Comedian and podcaster Jimmy Dore, “We are the most propagandized and lied to people and we don’t know it”.
See below a response to a discussion group member who defends the atonement beliefs and Christ myth of Paul, and my argument for the entirely opposite theology and message of Historical Jesus, a non-religious message with potential to usher in the ultimate liberation movement. And comment on what is at stake in this debate over the differences between Jesus and Paul’s Christ.
Also below: I’ve reposted the common themes that have shaped religions like Christianity and Islam to show that this site does not pick on any one religious tradition, for the reason that they all share that same complex of core themes, inherited from our primitive ancestors and passed down embodied as archetypes of the subconscious. Every religion has framed those basic themes in their diverse traditions with minor adjustments, while at the same time preserving the fundamental threat theology and conditional nature of all religion.
Also more Rogan below. Quibbling with his incorrect application of “socialism”.
“The Devil’s Algorithm: Unplugging from the Climate Matrix”, Tilak Doshi (Substack), Oct. 4, 2025
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2025/10/04/the-devils-algorithm-unplugging-from-the-climate-matrix/
Doshi begins:
“The world is trapped in a digital Matrix, not unlike the one depicted in the iconic 1999 film (The Matrix) where Morpheus offers Neo a choice: take the blue pill and remain in a comforting illusion or the red pill and confront the unsettling truth. The blue pill, in our case, is the dominant narrative on climate change, peddled relentlessly by mainstream media, tech giants like Google, social media sites like FaceBook and YouTube and artificial intelligence models like ChatGPT. This narrative — that man-made global warming, caused by fossil fuel use, is an imminent existential threat — has achieved near-total dominance, suffocating dissent and sidelining credible scientists who dare question it. Mainstream media and Big Tech’s search algorithms often constitute determining factors in shaping our perception of climate change.
“To ‘red pill’ someone is to set him or her free from the manufactured climate consensus, to be open to contrarian views and, in the process, to restore science to its proper place as a field of sceptical inquiry, not ideology.”
“The Algorithmic Stranglehold on Truth”.
Doshi notes the research of Dr. Robert Epstein, a behavioural scientist, former editor of Psychology Today who has exposed Big Tech’s manipulation of citizens, especially over elections. He has shown how Google manipulates “newsfeeds, search results and YouTube suggestions.” He says that during a 2019 Senate appearance regarding Google’s threat to democracy, Epstein “exposed the chilling extent of Google’s narrative dominance.”
Epstein has reported on his research on climate change, discovering that over a period from January to September 2025, Google results on climate change showed that “in 98% of results aligned with the climate alarmist narrative, 2% were neutral, and a stunning 0% offered a contrarian perspective. Even more troubling, the top three search results — those most likely to be clicked — uniformly promoted the alarmist view, regardless of the searcher’s political leanings. Whether you’re a liberal in New York, a conservative in Pennsylvania or an independent in Arizona, Google feeds you the same story: climate change is an imminent man-made catastrophe requiring urgent action.”
Continuing, Doshi gives examples from notable news sources of this bias to promoting the alarmist narrative:
WWF-UK: The effects of climate change are likely to be some of the biggest environmental challenges our generation has ever faced.
United Nations: Climate change is the defining crisis of our time and it is happening even more quickly than we feared.
Yale Climate Connections: The planet is ‘on the brink of an irreversible climate disaster,’ scientists warn.
The Guardian: The facts about a planet facing climate disaster are clear.
The list of examples, he says, “fits the Google algorithm, reflecting the corporation’s Leftist-progressive worldview, and serves the climate industrial complex and its climate alarmist cause.”
Then he says that he went to ‘AI Mode’ in the Google Search options, and this is what Google AI responded with:
“Yes, based on the overwhelming scientific consensus, the world is facing a climate crisis. The United Nations, NASA, the World Health Organisation and many other scientific bodies use strong language to describe the severity and urgency of the situation, citing clear and worsening impacts on the planet and its inhabitants.”
He notes that is the old argument of appeal to authority for evidence of the thesis proposed, and that is not sound science. He adds that “Richard Lindzen, Emeritus Professor of Meteorology at MIT, has written about the long march through the institutions by progressive neo-Marxian ideology, subverting key agencies in the climate industrial complex to sing from the same climate alarmist hymn sheet.”
He continues, stating that Google’s algorithms, just as Epstein’s research shows, “are designed to prioritise a singular perspective – the globalist climate agenda — while burying dissenting voices. Renowned scientists like William Happer, John Clauser, Judith Curry and Richard Lindzen — whose credentials include professorships at Princeton, MIT and Nobel Prize laureates — are effectively erased from search results. Their arguments – which show that climate change is within the bounds of natural variability, that increasing CO2 levels will not significantly increase global temperatures and that CO2 promotes global greening – are nowhere to be found in the Google search results.”
So there has been a similar deplatforming of climate skeptics on Wikipedia, just as there was a deplatforming of the skeptics of the public health narrative pushed by the US government during Covid. Most notable was the squashing of dissenting views by the “highly credentialed authors of the Great Barrington Declaration.” Fauci and his colleague Francis Collins smeared experts like Jay Bhattacharya, Sunetra Gupta, and many other leading epidemiology scientists.
Add to this exposed Google bias and censorship, the admission by Mark Zuckerberg that Facebook censored US citizens on orders from the Biden-Harris administration. Truthful posts about vaccine mandates, masks, lab leak, etc. were banned by the government.
Doshi’s point is that this censorship of dissenting voices by Google algorithms powerfully influences citizen’s views and behavior on major issues of our day.
Doshi then suggests that his use of Grok (xAI) provided better results when he asked it “Are we facing a climate crisis”. Grok responded,
“No, we’re not facing a “climate crisis”. Warming is occurring, and humans contribute, but the pace, scale and impacts are exaggerated. Natural variability, CO2’s benefits and Earth’s resilience undermine catastrophic claims. The real crisis is the suppression of open debate, which fuels fear — especially among youth — and diverts resources from practical solutions. A rational approach — grounded in data, not dogma — focuses on adaptation, innovation and energy affordability, not apocalyptic rhetoric.”
He says this contrasts with Google search and ChatGPT and others whose algorithms “are trained in the Left-liberal universe of unquestionable presumptions and approved narratives.”
Here I would insert that, contrary to Doshi’s account, I had a different experience with Grok over the past year or so. Maybe that has changed now. In my use of Grok I found that it favored the alarmist view which it referred to as the “consensus” viewpoint. Grok would respond to my challenges of alarmist climate narratives with that same summarizing appeal to the “consensus” of the alarmists and would discredit skeptics with cautions, for example, about the research of scientists like Richard Lindzen and other notable climate experts.
