This piece by Julia Bradbury was on BBC’s ‘Countryfile’ recently.
Farmer Peter Brown talks with Julia Bradbury
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b01qsl55
It’s on iplayer for a while.
Below is a copy of my letter to ‘Countryfile’ e-mailed on 11th February.
To:
Dear Countryfile,
Biodynamics
I recently watched Julia Bradbury’s piece on Biodynamics and was astonished that she did not mention the racist nature of the Anthroposophical doctrine that underpins all ‘Steiner’ organisations including Biodynamics, Steiner-Waldorf Schools, Camphill Communities, Triodos Bank, The Steiner Christians Community and many other Anthroposophical businesses and enterprises. As I mentioned in my piece ‘Mystic Shadows of Colour’:
Having split from the Goethean Theosophical Society, Steiner created Anthroposophy with massive support from pre-war corporate Germany. His schema proposed that every human was a manifestation of his or her Karmic history. The cosmic forces controlling Karma emanated from points in Europe, Africa and the lost city of ‘Atlantis’ and ensured that people who were sinful were reincarnated as black people while the spiritually aware were reincarnated as white people; the other races being on a sliding scale of skin tone and goodness. Disability and other misfortunes were also karmicly decided. The same cosmic forces also controlled the growth of plants and animals. In detail, Steiner lifts ideas from everywhere and muddles the whole into a mystic-racist-spiritual-doctrine. An intrinsic part of the doctrine in Steiner’s own words is:
“On the one hand there is the black race, which is the most earthly. When this race goes toward the West, it dies out. Then there is the yellow race, in the middle between the earth and the cosmos. When this race goes toward the East, it turns brown, it attaches itself too much to the cosmos and dies out. The white race is the race of the future, the spiritually creative race.”
From: http://www.nagara.co.uk/Mystic%20Shadows%20of%20Colour.htm
If one visited a farm run by the National Front or the British National Party in which it was considered that only white people know how to farm properly I’m sure, as a good journalist, Ms Bradbury would have at least mentioned it. To see her joking with the farmer while taking part in an Anthroposophical ‘blood and soil’ ritual was disturbing.
Institutional racism within other organisations such as The Metropolitan Police or the Football Association is bad enough but at least they admit to it and have policies to stamp it out; there is also much public interest and exposure by journalists. But, unlike Steiner organisations, most corporate bodies do not have racism written into their guiding philosophies – that is what makes the Anthroposophical world view so disgusting. I think Countryfile should go back to the Biodynamic Farm and ask a few searching questions; it isn’t enough to treat Anthroposophy as just another load of amusing New Age woo – it’s much more serious. Treating the subject in such a light hearted manner is really an insult to all those who have died trying to fight racism over the years; not least to the friends and families of those who died in the Auschwitz and Dachau Concentration camps, tending the Anthroposophical Biodynamic farms.
For more, please see:
http://www.waldorfcritics.org/articles/Staudenmaier.html
Sincerely,
Nick Nakorn
If I get a reply I’ll post it.
Interesting how things get distorted when taken out of context. The quote is taken from a lecture by Steiner that described how the five main races as described by Blumenbach in Steiner’s view arose. In Steiner’s view, the “black”, the “yellow” and the “white” arose first during Quaternary time with an inner physiology and external skin color that were determined out of the light- and warmth conditions where they arose, near the equator, more in the temperate zone, and more to the north. In Steiner’s view, the American Indians then arose out of a part of the Africans that moved west, across the Atlantic during Quaternary time, and then northwards, which changed the skin color more than the inner physiology. This led to a disharmony between the two, which made the American Indians less adapted to the new latitude, where it arose, than the latitude where the African people arose, and created a tendency to a weakness of the physiology of those American Indians that arose in this way, that made Steiner predict that they would die out in time, which has not yet taken place, but made them vulnerable to the diseases later brought to the Americas by the relatively few invading Europeans during the Middle Ages. This, more than European weapons led to the larger part of the extinction of the American Indians. That is what Steiner referred to with the summarizing comment: When the Africans move West (and north), they die out. (The transcript is incomplete on this point for different reasons.)
The comment on the “yellow race” has a similar background and was made in broad strokes. In Steiner’s view, part of the “yellow” group, after its arose, migrated south, to a warmer and lighter latitude. This led to a similar physiological disharmony and weakness as with the American Indians out of a weaker adaption to the new latitude, than the latitude where it arose, and a tendency to perish in time because of this.weaker adaption.
The comment on “the white race” refers to the situation during the transition from glacial to post-glacial time, not the present. At that – according to the perspective decribed by Steiner in the lecture (he described things from other perspectives at other times) – the “white race” were the “race of the future” as the origin of what developed as the Indoeuropean cultures, starting with an original Indian culture, under the inspiration and leadership of Noah/Manu, followed by an original Persian culture, and only then, around 3000 BC leading to the development of the more known cultures, starting as river cultures in connection with the outlets of rivers into the ocean.
