During last week\u2019s Q & A debate between Cardinal George Pell and Richard Dawkins, it was interesting that both men had perspectives on Nazism that were at once opposed and yet entirely congruent.<\/p>\n
Pell argued that Nazism and Stalinism were the \u201ctwo great atheist movements of the last century.\u201d Dawkins responded that while Stalin was an atheist, Hitler was not. However, they both agreed that Hitler represented the \u201cpersonification of social Darwinism\u201d (Pell) or that certain of what he tried to achieve arose \u201cout of Darwinian natural selection\u201d (Dawkins).<\/p>\n
Part of this to and fro was certainly the kind of argument that often arises in contemporary debates, often through a process one could think of as Nazification: one disputant involved in a debate on any given topic attempts to associate their opponent\u2019s views with the Nazis. It is the kind of thing that one could summarise in a sloganistic t-shirt: \u201cI\u2019m okay, you\u2019re a fascist\u201d (with an arrow pointing to the far-right).<\/p>\n
But how could there be such opposing views when it comes to Nazism and atheism? People may not generally realise it, but the divergence of opinion between Pell and Dawkins reflects deep divisions among historians themselves as to what the Nazis believed about religion.<\/p>\n