Below: Some interesting comment on the Nazis as socialists, and leftist’s refusal to accept that. It undermines a favorite smear that leftists apply to all opponents today, and exposes their “projection” in doing that.
An Australian friend posted this to our discussion group:
Subject: Humanity
“One day I hope humanity will look at each other with the same wonderment and awe as when we gaze at the stars.” (Attributed to De Waal). We need to do that today. We are stuck in a universal crisis. We seem to have lost all respect for one another. How many drones and missiles has Russia fired at Ukraine? More than 1,200! That is beyond insanity and stupidity. A diabolical evil.”
I responded:
“___, this drives my site probing and commentary- What incites and validates hatred toward differing others? What drives the ongoing eruptions of violence toward others? I probe themes like “salvation through destruction”, a dominant theme in too many of today’s meta-narratives, both religious and secular.
“As usual, this is my understanding of the human use of ‘behavior based on belief’, an ancient and still common coupling that arises from our primary impulse to meaning and purpose, our impulse as children to be like Daddy. Hence, that summary statement of Jesus, ‘Be unconditionally merciful just as your Father is unconditionally merciful’.” Wendell Krossa
Courage or cowardice?, Wendell Krossa
I have long been intrigued by human displays of either courage or cowardice in the face of crises, whether personal or larger social situations. It is something most of us feel when victims face mobs, bullies, thugs, especially at times when it matters as in some larger situation/context of an assault on basic human freedom.
We are watching a striking display of cowardice today in the birthplace of modern liberal democracy and freedom, England. Cowardice on the part of state politicians, bureaucrats, and notably police who appear to mindlessly fulfil the edicts of state elites (i.e. the “Online Safety Act” that has been undergoing abuse in “concept creep” where state elites/bureaucrats criminalize the speech, even innocuous speech, of those they don’t approve of).
Note the article below, one of many reports coming out of Britain, stories of citizens arrested for even normally innocuous expressions of their rights to free speech (“innocuous” in former times when common-sense still ruled public discourse). Citizens today in Britain are arrested for online comments. Some 12,000 such arrests per year now.
It is cowardice that gives primary rights to the threatening mobs, notably to more recent immigrants, a significant percentage who state publicly that they will not adapt to liberal democracy but seek to overthrow it and install theocracy instead. Priority rights are given to such people (freedom to attend public events), while taking those basic rights from citizens, even criminalizing harmless citizens just seeking to exercise their freedom.
These incidents of madness have become all too commonplace today in places like Britain. Do these authorities just not see or understand the critical need for ongoing defense of freedom in the face of mobs that reject and seek to overturn liberal democracy? It is shameful cowardice that gives primary rights and freedom to such mobs and denies such basic rights and freedoms to citizens.
“Ban on Jewish fans at U.K. soccer match shows the antisemitic mob is winning: The ruling in Birmingham was a shameful, cowardly decision by authorities”, Michael Higgins, Oct. 18, 2025.
https://nationalpost.com/opinion/the-antisemitic-mob-is-winning?itm_source=opinion
Higgins opens, “Police and the local council in Birmingham, England’s “second city,” have cowered to the mob and banned Jewish fans from attending a soccer match.
“It is a shameful, cowardly decision that comes only weeks after two people were killed during a terrorist attack on a synagogue in Manchester on Yom Kippur.”
Higgins continues, stating that state bureaucrats fear another terror attack and claim concern for Jewish victims. But he says that the decision by police to ban Jewish soccer fans will not prevent further such attacks but will encourage them. He moves on to apply this to our situation here in Canada because the same hatred of Jews has exploded here in firebombing of synagogues, shooting at a Jewish girls’ school, bomb threats, and other terror plots.
Higgins notes that the barbaric slaughter of Jews October 7 “is now a matter of celebration in this country.”
His point: “Mob rule is as much alive here as it is in Birmingham.”
The cowardice today is manifest, in that police, citing concerns for “safety”, deny the rights and freedoms of normal citizens with unjustified bans and this has become standard practise in places like Britain.
“It was a craven decision by authorities in a city where police have in the past often confronted and dealt with serious violence… Now the mere whiff of violence — or safety concerns — has West Midlands Police running for the hills.”
Some British politicians have protested the ban, while others have praised it.
