My Friend Brian Ruhe

The purest idealism is unconsciously equivalent to the deepest knowledge. —Adolf Hitler

It is better to make a mistake than to do nothing. —Adolf Hitler

     No doubt some of you have noticed that I’ve begun doing weekly Skype interviews with the notorious Brian Ruhe, the “Nazi Buddhist,” president of the Thule Society (an organization that endorses the worship of a deified Adolf Hitler), and lord and master of the Brian Ruhe show, recently censored and banned from YouTube but still available on Bitchute. In fact some of you have started reading this blog because of seeing me on Brian’s show—after all, Herr Ruhe evidently has a larger following than I do, though that’s not saying very much. So I suppose I should explain why I am associating with such a notorious fellow, what I have learned from this association, and why I now consider him to be my friend.

     Our first contact was back in 2011 or 12, and was brief and uneventful. I think in those days neither of us was fully red-pilled, so to speak, and we were more or less “normie” western Buddhists, though still rather unorthodox and weird by mainstream standards. Anyway, upon returning to the USA after many years in Asia I sent out emails to many of the teachers and Dhamma organizations in the general area (mainly the state of Washington and southern British Columbia in Canada), and in those days Brian Ruhe was a reputable, more or less mainstream Dhamma teacher. Anyway, after offering my services to any Dhamma society that was interested, Herr Ruhe wrote back saying that he was pretty much a subsistence Dhamma instructor and lacked the resources to support outside teachers, and that was that.

     Several years later, after both of us had been “radicalized” by the Information Age and the Internet, a supporter of both of us suggested to Herr Ruhe that he should interview me for his show (the Brian Ruhe show, then still on YouTube), and so he contacted me. Not only did he ask me to be on his show but he further asked me to be the spiritual director of the Thule Society, which latter honor I declined for reasons laid out in a previous post. But we did the show, and it went rather well, and so we have continued with it.

     No doubt there are some people out there who think that a Buddhist monk associating with a devout Nazi—or National Socialist, as Herr Ruhe prefers to call himself—is somehow necessarily inherently wrong and reprehensible. On the contrary, I don’t think so at all.

     Some of Brian’s views are very different from mine, with regard to politics, the heroism of Adolf Hitler, the origin, ancient history, and current state of the human race, and also with regard to Theravada Buddhism—though ironically he is more of a scriptural fundamentalist than I am, at least with regard to cosmology and his belief in the texts’ authenticity and authority in general. So although I know the texts rather better than he does, I am also more skeptical, while Brian, bless his heart, is endowed with more of the Will to Believe. (In other words, going with the terms of Buddhist philosophy, he is more faith-oriented and I am more reason-oriented.) Regarding politics, I am not a Nazi or a fascist by any sane, non-hysterical reckoning. I see myself as more or less of a classical liberal, and consider the libertarian system set up by the founding fathers of the USA to be about the best so far devised and put to the test. The farthest I would concede to the fascists would be to say that, at this stage in the game, if I were required to choose between Marxism/socialism and some form of not-particularly-violent fascism, I’d almost certainly go with the fascists. Socialism sucks, and Marxism is historically, objectively worse than Nazism or small-f fascism in general, going with such objective criteria as numbers of corpses generated by each system.

     So, although I’ve been called a Nazi sympathizer, my Nazi sympathies are very limited and conditional. I do have sympathy for Brian Ruhe though, mainly because he’s a nice guy, and a sincere one. For that matter I am willing to hold a discussion in good faith with anyone capable of a sincere and more or less courteous exchange of views. Hell, I’m even willing to have a discussion or reasoned debate with a neo-Marxist, though most of them seem too hysterical or ignorant to discuss their views rationally, especially if there is feedback from someone who disagrees with them. (Objective rationality is, after all, a tool of white patriarchal oppression.) I have been hoping to have a discussion with some advocate of politically correct Social Justice on this blog, but again, most of them are adverse to having their views challenged. But I am willing, just as Herr Ruhe also is willing.