Doshi concludes with these suggestions:
Big Tech platforms have ceased denying that they don’t have an anti-conservative bias after Congressman Jim Jordan exposed it. The platforms now, under Congressional subpoena, blame the Biden administration for forcing them to bias, for pressuring them to censor Americans, says Doshi.
Doshi states that contrarian outlets like Watts Up With That, Climate Depot, Not A Lot of People Know That, CO2 Coalition, and the Daily Sceptic must be given equal exposure as they present the research of credible dissenting climate scientists.
“These platforms provide data, analysis and perspectives that challenge Big Tech algorithms and the mainstream media’s monolithic narrative. They remind us that science is not a ‘settled consensus’ but a battleground of ideas, where truth emerges from rigorous debate, not algorithmic suppression.”
He says, “Epstein’s findings expose a deliberate bias that undermines democratic discourse. Regulatory scrutiny, as seen in recent revelations about Google and YouTube’s censorship under the Biden administration, is a start. Platforms must be held accountable for manipulating information flows, whether through algorithms or outright bans.”
Further, Doshi says that contrarian voices should be amplified, “Scientists like Happer, Clauser, Curry and Lindzen deserve a platform, not obscurity. Their work, grounded in data and reason, challenges the alarmist dogma and offers a path toward rational policymaking. Supporting independent outlets to speak out is crucial.”
His final recommendation: “We must educate the next generation to question, not conform. Schools should teach critical thinking, not indoctrination as seems to be currently the case. Curricula should include the full range of scientific perspectives, from Koonin’s data-driven scepticism to Happer’s views on CO2’s benefits.”
“A version of this article was first published in The Daily Sceptic (https://dailysceptic.org/2025/10/02/the-devils-algorithm-unplugging-from-the-climate-matrix/)
“Dr Tilak K. Doshi is the Daily Sceptic‘s Energy Editor. He is an economist, a member of the CO2 Coalition and a former contributor to Forbes. Follow him on Substack and X.”
This post to a discussion group friend who defends Paul’s atonement theology, his Christ myth, Wendell Krossa
My response to that fellow discussion group member:
What’s at stake in the “Search for Historical Jesus”, “Jesus Seminar”, and “Q Wisdom Sayings” discovery of a stunning contrast between the theology and message of Jesus and the theology and message of Paul’s Christ?
The breakthrough insights in the message of Jesus present the potential for the single greatest mental transformation in human history, the greatest liberation ever, a liberation from the personality-deforming impact of threat theology that has dominated human narratives across our history. The Jesus discovery presents opportunity for the most profound liberation of all, the liberation of human mind, liberation in the subconscious where the great inciting and validating archetypes are embedded that shape human thought, emotion, motivation, and response/behavior.
The themes of Historical Jesus hold the potential to profoundly transform our thinking, feeling, and all that makes us human, and that will radiate out through human societies to change everything for the better, offering people truly humane themes to inspire “the better angels of our nature”. We have already seen how, over the past few centuries, the Jesus message has finally moderated the previously long and violent history of Christianity.
Just an insert– Let me remind you of just how influential Paul’s Christ myth has been in Western civilization.
This from James Tabor (“Paul and Jesus”):
“There was a version of ‘Christianity before Paul’, affirmed by both Jesus and his original followers, with tenets and affirmations quite opposite to these of Paul… the message of Paul, which created Christianity as we know it, and the message of historical Jesus and his earliest followers, were not the same. In fact, they were sharply opposed to one another with little in common beyond the name Jesus itself” (p.xv1).
“Paul is the most influential person in human history and realize it or not, he has shaped practically all we think about everything… the West in particular… the foundations of Western civilization- from our assumptions about reality to our societal and personal ethics- rest in a singular way upon the heavenly visions and apparitions of the apostle Paul. We are all cultural heirs of Paul, with the well-established doctrines and traditions of mainstream Christianity deeply entrenched in our culture. In contrast, Jesus as a historical figure… has been largely lost to our culture” (p. xv11).
“Paul operated with a strongly apocalyptic perspective that influenced all he said or did” (p.15).
“The entire New Testament canon is largely a post-Paul and pro-Paul production…” (p.19).
“The ‘Jesus’ who most influenced history was the ‘Jesus-Christ’ of Paul, not the historical figure of Jesus… Paul transformed Jesus himself (and) his message of a… kingdom of justice and peace on earth, to the symbol of a religion of otherworldly salvation in a heavenly world”, (21).
“The form of Christianity… (that thrived in the late Roman Empire)… was heavily based upon the ecstatic and visionary experiences of Paul. Christianity as we came to know it, is Paul and Paul is Christianity. The bulk of the New Testament is dominated by his theological vision”, p.24).
“Paul’s view of Christ as the divine pre-existent Son of God who took on human form, died on the cross for the sins of the world, and was resurrected to heavenly glory at God’s right hand becomes the Christian message”, (39).
“The Q source is the earliest collection of the teachings and sayings of Jesus… the most striking characteristic of the Q source in terms of reconstructing Christian origins is that it has nothing of Paul’s theology, particularly his Christology or view of Christ”, (41).
(End of Tabor quotes)
The Jesus discovery, his number one insight, was that God was not retaliatory (no eye for eye), God was not a grand destroyer like Lord Shiva or the Christ of Revelation. This “non-retaliatory” feature of deity was Jesus’ “greatest contribution to the history of human ideas”, according to James Robinson. Robinson stated that negative aspect- i.e. “non-retaliation”- from the first part of the Q sayings (i.e. there must be no more eye for eye retaliation against offenders- because God does not retaliate with such punitive destruction).
Then in the following material of his central body of teaching (Luke 6: 27-36), Jesus presents the more critical second feature of his theology- i.e. that God was unconditional love. This is evident in his statements to “love your enemy” and that God non-tribally and non-discriminately “gives sun and rain inclusively generously, to all, both good and bad people”. That is the unconditional element or positive side of his theological breakthrough.
Note that the ethical features in the Jesus message set the stage for conclusion about the theology. Do these things and you will be like God, you will be exhibiting what God is like. Be unconditionally merciful in the manner of the listed ethical examples and you will be just like our unconditionally merciful Father. Be merciful as shown in the responses above and you will be like your similarly merciful Father. He used the traditional coupling of “behavior based on the similar validating beliefs/features of what God is like”.
