Tag: Alexander Nekrich

Another Memoir of a Slow Learner: The Judeo-Masonic Yoke as an anti-Catholic Tradition

Dr. Robert Hickson

8 October 2020

Saint Bridget of Sweden (d. 1373)

Epigraphs

“Exoteric, as distinct from esoteric, relates in part to external reality in contrast to a person’s own thoughts, interpretations, and feelings. It is knowledge that is public, as distinct from being provocatively secretive or cabalistic. Exoteric knowledge need not be knowledge that comes easily or, as it were, automatically. But it should be ascertainable, knowable, and communicable, not only for an elite. In the exoteric, there is no secret doctrine. However, exoteric knowledge presented quite openly can also easily be or seem to be a provocative weakness and appear even so weak that it is provocative to others, and hence even sometimes be deceitfully exploited by others. The Catholic Faith is intimately exoteric. ” (The fruit, in part, of R.D. Hickson’s searching 1974 conversations in Spain with Philosophy Professor Frederick Wilhelmsen (1923-1996)—in a close paraphrase of his vivid and formative insights.)

***

“You do not understand, Hickson. The greatest censorship is self-censorship.” Such were the words of the Russian-Soviet historian Alexander Moiseyevich Nekrich spoken to me in person in the late 1970s, after he was allowed to leave the USSR permanently in 1976. (He was Jewish, I believe, at least ethnically so, but I am not certain.)

The atrophying effects of such an extended self-censorship caused me later to open myself once again to some deeper reflections about secrecy and the occult.

For example, there is a story told to me by an academic philosopher and a native of Lebanon who later converted from his atheism and became a Catholic monk. It was a story about a close Lebanese friend of his father and about a secret that this good friend told him one night at great peril to himself.

This friend of his father wanted to give the young man a warning as well as present to him a piece of little-known, sometimes dangerous truth. This senior man had become a Mason and had gradually advanced “all the way to the top” (his words)—unlike the young man’s own father who had earlier entered, but soon left, Masonry and he did it quietly and from one of the lower ranks and the lower hierarchical orders of “White Masonry.”

The essential and consequential insight which was presented and further explained by the senior occult Mason was as follows: “Masonry is a Gentile front and instrument for Zionism.” (I copy the words exactly, and without further commentary here.) The senior Mason asked for a promise that the young man would never reveal his formidable words, nor their informed source, until he had died. (The young scholar, a future Catholic monk, faithfully kept his solemn promise to his father’s dear friend.)

Many other sources down the years—but not to be discussed here—have shown the close association of Jewry and Freemasonry. However, there usually seems to be genuine fear and a considerable self-censorship connected with any deeper discussion of such a theme and palpable set of historical facts, even if such a discussion only wants to examine these strategic and collaborative matters in the time since the 1789 French Revolution itself, and therefore the additionally consequential and public 1791 and 1806 Emancipations of the Jews—first by the Jacobins and then by Napoleon himself before he went east on military conquest. In any case, whatever one is allowed (or effectively not allowed) to examine and candidly to discuss in public is certainly a sign of real power. Important discourse is often then constricted, or at least attenuated.

Was there ever such a thing as “The Judeo-Masonic Yoke” and to what extent has it been growing and consolidating itself, in order to reform (or to weaken and then punish) its own traditional adversaries such as the traditional Catholic Church? But, our resultant and protracted self-censorship about such matters distorts and atrophies our own perception of reality. Do we agree?

However, I remember the post-Vatican II years of 1969-1971 and the then widely permitted and candid discussions and even published books about “The Myth of the Judeo-Christian Tradition”1 and, especially then prevailing Jewish indignation about the demeaning or trivializing “hyphen” in the very concept and implications of “the Judeo-Christian Tradition”—at least as the learned Hebrews saw it to be so. The hyphenated yoke, as it were, did not at all please them, because the components placed together under the same yoke were arguably themselves moving in very different directions, and with incommensurate purposes and irreconcilable goals. The modern Jews and the modern Christians (especially traditional Catholics) were still too divided and not sufficiently compatible. This is entirely understandable. But, what happened to ongoing “dialogue” and so-called “ecumenism”? What about the more tolerant recommendations and declarations of Vatican II (1962-1965), not only Nostra Aetate (28 October 1965), among other quite progressive conciliar texts?