Higgins concludes. “The political dynamics in this instance are the antisemites who are threatening the safety of fans, players and staff. And the drastic action that should have been taken was to denounce them and arrest them if they cause trouble…
“In a civilized society we tolerate the intolerable because that’s the price of freedom. But once the mob decides what is intolerable, and presses the authorities to accede to their demands, then our freedom is lost and society becomes more barbarous as a result.
“The barbarians are not at the gate; they are living among us.”
As Jordan Peterson asked an audience once, in regard to the need to stand courageously against the Woke mobs threatening to cancel any who spoke against that madness, “What do you want to be your legacy?”
Cowardice or courage? The issue is protecting liberal democracy freedom.
Now more on my site project to alleviate fear, notably existentially oriented fears, and to probe the root contributing factors to societal problems like ongoing eruptions of violence, to understand the pathology of “salvation through destruction”, and more…
Paul knew better but intentionally chose the dominant themes of primitive mythology over the “stunning new theology” of Jesus, for whatever reasons, Wendell Krossa
Here are some further points on Paul framing his Christ myth to contradict and bury Jesus’ new theme/message of unconditional theology. This is my holding Paul responsible for what he consciously, intentionally did with the Historical Jesus. We are responsible for the outcomes of what we promote, and no one is more responsible for pushing the fallacy of “salvation through destruction” than Paul. Wendell Krossa
See also below James Tabor’s points on the influence of Paul on our Western civilization.
A sample: “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.”
I repeatedly post the research of the apocalyptic millennial scholars who have revealed that apocalyptic millennial themes (central to Paul’s Christ myth) were significant drivers behind the mass-death crusades of Marxism and Nazism, and now also influence environmental alarmism. See reposting of Tabor’s statements below.
Let’s begin:
Paul obviously knew the “Q Wisdom Sayings” gospel of Jesus because it was the gospel of the Jewish followers of Jesus, the people who actually knew Jesus in person and had heard him teach. The message of Jesus was still well-known at the time of Paul, whether as an oral tradition or in some possibly written version (no extant copies).
Paul’s gospel of his Christ, to the contrary, originated from what he claimed were his “heavenly visions”, much like the messages from Moses (mountain-top experiences and burning bush), Buddha (revelations under a tree), Muhammad (cave revelations), and others. Intensely personal/subjective visions originating from inside the heads of these people. There was no outside verification of authenticity for the messages of these founders because their visions came from inside their heads.
Exception: In Muhammad’s case we have the fact of outside verification in that his mentor was the Ebionite priest Waraqa who taught him from the Gospel to the Hebrews, an early version of Matthew’s gospel that contained both the message of Jesus and, more prominently, the apocalyptic, retaliatory, destroying Christ of Paul. That outside source helps explain varied prominent themes replicated by Muhammad in the Quran.
And again, unfortunately, Muhammad did not include the moderation-affirming message of Jesus that contradicts entirely any theology of angry, threatening, destroying deity. There is no apocalypse or hell in the theology of Jesus, contrary to Paul’s Christology that dominates books like Matthew and distorts/buries the message of Jesus.
Muhammad yielded to the more dominant themes in Matthew that affirm the Christ of Paul, and his angry, threatening, destroying deity.
Historian of Christianity, James Tabor, says this about Paul’s Christ myth (“Paul and Jesus”):
“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).
Paul knew exactly what Jesus had taught. It was an undeniably clear message in the dominant Jewish Jesus movement led by James (the brother of Jesus appointed by him to lead) and Peter. However, Paul chose to ignore, dismiss, and then he outright contradicted what Jesus had taught. This is evident, for example, in 1 Corinthians 1, where Paul vilified the wisdom tradition that Jesus belonged to as “foolishness”.
Paul constructed his Christ as a reality that entirely contradicted Jesus. He stated a variety of things to dismiss the actual Jesus of history:
2 Corinthians 5- “So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer.” That is a direct rejection of the actual Historical Jesus, whom he refers to, with his usual distortion, as “Christ”.
Matthew did the same as Paul in appealing to Paul’s Hellenistic Christ, the miracle worker, to condemn any who refused the miracle-working Christ as those who were damned to hell (see, for example, Matthews comments in chapter 11: 20-24 of his gospel).
“Divinizing”- make divine, deify.
