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It’s just an excuse to differentiate themselves, it happens in cycles, first they went with the “biological” label, but gradually every wine became “bio”, so they found some other bullshit. Now that they’ve saturated that one as well, they’ll find something else.
Annoyingly, demeter products and the soil on their farms are consistently better than other bio etc. Competitors.
Doesn’t make their belief based practices effective. But they may help them make better decisions when it counts.
I know the Nazis we’re all in on occult type shit and “germanic / roman” mythos, is this meme just that Steiner had the same kind of woowoo occult going on?
I thought the Nazis we’re generally against Steiners brand of woowoo
OH I DID MORE GOOGLING:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudolf_Steiner_and_race
“Steiner, along with Hübbe-Schleiden and Hartmann, was affiliated with the racist and anti-Semitic Guido von List Society. For many anthroposophists in fact, ‘Jewishness signified the very antithesis of spiritual progress and the epitome of modern debasement.’”[334] The theories of theosophy and anthroposophy were “later co-opted by National Socialism”
Both stem from romantic and naturalistic idealism, that‘s Part of German culture. Modernity had severed the relationship between the people and the land and nature. Christianity and Judaism were seen as invasive religions, that eradicated the natural indigenous religion.
There‘s an antisemitic strain that rejected modern medicine as Jewish, and favored alternative methods. Homeopathy, Anthroposophic medicine, new Germanic medicine, quackery, and other alternatives were supported by the Nazis.
The Nazis regulated quacks and providers of alternative medicine as Heilpraktiker (healing practitioners), a law that‘s still around today in Germany. This legitimized them in the eyes of the public until today.
It’s all pretty convoluted and there’s no clear line. Nazism as an ideology has a lot of inherent contradictions. It’s both against modernity, for a more ancient indigenous culture, while embracing modernity, technology, media, and revolutionary change. It’s very syncretic.
Anthroposophy and other alternative medicine remains popular in Germany today, especially among the educated middle and upper class. Left-liberal hippies will often send their children to Waldorf (Rudolf Steiner) schools, which you can find in every medium sized city. I have personally listened to a Waldorf teacher talk in front a group of 40ish people how the Holocaust was the result of bad karma accumulated by the Jewish people. According to him the Jewish people were were cleansed by it and transitioned now to a higher stage of development.
The success of the German Green Party, organic farming, environmentalism, anti nuclear sentiment, alternative medicine, has a direct cultural origin in the naturalist romantic idealism from the late 19th, early 20th century. The Nazis co-opted some of it, because it fit in with their Völkisch and antisemitic ideas.
Even today, you can find neo-Nazis in Germany, who care a lot about the environment and animal welfare, also following alternative quack medicine. Anti vaccine sentiment was widespread in west Germany before COVID, and the anti-vax movement was easily co-opted by the far right afterwards.
It’s funny how hippies becoming right wing extremist is a worldwide phenomena. Even without the Nazi influence late stage hippies always end up on the far right. Like in my country the face of the anti-covid movement is a stereotypical white boy hippie with dreds. Like the typical mistrust in the government hippies have creates a lot of overlap with the far-right hence why some hippies become right wing extremist.
It pisses me off that they intermixed so much stuff. Some might be good, some might be bad, some definitely is bullshit, but you can’t really have a discussion because it’s all under one label and criticizing a part of it, criticizes the part you would agree to in their eyes.
Appreciate the detailed answer, the way you speak about it implies (or I take as an assumption) you’re German/local?
Yes, I am German. I come from that alternative milieu. My father was a founder of the local chapter of the Green Party and active in the peace and environmental movement. His job was working at a co-op owned bookstore with a book selection that had a strong emphasis on environmentalism, peace movement, leftist politics, third world authors (mostly Latin American leftists), etc.
I was born in an anthroposophic clinic. Throughout my childhood I ate mostly organic food and was treated with alternative medicine, mostly homeopathy and herbal. This impacted my life pretty negatively as I never received antihistamines for my allergies, only some vaccinations, nor any kind of attention to my ADHD. When I first visited a regular doctor as an adult, it was mindblowing to receive medicine, that actually works.
Some of my friends went to Waldorf schools, so I have second hand experience. Their school philosophy has lots of things going for it, but in practice can be pretty terrible for some children.
I can talk about this stuff for hours.
Wait biodynamic farming comes from Nazis?
They didn’t invent it, but they encouraged and invested in it. The number of biodynamic farms increased from 100 to 1000 after 1933. Some high up Nazis protected biodynamic agriculture and it was used on some SS run farms.
However the Nazis rejected Anthroposophie as an ideology.
Modern wine growers use astrology to plant?
I would think that’s a tiny subset of the producers.
I get that it’s woo (e.g. burying quartz crystals stuffed inside a cow horn), but I don’t see any racism. Care to elaborate?
I “found” this:
I’ve never read that before, doesn’t appear racist , even opposing racism in much of the text.
One of his beliefs was that Judaism still existing was a failure to assimilate.
Jewishness signified the very antithesis of spiritual progress and the epitome of modern debasement.’
Also:
One crucial stumbling block for English language readers is the anthroposophical tendency to delete racist and antisemitic passages from translated editions of Steiner’s publications.[341][342]
— Peter Staudenmaier (2009)
During the years when Steiner was best known as a literary critic, he published a series of articles attacking various manifestations of antisemitism and criticizing some of the most prominent anti-Semites of the time as “barbaric” and “enemies of culture”.[329][330] In contrast, however, Steiner also promoted full assimilation of the Jewish people into the nations in which they lived, suggesting that Jewish cultural and social life had lost its contemporary relevance[331] and “that Judaism still exists is an error of history”.
This bit feels very reminiscent of the “kill the Indian to save the man” type of racism that led to residential schools. Sure, he may not have thought there was an immutable negative quality associated with race, but he seems to have been a cultural supremacist.
Given that we now know that race isn’t real, I struggle to see the actual difference.
I’d say this was pretty on the nose
He saw race as a physical manifestation of humanity’s spiritual evolution
His belief that race and ethnicity are transient and superficial, and not essential aspects of the individual,[313] was partly rooted in his conviction that each individual reincarnates in a variety of different peoples and races over successive lives, and that each of us thus bears within him or herself the heritage of many races and peoples.
He presented explicitly hierarchical views of the spiritual evolution of different races,[315] including—at times, and inconsistently—portraying the white race, European culture or Germanic culture as representing the high point of human evolution as of the early 20th century, although he did describe them as destined to be superseded by future cultures.
Sounds like he held racist ideals, that were very influenced by scientific racism. But also contradicting himself as his other ideals of human individuality clashed with his own racism, so at times he ‘seemed opposed’ to racism.
I read all of the wiki article, not just the quoted parts. But I’ve decided to pick this part out and say that out of context of the rest of the article, what would you conclude
Toward the end of his life, Steiner predicted that race will rapidly lose any remaining significance for future generations.[313] In Steiner’s view, culture is universal, and explicitly not ethnically based, and he vehemently criticized imperialism.[317]
In the context of his ethical individualism, Steiner considered “race, folk, ethnicity and gender” to be general, describable categories into which individuals may choose to fit, but from which free human beings can and will liberate themselves
I did. Thus my assessment.