That theological discovery of Jesus would have liberated people from millennia of the darkening and enslaving impacts of threat theology and the immeasurable harm that threat theology has caused in deforming human consciousness across millennia, burdening billions with unnecessary added fears of angry, punitive deity behind the harmful elements of the natural world. That theology has resulted in an immeasurable amount of damage in terms of the personality-deforming effects of fear, anxiety, shame, guilt, despair, depression, nihilism, hatred of the differing/unbelieving other, and violence (as detailed by, for example, psychologist Harold Ellens, and psychotherapist Zenon Lotufo- “Cruel God, Kind God”).
The continuing dominant influence of Paul’s Christ myth across Western civilization today…
And here we get to the real destructive outcomes/consequences of threat theology on humanity. The historians have done the homework uncovering the themes of Paul’s apocalyptic millennial mythology (i.e. in his Christ myth) as driving themes behind last centuries mass-death crusades. That should be the “news story of the century” but it has been largely ignored, dismissed.
The Christ is Paul’s rejection of the stunning new theology of Jesus to retreat back to re-affirm primitive threat theology. He states his shamefully egregious rejection of Jesus, and consequent burial of his theology/message, in places like Romans 12: 17-20, where he quotes an Old Testament verse to express his contrary theology, i.e. “’Vengeance is mine, I will retaliate’, says the Lord”. That is a direct rejection of the new theology of Jesus that “God was non-retaliatory”. Add Paul’s repeated statements in Romans on “the wrath of God”, and John’s highlighting of an angry Christ “trampling out the fury of the wrath of God” (Revelation 19) before casting all unbelievers into the lake of fire to be tortured for eternity.
Erika Kirk (Charlie’s wife) recently re-affirmed her personal fear of this threat theology as her motivation for forgiving Charlie’s murderer (my paraphrase of her comments, “I have to do this so I can get into heaven and see Charlie again. If I don’t do this, then God won’t let me into heaven”). So also, Muhammad Ali’s wife said (at his funeral) that fear of the Islamic judgment and hell (threat theology) was the motivation of Ali for doing the good works that he did over the later years of his life.
Paul’s reaffirmed threat theology in his Christ myth with the main features of (1) Zoroastrian tribal dualism (the “saved” true believers of Christ are set in eternal warfare with the unbelievers who side with Satan).
(2) The feature of “Lord Jesus” who defeats all enemies, subjugates all, ruling eternally with the “rod of iron” totalitarianism.
And (3) the punitive retaliatory Christ who ultimately destroys all (all enemies, all life, the world) through the violence of apocalypse and then hell (Revelation).
This mythology has shaped Western consciousness and narratives validating endless crusades of “salvation through destruction”- i.e. murder the right people to achieve salvation (as per the sacrifice mythology), destroy your enemies to achieve your better future of millennium paradise. This mythology/thinking has been exposed by historians as driving the Nazi violence in clearing the way for the installation of their millennial Reich (after destroying Jewish Bolshevism).
These Christ themes, (apocalyptic millennialism, salvation achieved through murder and destruction), have also been revealed as guiding and driving early Marxist leadership in their crusade that promoted violent revolution as necessary to destroy enemies and clear the way for the restoration of the lost communalism utopia.
The historians have also tagged the same themes of Christ’s apocalyptic millennialism behind the contemporary crusade of environmental alarmists to engage their revolution to purge industrial societies (Net Zero, decarbonization) as required to clear the way for restoration of green utopia (restoration of a more wilderness world with severely reduced human presence/population- defusing the “population bomb”).
So much horrific damage from a complex of ideas/themes/beliefs that were most iconically embedded in Paul’s Christ myth and have subsequently functioned as significant contributing factors driving crusades of mass-destruction, mass-death across Western civilization, notably in the last century.
Sources: Arthur Herman’s “The Idea of Decline In Western History”, Richard Landes’ “Heaven On Earth: Varieties of the Millennial Experience”, Arthur Mendel’s “Vision and Violence”, David Redles’ “Hitler’s Millennial Reich”, among others.
As the military guy said (my paraphrase), you won’t’ solve the repeating eruptions of violence between people until you properly go after the root contributing ideas that drive such eruptions. He was speaking mainly to the ISIS-type violence across the Mid-East. But the same core themes have been detected behind the so-called “secular” ideologies that have been driving other mass-harm and mass-death movements like Marxist revolutions, Nazism, and environmental alarmism.
Add Richard Landes’ argument that you have learned nothing if you just see the monsters, the madmen who lead such movements of destruction (i.e. Hitler). You have to look beyond them to the apocalyptic millennial themes that have incited, guided, and validated their destruction. Those ideas have carried societies into mass-death outcomes.
The project before us is the Jefferson/Tolstoy project to recover the “diamonds” of Jesus from the “dung” of Paul’s Christology, showing that the theology and message of Jesus is entirely different from Paul’s theology and message.
This is more than just tinkering with reformism around the periphery of our great religious traditions. It is a call to go to the very core of our belief systems just as Historical Jesus did and overturn the Cohering Center of such narratives- the very God image that has long dominated such traditions, giving life to an entire complex of related bad ideas with horrific outcomes in deforming human minds, emotions, motivations, and responses/behaviors.
Historical Jesus presented us a stunning new ultimate Ideal and Authority, a stunning new image of a God who was non-retaliatory, non-tribal, non-dominating (true greatness was- “Do not lord over others, but serve others”, with that statement he entirely revolutionized our understanding of “God is great”). He offered a stunning new image of a God who included all equally, generously forgiving without demand for sacrifice/payment as illustrated in his “sun and rain given to both good and bad people”, and in the Prodigal Father story.
We have the tools today to uncover the “diamonds” of Jesus, long “buried” by Paul’s Christology, his Christ myth (“tools” as in “Search for Historical Jesus”, “Jesus Seminar” books, “Q Wisdom Sayings’ research, etc.). It is irresponsible of us to continue to ignore the stunning Jesus breakthrough on theology, his new image of deity that could transform human thinking and narratives so entirely as to present the potential for a liberation of human mind and spirit unlike anything before in history. Freedom from the curse and damaging outcomes of threat theology.
Added note to the fellow discussion group member:
Don’t you find it amazing that all this evidence has been uncovered and laid out in good historical detail and the news media have ignored it entirely. The single greatest news story in all history- that Historical Jesus presented a stunning new theology and a message that overturned the entire complex of bad religious ideas that have dominated human narratives from the beginning. Jesus gave us the solution, the answer to the major contributing factors in mass-destruction crusades that have repeatedly been incited, motivated by that same complex of bad themes/beliefs.