Helmut Koester, in his “History, Culture, and Religion of the Hellenistic Age”, wrote about the Hellenistic pattern of attributing things like miracles to special people. This relates to Plato’s elevation of special people as “philosopher kings”, people more specially endowed to rule others. That was validation of the ancient project of elites to establish and maintain the “elite/commoner” divide in societies. Something Jesus bluntly rejected with his statement (recorded in Matthew 20:25-27), “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be your slave.”
Koester details this in regard to the Greek practise of elevating special people over others:
“The idea of absolute monarchy, which became a reality in the establishment of the Hellenistic rulers, was rooted in Greek beliefs about the lawful rights that an extraordinary individual could claim. In Greece such people had always been honored as heroes after their death, and poets had praised them as divinely inspired human beings”, p. 34.
We understand, for example, the doctrine of the “divine right of kings” was derived from these Greek beliefs. Koester says that the “best” person should be king and could claim divine rights corresponding to Zeus’s royal office in heaven. The Roman emperors were also patterned on this ancient practise of divinizing special people, and a similar practise was followed in Egypt where Pharaohs were also considered divine.
Koester continues, commenting on “Hellenistic political biography” that was used to define the founders of religious movements. This helps to understand Paul’s framing of Jesus. Koester explains “aretalogy” from the Greek word “virtue, powerful deed”, and how Greeks used this in “cultic hymns that enumerated the great acts of a particular deity… prose narratives of the god’s miraculous acts.” He says that “such records were used in religious propaganda and recited in public”, p.131.
Koester says that in Greek minds, “extraordinary human gifts were not fundamentally different from divine powers manifested in current events… One could thus praise the divine gifts and wonderful deeds of human beings as one gave praise to the gods… The typical Hellenistic belief that divine powers are manifested in the great poets, philosophers, and rulers… some of the gods were originally human benefactors who had received divine honors for their deeds. The claim of divinity for Homer and Socrates may simply be a hyperbolic expression of admiration for great poetic or philosophical gifts”, p.131.
Hence, “Hellenistic biographies incorporate miracle stories in a strikingly uncritical manner… especially in the presentation of the life of the divine founder of a religion”, 131. We now see what Paul did with Jesus, under the influence of the widespread Hellenism of his time.
The Romans were besotted with Greek philosophy and culture and had no real mythology of their own to replace the dominant Greek influence on their belief systems and culture. As Koester says, “Roman biography owes its origin to Hellenistic influences” (p.131), with some differences.
Koester then makes these summarizing points about the Hellenistic practice of divinizing special human beings for propaganda purposes in founding and validating religions.
The practice of divinizing human beings in Roman culture ended “with the Christian lives of martyrs and saints. In the lives of the emperors, stories of political and military achievements stand side by side with narrations of prodigies and supernatural appearances, which signify both the greatness of the events and the divinity of the subject. In praise of the extraordinary and superhuman abilities of human beings, ‘panegyrical’ features frequently appear. The Christians adopted this genre of the ‘aretalogical’ biography for accounts of their founding hero, and it is not surprising that subsequent literature, especially the legends of Christian saints, is entirely dominated by miracle stories”, p.132.
(“Panegyrical”- “expressing formal, grand, and enthusiastic praise for someone or something”)
Jesus, in several almost buried points in the gospels, made statements that have been sidelined as of little importance due to the dominance of the Christ myth, but are actually central to the theology of Jesus, central to his anti-divinizing stance. Note for example that he emphasized his common humanity (his anti-special stance) in stating, “Why do you call me good?… No one is good—except God alone”, (Mark 10). He also repeatedly defined himself as just another imperfect human in identifying himself as “the son of man”, meaning “a human one, son of humans”. Just like any other common human person.
These almost buried tidbits of statements reveal the true historical person and message, so entirely contrary to the later Christology of Paul and subsequent “Christ-ianity” that would turn the Palestinian sage Jesus into the Hellenistic God. Paul constructed his Christ myth, portraying Jesus as the ultimate “Lord and Savior”, someone entirely opposite to all that Jesus actually believed and taught. As scholars note, there is nothing in the original “Q Wisdom Sayings gospel” (the closest to what Jesus actually taught) about Jesus claiming to be God or coming to offer himself as a sacrifice for the sins of humanity.
