There are Buddha Bars, Buddha Lounges, etc. in cities around the world. Most of them aren't strip clubs, though.

The Buddha Bar in DC features an 18 foot high statue of Shakyamuni Buddha: http://images.thrillist.com/files/images/pieces/1...

The Buddha Bar in Paris is famous enough to have a spin-off in Beirut.

Unless one looks at the absolute numbers it is impossible to know how significant or insignificant this "34% increase" is.

Also, what is being counted as "Islamophobic attacks"? Muslims and their apologists often claim that verbal and symbolic "attacks" on Islam (which are protected as free expression under French law) constitute "violence" against Muslims.

Also, who is the "Islamophobic Crime Monitoring Group", and why should anyone believe them?

Chinua Achebe's 1958 novel is titled "Things Fall Apart" (there is no "When" in the title of the novel). http://public.wsu.edu/~brians/anglophone/achebe.h...

Don: << <i>To speak of anything "European" at the time is anachronistic >>

This is certainly the most important point of all. In fact, the word "Europe" disappears from use during the Dark Ages, and does not reappear until the late 8th century with the rise of the Franks as the military power behind the birth of Western Christendom.

Well, it all depends on how you define who is a "part" of who. The simple fact is that neither the Hellenic nor the Roman world were primarily European -- in any sense, including geographically, culturally, demographically or economically. The center of gravity was outside of Europe.

And when civilization itself collapsed in Western Europe (where it's hold had always been rather tenuous), it was the Eastern Roman world (so-called "Byzantium", which was still largely based in Asia) that carried on.

ID has gotten hinkier and hinkier with the passage of time. I doubt anyone will miss it.

Neither Ariosophy nor Volkish sentiment contributed anything of any significance to either Nazism in general or the Nazi view of race in particular. So-called "scientific racism" was already well established as part of mainstream European culture of the time. And the specific form that "race theory" took on under Nazism is completely described by the works of Chamberlain, Rosenberg, and Hitler -- and none of those works rely in any way on Ariosophy or Volkishness.

Goodricke-Clarke is a Christian apologist who has devoted his career to portraying the Nazis as Pagans in order to distract attention from the close ties between Nazism and both Protestant and Catholic Christianity. He knows that there is no real evidence to support this, but he does not let that stand in his way. For Goodricke-Clarke Christianity is good and the friend of all that is good, while Paganism is bad and the enemy of all that is good. Therefore the Nazis, as representatives of ultimate Evil could not have been Christian and must have been Pagan. This is Goodricke-Clarke's starting point. The fact that he is forced to completely ignore the main story line of how racist ideology actually developed in Europe clearly reveals the complete worthlessness of his "research". Racist ideology was out in the open and in plain view, and it was adhered to by millions or even tens of millions. The lurid tales spun by Goodricke-Clarke involved tiny highly-secretive cliques furtively meeting in the shadows -- this freak-show is just a distraction from actual history.

And the Nazi embrace of Christianity was not just for public consumption. Huston Stewart Chamberlain was to National Socialism what Charles Darwin is to Evolutionary Biology. And one of Chamberlain's closest life-long friends was Adolf von Harnack, one of the leading Protestant theologians of his day, and still considered an important pioneer in such areas as Positive Christianity, Higher Criticism, and the Social Gospel, and liberal theology generally.

It is interesting to realize that the Nazis embraced not only Christianity broadly speaking, but they specifically promoted Positive Christianity and the Social Gospel. And the Nazis were also very favorably disposed to Higher Criticism, which gave them the freedom to purify Christianity not only of Semitic influences, but also of the "effete" influence of Greek philosophy, thus returning, in their minds, Christianity to its original, pure, Aryan roots. You won't learn any of this from Goodricke-Clarke, and it is precisely what his writings are consciously intended to steer you away from.

This is very good new ... for Patheos. They are getting a real bona-fide star of a journalist in Jason. And hopefully this move will not only preserve and enhance all the great things about the Wild Hunt, but it will find an ever bigger audience for this unique source of news and views.

The textbook (literally) of Nazi racial theory is Alfred Rosenberg's "Myth of the 20th Century", which opens with a quote from the Christian mystic Meister Eckhardt. In that book Rosenberg specifically mentions Wotan or Wotanism a grand total of 5 times, each time to reject any connection with them. Jesus, on the other hand, is mentioned over 100 times, always very positively. Luther is praised 45 times, and Eckhardt is praised 40 times.

The other two main written works that formed the basis for Nazi race theory were Huston Stewart Chamberlain's "Foundations of the 19th Century" (the model for Rosenberg's book), and, of course, Hitler's "Mein Kampf". Those two books are even more enthusiastic in their embrace of Christianity than Rosenberg's (if that is even possible).

Goodricke-Clarke completely ignores the actual roots of Nazism's racist ideology while taking his readers on a wild goose chase in search of "The Occult Roots of Nazism". Yes there was some interest in the Occult on the part of some Nazis, but so what? There have been Christian Occultists all along. Many Christian intellectuals today wish to claim Marsilio Ficino and Pico della Mirandola as among the greatest Christian thinkers of all times, and it doesn't get any more "Occult" than Ficino and Pico.

The primary sources (by Chamberlain, Rosenberg and Hitler) are all freely available on the Internet. If want a reliable secondary source, then I highly recommend Richard Steigman-Gall's "Holy Reich: Nazi Conceptions of Christianity".

Merofled: " ... it has taken decent people more than 60 years to drag norse mythology and its symbols out of the dirt and mud (and the blood and the bones, teeth and hair) that a lot of our more immediate ancestors trampled them down in ..."

Nazi racial theory was promulgated in explicitly Christian terms from beginning to end. The Nazis may have borrowed a little symbolism and terminology here and there from pre-Christian sources, but Christians have always done that.