Yes, people will still find other reasons to validate such destruction, but once disenfranchised of the old threat theology, they will have to engage their mass-destruction crusades without the validating affirmation from God. And that is a real blow to the primal impulse of humans for meaning and purpose. The Jesus insights/discoveries change everything.
Here below: A reposting of the core bad ideas long dominating human meta-narratives, both religious and “secular/ideological”.
The point of reposting these fallacies (bad ideas)? They continue to dominate our religious traditions and over past centuries have been “secularized” to now shape our major world “secular ideologies”. And they have consequences, outcomes in our lives and societies. Historians have traced them in driving mass-death crusades like Marxism (now reviving and spreading in the new iteration of “Woke Progressivism with DEI”). These ideas/themes also drove Nazism and now drive environmental alarmism and its mass-harm through decarbonization madness.
Why do so many continue to believe these bad ideas? Because they have long been embedded in human collective subconscious as archetypes and many today still choose their beliefs dominated by the criterion of “Emotional satisfaction, not rational thinking, and despite contrary evidence…” (Kristian Niemietz in “Socialism: The Failed Idea That Never Dies”).
This helps to understand why so many will zealously affirm climate apocalypse, despite now amassed contrary evidence from the best scientific minds that there is no climate crisis and never has been.
“The complex of “bad religious ideas” that have darkened and enslaved human minds from the beginning” Wendell Krossa (see other short versions in sections below with Grok’s comments on them).
http://www.wendellkrossa.com/?p=13571#more-13571
Here is a brief version (longer version in sections below or in the link just above) of the complex of primitive myths that includes-
(1) The baseline myth of a lost original paradise- i.e. a better past that “corrupt, evil humans” have ruined. This myth undergirds the sense of the loss of something good and, hence, now unbalanced justice demands that that the lost good must be restored in order to rebalance justice and righteousness in the cosmos and life. To make things right again. Moderns embrace this myth framed as the loss of the originally more wilderness world as paradise before too many people multiplied on Earth (“population bomb” hysteria).
Consequent to the myth that a better past has been ruined, primitive mythology pivoted to (2) blame people, to blame humanity as the evil corrupter of life that must be punished and even exterminated in order to restore the lost paradise, to “save life and the world”. In contemporary terms- Today the corrupter of nature is “greedy, consuming humans in industrial civilization” (the anti-human memes of “humanity as ‘virus, cancer’ on the Earth, an evil intruder” for seeking the improvement of the human condition using natural resources).
Even more specific today, the existential evil threat to life is greedy, consuming people using natural resources like fossil fuels that have enabled us to massively improve the human condition and enjoy the good life- this “existential threat” must be purged from life.
Then to further re-enforce the narrative that evil humans have ruined divine and pure nature (i.e. Earth as goddess, “Mother Earth”), the ancients added the intensifying element of threat that (3) life was declining toward apocalyptic ending. And to further heighten alarm, apocalyptic prophets have repeatedly set “always imminent” dates to raise hysteria levels among populations and to validate the use of desperate measures to “save” the world that is framed as always threatened by a looming apocalypse, threatened by evil enemies who are causing the looming end of the world in some manner.
In the environmental versions of apocalypse, people consuming too much of the world’s resources is the great threat that will end life. Such versions hold the myth of “limited resources”, as per, for example, Bill Rees’s “Ecological Footprint” fallacy.
Apocalyptic alarmists have also introduced the element of “hope” into the mix, a perverse version of hope that is built on the violent destruction of enemies (“salvation/utopia achieved through destruction”). In the salvation schemes of these alarmists, specially enlightened elites (i.e. whether priesthoods, religious authorities, or secular versions) lecture/scold the ignorant and unenlightened commoners on what they must do to be saved from imminent destruction and death- i.e. (4) demand some form of sacrifice/payment (enlightened elites validated in using state coercion).
Examples of contemporary sacrifice- “de-growth, de-development”, that argues for a return to primitivism as in the return to the more “pure and strong” existence of “noble savage” life as hunter-gathers with minimal or no ecological footprint (more “connected” to nature through low consumption). Add to this sacrifice/payment element, the redistribution programs pushed in the neo-collectivist crusades of today.
Couch this madness in a deformed version of the hero’s quest where those identifying as “true believer” heroes/messiahs must engage a righteous battle to conquer and (5) violently purge a purported monster/enemy that framed as demonized fellow humans. This takes validation from Zoroaster’s myth of cosmic dualism, that a great Good God (Ahura Mazda) must fight and destroy a great evil Force/Spirit (Angra Mainyu).
And when the enemy is fully purged/exterminated, then (6) salvation is attained in a renewed communal paradise, some “millennialism” utopia.
Critical to understand in this set of primitive themes is- What is the driving Force behind this complex? What is the “cohering center” of this complex that has deformed minds and wreaked so much destruction across history? What validates the rest of the ideas in the complex? Understand and overturn this central Ideal/Authority and you are making significant progress toward resolving the worst of human thought and behavior from our ancestors.
The cohering center is the “wrathful” deity of all primitive mythologies (threat theology), the deity pissed at humans for ruining his original perfect paradise. Hence, the subsequent threats of divine retaliation toward humanity by violently destroying the entire world in an apocalypse. The mother of all hissy fits. Followed by divine demands for sacrifice/payment/suffering as required conditions to achieve redemption.
The cohering center of the apocalyptic millennial complex of myths is the human-constructed image of a violent, destroying God who threatens people in this life through natural disasters, disease, accidents, and predatory cruelty, and then further threatens people with after-life harm that adds sting to death. This “monster God” is the central issue to deal with in apocalyptic millennial complexes of myths. This psycho-pathological vision of deity has dominated mythologies and religions across history and has now been transformed into secular/ideological systems of belief to also dominate those. I.e. “Vengeful Gaia, punitive Universe, angry Planet/Mother Earth, payback karma”, etc.
These deeply embedded themes, long entrenched in human psyches as subconscious archetypes, help explain why emotional satisfaction, not rational evidence is behind our choice in beliefs. Hence, many people simply respond to contemporary apocalyptic millennial narratives, whether Marxist collectivism or climate apocalyptic, because they “feel” right, good, just, and true. They resonate with deeply embedded archetypes from our primitive past.
And to show that this site does not pick on any one religious tradition, for the reason that they all share the same complex of core themes (inherited from our primitive ancestors and passed down embodied as archetypes of the subconscious). Every religion has framed those core themes in their diverse traditions with minor adjustments while preserving the basic threat theology and conditional nature of all religion.