See, for example, Maurice Casey’s “From Jewish prophet to gentile God: the origins and development of New Testament Christology”.
More on Paul’s intolerance of differing gospels in the other branches of early Christianity, and his harsh condemnation of disagreeing/differing others…
Paul intolerantly damned opponents who dared to teach other gospels, such as Peter and James who taught the wisdom sayings gospel of Jesus. And I would not affirm entirely Luke’s account of what Peter taught, in his Acts history of early Christianity. Luke was Paul’s protégé and with that bias he shaped previous events to magnify Paul and his Christ gospel. Luke, like the other gospel writers, wrote history shaped in terms of theology more than as actual historical fact. Which is ‘polite-speak’ for the recognized fact that the early Christian authors did a lot of lying in their noble cause to promote Paul and his Christ myth, to “save the world”.
We get insights into Paul’s animosity toward those who taught anything that contradicted his Christ mythology, in places like Galatians 1: “Even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let them be under God’s curse”. Some scholars conclude that Paul wrote this in reference to his feud with Peter and James, the two leaders of the Jewish Jesus movement.
Paul’s intolerance and animosity toward others and their differing gospels is also evident in his mocking the “super-apostles” (Corinthians). Again, he was undoubtedly referring to Peter and James.
(Insert: Some of the varied other gospels circulated in early Christianity- i.e. gospels of Judas, Mary, Philip, Thomas, Peter, James, etc.)
Other threats by Paul toward any who believed gospels other than his Christ, see for example, 2 Thessalonians:
“God is just: He will pay back trouble to those who trouble you… This will happen when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven in blazing fire with his powerful angels. He will punish those who do not know God and do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. They will be punished with everlasting destruction and shut out from the presence of the Lord…”
Notable in Paul’s Christ gospel is the embrace of the theme of retaliatory vengeance.
This was something that Jesus had clearly rejected when he stated, “Let there be no more eye for eye response. Instead, love your enemies because God does, generously giving the good gifts of life- i.e. sun and rain for crops- to all inclusively, to both good and bad people” (see Matthew 5 and Luke 6).
In that message, Jesus had stated his stunning new theology that God did not retaliate with punitive destruction but instead loved and included bad people. He further illustrated that new theology in the “Prodigal Father” story, the Dad who welcomed the wasteful son home without conditions. He illustrated the same unconditional mercy and generosity in the vineyard owner’s treatment of the late-comers. That was an illustration of generous inclusion and mercy toward all, equally. Though it was not prescriptive of how to run a business or state economy, but more about personal choice in how to dispense of one’s personal property. Add also the Good Samaritan parable as illustrating “love of enemy”. Also, we see the element of universal inclusion in Jesus welcoming societal outcasts in to community meals.
Paul, to the contrary, exalted retaliatory vengeance toward opponents/enemies as the critically defining feature of his theology and Christ myth. He established harsh retaliatory vengeance toward “enemies” in the highest ideal and authority- i.e. God/Christ. He stated this belief straightforwardly in Romans 12: 17-20 where he affirmed theological retaliation by quoting an Old Testament statement, “’Vengeance is mine, I will retaliate/repay’, says the Lord”.
That was an intentional rejection of the God of Jesus who did not judge, did not condemn, did not exclude anyone, did not dominate others, and would not punitively destroy others. Do you get the point of Thomas Jefferson and Leo Tolstoy that Paul’s Christology “buried the diamonds of Jesus in dung”?
Paul framed his Christ myth using what were widely known, at that time, theological themes/features from Sumerian/Babylonian, Egyptian, and Jewish philosophy/mythology. Paul’s personal embrace of the features of these dominant mythologies informed his “heavenly visions of the Christ”. He borrowed themes from those primitive sources of mythology that all held traditional images of deity as tribal, dominating, and a punitive destroyer, among other features. Apocalyptic retaliatory vengeance and destruction was a particularly notable feature of Paul’s Christ, probably borrowed from his adoption of apocalyptic in late BCE era Judaism (second and first centuries as in books like Daniel).
Tabor adds this on Paul’s message, “Paul operated with a strongly apocalyptic perspective that influenced all he said or did.”
