“Embracing the greater body of Steiner’s ideas, the subject of race becomes about a general over-arching evolution where race ceases to be meaningful as they now converge. And is often conflated with culture or simply groups separated by seas & continents. Without this, in secular modern context, it can only be seen as racist, taking paragraphs from context. He must either be prudent scientist or mistaken flawed dreamer.”

This approach would indeed, I think, side-step the most racist (i.e. wrong) aspects of Steiner’s teachings. The boundaries of what counts as a race are far more fluid than Steiner allowed. (Steiner held the door open for individuals of a “lesser” race to be more spiritually advanced than some members of a “higher” race.)

It also leaves in place two essential aspects of Steiner’s teachings — the idea of progress along a spiritual path according to an objective measure; and the idea that there are groups of people around the earth who collectively belong in these groups.

Problems remain however. It’s not just a matter of context. Steiner really did see various races as lower and higher, and really did claim to have gained this “knowledge” through clairvoyant insight (reading the Akashic Chronicle). If one makes the sensible move of admitting this “knowledge” to be false, it removes one of the central pillars upon which the entire edifice of Anthroposophy rests — namely that Steiner had an inside path to objectively true information about reality.

I think there are some valuable ideas in Anthroposophy, but they are more derived from Steiner’s personal observations and actual life experience. For example some of his insights into the nature of childhood and children’s behaviour. Some ideas about Christianity, if taken mythologically, rather than factually are well thought out.

But as long as Anthroposophists insist that Steiner’s “clairvoyantly derived” teachings are in any way obkectively true, the whole movement must be treated as dangerous and damaging.

The commenter begins–
>>I’m well versed in Anthroposophy, but I always maintain a detached attitude by default. I’d like to make a few observations on this matter. The entire article is clearly based on the assumption that Nazi Germany embodies absolute evil.<<

Misrepresentation of the article. The article centered on Anthroposophists who claim to have been persecuted by the Nazis. It is they — not me or my article — who try to benefit from cliched assumptions about Nazis.
My article focused on the denial by Anthroposophists that they supported the Nazi war of aggression in the East, the Nazi death camps, and the medical experimentation on prisoners. In fact prominent Anthroposophists supported all this, bith ideologically and materially.

>>This attitude is understandable because it stems from a complete historical reversal brought about by the race that fomented and won the two world wars, every revolution for centuries, and created both capitalism and communism.<<

This “complete historical reversal” which he claims exists is more accurately described as holocaust denial.

>>It goes without saying which race this is.<<

You’re either with him — in his whispered resistance against these destroyers of Western civilisation — or you’re one of them.

>>It is the most racist race ever to walk the earth, a race in open opposition to every other race, one that uses subterfuge and every wicked act to achieve its goals, which consist of total domination over every other race considered inferior, and which is well on its way to achieving this goal.<<

Talk for a moment to any antisemite, and you will get this kind of barrage of layer upon layer of conspiracy theory ranting and screaming. Debate is impossible because of the multiple layers all compacted into a couple of slogans. To go point by point through it would take 100 times longer than it did for him to scream it.

It’s unpractical take up the time and space to debunk this barrage. And the tirade is not only racist (by which I mean factually wrong), it is also a direct and vile attack on Jews and anyone who associates with Jews, or doesn’t hate them in the same way he does.

Most importantly here, I didn’t even mention Jews in the article, so his tirade is off topic.

Then he starts lecturing me on why I should have written an article against Jews, instead of the article I wrote.

>>When speaking of racism, it must be remembered that this problem arose and persists because of this race, which seeks to subjugate and annihilate all others.<<

Because the Jews must be put at the center of every discussion — without any exception whatsoever.

So if you write an article about esoteric views on race in the nineteenth century, in relation to the biological sciences of that time, and to modern science and social culture, you must put Jews at the center of it.

Then he starts glorifying the Nazis–

>>Germany opposed it and lost, seeing its own civilization and with it all of Western civilization destroyed in the process.<<

So according to him, Western civilisation fell with the defeat of its most advanced progenitors, the Nazis. And it was the Jews who defeated them.

And that’s the end of the comment.

I often ask commenters to only raise one main point in each comment wherever possible. That makes it easier for others to respond, or follow a discussion as it develops. He raises a couple of dozen different issues, most of them as vast as “the Jews caused every revolution for centuries”, which would take a long series of books to properly debunk. And it was not relevant, not even tangentially, to the article.

The only thing relevant to the article is that he also uses the same pseudo-scientific view of race that Anthroposophists use –as being deterministic of behaviour, and organised into a hierarchy of races. But others have argued for that view here in the comments, without veering off in the kind of hysterical race baiting that this commenter promotes.

Thank you for explaining & being a good moderator !

I think I’d summarise my comment as :

Embracing the greater body of Steiners ideas, the subject of race becomes about a general over-arching evolution where race ceases to be meainngful as they now converge. And is often conflated with culture or simply groups separated by seas & continents.

Without this, in secular modern context, it can only be seen as racist, taking paragraphs from context.

He must either be prudent scientist or mistaken flawed dreamer.

That was only the fifth time in 16 years of this website that I have deleted a non-spam comment. (The other four were all from a cancer quack promoting their own products after, and using more than 60,000 words.)

Thanks for your kind words.

It could be argued being selective about the kind of racism to censor is itself a prejudice or basing a decision on race but I agree if it irrelevant it should be deleted.

Personally I found it mostly non-sensical what he wrote.

I will take the opportunity to say something about the deleted comment. I have allowed comments I consider racist from Anthropsophists in this comment thread, because the article was about their views, and they should be allowed to defend or clarify them here.

The comment I deleted accused a particular “race” of causing two world wars, as well as being responsible for the evils of both capitalism and communism — which the Nazis were supposedly “trying to fight”. Not only historically and factually wrong, but also wrong to imply that this “race” is inherently defective and collectively responsible for their supposed crimes. Intellectually lazy garbage, not worthy of anyone’s attention, in my opinion.

And as neither this supposed “race” nor antisemitism were mentioned in my article, the comment was also completely irrelevant. After some consideration, I decided to send it into the trash.

In case anyone is wondering, I allow comments to appear without moderation. See the right hand side bar for “Website: Comment & Fairness Policy” for more details.

Personally I think ideally all expressions are allowed to occur, but it’s your site of course.

If any real journalist picked up this story and included a link to here, the post would go viral and millions of people would read it and wonder why WordPress has such crappy formatting!