The War Against the West is a 1938 book by Hungary

Hungary

Hungary , officially the Republic of Hungary , is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is situated in the Carpathian Basin and is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine and Romania to the east, Serbia and Croatia to the south, Slovenia to the southwest and Austria to the west. The...

-born scholar Aurel Kolnai

Aurel Kolnai

Aurel Thomas Kolnai was a 20th century philosopher and political theorist.-Life:Kolnai was born in Budapest, Hungary to Jewish parents, but moved to Vienna before his twentieth birthday to enter Vienna University, studying under Heinrich Gomperz, Moritz Schlick, Felix Kaufmann, Karl Bühler, and...

. It is a critical study of National Socialist

Nazism

Nazism, the common short form name of National Socialism was the ideology and practice of the Nazi Party and of Nazi Germany...

 ideology. The title indicates the author's view of Nazism as profoundly anti-Western (by "the West

Western world

The Western world, also known as the West and the Occident , is a term referring to the countries of Western Europe , the countries of the Americas, as well all countries of Northern and Central Europe, Australia and New Zealand...

" he meant the liberal

Liberalism

Liberalism is the belief in the importance of liberty and equal rights. Liberals espouse a wide array of views depending on their understanding of these principles, but generally, liberals support ideas such as constitutionalism, liberal democracy, free and fair elections, human rights,...

, democratic, capitalist

Capitalism

Capitalism is an economic system that became dominant in the Western world following the demise of feudalism. There is no consensus on the precise definition nor on how the term should be used as a historical category...

 tendencies of countries such as England

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

, France

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

, and America

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

).

The book was published by Victor Gollancz Ltd. (London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

) as a 711-page hardcover in 1938 with preface by Wickham Steed

Wickham Steed

Henry Wickham Steed was a British journalist and historian. He was editor of The Times from 1919 until 1922.-Life:...

. The Left Book Club

Left Book Club

The Left Book Club, founded in 1936, was a key left-wing institution of the late 1930s and 1940s in the United Kingdom set up by Stafford Cripps, Victor Gollancz and John Strachey to revitalise and educate the British Left. The Club's aim was to "help in the struggle For world peace and against...

 made it an "Additional Book" selection. It has not been in print since the late thirties, although it enjoyed a modest success at the time of publication.

Overview

During the twenties and thirties, Kolnai, born a Jew who converted to Catholicism under the influence of G.K. Chesterton, read extensively in the German language

German language

German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....

 fascist and national socialist literature. The book compiles and critiques the anti-Enlightenment

Age of Enlightenment

The Age of Enlightenment was an elite cultural movement of intellectuals in 18th century Europe that sought to mobilize the power of reason in order to reform society and advance knowledge. It promoted intellectual interchange and opposed intolerance and abuses in church and state...

 works of Nazi writers themselves. Kolnai's study was the first comprehensive survey in English

English language

English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...

 of Nazi ideology as a counter-revolution against, what German

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

 thinkers saw as, the materialistic, rootless civilizations dominated by comfort-addicted, money-and-security-centered, liberal bourgeois and rootless cosmopolitan Jews

Jews

The Jews , also known as the Jewish people, are a nation and ethnoreligious group originating in the Israelites or Hebrews of the Ancient Near East. The Jewish ethnicity, nationality, and religion are strongly interrelated, as Judaism is the traditional faith of the Jewish nation...

; the antithesis of the heroic model of more vital civilizations, prepared to risk their lives, to die for ostensibly "higher" ideals. It is a devastating critique that argues that Nazi ideology is alien to the West and profoundly disturbing and dangerous.

Kolnai saw the war against the West as, in essence, a war of paganism

Paganism

Paganism is a blanket term, typically used to refer to non-Abrahamic, indigenous polytheistic religious traditions....

 against Christian civilization. In citations from Hitler, Goebbels

Goebbels

Goebbels, alternatively Göbbels, is a common surname in the western areas of Germany. It is probably derived from the Old Low German word gibbler, meaning brewer...

, and others, Kolnai sought to expose what he saw as "the obsessive Nazi effort to replace Christianity with a crude and barbaric form of pagan religion, to twist the cross of Christ

Christian cross

The Christian cross, seen as a representation of the instrument of the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, is the best-known religious symbol of Christianity...

 into a swastika

Swastika

The swastika is an equilateral cross with its arms bent at right angles, in either right-facing form in counter clock motion or its mirrored left-facing form in clock motion. Earliest archaeological evidence of swastika-shaped ornaments dates back to the Indus Valley Civilization of Ancient...

."