     So, a primary reason why I do weekly Skype sessions with Brian is that he is willing to converse and exchange views in good faith, even though we don’t agree on all points. We’re not overly concerned with changing each other’s views, either. And I must say that the conversations can be interesting, for us at least. Also of course the videos have increased the readership of this blog.

     I mentioned that Brian is more orthodox than I am in his Buddhism, at least sometimes. He’s literally a devout Buddhist Nazi, or rather a devout Buddhist National Socialist—“Nazi” was originally a derogatory slur, and Herr Ruhe tends to avoid the term. (I persist in using the term “Nazi” simply because it’s shorter and easier, and National Socialists ought to be tough enough to hear words they don’t like very much. Besides, it’s used so much that it’s hardly any more of a slur than “National Socialist.” It’s sort of like the term “Pagan,” which also began as a slur but was later reclaimed, and even accepted with pride by faithful Pagans.) Anyway, with regard to Brian’s devout Buddhism, it is interesting that he was actually ordained as a Theravada Buddhist monk for several months back in the 90’s, in Thailand, I’m pretty sure. Later he was a more or less mainstream teacher of Buddhism and meditation in the general area of Vancouver BC, until he was red-pilled and then ostracized by intolerant or fearful leftists. So Brian is a Buddhist first and a Nazi second. He takes Buddhist ethics very seriously, including the stuff about compassion and nonviolence. He understands Dhamma better than do most western Buddhists, and probably practices it better as well.

     Some people might assume, and reasonably too, that a Nazi would necessarily endorse militarism and even genocide. Nope! Brian simply denies all of it. Not only does he not endorse genocide, he firmly disbelieves the very idea that Hitler’s Nazis favored or perpetrated it; all that stuff is just propagandist lies promulgated to vilify the Führer. The Nazis were the good guys, even by Buddhist standards, according to him—there was no genocide of “subhuman” races, and Hitler was a peace-loving man, an inspired visionary who preferred designing buildings to bombing them, and who was forced into WW2 against his will by establishment warmongers spurred on by globalist Jews. Thus, among other things, Brian Ruhe is a sincere Holocaust denier. (Personally, I feel that although many of the stories against Hitler are probably exaggerated to some extent—just consider the stories against Trump lately—Hitler’s notion of Lebensraum pretty much implied an eastward invasion sooner or later, and I very much doubt that the Slavs were simply going to donate their territory to him. Also, preemptively dividing up Poland with Stalin’s USSR was certainly not persuasive evidence of his peaceful intentions, and his annexation of Czechoslovakia was an arguably predatory and shitty thing to do. But I suppose the “Hitler did nothing wrong” folks have their own explanations for all of this.)

     Ironically and maybe counterintuitively, as anyone who watches his videos can see, Herr Ruhe in his actual conduct is morally superior to the hysterical leftists freaking out at him on the streets of Vancouver. Most people who walk past Brian as he peacefully holds up a sign bearing a pro-Hitler slogan (or something equally politically incorrect) just ignore him, or glance at him and continue on their way; but some people curse him to his face repeatedly, bellow at him in a state of outraged anger, hatred, and self-righteousness, and sometimes even physically assault him. No doubt they feel perfectly justified and virtuous while doing so. Brian is almost saintly in his potentially self-destructive desire to peacefully wave Nazi signs in the midst of crowds of leftist activists. It is peculiar that the lefties going hysterical at Brian are literally more intolerant and more hateful than a Nazi. Let that sink in for a moment. But not only that: I would go even farther and assert that many Social Justice leftists, possibly even most of them, are more intolerant and more hateful than a Nazi, at least this Nazi. In a recent video of Brian’s one guy actually observes that Brian Ruhe isn’t a “real” Nazi simply because he isn’t hateful enough.

     Again, I assert that I am not a Nazi or a National Socialist, or even a run of the mill fascist, and I do not agree with a lot of what Brian promulgates, even though he is a nice guy and we have some interesting conversations. A good example of ideological disagreement would be our respective attitudes towards Jewish influence on western civilization. Adolf Hitler once said,

The art of leadership…consists in consolidating the attention of the people against a single adversary and taking care that nothing will split up that attention….The leader of genius must have the ability to make different opponents appear as if they belong to one category.

