not, divinized. Instead, after the failed assassination attempt in 1944, Hitler claimed on the radio that he had been narrowly spared by divine providence to complete his mission; President Trump would make the same claim in after having narrowly missed a bullet at a campaign event in 2024. In the case of Hitler, the irony in implicitly invoking the Abrahamic deity as sparing Hitler so he could finish the Final Solution reflects Hitler’s distinction of the Jews from Judaism, which in turn made it possible for him to appropriate from religion, including in the Hitler Youth program.

Levy’s thought on appropriation of religious symbol, myth, and ritual in the Hitler Youth program centered on ontology (i.e., reality) as the nature of being, as in holy blood being related as Germanic spirit to the human soul. Here, the sacred is a marking out of being, whereas the profane is non-being. In this sense, Leibniz’s notion of God as perfect being is relevant. In setting apart a special race, which itself may remind us of God having a “chosen people” in Judaism, the “setting apart” feature of the process of sacralization is evinced even in terms of sacred objects, such as a flag, that are ritually and mythically set apart ontologically in going beyond mere symbol. Even though the Aryan race is “set apart” in Nazi ideology, individual Germans, even the young people in Hitler Youth, knew that the individual can and even should be expendable for the collective. That is to say, a young person in Hitler Youth reached the point of being a moral agent in being able to realize the moral duty of sacrifice as binding even as the agent thereby knows oneself to have freedom (of choice). This is basic Kantianism applied here not to critique the Nazi ideology, but to understand moral agency within it.

Kant argues that the moral law applies to finite rational beings (i.e. us), and that the recognition of being a moral agent (i.e., in realizing that I ought to have a certain motive or do something) must be premised on being free to do otherwise. I ought to do X means that I have the freedom not to do X. Kant’s theory maintains that such freedom is ontological, or noumenal, rather than being merely in the realm of appearance. Paradoxically, the necessitation of the moral law is conditioned on the reality of freedom of moral agents.

Whether Hitler Youth had a “confirmation” ceremony or not, at some point, a participant would have realized that the freedom of the individual includes the moral law’s necessity as the duty to sacrifice oneself for the collective. Because reason has absolute value as the means by which value is assigned to things (and other rational beings), and individuals are finite rational beings, however, the duty of an individual rational being to be sacrificed for a collective, which is not a rational being, is ethically problematic. Even Hobbes insists that individuals have the right to act to extend their self-preservation even when the political sovereign is trying to kill them. Even so, that Kant’s moral theory can be used to critique the deontological or deontic, duty-based, moral dimension of Hitler Youth is not to say that the participants were not intended to become moral, duty-based (rather than utilitarian) agents. Perhaps this gets at Levy’s interest in the role of agency in Hitler Youth.

In short, the secularization of religious symbol, myth, and ritual played a political role in Nazi Germany, including in Hitler Youth. This is not to say that Hitler was divinized or that any religion was adopted as the state religion, as in a theocracy. In terms of the duty-based ethics that ironically discounted to ontology of the individual in favor of that of the collective, the Germanic people, the political “religion” could only play a supporting, or background, role because theology and philosophical ethics are distinct domains even though they intersect. Levy’s notion of ontology as existentialist (i.e., of being) can be bifurcated between that of a distinctly religious transcendent ontology and an ethical ontology, such as Kant’s claim that the freedom of the will is “a fact of reason” that has a noumenal rather than merely phenomenological basis. The difference is that a distinctly religious transcendent referent is inherently beyond the limits of human cognition, perception, and sensibility (Pseudo-Dionysius), whereas Kant’s fact of reason is, well, of reason, and is thus not transcendent in the sense that a religious object is. Therefore, although capable of being related, theology, philosophy (i.e., ontology and ethics) and political theory should not be conflated. Perhaps this too is a fact of reason.