But it is also understandable—especially for earlier Catholics—that, under the long reign of Pope Leo XIII (1878-1903), both Masonry and the public conduct of modern Judaism were closely observed and critiqued, and quite separately so. They were certainly not yet to be combined and examined together as under one yoke, as in the concept and proposed reality of “Judeo-Masonry,” which is at least an improvement over the misleading notion of “Judeo-Christian.”

In 1884, moreover, Pope Leo XIII had promulgated Humanum Genus (20 April 1884), his Encyclical that was largely a stern condemnation of Masonry and its occult operations and advanced secrecy. Then, in 1890, about a hundred years after the 1789 beginning of the French Revolution, Pope Leo allowed and encouraged the authoritative Jesuit Journal, La Civiltà Cattolica to publish a three-part analysis entitled “The Jewish Question in Europe”—which was openly defending public justice and mercy, and is usefully structured in three parts: “The Causes; The Effects; The Remedies.”

Much has happened since that restive century after the French Revolution, and especially after the effects of its own revolutionary understanding of “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity.” Yet the traditional Catholic Faith and her Irreformable Doctrine and aspirational Moral Life of Virtue still remain entirely exoteric. That is to say, there is no secret doctrine in the Catholic Faith; the Church is not in any essentially fundamental way esoteric. Moreover, we Catholics have no supplementary nor complementary Talmud or Kabbala. Nor any other secret doctrines or societies. Are we thereby finally considered to be fools, deluded fools?

Nonetheless, while we are remaining and truly being inwardly and sincerely exoteric it is often an exploitable burden, and not an advantage in the operations of a strictly human history. Our forthright doctrinal and moral openness sometimes constitutes even a grave vulnerability and disadvantage.

We must thus learn to suffer well. But this cannot be so without our first (and indispensably) embracing the Cross, and then also without our own generous receptions of the exoteric sources of sanctifying Divine Grace, unto the possibility of Vita Aeterna and its Beatitude—if we do not freely and finally defect.


–FINIS–

© 2020 Robert D. Hickson

1See, for example, Arthur A. Cohen, The Myth of the Judeo-Christian Tradition (New York: Harper & Row, 1969, 1971).

The Concept and Reality of a Prolonged Self-Censorship and Its Effects: Alexander Nekrich’s Germinal Insights in the 1970s

Dr. Robert Hickson

29 September 2020

Saint Michael the Archangel

Epigraphs

“The censor’s sway is felt most acutely in the social sciences, especially in the sphere of history. Soviet censorship begins in the head of the historian.” (Alexander Nekrich, “Rewriting History” (1980)—my emphasis added)

***

“For the conscientious researcher, work loses all point if the censor asks him not only to delete this or that fact, but also to reach conclusions that are acceptable in the current political scene. And this is where self-censorship comes into play, the most important forms of censorship in socialist society. Self-censorship exerts a profound influence not only on the quality of the research done, but also on the researcher himself. If censorship is an essential element of the structure of the USSR,…then self-censorship is an essential quality of Homo Sovieticus—especially the sub-species of writer[s?] specialising in history and social and political sciences…. Usually the author is governed by self-censorship and the censors.” (Alexander Nekrich, “Rewriting History” (1980)—my emphasis added)

***

It was from Alexander Nekrich, a Russian emigre and former Soviet historian—who once was an esteemed member in the Soviet Academy of Sciences and History—that I first heard of the word and special concept of “self-censorship.” And then, with his further brief help, I more gradually came to understand some of the atrophying consequences of any protracted self-censorship, as distinct from more obvious and forthright public censorship.

An analogy might be helpful here. If an arm-muscle is inside of a plaster cast for too long, it starts to shrink or shrivel up due to the lack of exercise and of nourishment. So too comes the diminishment or attenuation of the higher range of human faculties when they, too, are deprived of sufficient exercise and nourishment.