It seems plausible to me that the Führer walked his talk in this case by using Jews as the unifying adversary. No doubt he really loathed them, but still it does seem plausible that they were also a convenient political tool for unifying the militant righteous indignation of the German people. Nevertheless, Jewish influence on western civilization is much more profound than most people realize; and anyone who reads Kevin MacDonald’s The Culture of Critique is bound to become at least a little antisemitic (which is why it’s the only academic work banned by Amazon.com). Some Jews really are behind much if not most of the pernicious social phenomena running rampant throughout the postmodern west, including multiculturalism and the various forms of Marxism. The Holocaust may very well have been exaggerated (for propaganda purposes) for all I know; and with regard to Herr Ruhe’s theories about reptilian space aliens collaborating with powerful Jews, I suppose the less said the better. It seems to me that the greatest Jewish influence on western civilization was the advent of Christianity, originally a Jewish reform movement, although relatively few Goy Rights Activists place much emphasis on that particular point.

     So, Brian and I disagree on some things and agree, more or less, on others. Considering that we are both Theravada Buddhists, there is naturally quite a lot of agreement on basic doctrines of Buddhism and Buddhist ethics, and I even happen to share some of his weird ideas derived from ancient Indian Buddhist cosmology.

     Regardless of the objective truth or falsehood of his beliefs, Brian Ruhe’s conduct is morally superior to most of the people publicly bashing Nazism, including the outrageous hypocrites virtue signaling on cable news outlets. News announcers and commentators on pretty much all of the mainstream media pose as moral guides to the masses, yet they, unlike Brian Ruhe, are certainly not operating in good faith. These people are calmly, self-righteously, and cynically attempting to destroy anyone who threatens the narrative that they are paid to disseminate (and yes, they are paid by globalist Jews), regardless of actual guilt or innocence. For me, the mainstream leftist/globalist media’s ruthless, cynical attacks on Brett Kavanaugh were the absolute last straw; the guy is a totally vanilla, nerdy Christian white rich guy who obviously has never been a sexual predator, yet almost the entire political left in the USA were declaring him a serial rapist based on nothing but unsubstantiated accusations made by leftist activists. When he became upset and indignant at such sleazy attacks these same people cynically attacked him for being emotionally unstable. Their conduct towards the Covington High School kids, or for that matter towards President Trump, have been no better. Such “moral guides” are vastly morally inferior to the likes of Brian Ruhe the “Nazi Buddhist.” If I were ever to be interviewed by someone like Morning Joe, or Cathy Newman in the UK, they would certainly not be conducting the interview in good faith as Brian does, intent upon an actual exchange of views, and I would feel contaminated by the process. Not that they’d ever want to interview me.

     As it turns out, I am one of the only monastics of Brian’s own professed religion who is willing to associate with him in public since he publicly began endorsing National Socialism. A few others are willing to communicate with him privately, but otherwise keep their distance. This is understandable, but whether this avoidance of Brian is based on missionary diplomacy, cowardice, or something else would depend on their own mental states, which I surely don’t know. Anyway, I’m no Jesus of course, but even the Christian Messiah was criticized during his lifetime for hanging out with prostitutes, tax collectors, and other unsavory riffraff.

     And so, to sum it all up, Herr Brian Ruhe has got some very weird ideas (some of which may be true for all I know), but he’s a genuinely good guy, as far as I can tell. I suppose his girlfriend could describe a side of him that I haven’t seen, but then again she’s his willing consort and presumably loves him—but of course that’s none of our business.

     Thus far I have enjoyed our Skype interviews, and I don’t give a damn about political correctness hysteria, so I’ll keep going with them for the foreseeable future. Brian’s Bitchute channel is here. The website for the Thule Society is here.

(insert 30s-era German military music here)

P.S. At Brian's request I am including here a short video of Brian characteristically offering up a Nazi salute in the midst of a crowd of protesting lefties, while fortunately being protected by a few police officers: 

https://www.bitchute.com/video/Fg7mLXklitO8/?list=jAwYD9IBVY8E&randomize=false