Pope Francis: Religious and Secular Arguments for Governments Subordinating Markets to Social Norms

The documentary, Pope Francis: A Man of His Word (2018) chiefly lays out the pope’s critique of economic Man. The film begins with references to climate change too loosely linked to the global population figure of 8 million humans, 1 billion of whom are unnecessarily living in poverty. The viewer is left to fill in the gaps, such as that because as biological organisms we must consume and use energy, the hyperextended overpopulation of the species is the root cause of climate- and ecosystem-changing CO2 in the atmosphere and oceans. Arguably, the salvific Son of God or the means into the Kingdom of God enjoy pride of place in the gospels, but compassion for the poor as well as outcasts and the sick is indeed a message that Jesus stresses in the faith narratives. Rather than being a sign of sin, poverty, especially if voluntary,  can permit the sort of humility that is much superior to the pride of the Pharisees. In the documentary, Jorge Bergoglio, who took the name Francis in becoming pope of the Roman Catholic Church in 2013, is a practical man who points to the sickness or temptation of greed that keeps humanity from riding itself of poverty, unnecessarily. Moreover, the hegemony of the market, with its culture of consumerism and commoditization, comes at the cost of the common good, which to Francis has a spiritual basis. Abstractly speaking, harmony, which inherently respects its own limitations, should have priority over greed and markets. Both of these can go to excess without enough built-in constraints as occurred before and during the financial crisis of 2008, with poverty plaguing humanity more rather than less as a result.

The full essay is at "Pope Francis."

Uncovering the Root of Poverty: An Addictive Habit

Addictive pain-killers killed 64,000 residents in the U.S. in 2016, in part because physicians tended to rely on patients’ self-determined ratings of pain on a scale of 1 to 10.[1] Such subjective ratings were of course vulnerable to self-seeking motives willfully negligent or even reckless in terms of health. A habit or marked tendency in favor of choices at the expense of a person’s own long-term well-being stems, I submit, from weak impulse-control. This factor can explain a lot about why poverty exists and goes on. 

Poverty, it has been said, is the cruelest form of war, for such war can go on and on and wreck subtle though tremendous damage on the afflicted. Yet the mentality that can get a person into such a war and associated bad choices can be easily overlooked by elites that deign to study the problem of poverty.

Attempting to explain escalating rates of suicide, overdoses, and alcoholism among uneducated Americans, Angus Deaton and Anne Case, who spoke at the CEO Council sponsored by The Wall Street Journal in November, 2017, pointed to the diminishing number of jobs “with a ladder up, with on-the-job training, with benefits.”[2] With less incentive to focus on doing well at work and less opportunity to get involved in a union, a person can easily feel despondent, especially given the breakdown of the nuclear and extended family and the decline of mainline Christianity. Drugs, including nicotine and alcohol, and ultimately even suicide, can remove the resulting sense of nihilism.

The job/family/religion explanation strikes me as overly formalistic, even external, however. For example, the rise of individualistic evangelical Christianity, which Deaton and Case claimed does not allow for a sense of community because of the theological emphasis on an individual's relationship with Jesus, can nonetheless provide social opportunities for people. A visit to any megachurch can demonstrate that “extra-curricular activities” go on in spite of the individualistic theological bent. Megachurches typically have coffee shops and fitness rooms, and even put on plays (e.g., at Easter). 
Similarly, not being able to get involved in a union does not exhaust the things a person can do with others in a group; political activism, for example, is open to workers outside of the work context (e.g., working on a political campaign).
I also take issue with the claim that uneducated workers do drugs because a promotion into management is no longer as easy as it may have been in the past. The work ethic is not predicated on advancement; rather, hard work itself is valued as a virtue. To be sure, the technologically and off-shore based relative loss of manufacturing jobs and the lack of satisfaction from working in a fast-food restaurant, for instance, have made it more difficult for uneducated people to find fulfilling jobs or jobs at all. Faced with loads of empty time--rather than trying to start an enterprise (e.g., a site online) or volunteer--drugs and alcohol are easy apparent fixes, or fillers. Yet the decision to have empty time is a course of least resistance rather than a fait accompli. The willingness to be lazy is itself significant, for it gets us closer to the underlying problem, which is internal. 
I submit that drug use, including alcohol and nicotine, does not stem from having lots of time from being unemployed. Rather, people who succumb to drug addition can be said to have weak impulse control; they do not have or use the strength of will to resist the urge to take another hit, or to try some drug in the first place. I've never tried heroine or cocaine even just to see what they are like because I know they are highly addictive so I have resisted offers to try them. So I'm surprised when I hear people who use those drugs treat them so casually, so conveniently, without any hint of impulse control. 
The lack of a college education is a contributing factor, for a surprising phenomenon of ignorance is its presumption to not being able to be wrong with respect to itself. So presuming to know all about heroine or cocaine and being able to manage them as if a physician fits with being uneducated. In college, students think through critiques of theories rather than taking them at face value; the professors model this. Being accustomed to critiquing other people's theories can get a person in the thought-habit of critiquing even one's own, even implicit, theories. In contrast, the assumption of ignorance that it must be right goes unchallenged by the uneducated. Interestingly, the difference is not just cognitive, for attitude is impacted by whether or not a person turns reason on oneself. The arrogance of ignorance contrasts with the humility that is ideally in putting one's own assumptions and beliefs about oneself and the world under the proverbial knife. Such an orientation necessitates the use of impulse-control, which in turn implies valuing it rather than conveniently assuming that it is not worthwhile. 

