| An analysis of Mr. Staudenmaier as "Protocol
of Steiner" forger and the stages in his efforts to cover up his untruthfulness
as self-proclaimed "historical scholar" (part VI)
(Continued from here)
In an answer to criticism by Göran Fant of
his article "Anthroposophy and Ecofascism", Mr. Staudenmaier, in a follow
up article titled "The Art of Avoiding History", pushes for "Story
four", without with one word mentioning that he has made up the whole second
part of the introduction to his original article, and now -- again untruthfully
-- asserting as a form of revised "new" "opening device", that
"the heart of the book is chapter six"
Why does he put forth this new "opening device"?
Clearly as lecture six is the only
lecture in the series, which once - in passing, at a time
and in a culture dominated by it - mentions the word "Aryan", which constitutes
the obsessive focus of everything Mr. Staudenmaier writes on Anthroposophy,
though it not in the lecture is referred to, neither as an "Aryan race",
nor as "Aryan root race" , as asserted by Mr. Staudenmaier in the introduction
to his article.
Instead Steiner in the lecture simply uses it in
a very neutral way as a term which at that time (1910) was commonly used,
to refer to, in Steiner's words:
"the peoples of Asia Minor and Europe
whom we regard as members of the Caucasian race"
About the lecture, Mr. Staudenmaier -- again untruthfully
-- writes:
"Here Steiner reminds his audience
of the racial superiority of 'the Aryans' ..."
Examining the
actual published lecture six shows that Mr. Staudenmaier's assertion
that the lecture describes "the racial superiority of the Aryans" lacks
any obvious support in the lecture, not least as it does not even refer
to the '"Aryans" as a "race" in the lecture, and also as it does not refer
to any of the actual "five main races" of humanity, that it describes,
neither as "inferior", nor as "superior" to any of the other.
Actually reading it shows that the lecture instead
describes the anthropological "five main races" of mankind
(of which the "Caucasians", but not the "Aryans", at the time of the lecture
was considered to be one). In the lecture, Steiner describes them in relation
to the nature and activities of (in his view) normal and abnormal higher
spiritual beings far in the past, described by the Judeo-Christian tradition
as Elohim and other, higher beings.
The one time Steiner mentions "Aryans"
in the lecture (and lecture series) is a short, very carefully balanced
and restrained description of how they (as one loose group of a number
of different groups), belonging to the Caucasians, in Steiner's view, are
more or less determined by forces, that:
"work indirectly through the sense
impressions and from there radiate to those parts of the central nervous
system which are situated in the brain and spinal cord"
and telling:
The particular task of the Caucasian
[comment: not Aryan] race is to find the way to the spirit through the
senses, for this race is orientated chiefly towards the sense-world.
Steiner also describes how in his view, European civilization
had
passed its "zenith in Europe in the middle
of the nineteenth century",
indicating that
in Steiner's view, European culture
at the beginning of the 20th century, with its racist focus, developing
anti-Semitism, and argumentation for "Aryan supremacy", was a culture on
the decline in relation to its zenith, with the development of the idealistic
culture of 60-100 years earlier.
This indication is preceded by a description of what
makes Semitic peoples great, and is followed by a description of what makes
the American Indian people great.
Steiner:
"the Biblical writer was able to claim
that Jahve or Jehovah had made this [the Semitic] people his own"
"When he declared himself to be the God of Abraham,
Isaac and Jacob, He proclaimed that He was present in the blood-stream
of the Patriarchs."
and describing this as something that reveals
"one of the mysteries which give us
a deep insight into the wise guidance of all mankind."
After the description of the Caucasians as more or
less "determined by the senses", he describes the greatness of the American
Indians, in their relation to the Great Spirit, which in Steiner's view
was their way of describing the Elohim of the Judeo-Christian tradition,
and the untruthfulness of what was presented to them by the invading Europeans,
as described by the, in Steiner's words, "last of the great chieftains
of the Red Indians":
"[What] makes the Brown Man great;
it is the Great Spirit who speaks to him in the soughing of the wind, in
the murmuring of the forest, in the surging of the waves, in the purling
of the brook, in thunder and in lightning! That is the Spirit who to us
speaks truth. Yes, from the lips of the Great Spirit comes truth. But your
spirits [those of the invading Europeans] here on paper and who express
what to you is great, they do not speak the truth."
As a short reminder, this can be compared to what
Mr. Staudenmaier writes about the lecture:
"Here Steiner reminds his audience
of the racial superiority of 'the Aryans' ..."
For a more detailed documentation of the twisted argumentation
by Mr. Staudenmaier on this, see here.
This has constituted Mr. Staudenmaier's last defense
line (up to 2005) in his repeatedly untruthful argumentation on the lecture
series, introduced with his freely fabricated fantasy forgery (described
earlier),
which he repeatedly has defended when its untruthfulness has been pointed
out to him and which has never been publicly withdrawn by him.
As such, the repeated untruths by Mr. Staudenmaier,
published from 2000 up to at least July 2005, and repeatedly defended by
the small vocal anti-Waldorf fringe group PLANS Inc. in California, constitute
the clearest example of anti-Waldorf demagoguery, fabrications which are
used to propagate the falsehood that Rudolf Steiner and anthroposophy,
and by implication Waldorf education, are racist
and anti-Semitic.
After repeatedly defending his untruths, then
in passing silently replacing them with a new story
Only in or after July 2005,
more than five years after the first publication of the article by Mr.
Staudenmaier at the site if "PLANS Inc.", and the repeated defense of it
by both Mr. Staudenmaier (as documented above) and by Mr. Dugan as implicitly
truthful (see later), has it been replaced with a slightly edited version
at the site, without any notice -- neither by Mr. Dugan, nor by Mr. Staudenmaier
-- that the original version has been replaced, while continuing to leave
the original article on the net, now unlinked to from the site.
The new "edited" version of the article ("edited"
in the main with regard to the introduction) was first made public in passing
in 2003 in a peripheral discussion on the internet, without any discussion
of the changes by Mr. Staudenmaier, and the reason for making them.
One of the changes made my Mr. Staudenmaier is
that he in the "new" introduction -- after repeatedly having defended it
in different ways at different times, as documented above -- has removed
the obvious falsehood, described above, with regard to the first
lecture in the lecture series. It also does not mention the sixth
lecture in the series, that Mr. Staudenmaier in October 2001 has described
as
"the heart of the book"
and instead "only" states that the introduction refers
to the lecture series in its totality.
For an analysis of the invalidity also of this
statement by Mr. Staudenmaier, see here.
For a description of and discussion of the "new" introduction, see here
(coming).
PLANS' way of using Staudenmaier's
repeatedly untruthful writings (documented by Daniel
Hindes) and "scholary" (horror) fantasies (documented above), seemingly
to try to incite anger against Waldorf education in particular in the Jewish
community, stands out as especially twisted in view, among other things,
of the extensive contributions people of Jewish origin have made to the
founding of Waldorf education and to its development to this day, and in
view of the important role played by the history of Jews and Judaism in
Waldorf curriculum, as part of understanding the history of humanity, at
the specific suggestion by Rudolf Steiner.
For more on the untruthful demagoguery spread by PLANS
about this, see here.
For more untruths by Mr. Staudenmaier (can you
take more?), in 2004 and 2005, continue here. |