This point is made to contrast all religion, notably Christianity, with the stunning new theology of historical Jesus that God was non-threatening, non-retaliatory, and non-religious because unconditional. No religion has ever communicated these insights and Paul intentionally buried them under his highly retaliatory, highly conditional Christ myth (the Christ as the ultimate cosmic sacrifice, the demanded condition to satisfy a highly conditional deity).
When considering the origin of religion in the ancient past (e.g. John Pfeifer’s “Explosion: An Inquiry into the Origins of Art and Religion”), note the element of fear that was introduced by the earliest shaman as they constructed the earliest elements of religion as their tool to control others (and yes, the “numinous” feature was also in the mix).
Those shaman/priests appealed to the invisible world of spirits/gods, claiming to know the secrets to that realm, thereby elevating themselves as special people in the tribal groups, as either divine in some manner or as the authentic representatives of the divine. That validated their impulse to dominate others, along with using fear and promising salvation (how to appease angry spirits and regain health or avoid death).
Those early shaman were the earliest elites, initiating the more formal “elite/commoner” divide in human societies where informal versions had already long existed based on age, strength/power, skills, gender, etc.
Anyway…
An important reposting:
Themes to unite Sapiens around (the best of a “force” propelling us toward a humane future), Wendell Krossa
Yuval Harari in “Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind” notes that from 70,000 to 30,000 years ago our species Homo sapiens went through the ‘Cognitive Revolution’ where we discovered new ways of thinking and communicating. We created language that enabled us to communicate meaning. The humans of that period learned to communicate more than just information about the physical world around them. They also learned to imagine and communicate fictitious things that do not exist at all and to do so “collectively”.
During this era of the Cognitive Revolution, early Sapiens began to construct legends, myths, gods and religions for the first time. And “This ability to speak about fictions is the most unique feature of Sapiens language” (p.27). This ability has continued into the modern era as along with religious fictions we have learned to create “fictious” ideologies, scientific theories, and visions of the future. It should be noted however, that the core themes of our “fictions” often consistently remain the same.
Harari is setting the stage for understanding how early humans were able to move beyond small groups of essentially extended families to live cooperatively in much larger groups, eventually in empires and states of millions of people. He suggests the secret to this “urbanization” transition was “the appearance of fiction. Large numbers of strangers can cooperate successfully by believing in common myths… Any large-scale human cooperation- whether a modern state, a medieval church, an ancient city, or an archaic tribe- is rooted in common myths that exist only in people’s collective imaginations”, (p.30).
He includes such “fictions” as limited liability companies (“legal fictions”), religious systems, systems of laws, nation states, etc.
He continues, “Much of history revolves around this question: how does one convince millions of people to believe particular stories about gods, or nations, or limited liability companies? Yet when it succeeds, it gives Sapiens immense power, because it enables millions of strangers to cooperate and work towards common goals… An imagined reality is something that everyone believes in, and as long as this communal belief persists, the imagined reality exerts force in the world”, (p.35).
This leads to the question of what story would function as a truly “humane force” to carry/propel us cooperatively toward a more humane future? What features/myths/beliefs would operate best to do so?
My proposal for a set of alternative features to what we have inherited from the past:
“Humanity’s worst ideas, better alternatives” (Old story themes, new story alternatives).
http://www.wendellkrossa.com/?p=9533
The identification and rejection of inherited bad ideas, now long embedded as archetypes of the collective unconscious, is a first necessary step to undergo, the “death” side of the “death/rebirth” process, the “disintegration” side of the “disintegration/re-integration” process. We emerge from these experiences/processes, hopefully, with new insights and narrative themes that affirm the better impulses of our natures, that affirm our human spirit and self.
I would choose themes that arouse deeply and intuitively felt impulses from the common human spirit in us, what many of us felt, for example, when Erika Kirk stated in regard to her husband’s murderer, “I forgive you”. She was struggling with the precept of Jesus to “love your enemy”. I would have counseled her to wait a while before struggling with that, till some of the pain had subsided, if it ever does (i.e. the conclusion of the dentist whose wife and daughters were brutally murdered that “Whoever created the idea of ‘closure’ was a fool”). But nonetheless, Erika’s statement reduced many of us to tears. We get it Erika, what you were trying to say and do. That precept of Jesus pushes us all to think of what love really means, what it really means to try to be truly and fully human.
Narratives/stories that hold our societies together…
The current meta-narratives holding our liberal democracy states together constitute a hodge podge of the principles, systems of law, and representative institutions of Classic Liberalism. But these generally successful experiments in cooperative liberal democracy are under constant assault by residual bad ideas in the religious traditions and ideologies held by many in these same nation states.
The forces at work to undermine liberal democracy come from both sides of our population divides- i.e. a complex of “bad religious ideas” are held and promoted on the right or conservative side, inciting many toward advocacy for theocracy-type narratives and policies applied to whole societies, and thereby crossing the boundary between state and religion. Similarly bad ideas are held on the left or “liberal” side, but in “secularized” versions, with the left/liberal side having now become highly “illiberal” and pushing more for revived collectivism approaches.
We need constant re-affirmation of the basic principles of liberal democracy to keep us all oriented to the fundamental things that we can all agree on. Principles, systems of common law, and representative institutions that serve the people and protect the rights and freedoms of all individuals, equally.
(End of Harari material)
Add here that also critical to reaffirming liberal democracy is to reaffirm the guiding and validating archetypes of our collective unconscious that have always been informed by people following their primal impulse to meaning and purpose, hence, speculating on ultimate reality, ideals, as in theology and related “spiritual” insights. I would offer the the non-religious wisdom sayings of Historical Jesus as the best alternative to the previous history of religious speculations.
A preface note to the “recap” below:
Just to add to this above comment- “all tightly related religions that have shared a historically descending trajectory of the same set of core themes.”
A note for emphasis: While there is obviously the common set of features in both Christianity and Islam that are listed below, the core commonality between religions like Christianity and Islam is the belief in a wrathful God who promises violent destruction through apocalypse and hell (i.e. threat theology). That “Cohering Center” of these religions undergirds and validates all else in their narratives- i.e. the demanded conditions for unquestioning belief, submission to religious authorities, and faithful religious practise (fulfill the rituals, payments, religious lifestyle, and promotion of the religion- i.e. seek converts, etc.).
And as I noted previously, when people make comparisons between Christianity and Islam- “Christianity gets a pat on the back for including the “Q Wisdom Sayings” message of Historical Jesus, something that Islam did not include that would have helped to moderate the tribal impulse to violent retaliation against unbelievers.”
