Umberto Eco, Carl Jung, Karl Barth and Hitler on Islam and Nazism
"It is impossible to understand National Socialism unless we see it in fact as a new Islam."
In a speech that he gave at Columbia University, Umberto Eco spelled out fourteen features that he considered were typical of “Eternal Fascism” (which he also calls Ur-Fascism), and I have shown that all fourteen features were present in Islam.[1] Charles Watson,[2] and G.-H. Bousquet[3] refer to Islam as a totalitarian system tout court, while Bertrand Russell[4], Jules Monnerot[5], and Czeslaw Milosz[6] compare Islam to various aspects of communism, and finally, there are those who note the resemblance of Islam to Nazism, among others, Carl Jung[7]. Jung was asked in the late 1930s in an interview if he had any views on what was likely to be the next step in religious development. He replied, referring to the rise of Nazism in Germany, “We do not know whether Hitler is going to found a new Islam [emphasis added]. He is already on the way; he is like Muhammad. The emotion in Germany is Islamic; warlike and Islamic. They are all drunk with wild god. That can be the historic future.”
Karl Barth[8] also reflected on the threat of Hitler, and his similarities to Muhammad:
Participation in this life, according to it the only worthy and blessed life, is what National Socialism, as a political experiment, promises to those who will of their own accord share in this experiment. And now it becomes understandable why, at the point where it meets with resistance, it can only crush and kill—with the might and right which belongs to Divinity! Islam of old as we know proceeded in this way. It is impossible to understand National Socialism unless we see it in fact as a new Islam [emphasis in original], its myth as a new Allah, and Hitler as this new Allah’s Prophet.
A prayer for the ruling National Socialism and for its further expansion and increase simply cannot be uttered—unless one wishes to strike his confession in the face and make nonsense of his prayer. But there is one prayer with regard to the ruling National Socialism which may be uttered and ought to be uttered. It may and has to be prayed, in all earnestness, by Christians in Germany and throughout the whole world. It is the prayer which was uttered right into the nineteenth century, according to the old Basel Liturgy: “Cast down the bulwarks of the false prophet Muhammad!”…And there we have it—we stand today, all Europe, and the whole Christian Church in Europe, once again in danger of the Turks [emphasis in original]. And this time they have already taken Vienna and Prague as well. “Thy will be done!” “If I perish then I perish!” They really knew that at the time of the old Turkish menace. They knew it better, knew it with more resignation to the will of God and less querulousness than we today do.
Thus Carl Jung, and Karl Barth[9], but also Maxime Rodinson[10], and Manfred Halpern[11], all recognize Islam’s similarities to fascism or National Socialism (the latter two terms often used synonymously); and, last but not least, Adolf Hitler.[12]
Albert Speer, who was Hitler’s Minister of Armaments and War Production, wrote a memoir of his World War II experiences while serving a 20-year prison sentence imposed by the Nuremberg tribunal. Speer’s narrative includes this discussion which captures Hitler’s racist views of Arabs on the one hand, and his effusive praise for Islam on the other:
Hitler had been much impressed by a scrap of history he had learned from a delegation of distinguished Arabs. When the Mohammedans attempted to penetrate beyond France into Central Europe during the eighth century, his visitors had told him, they had been driven back at the Battle of Tours. Had the Arabs won this battle, the world would be Mohammedan today. For theirs was a religion that believed in spreading the faith by the sword and subjugating all nations to that faith. Such a creed was perfectly suited to the Germanic temperament. [emphasis added] Hitler said that the conquering Arabs, because of their racial inferiority, would in the long run have been unable to contend with the harsher climate and conditions of the country. They could not have kept down the more vigorous natives, so that ultimately not Arabs but Islamized Germans could have stood at the head of this Mohammedan Empire. Hitler usually concluded this historical speculation by remarking, ‘You see, it’s been our misfortune to have the wrong religion. Why didn’t we have the religion of the Japanese, who regard sacrifice for the Fatherland as the highest good? The Mohammedan religion too would have been much more compatible to us than Christianity. Why did it have to be Christianity with its meekness and flabbiness?’”