Paul’s reaffirmation of the apocalyptic myth was a central element in his rejection of Jesus’ theology of a non-retaliatory God. A God who does not retaliate is a God who would not end the world with apocalyptic destruction, the ultimate act of retaliatory vengeance.
There is probably no greater distortion of Jesus and his actual message than Paul’s reframing of Jesus’ death as the ultimate sacrifice for sin. Varied scholars (e.g. Bob Brinsmead) argue that Jesus had been killed for protesting the sacrifice industry at the Temple in Jerusalem (Matthew 21). Paul, inexplicably denying that fact, then explained Jesus’ death in terms of the mythology of a cosmic Savior sent to make a blood sacrifice to appease wrathful deity.
Tabor again, “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 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).
Insert: In my former Evangelical Christian religion, we had been taught that the Temple protest of Jesus was a protest against the sinful disrespect of the profit-taking money changers. But Bob Brinsmead explains that those “money changers” were actually selling sacrifices to visitors, sacrifices that were not available in their home areas (i.e. blemish-free sheep and goats as required by Jewish law). And the fact that Jesus used a whip, says Brinsmead, himself a farmer, meant that was used to drive out the animals, not to be used on people which would have violated Jesus’ own stand against violence.
Jesus, in his “stunning new theology” of an unconditionally loving God, had overturned the most basic beliefs of Judaism, and other prominent mythologies well-known during his time- i.e. Sumerian, Babylonian, Egyptian, Zoroastrian, Hellenist, Greek mystery religions, Platonism, etc. Those mythologies had long dominated that era and promoted ideas of deity as angry with human sin, deity as demanding blood sacrifice to appease divine wrath, and sacrifice as required for salvation from hell.
Paul, in creating his Christ-ianity, deformed Jesus entirely on this issue of sacrifice, reframing his protest against sacrifice that had led directly to his death, as instead, a divinely initiated and planned blood sacrifice to appease wrathful deity (e.g. Romans). He framed Jesus as consciously involved in offering himself as the ultimate sacrifice, contradicting Jesus own rejection of sacrifice and protest against such.
See Bob Brinsmead’s essays elaborating 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/
Paul, in drawing from the major themes of primitive mythologies, constructed his Christ to be the ultimate Messiah for all humanity and all history. He took the dominant themes of ancient theologies of wrathful, retaliatory, destroying deity, and related primitive ideas, to cosmic, universal status in his Christ.
Paul affirmed, to eventually dominate Western consciousness, narratives, and civilization, the theme of “salvation through violent destruction”. And egregiously, too many followers of Christianity over the past two millennia have defended such barbarity (i.e. human sacrifice, even child sacrifice, as exhibiting divine “love and grace”).
Again, this excellent summary by psychologist/theologian Harold Ellens,
“There is in Western culture a psychological archetype, a metaphor that has to do with the image of a violent and wrathful God (see Romans, Revelation). Crystallized in Anselm’s juridical atonement theory, this image represents God sufficiently disturbed by the sinfulness of humanity that God had only two options: destroy us or substitute a sacrifice to pay for our sins. He did the latter. He killed Christ.
“Ellens goes on by stating that the crucifixion, a hugely violent act of infanticide or child sacrifice, has been disguised by Christian conservative theologians as a ‘remarkable act of grace’. Such a metaphor of an angry God, who cannot forgive unless appeased by a bloody sacrifice, has been ‘right at the center of the Master Story of the Western world for the last 2,000 years. And the unavoidable consequence for the human mind is a strong tendency to use violence’.
“’With that kind of metaphor at our center, and associated with the essential behavior of God, how could we possibly hold, in the deep structure of our unconscious motivations, any other notion of ultimate solutions to ultimate questions or crises than violence- human solutions that are equivalent to God’s kind of violence’…
“Hence, in our culture we have a powerful element that impels us to violence, a Cruel God Image… that also contributes to guilt, shame, and the impoverishment of personality…”.
As Harold Ellens says, “If your God uses force, then so may you, to get your way against your ‘enemies’”.
Paul’s Christ themes resonated across the pagan and Gentile world of his time, propelled with help from Emperor Constantine (state coercion) and his threats of death by the sword for any refusing to convert. What other religion felt divinely validated in using the sword to convert?