This is a critically important point- The “diamond” insights of Historical Jesus (Thomas Jefferson’s term) embody the potent counter to the prominent features of Paul’s Christ myth, features that have long functioned to incite, guide, and validate people’s worst impulses to harm others- i.e. features such as angry deity judging all human failure (see Paul’s letter to Romans, Thessalonians), God/Christ tribally excluding unbelievers (again, affirmed throughout Paul’s New Testament letters), God/Christ demanding submission (“Lord Christ” ruling with a rod of iron), the divine demand to join a ”true religion” and enter battle against false religions and demonic enemies that must be exterminated whether in this life or the next, and God/Christ promising violent ultimate destruction (Romans, Revelation), etc.
The “stunning new theology” of Jesus (his new image of God) rejected judgment, tribal exclusion (sun and rain given to all alike), submission (do not lord over others), and violent destruction (no “eye for eye” retaliation), etc.
Muhammad missed the powerful benefits of Jesus’ “Q Wisdom Sayings” when he did not include that material in his new religion. He certainly would have heard about it as he listened to his spiritual mentor, the Ebionite priest Waraqa (a Jewish or Ebionite Christian), as he expounded from the Gospel to the Hebrews (the early version of Matthew’s gospel). And most certainly Waraqa would have taught Muhammad the similar content of Matthew’s gospel.
Insert: It helps to inform ourselves of the good research of the Jesus Seminar and especially the research on “Q Wisdom Sayings” in order to clearly grasp the profound differences between the messages of Historical Jesus and Paul’s contrary Christology, an embodiment of Hellenism. Most helpful are the essays of Bob Brinsmead on this:
“The Historical Jesus: What the Scholars are Saying”
https://bobbrinsmead.com/the-historical-jesus-what-the-scholars-are-saying/
“The Doctrine of Christ and the Triumph of Hellenism”
https://bobbrinsmead.com/the-doctrine-of-christ-and-the-triump-of-hellenism/
Here’s a little recap of similar material further below, posted earlier on this site… Wendell Krossa
I saw a video clip of Bill Maher arguing that Islam was worse than Christianity for issues like intolerance and violence. He seems unaware of the actual history of these religions and that Islam is the direct offspring of Jewish Christianity or the early “Jewish Jesus” movement that was contrary to Paul’s Hellenist Christ-ianity. Another name for the Jewish Jesus movement was Ebionism (Ebionites). These- the Jewish Jesus movement and Paul’s Christ-ianity- were two dominant and entirely contrary movements in early Christianity, movements governed by entirely contrary themes or beliefs.
The Jewish Jesus people, or Ebionites, believed that Jesus was a prophet blessed of God but not God himself. And their movement held that Jesus said nothing about being a sacrifice for sin. That was the distortion of Jesus (i.e. coming to be a sacrifice for sin) that Paul introduced in his new Christ-ianity religion (not really “new” in that it embraced the themes of ancient Hellenism and other primitive mythical themes- see Helmut Koester’s “History, Culture, and Religion of the Hellenistic Age”).
We see intimations of the conflict between Paul and the Jesus movement in the New Testament. The Jewish Jesus movement embraced and promoted Jesus’ actual Q Wisdom Sayings message, hence also called the Q Wisdom movement. Paul’s Christ-ianity was a Hellenist movement set in direct conflict with that actual movement of Jesus.
The Jewish movement was led by Jesus’ brother James, and Jesus’ friend/follower Peter. Note how intensely Paul hated and opposed the Jesus Q Wisdom movement. He goes after its leaders, James and Peter, in statements such as Galatians 1:8-9, where he curses them with damnation. Paul also intolerantly condemned and vilified the Q Wisdom movement of Jesus in 1 Corinthians, mocking and dismissing it as “worldly wisdom”.
“The wisdom of this world is foolishness in God’s sight”, 1 Corinthians 3: 19.
The Jewish followers of Jesus viewed Paul’s Christ-ianity as heretical, just as the Old Testament prophets protested the sacrifice industry and its priesthood as heretical. They stated things like, “What makes you think I want all your sacrifices?” says the LORD. “I am sick of your burnt offerings of rams and the fat of fattened cattle. I get no pleasure from the blood of bulls and lambs and goats…. For in the day that I brought them out of the land of Egypt, I did not speak to your fathers or command them concerning burnt offerings and sacrifices”, and other similar statements in Amos, Jeremiah, Isaiah, etc.
But the victors in battles get to state who is promoting truth and who is presenting error, so Paul’s Christ-ianity demonized the Jewish Jesus movement as heresy and persecuted them till they were scattered. Some of those Ebionites fled to the Arabian Peninsula where they established congregations/synagogues that persisted over subsequent centuries, even up to around 600 CE when Muhammad emerges in Mecca.
How Islam was created as a version of Jewish Christianity/Ebionism (one source- Joseph Azzi’s “The Priest and the Prophet”):
Muhammad’s first wife was Khadija. Her cousin in Mecca was Waraqa, the priest of a local Ebionite congregation. Waraqa then become the spiritual mentor of Muhammad and taught him all that he knew about God and religion.
The Ebionites, again, viewed Jesus as just a prophet of God, not divine himself. And they did not believe that he was a sacrifice for sin. Ebionites also embraced water purification rites and practices and did not eat pork.
Scholars say that Waraqa taught Muhammad using the gospel to the Hebrews, an early version of Matthew’s gospel, which he also had translated. He used those books, among others, to instruct Muhammad.
Note in Matthew the pattern of stating that those who rejected Jesus’ miracles were then damned to hell, to being cast out into outer darkness where there was weeping and gnashing of teeth (a favorite statement of Matthew’s). Then note in the Quran that very same pattern of claiming that those who reject the message and the messenger (i.e. Muhammad) will be cast into hell, into the fire from which there is no escape. Such warnings are on almost every page of the Quran. Exact replicas of Matthew’s archetypal statements.
So also in Islam we find the practices of water purification and the prohibition on eating pork.
Interesting that as Muhammad borrows and replicates in his Quran what Waraqa is teaching him from the gospel of the Hebrews and Matthew’s gospel, Muhammad claims that he is getting this teaching as visions in a cave, so as to frame his ideas as revelations directly from God. No, he was actually just embracing the core themes of Waraqa’s Jewish Christianity. And that enrages Islamic theologians today to admit that.
