Spengler (Columnist)

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“Spengler” (in full, “Oswald Spengler”) is the pen name of an anonymous Internet columnist published exclusively in Asia Times Online (ATol) since January 2000. He has written from a Judeo-Christian religious perspective but in a provocatively iconoclastic style, using aspects of Western history and culture to comment on current geopolitical events.

Contents

[edit] Writings

Articles by Spengler appeared in ATol only occasionally before October 2003; since then, they have appeared on a more or less weekly basis, usually on Monday morning Greenwich time. Summaries of all Spengler’s articles, with links to each of them, are accessible in reverse chronological order on The Complete Spengler page of ATol's website and in a categorization by subject on a reader-maintained reference thread on the ATol-hosted Spengler's Forum.

Spengler also has written numerous informal contributions to online forums on which his articles have been discussed, including: the “Spengler” section (and its archives) of ATol’s discussion forum, The Edge, from October 2004 to June 2006; an open-registration Spengler's Forum hosted by ATol and moderated by Spengler, since June 2006; and Spenglers Stammtisch, an independent reader-moderated forum, since December 2006. Spengler’s contributions to each of these discussion forums, in reverse chronological order, are publicly accessible via Links to Spengler's writings, a reference thread of Spenglers Stammtisch.

[edit] Recurring themes

Spengler’s analysis of contemporary geopolitical events revolves around the theme of Christianity’s encounter with paganism, which he also describes as the conflict between individual freedom and traditional national identities. Receiving repeated emphasis is the idea of immortality, which pagans seek to find in a particular time-bound culture.[1] Spengler finds this hope misplaced and refers repeatedly to European nationalism as an extension of paganism. Instead, Spengler believes that Christianity offers a hope of both individual immortality and a transnational collective identity that is potentially compatible with individual freedom and resistant to destruction by it.[2]

Spengler indicates that the West has declined culturally since the 17th century and now has lost its will to survive, largely because its Christianization was incomplete and failed to eradicate pagan loyalty to traditional nations and cultures that growing individual freedom has been destroying for centuries but to which post-Christian Europeans still cling emotionally.[3] This cultural decline underlies not only Europe’s nationalist wars but also the demographic contraction of contemporary Europe.[4]

Spengler holds up the United States of America as an alternative to the European model. According to Spengler, the United States is not a product of Western Civilization, but rather a Christian rejection of it, and has been spared the decline of the West by its distinctively Judeo-Christian, non-traditional, ethnically and culturally diverse character.[5]

The United States also serves as exemplar of the individual freedom that creatively destroys traditional cultures and nations, and against which they often react violently.[6]

Spengler treats Judaism as a symbiotic complement to Christianity. Jew-hatred, which springs from Gentiles’ envy of the immortality of a religiously covenantal nation, becomes rampant in post-Christian rejection of Christianity, to the fundamental truth of which the survival of the Jews bears inadvertent witness.[7]

Spengler contrasts Judaism and Christianity with Islam, which he claims is a traditional culture of which aggressive jihad is a core element, fundamentally distinct from Judeo-Christian religion and not easily reformed, and whose growing hostility to the West is a reaction to the threat posed to Islam by individual freedom.[8] He suggests this threat has engendered both a crisis of faith in the Islamic world and an incipient demographic contraction in parts of it.[9]

However, Spengler is not certain of Western success in the war against jihad and finds some weaknesses in the American model. In particular, he maintains that such cultural and religious conflicts often cannot be resolved without the large amount of bloodshed,[10] and that horror of such vast bloodshed is a critical Western weakness in such conflicts.[11] Efforts to avert such bloodshed by pursuing stability, by seeking to perpetuate the status quo, tend to be counter-productive in the long run. Instead, successful and ultimately humane statecraft in cultural and religious conflicts requires accepting and exploiting uncertainty and instability.[12] Similarly, democracy offers no solution to such conflicts, and its promotion of individual liberty, being inconsistent with the collective identity of a traditionalist culture, can either exacerbate traditionalist reaction or accelerate traditionalist collective suicide.[13]

[edit] Intellectual Background and Sources

Spengler has cited works and studies of philosophy, religion, history, economics, psychology, mathematics, music and art. He has cited material written in German, Spanish, and Italian, as well as English.

Writings and authors to which Spengler has referred often and favorably include Goethe’s Faust, [14]Rosenzweig,[15] the Bible,[16] Clausewitz,[17] and Kierkegaard.[18]

[edit] Agenda and Method

"What is my agenda? … It is to promote Judeo-Christian ecumenicism in the support of traditional moral values and the resolve to defend the West against its enemies … But it is also to inculcate the habit of mind of accepting uncertainty. That is, if you will, the Clausewitzian side."

-- Spengler, 23 May 2006 posting on the "Spengler" section of ATol’s "The Edge." [19]

"The basis of my forecasts is … a religious-existential approach to analyzing the motives of the protagonists, contrasted with a reality check (demographics and economics), and an effort to synthesize the response. A spiritual rather than a positivist approach to global politics has some predictive power."