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[1] Umberto Eco, The New York Review of Books, June 22, 1995, pp.12-15, and my article “Islam, the Middle East, and Fascism”, in Virgins? What Virgins? And Other Essays, Amherst (NY): Prometheus Books, 2010, pp.255-288.
[2] The Muslim World, January 1938 (Vol. 28 Issue 1 Page 1-107), p.6.
[3] G.-H.Bousquet [1900-1978]. L’Ethique sexuelle de l’Islam. Paris: Desclée de Brouwer. 1990 [Ist edn.1966], p.10.
[4] Bertrand Russell, The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism. London: George Allen and Unwin, 1920 pp.5,29,114.
[5] Jules Monnerot. Sociologie du Communisme, Paris: Gallimard, 1949. [English translation by Jane Degras and Richard Rees. Sociology and Psychology of Communism, Boston: Beacon Press, 1953]
[6] Czeslaw Milosz, The Captive Mind. Translated from the Polish by Jane Zielonko. New York:Vintage Books, 1959, pp.51-77.
[7] Carl Jung. The Collected Works Volume 18, The Symbolic Life, 1939, Princeton, Princeton University Press p. 281.
[8] Karl Barth. The Church and the Political Problem of Our Day, New York: Scribner, 1939, pp. 43; 64-65.
[9] I owe the references for Jung and Barth to Dr. Andrew Bostom.
[10] Maxime Rodinson. Islam Resurgent? Le Monde, December, 6-8, 1978, quoted in Janet Afary and Kevin B.Anderson. Foucault and the Iranian Revolution. Gender and the Seductions of Islamism. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2005, p.233.
[11] Manfred Halpern. Politics of Social Change in the Middle East and North Africa Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1963, quoted at Martin Kramer’s Wesbsite: http://www.geocities.com/martinkramerorg/2006_09_20.htm, Accessed October, 22, 2007.
[12]Albert Speer. Inside the Third Reich. 1970, New York: The Macmillan Company, p. 96.
Reader Interactions
The French Disconnection
Who - and what - was the rioting really driven by?
Imagine the U.S. canceling the Fourth of July holiday due to high crime in our cities and you get a sense of what has occurred in France. Cities across France canceled Bastille Day observances July 14 because of rioting that ignited when a police officer shot and killed 17-year-old Nahel Merzouk, a French citizen of Algerian and Moroccan descent, during a traffic stop in Paris on June 27.
News reports said churches were burned to the ground and graffiti was scrawled in red paint on a church in Marseilles declaring: “Mohammed was the last prophet”. Bank branches were ransacked and ATMs opened with chainsaws. Some shouted “death to the police,” “death to France,” “death to the Jews,” and “Hitler was right.” A Holocaust memorial was defaced. Thousands have been arrested.
Kosher food restaurants and shops have been looted and burned during the rampage.
Ayat Oraby, a former Egyptian TV and Muslim Brotherhood affiliate, has contributed her dose of venom to the French riots: “To where is France heading? To hell, God willing!”
Is France now paying a heavy price for admitting so many radical Islamists into the country? As Sorbonne University Professor Bernard Rougier has written: “Since the 1970s, France has welcomed an ever-increasing number of immigrants from the Muslim world. … Only a tiny minority have assimilated into French society. The others live as they lived in their countries of origin.”
Guy Milliere, on his webpage for the Gatestone Institute International Policy Council, recently posted these various quotes on the subject: “Radical imams came from the Muslim world and allege that France is guilty of having colonized their countries, that Muslims should continue to live according to the law of Islam and that, in the imams’ view, France should pay for its crimes. Many politicians have told the newcomers that France is racist and had exploited them.”
Milliere also posted this one: “Criminal gangs formed and began ruling these neighborhoods … French political leaders closed their eyes. Meanwhile, these Muslim neighborhoods have grown and crime from them increased.”
Some politicians have tried to appease the radicals by sending more money to Muslim neighborhoods following riots by mostly young people who believe they have no future. To no avail. Rioting has now spread to Muslim areas in Belgium and Switzerland.
Again, none of this should come as a surprise. As the late Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi predicted: “We have 50 million Muslims in Europe. There are signs that Allah will grant Islam victory in Europe — without swords, without guns, without conquest — will turn it into a Muslim continent within a few decades.”
