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Some general resistance to extremism

Some general resistance to extremism

Last updated on: November 15, 2025 at 3:47 pm by Dan Peterson

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Some general resistance to extremism 2025-11-15T15:47:39-07:00 Dan Peterson

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The memorial at Buchenwald, one of the oldest and largest Nazi concentration camps within the territory of the Altreich, the historic German empire (Wikimedia Commons public domain photograph)

The German town of Weimar is tiny — it has only about 65,000 inhabitants — but its cultural importance is enormous.

Martin Luther was in Weimar on several occasions.
Between 1608 and 1617, Johann Sebastian Bach worked as a court organist in Weimar.
In the nineteenth century, Franz Liszt made the city a center of German music. He premiered Richard Wagner’s Lohengrin in Weimar.
Richard Strauss served between 1889 and 1894 as assistant director of the court orchestra in Weimar.
Artists like Wassily Kandinsky, Lyonel Feininger, and Paul Klee lived and painted in Weimar.
Walter Gropius founded the Bauhaus design movement in Weimar.
Friedrich Nietzsche died in Weimar.
The prominent ‘German writers Johann Gottfried von Herder and Christoph Martin Wieland lived in Weimar.
Most of all, though, Weimar is associated with the titanic figures of Friedrich Schiller and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, who lived in the city and are buried in it.

And then, roughly five miles away, the Nazis built the Buchenwald concentration camp, where, although it was intended more as a slave-labor facility than as a place of systematic extermination, an estimated 56,545 inmates were murdered.

Among the prisoners at Buchenwald, at one time or another, were such notable people as the child psychologist Bruno Bettelheim; Imre Kertész, future 2002 Nobel laureate in literature; the once and future French prime minister Léon Blum; the Protestant theologian and eventual martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer; a former Dutch prime minister; a former Belgian prime minister; Elie Wiesel, future winner of the 1996 Nobel Peace Prize; Édouard Daladier, former leader of France; and even Robert Clary, the French actor who would eventually play Corporal Louis LeBeau in the television comedy series Hogan’s Heroes.

Both the glory and the horror of German history are on full display in and immediately around Weimar. The close proximity of Buchenwald and Weimar illustrates with painful clarity the fact that civilization and barbarism are not safely and hermetically separated from one another, that both refinement and brutality are fully human options.

During the 1920s and 1930s, a period of economic weakness and national humiliation, the people of Italy, Germany, Spain, and other lands turned to strong leaders who, they believed, would make their countries great again. (Wikimedia Commons public domain image)

I am beyond horrified that antisemitism, sometimes even accompanied by a sympathetic understanding of Adolf Hitler and the Nazis, appears to be enjoying a recrudescence in certain circles. (See “Nick Fuentes and the Antisemitism that Believes in Nothing.”) So I’m happy that films such as Truth and Treason and Nuremberg have recently appeared. They are badly needed reminders. Here’s a review of the latter that was published in National Review: “Nuremberg Puts Evil on the Stand: The film about the pivotal Nazi trials poses uncomfortable and critical questions.”

If you are a Latter-day Saint who has in any way fallen under the spell of Nick Fuentes and his ilk, you need to repent and to back away as quickly as you are able.

From an event at the Jordanian Embassy in Washington DC a number of years ago, in honor of BYU’s Islamic Translation Series (later, the Middle Eastern Texts Initiative, or METI). From left to right: the late Elder Neal A. Maxwell, of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles; Ambassador Marwan Muasher; Senator and Mrs. Harry Reid; then BYU President Merrill J. Bateman; and some vagrant who must have wandered in off the street. (Photo used courtesy of BYU)

I never had the opportunity to vote against the late Senator Harry Reid (D-NV), but, as a free-market-inclined, pro-life, federalist, limited-government conservative who strongly believes in original-intent jurisprudence and strict construction of the Constitution, I would certainly have done so had the opportunity presented itself to me. That said, I defended him several times on this blog (see here, here, here, here, here, here, and here, for examples) — against considerable (and sometimes quite unpleasant) push-back — because Senator Reid was a faithful Latter-day Saint about whom I had heard a number of very good things, including from at least two conservative Latter-day Saint Republican senators. (Weirdly, one angry self-identified Latter-day Saint writer denounced me as a covert enemy of the Church and of Western civilization, linking me with my co-conspirators, Elders Dieter F. Uchtdorf and Patrick Kearon.)

But I was genuinely shocked at Senator Reid’s enthusiastic willingness to lie publicly about Mitt Romney, and to refuse either to apologize for the lie or to repent of it, even when it became unambiguously clear that his accusation was untrue. His justification was that his charge had, in his judgment, helped to defeat Romney and, thus, to retain the White House for Barack Obama and the Democrats.

My own moral framework wouldn’t permit such action to me — not, at least, with a quiet conscience. I value civility and honesty far above politics. And I regard Harry Reid’s conduct in this matter not only as indefensible but as utterly incomprehensible. How could an apparently faithful and committed Latter-day Saint behave in such a fashion? How could he face himself in the mirror? And, while it doesn’t make any essential difference that Mitt Romney was (and, of course, still is) an active member of Brother Reid’s Church, that fact simply makes Senator Reid’s misconduct all the more egregious.

So reading this article didn’t make me feel even slightly better about the case: “New book shows how Harry Reid’s team celebrated false claims about Mitt Romney’s taxes: Author explains why Reid never regretted the accusations that hurt Romney’s 2012 campaign.”

Senator Harry Reid, Joshua DuBois, President Thomas S. Monson, President Barack Obama, and Elder Dallin H. Oaks at the presentation to Mr. Obama, by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, of his family history. (Wikimedia Commons public domain image)

A podcast episode from Meridian Magazine: “Come Follow Me Extra: Why Would Anyone Question if Joseph Smith Wrote the Revelation on Plural Marriage?” “Polygamy deniers claim that Joseph Smith didn’t write the second half of Section 132, but that it might have been Brigham Young to justify the practice. Extensive word studies called stylometrics take a look at the claim.”

The Montevideo Uruguay Temple (LDS Media Library)

Now, though — alas! — it’s time for something from the Christopher Hitchens Memorial “How Religion Poisons Everything” File™: “Elder Renlund Sees Church Donations in Action at University Hospital in Uruguay.” (You will perhaps remember that, prior to his call to serve as a General Authority, Elder Renlund was a physician specializing in cardiology.)

But theists aren’t content merely to torment people. No, indeed. They also want to muck about with nature: “Elder Caussé Calls Care for God’s Creations an ‘Expression of Love’” (This article is accompanied by some quite interesti . . . umm, revolting and infuriating videos that I commend to your notice.)

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