​In my book Wednesdays with Wally, I give the account of his years in Berlin as an American university student in the 1930s. When he first arrived, sometime in June, 1933, one of the things Wally had to do was make a special delivery for his former employer, a Jewish businessman from New Orleans.

To find out where to make his delivery, Wally needed to find out how to get to where he needed to go. He didn’t yet know his way around Berlin. Wally’s landlady, an older woman named Frau Schoebel, told him to go to a nearby bookshop and buy a map. He found the bookseller and noticed that bookstore of 1933 Berlin looked very different than its American counterparts.

Wally was unaware that the year before he arrived at the University of Berlin, more than 22,000 volumes from that University’s library were burned in a socialist rally. Bookstores which sold unapproved books found themselves with shattered windows or were firebombed. Police were unwilling to investigate these crimes, because the Nazis, now Germany’s ruling party, were behind the crimes.

In its front window, the bookstore Wally went to had copies of the two officially-approved “bestsellers” displayed prominently, along with a framed photo of Adolf Hitler and little Nazi flags.

Those two bestsellers were Adolph Hitler’s autobiography Mein Kampf, and Mythus of the Twentieth Century by Alfred Rosenberg. Readers and historians are aware of Mein Kampf, but many haven’t heard of Rosenberg’s Mythus.

Many loyal Nazi households in 1930s Berlin kept a copy of Mythus sitting in their home, often in a prominent place — like today’s coffee table books or a family Bible.

The author of Mythus had an interesting — and checkered — past. Alfred Rosenberg was a former Bolshevik from the Balkans.  An ethnic German, Rosenberg fell out with the Russian leadership of that country’s socialist revolution of 1917, and fled to Germany, where he also had citizenship.

Like many other German socialists, Rosenberg gravitated toward Nazism. According to American journalist William Shirer, CBS News’s Berlin station chief in the 1930s, there were rumors of Rosenberg having had a financial falling out with Russian Bolsheviks before his move to Germany. Rosenberg would later find a  more appreciative audience in another expression of socialism, the pro-German (and anti-Russian) Nazis.

“Rosenberg was one of Hitler’s ‘spiritual’ and ‘intellectual’ mentors, though… he strikes me as extremely incoherent and his book Mythus of the Twentieth Century, which sells only second to Mein Kampf in this country, impresses me as a hodgepodge of historical nonsense.”
— William Shirer, Berlin Diary

Socialist movements of all kinds need ideologies that claim the moral high ground — no matter whether they actually have it or not. Rosenberg — and today’s socialists — claim they act for the good of everyone involved. As George Orwell would point out, this kind of claim is especially for the good of the leaders of a ruling party. Rosenberg knew this. He was a pseudo-intellectual and a writer who claimed to speak for the good of the people. 

Drawing on dubious sources, and fabricating a false history with just a few facts thrown in, Rosenberg wrote Mythus based on racial themes. He portrayed Western civilization as having been formed and transformed by the “superior” German race. Rosenberg wrote that the Germans, in turn, had then been persecuted by “lesser” races, such as Slavs and Jews.

It was time, claimed Rosenberg, for Germans to ascend to their proper place. 

Rosenberg used a doctrine of racial hatred that claimed Socialism was the answer to save this “master” race. Rosenberg claimed that confiscation of property and violation of human rights were necessary to prevent anti-German racism.

Now in 21st Century America, instead of the 1930s Berlin, we see something familiar. The Rosenberg approach has made a comeback. 

With lots of financial backing, and with the endorsement of well-paid promoters, the 1619 Project is essentially the same book as Mythus of the 20th Century.

It has the same goal. It means to divide rather than to unify. It justifies violence on the grounds of a false moral superiority, encouraging revenge. Also, 1619 Project endorses a form of socialism as the only solution. (Ignoring 150 years of evidence for the economic failure of socialism in all its forms.)

Socialism - in any form - has nothing to do with equality or fairness. It reestablishes a ruling class over a class of those who are required to farm, manufacture and serve the rulers.

Socialism re-creates the serf class. And a serf system always benefits those with money and power.

This is how Rosenberg was able to publish his book. Moneyed interests in Europe wanted serfs. It is how the 1619 Project — and Critical Race Theory — became so highly promoted. Many people with power and money want a serf class. 

The self-styled “lords“ over the would-be “serfs“ call for a redistribution of the wealth of others to the interests of the “ruling class”.  They spend loads of money to destroy human independence and enforce dependence on this newly-created serf system.

True equality respects the rights of each individual. 

And it is the job of each individual to take responsibility for himself.