Dissertation Update

 As I proceed with my doctoral program, I am in my last class now of the dissertation phase.  If all goes well, I will defend during the summer at some point, and will officially be a Ph.D.  At this point, I am in the process of revisions of chapters per the professor's recommendations, and that is going smoothly.  But, there are details worth mentioning, as I do have a somewhat unique topic. 

I haven't delved into the topic itself in detail, as there are a couple of reasons why.  First off, I don't want to have to explain to some well-meaning but nosey older friends of mine what anything is.  A big pet peeve I have is when someone like that wants to know what is on every inch of a homemade pizza, as if I have the time to delve into that.  As I said, I don't think they are ill-intentioned or anything, but it does sort of rub me the wrong way on many of those issues.  Secondly, the complexity of the topic is such that it would almost take five pages to try to explain it all to everyone who would ask.  This is really true of any dissertation in all honesty, regardless of authorship.  Someone who has not actually done doctoral-level research at times doesn't grasp that - they are looking for a Reader's Digest synopsis of a topic that is more detailed than a paragraph or short answer can provide.  It isn't their fault, and it doesn't reflect on their personal intelligence at all, but it is just territory they have not ventured into and thus they may not fully understand what is entailed in the process.  This is true of any type of work in all honesty - a brain surgeon cannot give short answers of what he does, and an electrician cannot do that either.  There is procedure, rubric, and vocabulary unique to each one of those fields, and not everyone is as familiar with it.  So, if you are one of those well-meaning people who has to ask "what is your dissertation about?" I would say don't - and for someone compiling research for a dissertation, it works the other way too. Do not expect everyone to have the levels of knowledge and interest in a topic that you do, because it can make you come off elitist.  It is best to not try to "toot your own horn" and give a discourse on a topic that many don't know or even care about.  I think if more doctoral candidates understood this, the level of hubris could be reduced dramatically. 

For the sake of satisfying curiosity though, the topic of my research is ideological streams that shaped National Socialism.  I have essentially focused on four areas - occultic societies, eugenics, the political movements that contributed to the evolution of National Socialism, and the philosophical movements and figures that contributed to its narrative.  In doing so, I have decided to go with Brian Walsh's and Richard Middleton's model they used in A Transforming Vision which is called Central Narrative Convictions, or CNCs.  Additionally, I have appealed to the field of Personalist philosophy to attempt to delineate what is unique to National Socialism versus what it assimilated from earlier movements (the communicable vs. incommunicable discussion).  The idea of a doctoral dissertation is that it should be a culmination of all of one's learning over the course of their academic career, and in doing so it means pulling from other disciplines to create a thesis.  While National Socialism was a very evil movement, it does share in common with any other group or movement one thing - it has a "story" that animates its agenda, and in doing so the story is built upon CNCs - questions such as "who are we?", "where are we?", "what's wrong?", and "what's the remedy?"   Any movement - good or evil - draws upon these CNCs to create its narrative, and in the case of political ideologies, this means essentially turning the narrative into a platform, and then into policy if such a movement achieves power in a nation.  This formula is called NPP, and it is integral to how a group forms as well as how it evolves.  Nazis had this process as well, as they didn't appear out of a vacuum either.  And, that leads to a couple of issues I have had to address during the whole course of composing this dissertation. 

Nazism is an evil ideology, and in general it is looked at critically as it should be.  The problem though is that having a critical approach to an evil ideology like Nazism can take for granted that it was not just the ramblings of a few mentally unbalanced psychopaths. While some participants in this movement certainly were psychopaths (Hitler definitely was), there were also ideologues who were constructing a system of thought which led to Hitler and his party coming to power.  I had a professor early in the dissertation process (this was not my Research Director, but another instructor) who basically was dismissive of the Nazis having an organized ideology.  I understand why he was, and in principle I would actually sympathize with him on this. However, the problem was that he didn't think Nazism was a coherent (albeit evil) ideology, and he actually said as much.  I don't know if that is a way of an instructor gauging how serious a student is about their topic or not, but the dismissive aspect of his attitude was not something you would expect from scholarly inquiry.  In a way though, encountering this is sort of a proofing ground for the formal defense of the dissertation later, as part of the reason why it is called a "defense" is that it does compel the author of the dissertation to be able to explain his or her position on the topic, and thus questions should be anticipated as it helps prepare the defense better.  If you are fortunate enough to get a defense scheduled, it means that you are being recognized as an expert on that topic, and thus there is an expectation to know the substance of what you are presenting.  Naturally, after spending a year or more drafting approximately 300 pages of material, as well as reading over it, revising and editing, as well as the research behind doing it all, one should have at least a casual familiarity with their topic. The formal defense is a way for the doctoral candidate to display that. My own dissertation took approximately one year thus far to construct, and I am currently in the revision phase of it now.  In a couple of months, I will possibly be scheduled to defend, and after that a few last-minute edits will make the dissertation ready to present to the university library.  At that point, one can call themselves "Doctor."  If all goes well for me, I will have that distinction by mid-September at the latest. 

