FROM ANDREW "THE HAMMER" HAMMER

The summaries or epigrams that we have published during the past year are the result of a series of full-length papers or lectures authored by Dr. Richard Koenigsberg during the past twenty-five years. The Newsletter represent conclusions or "Final Solutions" on the nature and meaning of war, genocide and terrorism.

THE SECOND BATCH OF THESE PAPERS APPEAR BELOW. Please CLICK THROUGH THE LINKS to read the full papers or lectures.

By reading these papers and presentations, you will become familiar with the body of work from which Koenigsberg's LAW OF SACRIFICE has emerged.

Best regards,

Andrew C. Hammer: July 20, 2023. 5: 30 PM
  1. Dying for the Country: Death in warfare is depicted as honorable and noble. The  Holocaust depicts the ugliness, futility and meaninglessness of submission to the nation-state: sacrificial death stripped of words like honor, heroism and glory.
     
  2. Eliminating the Evil Enemy: The ideology of nationalism and wars undertaken in the name of one’s nation is constructed based on a binary. On the one hand is one’s own country, conceived as absolutely good. On the other is the enemy, conceived as absolutely evil. Absolute goodness is imagined to be threatened by absolute evil. To rescue goodness from evil, the source of evil (the enemy) must be destroyed. Collective forms of violence grow out of this ideology—or myth—projected or externalized into reality.
     
  3. First World War as Sacrificial Ritual: According to Jacques Soustell (1970), the Aztecs believed that the sun was born “from sacrifice and blood.” Warfare was a sacred activity whose purpose was to capture enemy soldiers and  feed them to the gods.  Lopez Austin observed that as long as men could offer the blood and hearts of captives taken in combat, the sun god would “continue on his course above the earth.” It was necessary to feed the sun every day with its food, the precious water, human blood. The life and mission of Aztec warriors had a singular purpose: feeding the sun god.
     
  4. COMPARING THE AZTEC SACRIFICIAL RITUAL TO THE WESTERN SACRIFICIAL RITUAL CALLED  THE FIRST WORLD WAR:

Aztec Ritual Sacrifice
Removing the heart of a captured warrior:
feeding the Sun God.

Western Ritual Sacrifice: Battle of the Somme: British soldiers about to run into machine gun fire: feeding Great Britain.

Aztec Ritual Sacrifice

Carnage

Aztec Sacrifice. Post-Conquest Nahua Painting, c. 1560. (Priests hold excavated heart to sun atop teocalli).

Carnage: British soldiers go over the top to be slaughtered by German machine guns.
  1. Genocide as Immunology: The Psychosomatic Source of Culture: In Hitler’s Ideology (1975) and numerous on-line publications, I analyze recurring images and metaphors appearing in Hitler’s writings and speeches. I conclude that Hitler’s ideology possessed a coherent structure revolving around the idea of Germany as an organism and Jews as pathogenic micro-organisms whose presence within the body politic could lead to Germany’s demise. The Holocaust grew out of the logic contained within this ideological fantasy.
     
  2. History and Sacrificial Death: The creation of ‘History’ requires: (1) Political leaders who persuade human beings to perform acts of violence. (2) People (journalists and historians) who record performances of political violence. It is not as if the violent acts that constitute history are separate from the recording of these acts. Journalists and historians are full participants, not simply  bystanders. Their role is to ‘witness’ violent political acts, thus to create “history” by recording them.