-- Spengler, 14 July 2006 posting on the ATol-hosted "Spengler’s Forum."[20]

[edit] Anonymity and Pen Name

Spengler has indicated repeatedly that he is a male of middle to advanced age.[21] He is not known to have made public his nationality, ethnicity, religious affiliation, class background, formal education, marital or family status, occupation or work history.

Spengler has characterized his namesake, the German philosopher of history Oswald Spengler (1880 - 1936), as “an unspeakable racist” who believed “that man was a ‘beast of prey.’”[22] He has written that his choice of pen name “is ironic rather than semiotic,”[23] although it “reflects the original Spengler's conclusions about the West,”[24] namely that it is in decline. He has claimed to “have no sympathy for cyclical or ‘biological’ theories of history of the sort that Oswald Spengler promulgated,”[25] and that he does not share the original Spengler’s historical pessimism:[26] “If I were not an optimist at heart, I would not compose these essays.”[27]

[edit] Online References

As of February 2007, a web search for "Spengler" and "Asia Times" yielded 88,100 references on Google, or 66,800 excluding initially undisplayed references.

As of March 2007, Marketleap’s link popularity check service showed that major search engines contained more than 41,300 links to The Complete Spengler page of ATol’s website, excluding links to specific articles by Spengler listed on that webpage.

[edit] References and Links

The Complete Spengler (Spengler’s articles in reverse chronological order)

Spengler essays by subject

Links to Spengler's writings (including Spengler’s forum postings)