One of my most precious forms of admiration and gratitude for Aristotle is to be seen especially in one of his definitions of happiness: “happiness is the exercise of the full range of human faculties along lines of excellence [i.e., virtue].” (I cannot now find the source of those words I once read and memorized at once.)

In the latter part of the 1970s, Professor Alexandr Nekrich visited the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and gave a learned talk. After this talk I had occasion to speak with him, just the two of us. In my callowness I asked this solemnly earnest man what it was like to be an historian in the Soviet Academy of Science when the past is, as it were, always changing in accordance with the Dialectic—dialectical materialism and historical materialism, with its varying and desirably safe temporary interpretations. How, I added, did you enduringly live with such censorship? Professor Nekrich looked at me gravely and said : “You are naive. The greatest censorship is self-censorship.” And he told me more. I do not know why he opened up to me. Perhaps because he knew that I was a military officer.

We discussed the elements of fear and trust and how they shaped the protective resort to self-censorship. I then remarked that such self-censorship would also likely lead to the atrophy of human faculties.

Professor Nekrich then became interested in my word “atrophy” in this context of censorship, although he knew at once of the Greek roots and etymological meaning of that vivid word. I then used a more arcane expression—“atrophying self-censorship”—and he was pleased with it, and said that he would make use of it. Thus we started to consider how that concept could—and should—be applied effectively. We agreed that one of the ill fruits of prolonged self-censorship was the subtle atrophy of one’s indispensable human faculties, leading to a kind of paralysis and debilitation.

I was never to see Alexander Nekrich again, but I shall always remember his earnest and contemplative face and searching questions and insights, to include his mention of the important “SECOND Nazi-Soviet Pact,” which got him into trouble with the censors and supporters of Stalin. I later learned that he (with Mikhail Heller) wrote a lengthy book entitled Utopia in Power (1985) about the 1917-1985 history of the Soviet Union. Only recently, however, was I to discover that Nekrich also wrote an earlier 5-6 page essay on censorship, in 1980, and entitled “Rewriting History” (as translated by Marjorie Farquharson in Index on Censorship 4/1980) which is still to be found on the Internet. It would be of worth to read and discuss that essay still. But a few words now might be apt given the spreading autocratic and enforced rules about protective masks and social distancing and confusing “lockdowns” and all that. Fear and distrust abound, it seems, and so does increasing self-censorship.

One may recall that one test of real power—as distinct from mere formal power—is who controls what may be said, and what may not be said, in public.

As in the former Soviet Union, some things are so taboo that one may not even say that they are taboo.

François Furet, for example, once said that “modern democracy is dependent upon a hidden oligarchy which is contrary to its principles, but indispensable to its function.” That is to say, modern democracy is based on a deception. However, who would be able and allowed to discuss that matter in depth and openly? What would the oligarchs permit? And, specifically, who are they?

Solzhenitsyn urged us “not to live the lie” and also warned us “not to participate in the lie.”

Nekrich warns us to be careful about the destructive and abiding effects of too much and deceitful “self-censorship.” It is a form of living the lie. And the greatest effect of the lie is the breaking of trust—even the most intimate trusts. And once they are broken, they are so hard to repair and re-build.

For sure, Dr. Alexandr Moiseyevich Nekrich (1920-1993) has incipiently inspired us to consider more deeply the phenomenon of “atrophying self-censorship” and some of its formidable ramifications.

What is happening today, not just in the United States but throughout the world, even the manifestations of chaos and censorious “democratic despotism,” may be correctively helped along a little by Nekrich’s own illuminating experiences in the Soviet Union and his later insightful, articulate writings as a 1976 Russian emigre. He is a sobering guide for us, as his 1980 essay on “Rewriting History” will confirm.1 We should study and savor that compact 1980 essay further, and in the light of current and recurring events.

–FINIS–

© 2020 Robert D. Hickson

1https://marjoriefarquharson.blog/2020/03/31/rewriting-history-by-alexander-nekrich-1980/