The basic themes incorporated in Paul’s Christ resonated with many people affiliated with the primitive religions of his era, people who held the very same deeply embedded archetypes that had long before been shaped by primitive mythologies. The common themes rehashed in Paul’s Christ enhanced the spread of early Christianity. Long before Kristian Niemietz stated it, many responded to the endless repetition of primitive mythical themes according to “emotional satisfaction”, meaning that any new version of primitive themes resonated with deeply embedded archetypes in most people’s subconscious.
Niemietz: “Emotional satisfaction, not rational thinking, and despite contrary evidence, dominates our choice in beliefs.”
Those themes continue to resonate today, validating many in their embrace of ever new versions of “apocalyptic millennialism” (salvation through destruction). We have seen this in the widespread embrace of the “salvation through destruction” that has shaped Marxism. The outcomes of these themes? 100 million slaughtered by Marxist revolutions last century alone. That cursed collectivism continues today packaged in Woke Progressiveness with DEI. “Woke Racism” is now used to define the tribal dualism of collectivism- i.e. who belongs to either the victim or victimizer categories. Skin color is now a defining feature contrary to the dream of Martin Luther King that we move to a colorblind society.
Hence, my repeated statement that Paul is mainly responsible for ongoing eruptions of violence today, for endless crusades of “salvation through destruction” across Western history. We saw the subconscious resonance and submission to “salvation through destruction” in the German embrace of Nazism. And we see it again today in the embrace of environmental alarmism/climate apocalypse. So also, in the ongoing support for Islamic death-cultism, etc.
Added note:
The contradiction between Paul and Jesus offers an epitome illustration of the difference between bad and good, and related behaviors and outcomes in societies.
Tabor again on Paul’s influence, particularly on Western civilization. Tabor summarizes well the difference between these two and their influence on our civilization.
“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).
Interesting analysis of this modern day hero, Wendell Krossa
It has long been a truism that history’s heroes come as mixed packages of perfect/imperfect. I have viewed Trump from the beginning of that descent down the escalator as a mix of contraries. He has good business sense and experience, too often absent from people in politics and hence their horrific failures in guiding large economies.
And then Trump has the lasting stain of that encounter with Rosie O’Donell where I first became aware of his “petty vindictiveness”, apparently stemming from his “number one guiding ethic”- i.e. “eye for eye retaliation” against critics, but scaled up in his case to “10 eyes destroyed in opponents for every one that they destroy”. Phrased as, “I hit my opponents back 10 times as hard as they first hit me”.
I believe his positives far outweigh the embarrassing negatives, like the petty vindictiveness that so often has left him looking like a 2-year old in a sandbox childishly throwing sand back at critics, wailing “They started it”. During his first term, standing at a White House garden podium, he snapped back at some reporter who had asked a critical question, “You are a bad man, a bad reporter. I don’t like you.” And there was the incident after his first term Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, left, having made some critical remark about Trump. Trump’s response- “He’s as dumb as a rock”. Ouch.
But those policies. Lowered taxation. Seriously decreased regulatory burden. Consequent booming economy that benefits hundreds of millions of Americans. The first-term results showed that the lowest quintile of the population had the largest percentage median income gains (Office of Management and Budget stats?). That put the lie to Pelosi and other’s endless deranged statements that Trump “inherited Obaman’s economy” and “Trump’s policies only benefit his wealthy billionaire pals”.
I also add the fact that over three years of the Trump economy, median income gains were over $6,000. Where over 8 years of the Obama economy, median income gains were only about $6,000 total. Meaning, that without Covid and given 8 years, Trump median income gains would have been about $16,000. Nancy, that is not “inheriting Obama’s economy”.
Add that “Fascist dictators” don’t undermine their control over populations by lowered taxation. Taxation is how states coercively appropriate the money of citizens because state elites/bureaucrats arrogantly believe that they know better how to distribute it. And “dictators” don’t decrease the regulatory burden on civilians because that is how such elites intrude into and control the lives of citizens. So no, he certainly is not a “Hitlerian fascist dictator”. Nonsense.
But yes, there are troubling signs in the Trump administration of the “former oppressed becoming the new oppressors”. Matt Taibbi and others have warned about such things in regard to crackdowns on the offensive speech of opponents, etc.