I submit that the “Two Americas” are separated by two trajectories of habitual thinking and values that stem from whether or not a person values and has good impulse-control. People who value such control loathe being around people who don't. Put another way, evading impulse-control is acceptable in some quarters while looked down on in others. The two respective cultures are each self-reinforcing, and social distance between those cultures naturally widens and is not just a matter of being educated or not. Unfortunately, I have been exposed to three "ghetto" apartment complexes, complete with "ghetto property-managements" whose mentality goes beyond garden-variety incompetence to reflect the lack of impulse-control evinced by many of the residents with respect to each other (e.g., being inconsiderate with noise late at night, and having a tendency to lie--failing to resist to impulse to take the easy out).  
Speaking once with a security guard whose company covered one such “ghetto complex” in addition to other, “non-ghetto” complexes, I was struck by how he distinguished the “ghetto” residents. “They think they live in houses, playing their music as if people are not on the other side of the wall. We don't have this problem at the other complexes we handle. The people in that area of town are not so inconsiderate.” I could see why uneducated poor people live together and other people avoid them; the difference is not merely monetary. People who resist the urge to play music or movies loud at night so not to disturb neighbors also resist the urge to lie when doing so would get them off the hook. In apartment complexes populated by poor, uneducated people, the mentality is exactly the opposite, and such a sordid mentality based in a convenient refusal to engage in impulse-control (for selfish reasons) is anathema to other people, who thus keep their distance and even perhaps urge public policy that hurts the poor. Regardless of how sordid the attitude is, I contend that poor people's human rights to sustenance should be respected and protected. This is particularly so because of how intractable the attitude truly is. A person who is used to dismissing impulse-control (i.e., not valuing it) is not likely to go down the other track, unless the motive comes from sustained suffering. 
In terms of not being employable, the lack of a college education again does not tell the whole story. A low-level employee interacting regularly with customers gets heat from a manager if the attitude is, "I can't be wrong about X." Lying about the customer is also not acceptable. Impulse control is vital to virtually any vocation. 
A day after Thanksgiving in 2017, I faced a middle-aged cashier who insisted that people could refuse to recognize that it was Thanksgiving and instead validly select another holiday to celebrate that day, including Christmas and even July 4th.  I countered that Thanksgiving and the other two holidays are set by the U.S. Government, and so are on determined days.  She dismissed this out of hand, which was insulting, and repeated, "It can be any holiday you select." She refused to resist her impulse that she must be right even though she was wrong. "No, yesterday was Thanksgiving and this is Thanksgiving weekend--not another holiday," I insisted, but she rigidly held on to her ignorance as if it could be right. Rather than use self-discipline even to consider that she may have been wrong, she failed to resist the impulse of the presumption of being right and being dismissive.

I submit that a culture exists in the poor America that involves not only a difference in wealth and even education-level, but and most crucially in the attitude toward and practice of impulse-control. That is, being inconsiderate, lying, and feeling entitled in being infallible about what a person thinks one knows can become salient norms where enough uneducated poor live. The attitude thinks it receives confirmation because other people in a similar way also have it. The poor are very susceptible to being rude, lying, and using drugs because of ill-used or perhaps impaired impulse-control. Viewing such restraint as of nugatory value, it is easy to be inconsiderate, rude, even highly aggressive (given the overblown or even imagined slights or provocations).
Biking in poor areas near universities, I have noticed the extreme “road-rage” that is distinct among poor drivers. Today in fact, I witnessed one driver get out of his car to shout at the driver in front of him at a red light. The aggressor showed absolutely no impulse-control; his emotions were out of control. Similarly, I've seen poor drivers much, much more than other drivers lose complete control of themselves emotionally and because apparently I had no right to bike on the side of the roads along the curbs! The sheer aggressiveness, outstripping any rational basis in the context itself, has both amazed me and formed in my mind an image of the typical poor driver. My reaction in observing such drivers has been that such people must surely live in a very different world. I couldn't imagine anyone with such pathetic impulse control being in college or holding a job. Clearly, another America exists, with its own mores and values that retain the inhabitants from entering (and being accepted in!) polite society. Being in the habit of evading impulse-control is so different than valuing such internal control that “Two Americas” can be so explained. Both in terms of wealth and, if the stats on drug and alcohol abuse are correct, impulse-control, the America that is expanding is not the one that should be.