[edit] Footnotes

  1. ^ Internet stocks and the failure of youth culture (ATol, 31 Aug. 2001: “All cultures exist to ward off the presentiment of death”), Indispensible handbook for global theopolitics, a review of The Star of Redemption by Franz Rosenzweig (ATol, 21 Nov. 2005)
  2. ^ Christianity and creative destruction (ATol, 13 Oct. 2004), Indispensible handbook for global theopolitics, a review of The Star of Redemption by Franz Rosenzweig (ATol, 21 Nov. 2005).
  3. ^ Why Europe chooses extinction (ATol, 8 Apr. 2003), Mel Gibson's lethal religion (ATol, 9 Mar. 2004), The Dead Peoples' Society (ATol, 15 Feb.2005). For similar articles, see the Western culture and civilization category of the Spengler essays by subject thread of Spengler's Forum.
  4. ^ Faith, fertility and American dominance, a review of The Empty Cradle by Phillip Longman (ATol, 8 Sept. 2004), Death by secularism: some statistical evidence (ATol, 2 Aug. 2005), Why nations die (ATol, 16 Aug. 2005).
  5. ^ The meaning of life (ATol, 17 Mar. 2004: "America itself is not a product of Western Civilization, but the result of extremist rejection of Western Civilization by English Puritan separatists, who chose the Hebrew over the Greek aspect [of Western Civilization]"), Spengler replies to readers (ATol, 6 Oct. 2004: "America is by its nature Christian; it is the Ecclesia, those who are called out from among the nations to become a new Israel"), Why is good dumb? (ATol, 21 June 2005: "As the only nation with no ethnicity, America is the most Christian, and indeed the last Christian nation in the industrial world as a practical matter"). See also Mahathir is right: Jews do rule the world (ATol, 28 Oct. 2003), Why Americans can’t laugh at American culture (ATol, 16 Dec. 2003: "America … has no culture of its own" [which is] "both a blessing and a curse"), What is American culture? (ATol, 18 Nov. 2003), and What makes the U.S. a Christian nation (ATol, 29 Nov. 2004),
  6. ^ Why Islam baffles America (ATol, 16 Apr. 2004: "America by its nature disrupts traditional order. It is … the agency of creative destruction"), Mideast: Lessons from classical warfare (7 Nov. 2006: "The United States is a global avalanche of creative destruction that rips apart the bindings of traditional life").
  7. ^ What the Jews won’t tell you (ATol, 4 Nov. 2003), The pope, the musicians and the Jews (ATol, 10 Mar. 2005), You don’t need to be apocolyptic, but it helps, a review of Standing with Israel by David Brog (20 June 2006).
  8. ^ Why Islam baffles America (ATol, 16 Apr. 2004), The assassin’s master sermon (ATol, 16 Nov. 2004: "Traditional society is the locus of the vast majority of the world’s billion Muslims. … Radical Islam stems from despair in the face of cultural death; precisely for that reason it bespeaks a ghastly indifference toward individual death"), Muslim anguish and western hypocrisy (ATol, 23 Nov. 2004), Spengler replies to readers (ATol, 8 June 2005: "I consider the whole ’Islamic Reformation’ project an exercise in futility"), Iran: the living fossils’ vengeance (28 June 2005: "Islam … promises to impose the system of traditional life upon the world."), Jihad, the Lord’s Supper, and eternal life (18 Nov. 2006).
  9. ^ The demographics of radical Islam (ATol, 23 Aug. 2005), Crisis of faith in the Muslim world - Part 1: Statistical evidence (ATol, 1 Nov. 2005), Crisis of faith in the Muslim world - Part 2: The Islamist response (ATol, 8 Nov. 2005).
  10. ^ In defense of genocide (ATol, 4 Jan. 2001), More killing, please! (ATol, 11 June 2003), Happy Birthday, Abe - pass the blood (ATOL, 9 Feb. 2004), Military destiny and madness in Iran (ATol, 6 June 2006), The Middle East is hopeless, but not serious (6 Feb. 2007).
  11. ^ Sir John Keegan is wrong: radical Islam could win (ATol, 12 Oct. 2001: "The grand vulnerability of the Western mind is horror."), Horror and humiliation in Fallujah (ATol, 27 Apr. 2004), Jimmy Carter’s heart of dorkiness (ATol, 27 Jan. 2007: "Horror is the ultimate weapon of the Muslim world against the West.")
  12. ^ Geopolitics in the light of option theory (ATol, 26 Jan. 2002); How I learned to stop worrying and love chaos (ATol, 13 Mar. 2006); Faith and risk in the cold war (ATol, 22 Jan. 2007).
  13. ^ They made a democracy and called it peace (ATol, 7 Mar. 2005), The beast that slouches toward democracy (ATol, 15 Mar. 2005), Fight a democracy, kill the people (ATol, 4 July 2006). For similar articles, see the Political philosophy category of the Spengler essays by subject thread of Spengler’s Forum.
  14. ^ The devil’s sourdough and the decline of nations (ATol, 20 Feb. 2006), Harry Potter and the decline of the West (ATol, 20 July 2005: "Goethe’s Faust I have long considered the definitive masterwork of Western literature…"); Are Americans good enough to be Americans? (ATol, 6 Apr. 2004: "Goethe’s tragedy remains the great modern epic."), Sir John Keegan is wrong: radical Islam could win (ATol, 12 Oct. 2001).
  15. ^ Indispensable handbook for global theopolitics, review of The Star of Redemption by Franz Rosenzweig (AToL, 22 Nov. 2005: "Read Franz Rosenzweig … for the 100-and-a-score essays I have published in this space were an attempt to put fragments of his thinking before the English-speaking public."), Oil on the flames of civilizational war, review of Franz Rosenzweig, Ausgewählte Schriften zum Islam (ATol, 2 Dec. 2003).
  16. ^ The devil’s sourdough and the decline of nations, ATol, 20 Feb. 2006. "The world … cannot do without the Bible," 8 Mar. 2006 posting on the "Spengler" section of "The Edge," page 1 of discussion thread titled "retracted." "My view is the Biblical one, which is that God’s love and Grace are exogenous to the universe, and inexplicable in natural terms," 6 Sept. 2006 posting on "Spengler’s Forum," page 1 of discussion thread titled Spengler’s American Idol.
  17. ^ Santa Clausewitz, a minor Chinese god ( ATol, 21 Dec. 2004), Ronald Reagan’s creative destruction , (ATol, 8 June 2004).
  18. ^ Socrates the destroyer (ATol, 25 May 2004); "I identify with Kierkegaard more than with any other modern thinker," 20 Apr. 2006 posting on the "Spengler" section of "The Edge," page 1 of discussion thread titled "Rosenzweig and Heidegger -- seen it, Spengler?"
  19. ^ On page 4 of discussion thread titled "By popular demand ...."
  20. ^ On page 2 of discussion thread titled "Puppies!!!."
  21. ^ E.g., "The feminine point of view amounts to what we otherwise call paranoia," Women as priests? Women never forgive anything! (ATol, 27 Apr. 2005). "I came to Rosenzweig late in life and kicked myself for all the wasted years," 29 May 2006 posting on the "Spengler" section of "The Edge," page 1 of discussion thread titled "Prof. Norbert Samuelson on Rosenzweig."
  22. ^ They made a democracy and called in peace (ATol, 8 Mar. 2005).
  23. ^ When even the Pope has to whisper (ATol, 10 Jan. 2006).
  24. ^ 24 Dec. 2004 posting on the archives of the "Spengler" section of "The Edge," page 5 of discussion thread titled "Muslim anguish and Western hypocrisy."
  25. ^ 19 June 2006 posting on "Spengler’s Forum," page 1 of discussion thread titled "If you enjoy reading Spengler ...."; see also 22 Apr. 2006 posting on the "Spengler" section of "The Edge," page 1 of discussion thread titled "’Spengler’ on Spengler
  26. ^ "Unlike my namesake, I am not pessimistic about civilizations in general. I am pessimistic about some and optimistic about others." How I learned to stop worrying and love chaos (ATol, 14 Mar. 2006).
  27. ^ 29 June 2006 posting on on "Spengler’s Forum," page 2 of discussion thread titled "Optimism is a sin."
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