Anyway, here is some interesting analysis of the (her term), “boy-man” president by Barb Kay of National Post. I am not fully with her on “arrested psychological development” to diminish what may be more just the unique personal expression of a free and confident person.
“Trump willed peace plan into being. Give the man his victory lap: Trump’s arrested psychological development was the base metal for alchemical transmutation into political gold”, Barbara Kay, Oct. 18, 2025
Kay begins, stating that after a grueling weekend finalizing the Israeli peace accord, Trump appeared as unflagging and “peppy” at the end as he was at the beginning. She then compared Trump to the boy-man in the movie “Big”, starring Tom Hanks, the story of man who remains boyish and yearns for childhood’s “soothing, responsibility-free simplicities”.
She concludes, “That’s Trump. Except for the part about being conflicted and yearning to escape responsibility. No matter how complex it gets, Trump’s ‘fun job’ has him on a permanent high. Other oldies, like me, look in the mirror and see a memento mori. Trump looks in the mirror and sees the fresh-faced boy whose destiny it is to awe the world with his superhuman power and charisma, bending all other kingpins to his iron will. And behold: The fantasy has legs.”
Kay continues, stating in regard to the Mid-East peace accord, that “Trump’s haters are amazed and frustrated by this feat. It makes no sense.”
Where all previous presidents failed at Mid-East solutions, “Trump’s wildly inflated ego and ridiculous personality should have proved anathema to success. Instead, here he is, ‘bestrid(ing) the narrow world like a Colossus,’ as Shakespeare’s Cassius says with incredulity of Julius Caesar. Incredulity and envy: ‘Upon what meat doth this our Caesar feed/That he is grown so great?’”
She adds, “I’m not arguing for Trump as the reincarnation of Caesar, only for what a demotically-attuned, bullish individual’s sense of destiny, aided by a political vacuum produced by ‘petty men’ — in this case, Democrats in thrall to pernicious woke theories — can achieve.”
Kay says that children blurt out truths that adults have learned to suppress, children see what they see “unfiltered by abstract theories. They haven’t yet been schooled by charlatans into believing demonstrable falsehoods, and so they don’t feel constrained from stating the obvious.”
“Amongst other entrenched charlatan-sponsored harms that ‘adults’ wouldn’t touch, but that boy-man Trump quickly mitigated or ended are: America’s catastrophically open border; the subjugation of women to a stupid, misogynistic theory in NCAA sport; divisive and corrosive DEI considerations in federal contracting; toleration of extreme antisemitism on university campuses; a reversal to seriously declining military recruitment; funding to Hamas-riddled UNRWA; and a crushing setback to Iran’s nuclear-weapons obsession, thus ending the Iran-Israel war, not to mention playing a substantial role in de-escalating or ending several other wars.”
And now with his 20-point peace plan, she says that Trump has achieved his crowning success. She says he willed it into being and has earned his victory lap.
This interesting comment on the Nazis as socialists, Wendell Krossa
Beyond the more “surface ideology” of socialism, the Nazis embraced the same fundamental themes of “apocalyptic millennialism” (salvation through destruction) that similarly drove (and still drives) Marxist revolution. Ditto for the same themes driving environmental alarmism and its climate apocalypse crusade that seeks the destruction of industrial civilization as necessary to restore the lost paradise of a more wilderness world with severely restricted numbers of humans, or “without humans”.
“Salvation through destruction” is about the felt obligation/necessity to destroy what exists, imperfect as even the best of present systems are, to achieve some imagined “utopian perfection” alternative. And as Arthur Mendel so brilliantly details (“Vision and Violence”), salvation through destruction processes feed the impatience of the revolutionary for “instantaneous coercive purging/purification” of what is viewed as wrong, an impatience with the “gradualism processes” of messy liberal democracy.
“Yes, the Nazis were socialists: Pierre Poilievre has enraged his critics by being historically accurate”, Carson Jerema, Oct. 17, 2025
Jerema opens:
“Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre is quite talented at causing his enemies’ minds to explode. His latest missive on social media this week pointing out that ‘Nazi socialism’ was indeed a form of socialism set off a thousand furiously self-righteous posts. Leaving aside for the moment whether it was wise for Poilievre to make this point, it is neither inaccurate nor misleading to say that Germany’s National Socialist party was ‘socialist’ in much more than name, as much as Poilievre’s left-wing critics want to pretend otherwise.”
