La révolution culturelle nazie - Johann Chapoutot

For the Nazis, "culture" was originally simply a transcription of nature: trees and waterways were revered, mating, feeding, and fighting were done like all other animals, and defending one's herd and it alone. The distortion occurred when the Semites settled in Greece, when evangelization introduced Judeo-Christianity, and then when the French Revolution completed these absurd ideological constructs (equality, compassion, the abstraction of law...). To save the Nordic-Germanic race, a "cultural revolution" was necessary, a return to the way of life of the Ancients, and a re-establishment of harmony between culture and nature. It was by thus refounding law and morality that Germanic man believed he could act in accordance with the dictates of his survival. Thanks to this rewriting of law and morality, it became legal and moral to strike and kill. By delving into specific points, such as the interpretation of Stoicism and Plato under the Third Reich, the use of Kant and his categorical imperative, and the reception of Roman law in Germany, Johann Chapoutot will demonstrate how the rewriting of Western history took place and through what channels such ideas reached the perpetrators of Nazi crimes. This lecture accompanies the exhibitions "A Dictator in Pictures: Photographs by Heinrich Hoffmann" and "Views of the Ghettos: German Propaganda Photographs and Photographs by Jewish Photographers of the Ghettos of Eastern Europe (October 1939 – August 1944)," which will be held at the Pavillon Populaire from June 27 to September 16, 2018. Curators: Alain Sayag and Sophie Nagiscarde. Johann Chapoutot is Professor of Contemporary History at Paris III Sorbonne-Nouvelle University and a member of the Institut Universitaire de France. A specialist in political and cultural history, he has been exploring the question of the use of history, philosophy and law by Nazi ideology since his doctoral thesis.