For the present, Steiner considered the “white race” to be a weak and perishing “race”, not the “race of the future”. http://waldorfanswers.org/OnSalonArticle.html
For an introduction to the untruthful demagoguery with which Peter Staudenmaier started his career as solo author on anthroposophy, see http://thebee.se/Staudenmaier
Excalibor/Sune/TheBee – please stick to one name when on line or it looks as if you are three people not one. Thanks for your comments; but there are no circumstances or contexts in which Steiner’s comments can be construed as not racist. Your continued support of Steiner’s work makes you a racist too; so sad you do not choose a non-racist philosophy to defend.
When I gave my personal email address in the form, it asked me if I was someone else. I could not correct that in the form, and therefore, to simplify things, logged into my blog and posted my comment based on that. Sorry for the confusion.
Yes, forms are not always reliable. I find it easier to link my avatar to my name and use my name for all postings. though above seems to have my name twice.
Thank you for this piece. My family and I watched open mouthed at the subject matter shown on Countryfile last night, including biodynamics and Tarot cards! So pleased we are not the only ones that found the whole thing distasteful.
You’re most welcome. I rarely watch Countryfile as It seems to have an odd attitude to rural life – often romanticizing it out of existence.. As for the Tarot, I missed that entirely – too busy thinking about the Biodynamics issue!
Just short on my continued support of Steiner’s work: Am I a racist? No, Staudenmaier is just an excellent eloquent propagandist, continuing in the same twisted vein as he started in 2000 and then has continued since then. Try http://thebee.se/Staudenmaier and http://thebee.se/BBC
Sune, If anything, Staudenmaier’s work is very, very reserved in its conclusions – given the material upon which it’s based. He’s not a propagandist, he’s an academic.
Over the past couple of years I have asked the same question over and over again of Steiner supporters. If you are not racist, why choose a racist ideology? It taints everything it touches because ‘good will and peace for all’ , whoever says it, does not make sense if, at the same time, one says ‘even though I think some people are less worthy than others due to skin colour (or any other physical trait)’.
So either you genuinely don’t think Steiner was a racist – in which case you probably don’t even know what racism is or you are also a racist but don’t know it – or you do know and would rather support a racist doctrine than a non-racist doctrine. It’s not as if there are not many, many alternatives to Steiner’s ‘spiritual’ systems to choose from. If you are not a racist, then leave Steiner behind and use your talents to fight racism.
I find it impossible to believe that, having spent years studying Steiner and years supporting Anthroposophy, you do not recognize Steiner’s intrinsic racism. Having read a great deal of your work and a great deal of Staudenmaier’s work I have concluded that Staudenmaier is a serious academic and you are a supporter of a racist ideology. You claim not to be racist but all you say on-line points in the other direction.
Sune, I have also often wondered why you choose Excalibor as one of your internet names – the legend of king Arthur’s knights is steeped in racist and misogynistic power-politics – his ‘noble knights’ even willing to die to continue their search for the ‘holy grail’ and take part in The Crusades. But of course you know all that.
Staudenmaier has two faces. One untruthful and demonizing of anthroposophy and Steiner. That’s the face out of which he wrote what he still publishes on the net, that deeply upsets people, and that in turn is used by others to demonize anthroposophy. That’s what even reached the producers of the BBC-film on 19 November last year, that I comment on at http://thebee.se/BBC
Then he has another more serious face out of which he cannot allow himself to actually be untruthful about published historical sorces, just give incomplete and slanted descriptions of them, obsessed with any small detail of how people from the whole spectrum of anthroposophical activities related to Jews and nazis during the Nazi time in Europe.
I make some comments on a paper by him, close in nature to the first demonizing end, “Race and redemption”, at http://thebee.se/comments/PS/OnPS2004Paper.html
But as now PhD he continues to publish his untruthful demonizing stories, that upset people.
That makes him a – today – Janus faced intellectual con artist.
Steiner admittedly often is difficult to understand, as he wrote out of the opposite philosophical tradition as that out of which present natureal science has developed. I have tried to sort out some basic aspects of this at http://thebee.se/SCIENCE/Science.htm
As for the term “race”, that is the main focus of Staudenmaier’s writings on anthroposophy, Staudenmaier does not lift his nose from the word on paper to the different concepts that lie behind it, and that only on the surface seems to be the same: “race”.
If you do lift your nose from the paper to the different concepts behind the word, you find what I have at least tried to start to sort out, first at http://thebee.se/comments/comments1.htm and then, somewhat more developed, at http://waldorfanswers.org/ThreeConcepts.htm http://waldorfanswers.org/PastRaces.htm#Atlantis and http://waldorfanswers.org/PastRaces.htm#Humanity
http://www.thebee.se/Steiner/reincarnation-globally.htm describes some comments by Steiner describing his understanding of the fate and continuation of the American Indians that were conquered and exterminated by Europeans and after the “discovery” of America by the latter.
