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Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn

68 quotes

“We have said before that it is difficult to find the exact reasons for the growing popularity of the word democracy and democratic taken from a dead language which is thoroughly nonunderstandable to 999 out of 1000 Americans. The decline of classical education in favor of progressive "self-realization" has favored the increased use of wrong labels.”
Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn (1909–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There is something pathetic in seeing Americans almost daily besmirching unconsciously their ideals and their traditions—all thanks to a faulty education. The Founding Fathers would turn in their graves if they could hear themselves called "Democrats"; America indeed was never a democracy, and never will be [...] Those who have been taught the wrong interpretation may ask their money back from the schools where they have wasted their adolescence. And the textbooks which preach a spurious democracy may still provide us with fuel in cold days to come.”
Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn (1909–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“America is not a democracy. We are not fighting for democracy. We fight for liberty. America not only fights for its own survival, for its own liberty, but also for liberty abroad. Human dignity can never be preserved without liberty. Liberty is therefore a real good, a precious good worth while to be redeemed by blood.”
Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn (1909–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“E pluribus unum, the constructive principle of federation, In God We Trust, the recognition of God's limitless fatherhood — these two watchwords, together with that of Liberty, should be our creed, not that spurious label democracy which our American forebears despised and execrated.”
Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn (1909–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In the linguistic usage of the Left, "democratic" denotes much more frequently highly negative values. Everybody is acquainted with the real meaning of such expressions as "making democracy work in the classroom" which just stands for lack of discipline, or "democratizing literature" which means plain trash.”
Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn (1909–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The ideal dwelling place for the herdist is the city, the megalopolis with its apartment houses, clubs, cinemas, theaters, offices, factories, and restaurants. Here the herdist has ample opportunity to live the life of the masses, to lead an impersonal and lonely existence in a truly dehumanized ant heap, to love and like nobody but himself and perhaps those similar to him.”
Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn (1909–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The true herdist [...] is nothing but an egoist who cannot tolerate anybody differing from himself. John Doe, the identitarian, wants a nation, a world, a universe peopled by millions of John Does. He cannot sympathize nor like anybody at variance with John Doe. No wonder that his wishful dream is a humanity of John Does without God or Devil. The herdist is by necessity a humanitarian.”
Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn (1909–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It must furthermore be borne in mind that equality stands for monotony and not for harmony. A harmonious melody can only be established by different unidentical musical tones. These tones must be assembled and have to follow in a certain sequence; otherwise they will result in chaos and not in melody. Human society presupposes such an inequality and unity.”
Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn (1909–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If medieval man would have been told that he could "appoint" his kings or superiors, he might have become quite interested in the proposition. Yet on discovering that his vote was scheduled to be drowned in an ocean of millions of other votes his reaction would have been that of a man whose leg had been pulled successfully.”
Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn (1909–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There is hierarchy as well as function in every organism. One man may be more important than another just as the eye is more important than the finger.”
Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn (1909–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Liberty is the ideal of aristocracy, just as equality stands for the bourgeoisie and fraternity for the peasantry. One can combine liberty with fraternity but neither of them with equality.”
Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn (1909–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The worship of size and number is an old ochlocratic as well as materialistic trend as opposed to the Christian traditional love for quality. It is "bigger and better" and not "better and bigger" which inspires our democratists with their competitive and recordistic tendencies.”
Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn (1909–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A Christian will consider a tyrannical person bossing a city brutally a lesser evil than a whole city lynching one man. In the first case there is one sinner and thousands of sufferers, in the latter case thousands of sinners and one sufferer. The materialist will look at the problem the other way round. He is never interested in sin, but as a humanitarian only in suffering. His final logical conclusion is euthanasia and the sacrifice of individuals to the whim of the masses.”
Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn (1909–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The horizontalist is tied down and cannot rise above himself. In his antagonism toward all hierarchy he even finally opposes the idea of God as a superior to himself, as a Supreme Being, and therefore also the conceptual images of Popes, emperors, kings, and fathers.”
Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn (1909–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Dignity is naturally an "aristocratic" virtue, best demonstrated in adverse circumstances, in bearing of suffering, in facing death, childbirth, or the guillotine. Dignity as an attitude is also something personal and not collective. Democratism never liked dignity. Nothing infuriates the howling mob more than dignity.”
Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn (1909–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Ochlocracy is revolution in permanence.”
Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn (1909–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Europe's rise is written in the terms of Christianity and Monarchy, Europe's decay in the terms of Republicanism, "Progressivism," and Godlessness.”
Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn (1909–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The natural, romantic man, regardless of whether he liked or disliked the Jews, saw in them the representants of an interesting and ancient race, blood brothers of our Lord. Yet the true herdist resented the baptized or unbaptized sons of Abraham violently, and for the identitarian National Socialist, with his latent inferiority complex and his petit bourgeois lack of worldly experience, they were the worst offenders against the sacred law of uniformity.”
Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn (1909–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Ninety-five per cent of modern people have no ideas or convictions of their own. Five per cent have views and convictions but again ninety-five per cent of these do not dare to stand up for them. There are five per cent of five per cent who have courage and convictions. These make history for good or evil.”
Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn (1909–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There is no such thing as a historical fatality; there is only a historical nemesis which punishes those who have hesitated to act when action was still possible.”
Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn (1909–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Neither are the progressivists, in present-day America, revolutionaries or enemies of the order. Being "radical" or "progressive" they merely want to continue with greater speed and determination along the established, wrong trail.”
Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn (1909–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Rightist ideas are only truly magnetic if they are absolutely pure; Leftist ideas, on account of their materialistic and heretic essence, never demand perfection. Mediocrity is the death of every Rightist movement, but it is the very air in which Leftism thrives. A totalitarian leader who betrays practically every point of his party program hardly shakes the faith of his fanatical followers, but mediocre monarchs, Popes, and prelates have destroyed the old order.”
Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn (1909–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The automatic desire for more power is only apparent in children, primitives, people of low character or intellect; for the superior man, power is like a cross, duty a burden, responsibility an obligation.”
Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn (1909–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Liberty and equality are in essence contradictory.”
Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn (1909–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Even 51 per cent of a nation can establish a totalitarian and dictatorial règime, suppress minorities, and still remain democratic; there is, as we have said, little doubt that the American Congress and the French Chambre have a power over their respective nations which would rouse the envy of a Louis XIV or a George III were they alive today.”
Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn (1909–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“'Welfare State' is a misnomer, for every state must care for the common good.”
Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn (1909–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In the last two hundred years the exploitation of envy—its mobilization among the masses—coupled with the denigration of individuals, but more frequently of classes, races, nations, or religious communities, has been the key to political success.”
Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn (1909–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Who is secure in all his basic needs? Who has work, spiritual care, medical care, housing, food, occasional entertainment, free clothing, free burial, free everything? The answer might be “monks and nuns,” but the standard reply is, “prisoners.” And inevitably this conjures up citizens of the Provider State who have protection from the “cradle to the grave.”
Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn (1909–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The dropping of the [atomic] bomb on a populated center was another totally superfluous crime. Even if callous arguments for the annihilation of Hiroshima could be made, there was no necessity for the slaughter in Nagasaki, cradle of Japanese Christianity. Within a split second the bomb wiped out one-eighth of Japan’s Catholic Christians. Here the argument resurfaces—Truman wanted to impress the Soviets, just as Churchill had with Dresden. But how could any butcher impress the arch-butcher from the Caucasus? Not even the late Adolf Hitler had succeeded.”
Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn (1909–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“For the average person, all problems date to World War II; for the more informed, to World War I; for the genuine historian, to the French Revolution.”
Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn (1909–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Patriotism, not nationalism, should inspire the citizen. The ethnic nationalist who wants a linguistically and culturally uniform nation is akin to the racist who is intolerant toward those who look (and behave) differently. The patriot is a "diversitarian"; he is pleased, indeed proud of the variety within the borders of his country; he looks for loyalty from all citizens. And he looks up and down, not left and right.”
Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn (1909–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is most amazing that one encounters fairly well-educated Christians who believe that "we are all equal before God." If Judas Iskariot were equal to John the Baptist or John the Evangelist, Christianity would have to close shop. Dominican R.L. Bruckburger said rightly that the New Testament is a message of human inequality. (Could one imagine that, at the Day of Judgment, all sentences could be equal? That God would not "discriminate" between saints and sinners?)”
Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn (1909–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Generosity is a virtue more frequently found in the small top layers than among the masses. After all, it takes intelligence to suspect that generosity very often pays while egotism does not.”
Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn (1909–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[T]here are in America about a hundred different types of "democracy," each held to be "real democracy, democracy as it was meant by the Founding Fathers, democracy as we all understand it." But the Founding Fathers, although they had very clear and concise ideas, wanted personally no democracy, and the only way out of the chaos is to go back like good children to the giants of the past, be they theologians like St. Thomas, philosophers like Plato, or statesmen like the authors of the Federalist. Confusion of words and meanings leads to the confusion of minds, and the confusion of minds breeds upheavals and revolution, as a well-known American once rightly pointed out.”
Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn (1909–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The true "herdist" will carefully avoid acting or thinking originally, in order not to destroy the uniformity which is so dear to him, and he is also ready to rise immediately against anybody who dares to act independently and thus destroy the sacred unity of the uniform group to which he belongs. The loyal herdist will not rise alone against the sacrilegious offender; he will have the support of the rest of the circumscribed society and thus a mass action of collective protest will take place, forcing the "lonely individual" to conform or to withdraw. It must be fully borne in mind that no one of us is completely free from the influence of the herdist instinct and even the noblest among us yield to its dark appeal in one form or the other.”
Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn (1909–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The herdist instinct is furthermore not only personal, in the sense that it clamors for a personal collectivism; it creates also a longing and desire for the visual or acoustic contemplation of identitarian or uniformistic phenomena. The true herdist, the man truly dominated by that inferior instinct, will not only rejoice in marching amongst twenty thousand uniformly clad soldiers, all stepping rhythmically in one direction, but he will find an almost equal gratification in contemplating the show from a balcony. He will not only be happy in sitting amidst two hundred other bespectacled businessmen, drinking beer and humming one chant in unison, but the aspect of a skyscraper with a thousand identical windows will probably impress him more than a picture by Botticelli or Zurbarán.”
Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn (1909–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It should not be forgotten that none of us lacks the herd instinct completely and that there is scarcely a human being who is totally devoid of the romantic spirit. But while the herd instinct of those "who want to march through life together, along the collective path, shoulder to shoulder, wool rubbing wool and the head down" (José Ortega y Gasset)—is of the animalistic order, the romantic spirit is purely human, divine. The plenitude of life so eagerly sought by the Romantic, as here conceived, is inaccessible to the animal. The terrifying diversity of the total cosmos (visible as well as invisible) has no meaning for the termite or the herdist with their limited existences in their limited buildings.”
Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn (1909–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“One should, in that connection, certainly not forget the "greatest" adventure of the herdist, his banal excursions into the animalistic aspects of sex. Here he hopes to drown the despair over his loneliness in the herd. The Romantic may be alone, but he is never lonely, and that because of his knowledge of the presence of God. (Certainly, also, there is more loneliness in an apartment house or in a crammed subway than in a village with widely dispersed cottages.) Yet the restriction of adventure to the sexual sphere is the reason why our urban culture and civilization is so terribly oversexed. The great thirst does not go for "women" or "men" but for sex alone, sex for sex' sake. It is not the attraction of the other sex, but sex as a drug and escape. It thus stands in the same category as the movies. Modern man, having abandoned the supernatural, here seeks for perhaps a last consolation, in order not to be completely overpowered by machine and monotony.”
Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn (1909–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We must furthermore always bear in mind that equality presupposes the perpetual application of force; equality after all is an unnatural condition — it is just as unnatural as a completely straight line, a geometrical plain, a perfect circle, distilled water, etc. It needs the intervention of human agencies who have to curtail and to stem the natural growth and development sometimes in the most brutal and cynical way. Docteur Guillotin, Procrustes, the mythological Hellenic bandit, and the magistrate of Strasbourg who decided during the French Revolution to demolish the tower of the medieval cathedral because it was higher than the surrounding houses, belong all to the same category.”
Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn (1909–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“True herdism, elevated from the status of a low and contemptible instinct to the supreme level of an ideology, of a Weltanschauung, has become a tremendous force in our modern culture and civilization. The herdist ideologies, based on that powerful animal instinct, have attacked and transformed most spheres of human activities including love, sex, and politics. The different "democratic" (and superdemocratic totalitarian) parties of the twentieth century have continued and fostered this process of dehumanization of our Christian culture to a degree hitherto unknown in the annals of human existence.”
Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn (1909–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“From a purely human and material point of view we are utterly unequal — unequal in the eyes of our fellow men (which matters less) but also unequal from an absolute material standard. From that point of view we are not even born equal; the syphilitic babe and the healthy newcomer in this world are different in material quality. The stupid and the intelligent man or woman, the physically strong and the physically weak, the learned and the unlearned — they are all humanly unequal from the aspects compared. And of course there is also a hierarchy of characteristics. The Theist will give precedence to spiritual qualities over intellectual qualities, and most people will value intellect higher than mere bodily strength.”
Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn (1909–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“This pagan geocentrism has changed the very content of our culture. The "happy end" of the cheap, popular novels and the films is nothing but the outcome of the supposition that the human drama finds its ultimate conclusion here on earth. The Calvinists in their materialism took a similar attitude. The more subtle Atheist, of greater experience, has contempt for the "happy end" and substitutes for it a stubborn heroical pessimism which comes pretty near to integral despair. The modern Catholic French writers like Mauriac and Bernanos avoid the happy end in relation to this life. Paul Claudel, in L'Ôtage, expresses his disbelief in earthly justice by punishing the people of good will and rewarding the villains in the last scene of this play. For the Christian the earth is essentially a "vale of tears.”
Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn (1909–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“This change from the fatherhood of God to the fatherhood of the pithecanthropus erectus, Dubois' "Walking Ape-Man," has destroyed a good deal of genuine human pride. Once everybody was proud of his own class or station in life. But now there is everywhere an unquenchable thirst for identity and equality. Nobody wants to serve, nobody wants to be subjected because service in a nonhierarchical society means going under the level of equality. [...] the genuine pride which people used to feel for their station in life, vanished: the aristocratic pride, the craftsman's pride, the burgher's pride and honor. Everybody wanted to get quickly to the top of the ochlocratic sand heap of equal gains. The feeling of inequality begins now to be a burning pain, snobism lifts its ugly head, the element of general human competition gains headway in every phase of life.”
Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn (1909–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“These expressions — "culture" and "civilization" — have to be used in their Continental sense to make the point clear. "Culture" is the sum of all products which represent a personal manifestation, like painting, poetry, religion, philosophy, and the humanities. "Civilization" is nonpersonal. It is the sum total of all efforts which contribute to the increase of comfort or "usefulness" in the practical sense. Bathtubs, dentists' tools, railways, and traffic regulations are products of civilization. […] Yet while civilization is basically lack of friction, smoothness, comfort, and material enjoyment we have to look at traditional Christianity as being something "uncomfortable." […] It is difficult to project into the frame of a comfortistic civilization the picture of Christ, hanging on the cross with a body convulsed by pain, the palms torn to shreds by the heavy nails, the hairs glued to the scalp by sweat and coagulated blood. It ought to be repeated again that culture is always "magnificent." […] Civilization is geocentric comfort. But culture, which must be bought by bitter suffering (there is neither art nor sanctity without suffering), points always toward heaven. And the ochlocratic millennium hell bent upon avoiding suffering will turn its back toward heaven.”
Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn (1909–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There used to be once the dominating idea of "Christendom," but this was far from being collectivistic in character as it contained two hierarchic principles: the visible one from beggar to Pope and the invisible one from sinner to saint. "Humanity" as such scarcely existed as a living principle in the Middle Ages because man had in regard to eternity no collective existence. Individuals sacrificed themselves for their families, their manorial lords, kings, cities, rights, privileges, religion, their beloved Church or the woman they loved, in fact, for everything or anybody to which or to whom they had a personal relationship. The anonymous sand-heap "humanity" was unknown to medieval man and even the concept of the "nation" was not equivalent to a gray mass of unilingual citizens but was looked upon as a hierarchy of complicated structure. Sanctity as well as heroism were problems of the individual.”
Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn (1909–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Arbitrary compulsory education is after all a flagrant curtailment of parental rights and at least as "totalitarian" as conscription. Yet practically nobody dared to contradict the sacrifices made to the idol of "education" and few people sensed that compulsory elementary education was a great step in the direction of totalitarianism which in time intervened in every region of human existence. True, the father's right is not violated by compulsory education in so far as a certain degree of education is reasonably deemed necessary by the State for citizenship, to be administered in the school of the father's choice, provided that school is not subversive in its nature. But the supreme rule is that the child belongs to the parent and not to the State.”
Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn (1909–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The personal mystery of medieval man has been largely destroyed by capitalistic technicism and bourgeois scientism. There was always something mystical in personal creation as well as a "secret" in manual, artistic skills; convents and monasteries jealously kept the secret of their liquors; craftsmen had their secrets and so had doctors, alchemists, astrologers, and pharmacists in their more or less dark trades. Mystics, hermits, midwives, cooks, and violin builders harbored their secrets. Nature was full of unpenetrable mysteries and strange events; the scarcity of written documents furthered the growth of sagas, folklore, and legends. But not only man, nature, and life had their mysteries; even today we speak of the mysteries of the Rosary, of the Mass. In the Armenian Rite of the Catholic Church a veil is spread between the altar and audience during the Consecration of the Host. These mysteries on the other hand, personal as they might be, were far from creating walls between human beings who were by them not less magnetically attracted than by distance. Bodies are mutually attracted by nearness, knowledge, and pleasure but souls by distance, mystery, and suffering.”
Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn (1909–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Cities like London, New York, Berlin, Paris, Chicago, Pittsburgh, Detroit, or Glasgow are high spots of slavery in comparison to Albania, Bulgaria, or even Central Africa. The slavery of the watch and clock, the bourgeois, anthropocentric slavery of material prestige and successful competition (to slave in order to keep up standards), the wage slavery of the proletarian, the school slavery of the children, the conscription slavery of the adolescents, the road slavery, the factory slavery, the barrack slavery, the party slavery, the office slavery, the parlor slavery of manners and conventions — all these slaveries make political "freedom" appear a bitter joke.”
Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn (1909–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Once Europe could boast of a large class of craftsmen — free people with the opportunity for artistic creation; but now everything is manufactured by mass production and the result is an incredible shrinkage in the variety of forms due to standardization. There is probably a greater variety of goods in Timbuctoo or in the Sooks of Marrakesh than in Frankfort or Los Angeles. The artifacts are thus "democratized." (Mr. Gray and Mr. Green get an identical product for an identical price.) […] The defenders of mass production emphasize the fact that modern manufacture makes more goods accessible to a greater number. They are not aware psychologically that the gain is nil. It is true that a book used to cost during the Middle Ages the equivalent of two to five hundred dollars whereas Gone With the Wind can be bought in editions of $1.49 and even less. Libraries were the privileges of a very few. But on the other side people enjoyed books far more, and the purchase of a book was a greater event in life than today the acquisition of a Cadillac. Nowadays one walks nonchalantly into a bookstore, pushes two and a half dollars over a counter, reads the book and forgets it sometimes in the suburban train.”
Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn (1909–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The Catholics can find consolation in the fact that Catholicism is the only conscious negation of our ailing and perverted modern world, and therefore (spiritually and intellectually at least) the only revolutionary movement. All other political philosophies — Leftist "Democrats," National Socialists, Continental Liberals, Communists, and Technocrats — agree on the coming earthly millennium of equality, plumbing, hygiene, and statistical increases in the material sphere. Their fight against each other is so bitter only because it is in its essence fratricidical. They all believe in a more or less identical Utopia yet they differ about the means to achieve it. In this respect they resemble the unfortunate masons trying to build the Tower of Babel but who failed to achieve their goal because the confusion of languages prevented them from mutual understanding and common planning; the man who could translate their thoughts would indeed be antichrist.”
Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn (1909–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source