The premise behind the video (National Socialism was Gnostic) isn’t exactly unflattering to our camp, but he takes that premise and mixes it in a massive vat of misinformation. A few gems in the video include:
1. He conflates Gnosticism as being in the same camp as Hermeticists and general occultists
2. He frames Gnostics as this hidden cabal pulling the strings of society as a lesser known and followed, even secretive sect, when the reason it’s lesser known and even lesser followed, is “because of its personal excellence” as Savitri Devi would say. Speaking of which….
3. He uses “gnosis” being commonly translated as “hidden knowledge” as evidence that gnostics are this secret society, when “gnosis” is only hidden in the sense that you have to actually WORK for it. If we follow his own logic, then what he’s saying would apply equally to Buddhism, and its relationship with the concept of enlightenment. Although considering his personal beliefs, I’m sure he’d be against Buddhist teachings as well. We Gnostics are MORE than happy to proselytize, and we’d be even happier if everyone on Earth were Gnostic
4. He claims that John predicted the future through divine revelation, and that this is proof that he was Gnostic. Completely ignoring the fact that predicting the future in the manner that he’s discussing is just what humans tend to do, especially if they’re religious. That’s not unique to, or characteristic of Gnosticism in any way, shape or form
5. Gnosticism is supposedly a parasite that infects other religions, even though you could completely ignore Christianity, Islam, Judaism, or any other mainstream religion and still have Gnosticism come out on the other end equally as coherent. Regardless of our beliefs on the Gnostic nature of Christianity or Islam or (the non-Gnostic nature of) Judaism, specific prophets are completely irrelevant to Gnosticism’s legitimacy. I would have no qualms at all with Gnostics who wish to separate themselves from other religions or prophets entirely and emphasize its independence, at least on a purely religious basis
5. He claims that Gnosticism requires its followers to self-censor themselves from opposing views, because they’ve already arrived at the Truth. Ignoring the fact that this is a general human tendency to block out opposing views and not a specifically Gnostic one, this is false for very obvious reasons. Gnostics are just as capable of being well versed in general religion and philosophy. And if I were self-censoring myself, then I wouldn’t have wasted over 45 minutes of my time watching his video. The misinformation in this video is so dense that if I were self-censoring, I would have stopped watching 10 minutes in
6. In one of his most baffling statements of all, he claims that the Puritans were Gnostics. Yes, THE Puritans
This video really needs to be watched all the way through. This little comment I’ve posted here, does not do it justice. And this video is currently sitting at over 150,000 views, with many commenters accepting it uncritically, or at the very least not critically enough. This video is a great example of epistemic violence, in my opinion