Sunday, September 30, 2007

Who knew?

Last week, for one of my classes, I was reading Hannah Arendt's The Origins of Totalitarianism, and was interested to come across the following in her discussion of pre-Nazi Germany:

“What they conspicuously lacked, despite all high-sounding nationalist phrases, was a real nationalist or other ideology. After the first World War, when the German Pan-Germans, especially Ludendorff and his wife, recognized this error and tried to make up for it, they failed despite their remarkable ability to appeal to the most superstitious beliefs of the masses because they clung to an outdated nontotalitarian state worship and could not understand that the masses’ furious interest in the so-called ‘suprastate powers’ (uberstaatliche Machte)—i.e. the Jesuits, the Jews and the Freemasons—did not spring from nation or state worship but, on the contrary, from envy and the desire also to become a ‘suprastate power.’”

All this time, and I've been blissfully ignorant of my membership in a "suprastate power." Maybe a good icebreaker at parties?--Oh, by the way, did you know that I belong to a suprastate power?

5 Comments:

Blogger testsjmg said...

Mark,

That sounds like an unpleasant medical medical component.

-J.

10:46 AM  
Blogger Kiwi Nomad said...

Oh flip... maybe that is the simple reason I have been 'lapsed' for so long.... I never knew how to spell 'suprastate'!

4:47 PM  
Blogger Kiwi Nomad said...

Oh flip... maybe that is the simple reason I have been 'lapsed' for so long.... I never knew how to spell 'suprastate'!

4:47 PM  
Blogger Unknown said...

I always knew the Jesuits were out to take over the world.

12:49 PM  
Blogger Kiwi Nomad said...

Actually I just read the word "lachrymose" on another blog... and I think it is even nicer than 'suprastate'! I think I will spend the day being lachrymose now.

11:28 PM  

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