If I am correct in my analysis here, simply providing more and better jobs, creating labor unions and other ways for poor people to “get involved” or be in a group only touch the surface, and thus cannot get the job done in eliminating poverty. Even if "ghetto" apartment complexes are "broken up," with the very poor being disbursed such that they cannot form a culture of least resistance, the internal attitude with respect to impulse-control is surely very difficult to change. So study of precisely how such a feat may be accomplished is needed. 

---

[1] Gregory Korte, “U.S. Waging Tech War against Opioid Epidemic,” USA Today, November 24-26, 2017.

[2] Janet Adamy, “’Two Americas,’ Updated,” The Wall Street Journal, November 20, 2017.

Biblically-Based Investment Funds: A Matter of Priorities

Is it biblical to say a Christian can serve both God and money? In the Gospels, Jesus speaks to this point directly; it is not possible. In early 2017, Inspire Investing established two new exchange-traded funds having a “biblically responsible” approach to investing—meaning that they would avoid buying shares in companies that have “any degree of participation in activities that do not align with biblical values.”[1] That such activities include even tolerance for gay employees raises the question of just how practical an evangelical investment strategy is after the U.S. Supreme Court made gay marriage legal in all of the 50 republics making up the U.S.

According to the New York Times at the end of February, 2017, 92% “of the Fortune 500 companies include ‘sexual orientation’ in their nondiscrimination policies and 82 percent include ‘gender identity.’”[2] Mark Synder of the Equality Federation pointed out that businesses “have been leading the fight for full equality over the last few years. L.G.B.T. people are part of the fabric of our nation.”[3] In short, the approach of the funds was “squarely at odds with that of nearly all of corporate America.”[4] Finding companies in which to invest in may not be so easy for the employees of the two funds. Put another way, the rate of return achieved may be compromised. Of course, an evangelical Christian would contend that compromise with sin is no virtue—certainly no Christian virtue.

Adding to the difficulties is the fact that not all evangelical Christians believe that discrimination is a biblical value, Snyder asserts. Of course, the very word discrimination is ideologically laden; it implies that the thing prohibited is salubrious rather than sordid in nature. Within evangelical Christianity, the tenet that sin explicitly listed in the Old Testament should not be supported or enabled is nothing short of an article of faith. Yet even here, that Jesus of the New Testament is silent on the matter of homosexuality may give even holders of that article some pause. At the very least, the question of priorities can be raised. Should not the funds avoid investing in companies that enable or contribute toward sins identified by Jesus? To put emphasis on a sin not mentioned by Jesus has the opportunity cost of the benefit foregone from focusing on sins that are important to Jesus in the Gospels.

In fact, that Jesus stood with the outcast might prompt an evangelical Christian to feel uncomfortable in taking on a marginalized group in society—especially the transsexuals. Yet Jesus tells the prostitute to sin no more, and gays today are not apt to view homosexuality as a sin and agree to abstain from sex. Gays would be on firmer ground in pointing out that Jesus preached love foremost—a sort of love not delimited to friends and family. Hence Jesus hangs out with the sinners, loving even the “unclean” rather than going after them or those who help them.

Hence the question: what would a biblical-oriented fund based on Jesus’s concept of love (i.e., agape) have as a metric? Companies in which people fight and insult each other, such as Uber, would presumably be off the list. So too would military contractors. But just as the traditional “sin” stocks involving tobacco, gambling, and alcohol would not necessarily be excluded, so too would the matter of a company’s HR policy on gays be of small import. In short, matching Jesus’s priorities in the Gospels would arguably be a sounder basis for a biblical-based Christian investment fund. In the end, the question is whether Christians truly understand Christ’s brand of love. I suspect that it is not as ideologically comfortable as the current practice indicates. I suspect that a truly Christian investment fund would not line up on one side of a general ideological division in society, for religion transcends ideology—otherwise faith reduces to self-idolatry.

---

[1] Liz Moyer, “Alongside Faith in Investing, Funds Offer Investment Rooted in Faith,” The New York Times, February 28, 2017.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Ibid.