He then lists some of the pretenders and their pretenses: Those who call Poilievre’s history “Fake”, and mock his lack of knowledge on the subject, as one professor said, “Once again, as somebody who is literally a professor studying totalitarianism, I am telling you that the Nazis were not socialists.”
Says Jerema, “You get the picture. To his critics, Poilievre is either ignorant or deliberately misrepresenting history to compare his opponents on the left to the Nazis.
“This debate, if you can call it that, boils down to definitions of socialism. Those adamant that the Nazis were not socialists will argue that socialism refers to owning the means of production, meaning public or state-owned enterprises. The Nazis, while in power, controlled the economy, not through state ownership, however, but through subsidies and various forms of coercion, while permitting most industry to be privately held.”
Why the defensive reaction of the liberal/leftist-types to Poilievre’s comments?
“To his critics, Poilievre is either ignorant or deliberately misrepresenting history to compare his opponents on the left to the Nazis.”
This most common smear of leftists today, that all opponents are “Nazis”, appears to be another incident of psychological “projection”. The claim that the Nazis were socialists may be hitting too uncomfortably close to home for leftists holding similar ideological positions, if Poilievre is right.
“AI Overview
“When someone is “projecting,” they are unconsciously attributing their own unacceptable feelings, thoughts, or flaws to another person. It’s a defense mechanism where a person shifts their own negative emotions, like jealousy or anger, onto someone else to avoid confronting them within themselves.”
Jerema continues: “At minimum, a government coercing private business to align their actions with the objectives of the state sounds a lot like the efforts of many contemporary governments trying to do the same, but for environmental reasons. The World Economic Forum’s notion of “stakeholder capitalism,” where the interests of “shareholders” are replaced with the interests of “stakeholders” to coerce private companies to effectively implement public policy, whether relating to matters of climate change, or DEI, sounds a lot like how Germany, and Italy for that matter, organized their economies in the 1930s.”
Insert:
At first blush I felt that what Poilievre and Jerema are getting at sounded more like “Fascism”, where the state does not take actual ownership of private businesses (collectivism) to operate them “on behalf of or for the people”, the grand delusional claim of socialist elites who believe that they alone as enlightened vanguards must appropriate the means of production/businesses as they know best what to do. Fascism leaves business under private ownership but through state edict, law, and other forms of coercion, state elites force businesses to do the partisan will of the state elites.
But further comment by Jerema below reveals that Poilievre may be right, according to how Frederich Hayek explained socialism and the Nazi version of the same ideology.
(End of my insert.)
Jerema says further, “In any case, the definition of socialism as publicly owning the means of production is unnecessarily restrictive and hardly universal.”
He notes that Frederich Hayek (“The Road to Serfdom”) defined socialism as state control over the economy and rejected the view that the Nazis “opposed all forms of socialism”.
He says Hayek explains that while the Nazis outlawed Communist and democratic socialist parties, that did not mean that socialism was contrary to Nazism because both the Germans who supported the Nazis and those who opposed them were socialists.
“As Hayek put it: ‘the conflict in existence between the National Socialist ‘Right’ and the ‘Left’ in Germany is the kind of conflict that will always arise between rival socialist factions’.”
He continues, noting the explicitly socialist policies of the Nazis, such as “the nationalization of all businesses which have been formed into corporations… and the immediate communalizing of big department stores.”
He notes that while in power, the Nazis did not nationalize business, and privatized state industry, but (quoting another source) did so “within a framework of increasing control of the state over the whole economy through regulation and political interference.”
“Again, this was not capitalism, but state control of the economy, a form of socialism. Even if it differed from the Nazis’ electoral platforms, the party still sought to accomplish its socialist goals through increasing regulation of markets, and effective control of private property if not outright ownership. In the early 1930s, Hitler said, ‘Why need we trouble to socialize banks and factories? We socialize human beings’.”
Jerema ends, quoting Hayek further, on how “personal liberty is incompatible with central planning, as the government would have to interfere in people’s lives with greater and greater intensity. Socialism leads, inevitably, to tyranny, he argued. This observation was ultimately the point Poilievre was making: ‘Only freedom — free speech, free enterprise and free choice — empowers all to fulfill their potential & live good and great lives’.”