In 2018, a House of Representatives subcommittee held hearings on the influential Muslim Brotherhood and what it called its “global threat.” Then-Rep. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) said: “The Muslim Brotherhood’s Supreme Guide, Mohammed Badie, has said that the organization’s goal is to establish a new Islamist caliphate, including the imposition of sharia law, which is the totalitarian Islamic legal code. We saw what happens when the Brotherhood takes control of a country in Egypt from 2012 to 2013, and the results were chilling, that then-President Mohamed Morsi defied the rule of law and granted himself near absolute power. As Egyptian leader Mohamed El Baradi put it, Morsi usurped all state powers and appointed himself Egypt’s new pharaoh.”
While it is obligatory to say not all Muslims are terrorists, nor do all share the goal of the Muslim Brotherhood, the rioting in France, Belgium and Switzerland shows the influence of the growing radical wing of Islam. It should be a warning because the extremists’ have announced their ultimate targets are Israel and the U.S.
Imagine the U.S. canceling the Fourth of July holiday due to high crime in our cities and you get a sense of what has occurred in France. Cities across France canceled Bastille Day observances July 14 because of rioting that ignited when a police officer shot and killed 17-year-old Nahel Merzouk, a French citizen of Algerian and Moroccan descent, during a traffic stop in Paris on June 27.
News reports said churches were burned to the ground and graffiti was scrawled in red paint on a church in Marseilles declaring: “Mohammed was the last prophet”. Bank branches were ransacked and ATMs opened with chainsaws. Some shouted “death to the police,” “death to France,” “death to the Jews,” and “Hitler was right.” A Holocaust memorial was defaced. Thousands have been arrested.
Kosher food restaurants and shops have been looted and burned during the rampage.
Ayat Oraby, a former Egyptian TV and Muslim Brotherhood affiliate, has contributed her dose of venom to the French riots: “To where is France heading? To hell, God willing!”
Is France now paying a heavy price for admitting so many radical Islamists into the country? As Sorbonne University Professor Bernard Rougier has written: “Since the 1970s, France has welcomed an ever-increasing number of immigrants from the Muslim world. … Only a tiny minority have assimilated into French society. The others live as they lived in their countries of origin.”
Guy Milliere, on his webpage for the Gatestone Institute International Policy Council, recently posted these various quotes on the subject: “Radical imams came from the Muslim world and allege that France is guilty of having colonized their countries, that Muslims should continue to live according to the law of Islam and that, in the imams’ view, France should pay for its crimes. Many politicians have told the newcomers that France is racist and had exploited them.”
Milliere also posted this one: “Criminal gangs formed and began ruling these neighborhoods … French political leaders closed their eyes. Meanwhile, these Muslim neighborhoods have grown and crime from them increased.”
Some politicians have tried to appease the radicals by sending more money to Muslim neighborhoods following riots by mostly young people who believe they have no future. To no avail. Rioting has now spread to Muslim areas in Belgium and Switzerland.
Again, none of this should come as a surprise. As the late Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi predicted: “We have 50 million Muslims in Europe. There are signs that Allah will grant Islam victory in Europe — without swords, without guns, without conquest — will turn it into a Muslim continent within a few decades.”
In 2018, a House of Representatives subcommittee held hearings on the influential Muslim Brotherhood and what it called its “global threat.” Then-Rep. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) said: “The Muslim Brotherhood’s Supreme Guide, Mohammed Badie, has said that the organization’s goal is to establish a new Islamist caliphate, including the imposition of sharia law, which is the totalitarian Islamic legal code. We saw what happens when the Brotherhood takes control of a country in Egypt from 2012 to 2013, and the results were chilling, that then-President Mohamed Morsi defied the rule of law and granted himself near absolute power. As Egyptian leader Mohamed El Baradi put it, Morsi usurped all state powers and appointed himself Egypt’s new pharaoh.”
While it is obligatory to say not all Muslims are terrorists, nor do all share the goal of the Muslim Brotherhood, the rioting in France, Belgium and Switzerland shows the influence of the growing radical wing of Islam. It should be a warning because the extremists’ have announced their ultimate targets are Israel and the U.S.
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