So c’mon Bill Maher, enough of the “Islam is worse than Christianity” stuff. Both share the same core themes, just as all the other historical descendants of such ideas do today, both religious and “secular/ideological”. Just as you do Bill, with your climate apocalypse nonsense. No different from the core themes of Islam and Christianity, though you claim to be “non-religious”. Ya right. Read Richard Landes, Arthur Herman, Arthur Mendel, David Redles and others, who have done good homework revealing that all these religions, along with contemporary secular variants like Marxism, Nazism, and environmental alarmism, always replicate the very same apocalyptic millennial themes along with the larger complex of related bad ideas that that this site posts regularly.
There is nothing new under the sun. And why are we all fighting and killing one another when so many of us believe exactly the same core narrative themes?
How many view themselves today as “secular, humanist, materialist/atheist even” yet go about mouthing the very same primitive themes of all past religious traditions, just framed in what they believe to be new “secular/ideological” versions, with new terminology, definitions, etc.
Getting a clear grip on the profound difference between the core themes of Historical Jesus and Paul’s Christ myth will help to expose such confusion and provide clarity on better alternatives to the old threat theologies of religious traditions.
Note:
The point in this is how we succumb even in the modern age to the most primitive and barbaric ideas and then wonder why we continue to suffer through endless eruptions of the “madness of crowds”, as in repeated Marxist revolutions (the same old collectivism now framed in “Far-left Woke Progressivism”), Nazi horrors, and now environmental alarmism crusades (climate apocalypse hysteria) that propose to ruin our societies with salvation schemes like Net Zero, banning the fossil fuels that provide the very energy driving our civilization and providing the 6000 “fossil fuel derivatives” that grant us the many benefits of our much improved human condition.
We have not yet heeded the warning of Richard Landes to beware apocalyptic ideas that hold the potential to carry societies into mass-death movements as they have done in Marxism and Nazism.
AI Overview presents this on Ebionism (I am not affirming all this. See Bob Brinsmead’s essays on this)
“Ebionism was an early Jewish Christian movement in the first few centuries CE that viewed Jesus as a human Messiah and prophet, not God, insisting on strict adherence to Jewish law, such as circumcision and dietary rules. They rejected Jesus’ divine nature and virgin birth, believed he was adopted as God’s son due to his perfect righteousness, and revered James the Just, the brother of Jesus, as his true successor. Ebionites also rejected Paul the Apostle as an apostate and used a version of the Gospel of Matthew that excluded the virgin birth narrative.”
Key Characteristics of Ebionism
• Messianic Jesus:
They affirmed Jesus as the promised Jewish Messiah and prophet but rejected the common Christian belief in his divinity.
• Human Messiah:
They believed Jesus was a human being, the natural son of Joseph and Mary, who became God’s son at his baptism through his perfect obedience to the Law of Moses.
• Adherence to Jewish Law:
The Ebionites, meaning “the poor ones” in Hebrew, placed great importance on following the Jewish law, which included circumcision, keeping a kosher diet, and observing the Sabbath.
• Rejection of Pauline Theology:
They saw Paul as a false apostle who had abandoned Jewish tradition and law.
• Veneration of James the Just:
They revered James, the brother of Jesus, as the true successor to Jesus’ ministry, not Peter.
• Gospel of the Ebionites:
They utilized a specific version of the Gospel of Matthew that did not include the virgin birth or genealogy of Jesus.
Relationship to Early Jewish Christianity
• Continuation of Jewish Roots:
Ebionism represents a form of Jewish Christianity that emphasized keeping Jewish identity and traditions central to Christian belief.
• A Reaction to the Gentile Mission:
Some scholars suggest their theology was a response to the law-free Gentile mission of early Christianity, emphasizing the continuing relevance of the Law for believers.
Decline
• Orthodox Pressure:
The Ebionites eventually declined as Christian orthodoxy was established, with some choosing to return to Judaism and others integrating into more mainstream forms of Christianity.
(End of AI Overview statements)
Finding gems in strange places, Rogan and guest Jordan Jensen Wendell Krossa
This one, like so many other Rogan interviews, surprises because with this guest they start out as two comedians “talking shit” about nonsense stuff, gossip, but then later around the 30 to 45 minutes mark they shift into some fascinating personal experiences and insights. How both of them find out things about themselves through the use of psychedelics, “medicines” that are better understood now as therapeutics because of the public shift away from the previous history of demonizing them as “illegal drugs” (Schedule 1 or Class 1) to many now embracing them for their helpful qualities. Notable here are DMT and “Acid” (LSD), along with mushrooms and others.
Jensen offers some detail on her struggles with OCD, especially with washing her hands. She discovered through her use of Acid that her issue was that she did not trust herself. She believed that she might do something dangerous or bad (i.e. touch something contaminating which also has a normal safety element to it). She said that she had to learn that was wrong, to not trust herself. She had to learn to believe in herself, to trust herself and she then learned to deal with her OCD better, something we all suffer from to varied degrees and in different ways.
Good insight here from real life experiences. Jensen talks about her urges to do something crazy in public, common among many people who have to learn to fight such urges. Her urge was the urge to bite some famous person, like a movie star that she was sitting next to once (i.e. it was Laura Dern).
She did not trust this urge in herself and once gave into it and jumped off a ski lift that fortunately was close to the ground. I think also of a guy in a large Sunday morning church audience who shouted out nonsense, unable to control his urge to do something crazy. That illustrates this crazy urge thing, that some get standing near a cliff- i.e. the urge to jump.
The point that Joe and Jensen make is that they find help in therapeutics. Very interesting.
As Joe says regarding the DMT “entities” that he met during his experience (Jordan Peterson and others also talk about these), they are conscious beings that know us and tell us just what is wrong with us and how to correct it. They offer wise insights and advice. This is very interesting.
Jensen’s point on how she got a hold of her OCD was also good, because, as she says, giving way to obsessions then “builds neuronal grooves in our brains that are hard to overcome”, pathways that are hard to break. She is good on varied common struggles that we all face. She had to overcome her obsession with not touching contaminated things which is not just about physical contamination but also fear of mental/emotional contamination, perhaps from hearing or viewing bad things. And she did what therapists urge people to do- i.e. encourage yourself to engage voluntary exposure to those things that we fear and learn that they don’t harm us, that our fears are overblown and not presenting us with real dangers.
And so much more…
“Joe Rogan Experience #2380 – Jordan Jensen”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=laLx9PryjFE&t=1137s
Quibble notes re Rogan: Understanding another version of collectivism, Wendell Krossa
Rogan touches on “socialism” as he has done before and muddles again the meaning and essential nature of socialism by sloppily using that term that describes a very well-defined ideological system and applying it incorrectly to agencies like local fire departments, or programs like universal health care (e.g. Canada’s medical system).