Contents

Chapter	Section	Notes
	Preface
	Author's Foreword	Identifies the two outstanding figures who have contributed to the rise of National Socialism as a creed, as Friedrich Nietzsche Friedrich Nietzsche Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was a 19th-century German philosopher, poet, composer and classical philologist...  ("perhaps the greatest Satanist of all times") and Stefan George Stefan George Stefan Anton George was a German poet, editor, and translator.-Biography:George was born in Bingen in Germany in 1868. He spent time in Paris, where he was among the writers and artists who attended the Tuesday soireés held by the poet Stéphane Mallarmé. He began to publish poetry in the 1890s,... .
Chapter I. The Central Meaning of the National Socialist Attitude	1. Tribal Egoism versus Humanity and Objective Standards.
	2. The National "Being" versus Mankind.
	3. The Intellectual Height of Anti-Intellectualism.
Chapter II. Community	1. Community beyond Personality.
	2. The "We" Experience.
	3. The Eros of Militarism.
	4. The Universe of the Particular.
	5. Unity and Inequality.
Chapter III. State	1. The Revolt against Liberty.
	2. The Emancipation of Tyranny.
	3. The Vice of Democracy.
	4. Creative Enmity.
	5. The Mystery of Leadership.
	6. The Totalitarian State.
	7. All-Politics, and No-Politics.
Chapter IV. Human Nature and Civilization	1. The Essence of Man: Heroes and Daemons.
	2. "Leib" and Life.
	3. The Revival of Elemental Forces.
	4. The Superstitions of Civilization.
	5. At the Gates of Death.
	6. Male Supremacy and Feminine Undertone.
Chapter V. Faith and Thought	1. The Relativity of Value — the Absoluteness of Power.
	2. The New Paganism.
	3. Christianity Heathenized.
	4. The God that is Ourselves.
	5. The Call for Mythology.
Chapter VI. Morals, Law and Culture	1. The Expropriation of Reason and Ethics.
	2. The Morals of Greatness and Ruthlessness.
	3. The Romance of Activity.
	4. The Lawless Law.
	5. Irrational Science.
	6. Education for the Nationalist State.
Chapter VII. Society and Economics	1. The Socialist Phrase.	Among others, Sombart's "essentially regulated planned economy" as a definition for the German "blood and soil" socialism characterized by anti-capitalism and stark opposition to the classical liberalism of life, liberty, and property found primarily in Great Britain before WW II.
	2. The Revival of Class-Rule.
	3. Inequalitarian Socialism.	What remains of socialism is an essentially vague ideology of "planning", discipline instead of liberty, dictatorial state interference instead of economic freedom, and a generous grant of "honour" to workers, or more especially to "work".
	4. The Economics of State-Power.	It is a feature of Fascism that "Capitalism" no longer fends for itself on the open battlefield of economic argument, but takes a concealed stand behind the showy and new-fangled hierarchy of popular dictatorship, which is at one a hireling in its pay and its overlord taking toll from it.
	5. The Servile Society.	The notion of a "new ethic" of commerce in which the business owner issues orders of work to his henchmen workers, while both operate together as one cell of an organic economy. The power of these cell is counterbalanced by public factors such as Labor Trustees and appointed (national) socialist party organizers.
Chapter VIII. Nation and Race	1. The Creed of Nationalism.
	2. The Sacrament of War.
	3. The Ethnic Idol.
	4. The Secret of Race.
	5. Racial Purity.
	6. Racial Hierarchy.
	7. Breeding the Nation.
	8. The Meaning of Anti-Judaism.
Chapter IX. The German Claim	1. The Category of "Germanhood".
	2. The Prussian Drive.
	3. The Central Nation.
	4. Fighting Rome and the West.
	5. The "Master Race".
	6. Nation or Empire.
	7. The Road to Hegemony.
Conclusion. Nazi Germany and the Western World	1. The Failure of the West.
	2. The Fields of Resistance: (a) Facts. (b) Perspectives.
	3. The Soul of the West.
	Bibliography
	Index

External links

• Transcript of remarks on the book Occidentalism
  Occidentalism
  The term Occidentalism is used in one of two main ways: a) stereotyped and sometimes dehumanizing views on the Western world, including Europe and the English-speaking world; and b), ideologies or visions of the West developed in either the West or non-West. The former definition stresses negative...
  
  : The West in the Eyes of Its Enemies by Ian Buruma
  Ian Buruma
  Buruma is a nephew of the English film director John Schlesinger, a series of interviews with whom he published in book form.-Works:*The Japanese Tattoo with Donald Richie ISBN 978-0-8348-0228-5...
  
  , on 8 April 2004, at the Carnegie Council Books for Breakfast.
• Kolnai's Political Memoirs, reviewed by Lee Congdon of James Madison University
  James Madison University
  James Madison University is a public coeducational research university located in Harrisonburg, Virginia, U.S. Founded in 1908 as the State Normal and Industrial School for Women at Harrisonburg, the university has undergone four name changes before settling with James Madison University...
  
  . Discusses The War Against the West
• 1938: Literature, World from Collier's Year Book.
• The Spirit of Nazism, a review of The War Against the West by Hans Kohn
  Hans Kohn
  Hans Kohn was a Jewish philosopher and historian. Born in Prague during the Habsburg Empire, he was captured as a prisoner of war during World War I and held in Russia for five years...
  
  , in The Nation, Vol. 147, 1 October 1938.
• Aurel Kolnai and the Metaphysics of Political Conservatism by John P. Hittinger.