​​​ANDREW HAMMER PRESENTS

A DIALOGUE BETWEEN HOWARD BLOOM AND RICHARD KOENIGSBERG ON HOW

"BLOOD SACRIFICE CREATES THE NATION-STATE"ST
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“What compels a group of soldiers to willingly run into a barrage of automatic weapons during World War I? How did the kamikaze pilots come to believe their actions were warranted? Koenigsberg explains how BLOOD SACRIFICE creates nation-states.
 


Richard A. Koenigsberg is director of the Library of Social Science and author of:
 
Nations Have the Right to Kill

 Hitler's Ideology

Bloom is founder of

THE HOWARD BLOOM INSTITUTE

He is the author of:

The Muhammad Code
 
Click the links above for information on how to purchase either of the books. For information on purchasing The Muhammad Code,
click the link above
Koenigsberg stated that humankind values war as an opportunity to sacrifice for something greater than the self. The violence of warfare is masochistic. There is a SACRED OBJECT to which human beings submit.

Invoking Horace’s phrase, “It is sweet and honorable to die for one’s country,” Koenigsberg suggested that the sacrificial ideology of war lies at the “core of Western civilization.” 

When societies wage war, there is something for which people kill and die—a SACRED OBJECT that brings the enterprise into being.

For Hitler it was Germany; for the Aztecs it was the Sun God; for George W. Bush, it was freedom & democracy; for martyrs in the Middle East, it is Allah. Sacrificial death validates the entity or idea for which the sacrifice is made.

Westerners have the illusion that they are rational because they no longer die for religion. But they still have an object that is worshipped: not god, but a SACRED OBJECT, the nation.