It’s all much more complicated that you might think at first.
Was Stener a racist in the sense of viewing any generic quality of people as more important that what they/we are as individuals?
No. http://waldorfanswers.org/ARacistMyth.htm and http://waldorfanswers.org/WRacismMyth.htm try to throw some light on this.
But Staudenmaier is eloquent and eloquence at mainly all times beats stfife for serious truthfulness and clarity of thought.
Sune, the vast majority of the links above – many, if not all, written by you – do not explain away or excuse Steiner’s racism in any coherent way. Peter Staudenmaier is the foremost independent academic writing about Anthroposophy and there is no point in going over his properly referenced and researched arguments again and again. Calling him a con-man, as you have done for as long as I’ve been reading your comments on the net, is not helpful to your own argument, let alone helpful to fighting racism. I’ve read Staudenmaier’s work and checked the sources, so have you. But you claim not to believe in ordinary rationality and thus your arguments are as confused as Steiner’s own. As you know, the institutional racism that I object to in Anthroposophy has the same devastating consequences as it would in, and around, any other organisation. Hiding behind mystic nonsense does not make the problem go away.
Nice piece. Great to see the hollier than thou biodynamic branch of the enviro. movement being put under the microscope. These people have had it their own way for so long. Imagine if even a fraction of the racism elluded to was present in the Monsanto corporation, it would be shouted from the rooftops.
The movie “Spring time with Hitler in Germany’, about sums up the looney nature of Biodynamics – but much funnier.
Nick, you write: “you claim not to believe in ordinary rationality”
I very much believe in rationality and have especially worked to penetrate the basic concept of science from a philosophy of science perspective – http://thebee.se/SCIENCE/Science.htm
That’s why I’m so upset at Staudenmaier’s way of making a mockery of the concept by repeatedly publishing untruths about published historical sources, first as an amateur historian, claiming to be a real historian, and then – again – as an actual historian in the sense of having gotten a PhD in the subject, and showing he has no interest in the actual meaning of the basic concepts he’s arguing about, being satisfied with playing wordgames about it.
http://thebee.se/Staudenmaier and http://thebee.se/comments/PS/OnPS2004Paper.html
It has my contempt.
It’s saddening, since Countryfile could have chosen instead to do a feature about permaculture, which is genuinely mindful of the impact humanity has on the environment, and endeavours to work with nature, but has none of the problematic baggage (and woo-woo) associated with Biodynamics.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permaculture
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Having followed Nick Nakorn’s reasoning in his polemic against bio-dynamic agriculture and even more so, against Anthroposophy and anthroposophical endeavours wherever they are present, it is abundantly clear that both his language and, more importantly, the content of his thought issues from the error lying at the foundation of pseudo-science and self appointed moral ascendency.
Based upon his own fears, lack of academic rigour in failing to thoroughly substantiate the sources of his fellow “crusader’s” (Staudenmaier) assertions, and the most basic error of all, lack of will to thoroughly study and understand the central reality behind Rudolf Steiner’s anthroposophy, which is that each human being is a unique individual who has the potential, should he wish to exercise his free will, to deepen and expand his consciousness. Even the most superficial thinking applied to the concept “Individual” would reveal that it requires no further qualification. One is not an individual when one identifies with a race, nation, gender, age, religion, philosophical outlook, political persuasion, or any other outer definition which links us with potentially millions of others, sharing any of the above. These are simply outer circumstances of life. Failure to recognise this shows an incomplete understanding of, and therefore potential to develop, one’s individuality. In the Waldorf School movement, on Bio dynamic Farms, Anthroposophical Medical Clinics and Practices, the Camphill Movement, in Anthroposophical initiatives in the Arts and the Sciences, you will find individuals from most nations on Earth, every conceivable colour of skin, religious creed, economic background, professional qualification and physical and mental ability.
Given the apparent super abundance of information that Nick Nakorn posts (and under his other name, Nagora), it should be recognised that facts and truth are not necessarily synonymous – (a simple example: to the eye, the Sun clearly crosses the sky every day, whereas in truth, it is the Earth that turns on its axis and orbits the Sun: the first is a Fact, the second is a Truth.) The accumulation of facts alone are insufficient for the attainment of knowledge – and especially so when taken out of context and not penetrated with clear thought – and neither is the attainment of knowledge sufficient guarantor for the exercise of wisdom. Given everything that Rudolf Steiner has brought into the World and the Impulse from out of which he brought it, it is clearly evident that Rudolf Steiner was not in any way racist – failure (or unwillingness) to recognise that, is merely an indication of a complete lack of understanding of everything anthroposophy stands for.
I read great fear in this individual’s obsessive polemic, rather than any genuine experience in, or understanding of, any aspect of Rudolf Steiner’s work, or of that which unfolds all over the world in Anthroposophical endeavours, all of which have benefited and will no doubt continue to benefit an ever increasing number of people, regardless of their race!