So, one question that will inevitably be asked of me is how and why I chose this topic?  To be honest, I have been interested in World War II history since I was a kid and have read extensively on many aspects of it over the years.  At the age of 9, as a matter of fact, I was reading Robert G.L. Waite's psychological history of Adolf Hitler entitled Adolf Hitler: The Psychopathic God which was originally published when I was 6 years old in 1975.  At age 13, I got a copy of William L. Shirer's The Nightmare Years, which was published in 1983 and was a prequel to his better-known work, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, published some 14 years later.  I have also watched dozens of documentaries on the topic, and those have stimulated my interest as well.  Therefore, doing this as the capstone of my whole academic career is a natural choice.  So, what do I hope to do with this after I have the degree and the dissertation becomes published?  Let me now talk about that briefly.

My dissertation on this topic is the academic dimension to my actual work I want to do with this.  There is a bigger reason why Nazism and its "story" are crucial, as many of the ills we see in society now have the same roots in many cases.  That case was made by authors such as Jonah Goldberg, who actually delved into that in his book Liberal Fascism, and less-scholarly but equally significant sources such as Joseph Carr's 1983 book The Twisted Cross and Kevin Abrams' and Scott Lively's 1995 book The Pink Swastika dealt with occultism and homosexuality respectively being part of the Nazi legacy.  While those sources would not be considered "peer-reviewed" by academic standards, they are significant in that they do ask the questions that need to be asked and also challenge academic scholarship to look into the connections more. I had some difference of opinion with my own Research Director when I chose to use such material, but after he saw what I was doing and where I was going with it, he understood and said that essentially it was an important tool as long as I didn't rely on it for the main body of research.  Oftentimes, more popular and/or "conspiratorial" literature, while somewhat editorialized and with a certain view to get across, does provide a rich reservoir of primary source material for research.  Also, the fact that these popular works are well-known and widely read also suggests that they are raising important issues and perhaps they should be taken with some degree of serious interest. Additionally, if one takes the academic research after the doctorate has been conferred and utilizes it for a more focused purpose, that means the research done was productive and thus will maybe stimulate discussion.  Let me go into that briefly in my case. 

If you intend to be a commentator on things such as the book of Genesis in the Bible, social issues such as abortion, transhumanism, and the LGBT agenda, and Darwinian evolution, then knowing what animated Nazism and led to its rise to power is integral to the process.  Many of those big social issues today were also issues that created the Nazis, and the American political Left does share a lot of ominous similarities to the Nazis and the movements they sprang from.  You also begin to see the Nazis in a different light - while the Establishment tries to discredit Christians and political conservatives by lumping Nazis in with the "right-wing," the evidence shows that the Nazis were in reality more left-leaning than right-wing.  As a matter of fact, the Nazis could not even technically be called "conservative" because they were often at odds with who the actual conservatives were at that time in Germany - the actual conservatives were the Monarchists, and in Austria the Monarchists were also very influenced by Catholic spirituality and faith, and not the occultic/mythological worldview that the Nazis and their Volkisch predecessors held to. And, many prominent early Nazis even identified a socialists, hence the name "National Socialist Party."  Looking at movements such as BLM, Antifa, and the campus riots going on in support of terrorists like Hamas today, the similarities between them and the earliest Nazis are eerie.  Now, even overt antisemitism has become a tenet of "leftist woke" protesters today, and that should cause us to have red flags raised.  Educating others about this complex topic is integral, and it is the reason I chose the topic for my dissertation.  In future posts, I want to begin maybe delving into all that from a less-scholastic perspective, as I feel it will bring valuable insight into current discussions.

Any rate, that is my update on the dissertation process.  Very soon, I will have the privelege of having the title "Dr." in front of my name, and it also means that a "career" of almost 50 years as a student off and on will finally be completed.  If you are a fellow person of faith, I covet your prayers as I tackle this home stretch, and thank you from the bottom of my heart in advance.  Have a good remainder of your week, and will see you next time.