Rogan then claims that socialism is about compassion. Well Joe, sincerity in believing that you are motivated with the best of intentions (love) and doing something righteous does not guarantee good outcomes, compassionate outcomes. The motivating factor driving socialism is more correctly understood as “suicidal empathy” as Gad Saad will tell you and Thomas Sowell will illustrate for you, because you get the same old destructive outcomes from every socialist experiment across the past century or so, all 24 major examples. All despite the framing by leaders that they were about “social justice”, “equity”, and compassion for the “oppressed”.
Socialism advocates an approach for organizing society that elevates the “common or greater good, the collective” over individual rights and freedoms. And some “enlightened elite” must run the collective “for the people, on behalf of the people”, something that is never the actual result, and cannot be the outcome, as Kristian Niemietz states.
Quote from his “Socialism: The Failed Idea That Never Dies”:
“Socialism in the sense which self-identified democratic socialists define it… a democratized economic planned collectively by ‘the people’, has never been achieved anywhere and could not be achieved. Economic planning can only ever be done in a technocratic, elitist fashion, and it requires an extreme concentration of power in the hands of the state. It cannot ‘empower’ ordinary workers. It can only ever empower bureaucratic elites.”
The “greater or common good” that is proclaimed by socialism is the collective that is elevated above individual rights and freedoms. And that inevitably results in the undermining of individual freedoms and rights which is where all genuine socialist experiments have ended. Consider also that Marx’s number one evil to be banned, first and foremost, was private property. Socialists accomplish this by “nationalizing sectors of the economy” as in coercively taking ownership of private businesses, taking possession of “the means of production”.
And that undermines freedom, and liberal democracy in general. All truly socialist experiments ultimately end in the same destructive mess that we are observing in Venezuela, the latest example of “true socialism/collectivism”. And that, after Chavez promised to offer something new and different, not Stalinist.
Again… Governing elites/bureaucrats, the “enlightened vanguards” of socialist crusades, believe that they know best how to organize society on behalf of all others. Consequent to that self-delusional viewpoint, the elites centralize power and control (on behalf of or for the people). Once again, after all, someone has to run the collective. And that must be the enlightened elite. The deformity of society starts right there, in that centralizing of power and control that directly undermines individual rights and freedoms.
Which approach protects liberal democracy best…
Our Western democracies have long struggled with the issues of how to soften and correct the sometimes harsher outcomes of free markets. Citizens to the left believe some form of soft socialism is the route to take, as in increasing the role and size of government by increasing state programs and bureaucracies (in size and number) with the consequent demand for more taxation to support the expanding state bureaucracy (i.e. state elites/bureaucrats taking citizen’s income to spend it on their behalf, believing they know better how to spend it). Add also the natural trend of bureaucratic elites to increase regulations, often letting that trend get out of control till states end interfering and controlling individual citizen’s lives in onerous detail, again, believing the state knows better how to run the society, than the citizens do. That denies the common citizen’s impulse to do the right thing. And it denies citizens their self-determination and personal control over life which is damaging to human development and independence.
So no Joe, fire departments are not socialism, nor is universal health care socialism. Such agencies and institutions are more like basic infrastructure. So be careful to distinguish something that has consistently been such a great threat to freedom and liberal democracy. Our imperfect liberal democracies, where protected freedom and contract rights have motivated individuals to create companies, jobs, products and services, and immense wealth over the past century or so. And that creativity, unleashed in protected freedom and private property rights, has resulted in massive improvement of the human condition and enabled us to do all that we value, including protect the natural world.
The free-market system is far more truly “compassionate” in lifting billions out of the horror of poverty, despite the meddling by state elites and state bureaucrats that has often distorted the system.
As Thomas Sowell has wisely stated- It’s the consequences, the outcomes as “the test of facts” that expose the false compassion/empathy of socialism, the “suicidal empathy” that motivates socialist elites.
I would add that we need to make careful distinctions of which element is beneficial in “social democracy/democratic socialism” systems. It’s not the socialist element but the democratic element that produces the best outcomes. That has been affirmed in Sweden’s case.
Protecting individual rights and freedoms has been proven critical to developing a successful society, despite the distortions and failures that arise from elites continually meddling and corrupting free markets. Liberal democracy expressed in the free-market system has been the best means to protect human freedom and thereby produce the best outcomes for the most people. Evaluated by outcomes/consequences, it is unquestionably a more compassionate approach to organizing human society as it has lifted billions out of poverty where socialist approaches and states have consistently impoverished and immiserated billions.
Striking historical examples: Chinese collectivism coercively installed under Mao and Russian collectivism under Stalin and others.
Then the Nazi thing…
Rogan and Jensen also discussed what happened in Nazi Germany during WW2, suggesting that it must have been something “psychological” that explains why average Germans went along with that madness. Well yes, “something psychological” because Germany was a Christian nation with previous centuries of teaching the population basic Christian ideas/beliefs. That built a mental framework for German thinking, a framework built around apocalyptic millennial themes.
Hitler then comes along mouthing the core themes of Christ mythology- i.e. apocalyptic millennialism- especially during the Weimar years when it appeared that Germany was heading toward apocalyptic decline and it seemed the country faced the disastrous ending of the culture, race, and nation. Hitler’s themes, earlier dismissed as the raving of a fringe lunatic, now during the disastrous Weimar years, resonated deeply with Christian Germans. He presented himself as a messiah figure who promised the hope of national salvation into a Millennial Reich.
His message, like previous Christian belief, argued that it must be “salvation through destruction”, “salvation by murdering the right people”. In the German version of that core mythical theme, the enemy to be destroyed was Jewish Bolshevism, by means of a great final battle of extermination, the final Armageddon battle. That explains Hitler’s disastrous obsession with the Eastern front.
Hitler eventually shifted to a further extreme and presented himself as the violent Messiah of Revelation who must ever more violently destroy Germany’s enemies. His crusade of “salvation through destruction” shifted to the final stage of apocalyptic crusades- the doubling down to “exterminate or be exterminated”. He intensified the final solution of eliminating the threat to Germany, in order to save the nation, by purging German society of the corrupting Jewish Bolshevism enemy as essential to accomplish salvation and emerge into the promised millennial paradise. Those themes resonated with German minds and spirits and the power of such beliefs was that they enabled people to live in denial of the outcomes of horrific harm to others.
They were beliefs that enabled populations to believe that especially desperate times (i.e. apocalyptic threat) demanded desperate measures to save their world that was facing apocalyptic ending.