What is Völkisch?

Volume 1 of this book explained the term VÖLKISCH as the core of the closely consolidated militant community.

The word VÖLKISCH does not express any clear idea just as the word ‘religious’ is not clear.

The word ‘religious’ acquires a precise meaning only when it is associated with a definite form which is put into practice.*

Inner religious yearning is transformed into practical faith only when it:

• leaves the sphere of metaphysical ideas
• is moulded to a definite dogmatic belief

Such a dogmatic belief is not an end, but the means to an end.

• Yet this dogmatic means can never reach its end. Yet this end is practical.

The word ‘deeply religious’ tells us little about this dogmatic belief.

• A few people are content with such a vague description.
• It merely means an individual thinking and acting according to his own bent.

Faith safeguards faith’s own existence by helping to lift the human being above mere animal existence,

If we abolish religious teaching without replacing it with anything of equal value, the foundations of human existence would be seriously shaken.

Man does not live merely to serve higher ideals.

Man serves higher ideals which in turn give the necessary conditions of his human existence. Thus the circle is closed. *

‘Religious’ implies some fundamental ideas and beliefs, such as:

• the immortality of the soul
• its future existence in eternity
• the existence of a Higher Being, and so on.

But these ideas can be critically analysed and accepted or rejected.

This means that these ideas are supported by emotion or yearning that is governed by a defined doctrinal faith.

Such a faith provides the practical expression for religious feeling.

Without a clearly defined belief, the religious feeling:

• would be worthless for the purposes of human existence
• might even disorganize people because of its vague and multifarious tendencies

What I have said about the word ‘religious’ can also be applied to the term VÖLKISCH.

VÖLKISCH also implies certain important fundamental ideas.

But they are so vague that they are mere opinions until they become the elements in the structure of a political party.

This VÖLKISCH:

• gives practical force to the ideals that grow out of a WELTANSCHAUUNG.
• addresses the demands from such ideals

These ideals cannot be realized by mere inner longing just as freedom cannot be won by merely yearning for it.

Only when the idealistic longing for freedom it organized with military force can that desire be transformed into reality.

Any WELTANSCHAUUNG will be of no practical service to a people as long as its principles have not yet become the rallying point of a militant movement.

This movement will remain a mere party until is has brought its ideals to victory and transformed its party doctrines into the new foundations of a State which gives the national community its final shape.

An abstract concept serves as the basis of a future development.

• The first prerequisite is to form a clear understanding of this concept.
• Only on such a basis can a movement be founded which will be able to draw the necessary fighting strength from the internal cohesion of its principles and convictions.

From general ideas:

• a political programme must be constructed
• a general WELTANSCHAUUNG must receive the stamp of a definite political faith

This faith must:

• be directed towards practical ends
• serve the general ideal as such
• take into consideration the means for the triumph of the ideal

The statesman’s practical wisdom must help the abstract idea, which is correct in itself.

This eternal ideal has everlasting significance as a guiding star to mankind.*

The statesman must:

• take abstract and general principles derived from a WELTANSCHAUUNG which is based on truth.
• transform them into a militant community whose members have the same political faith

This community is:

• precisely defined
• rigidly organized
• of one mind and one will

Out of the army of millions who feel and understand this truth, one man arises.

He must:

• have the gift of expounding general ideas in a clear and definite form
• formulate principles that will be as clear-cut and firm as granite
• fight for these principles as the only true ones, until a solid rock of common faith and common will emerges above the troubled waves of vagrant ideas.

Interpreting VÖLKISCH as based on Race

Currently, it is believed that the State has a creative force which can build up civilizations.

But it has nothing in common with the concept of race as the foundation of the State.

The State is considered rather as something which has resulted from economic necessity, or, at best, the natural outcome of the play of political forces and impulses.

This ignores*:

• the primordial racial forces that underlie the State
• the importance of the individual

If it be denied that races differ from one another in their powers of cultural creativeness, then this same erroneous notion must necessarily influence our estimation of the value of the individual.

If all races are alike, then all nations and individuals are equal to one another.

International Marxism applies this, effected by the Jew Karl Marx who turned this idea into a definite political faith.

In reality, that general concept had existed long before the time of Karl Marx.

This is why Marxist teaching became possible.

The difference is that Karl Marx existed in a world already in gradual decomposition.

He used his keen powers of prognosis to detect the essential poisons, so as to extract them and concentrate them, with the art of a necromancer.

His resulting solution would bring about the rapid destruction of the independent nations.

But all this was done in the service of his race.

Thus, the Marxist doctrine is the concentrated extract of the mentality which underlies the general concept of life today.

This is why our bourgeois world cannot put up any effective fight against Marxism.

This bourgeois world is permeated with all those same poisons.

Its conception of life differs from Marxism only in degree and in the character of the persons who hold it.

The bourgeois world is Marxist but believes that the bourgeoisie can dominate the world.

Whereas Marxism itself systematically aims at delivering the world into the hands of the Jews.