Erik Ritter von Kuehnelt-Leddihn Guide, Meaning , Facts, Information and Description
Erik Ritter von Kuehnelt-Leddihn (July 31, 1909 - May 26, 1999) was an Austrian Catholic aristocrat intellectual. He describes himself as an "extreme rightist arch-liberal"; to be more exact, he argues against democracy and in favor of monarchy. His early books Menace of the Herd and Liberty or Equality were influential with the conservative movement in the United States. He was also a talented linguist (he knew eight languages fluently and could read eleven others). His best known writings were for the right-leaning National Review.
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Life
Kuehnelt-Leddihn was born in Austria. At the age of 16, he was the Vienna correspondent of the Spectator (London), a distinguished weekly founded by Addison and Steele. From then on, he didn't stop writing. He studied civil and canon law at the University of Vienna at the age of eighteen. From there, he went to the University of Budapest and received an M.A. in economics and his doctorate in political science. Moving back to Vienna, he took up studies in theology. In 1935, von Kuehnelt-Leddihn travelled to England to become Master at Beaumont College. Following the First World War, he moved to the United States, where he was to remain until after the Second World War, at which point he resettled in Austria, where he lived until his death. From 1938 to 1943, he was appointed head of the History Department in St. Peter's College, New Jersey.
His travels took him everywhere. He visited the USSR in 1930 to 1931 and has been to every state in the United States. Since 1957, he took trips every year either around the world or south of the Equator.
Von Kuehnelt-Leddihn taught at Georgetown and Fordham University during his life; he had also written for a variety of publications, including London Spectator and The Catholic World. He also worked with the Acton Institute, who declared him after his death "a great friend and supporter".
Work
His socio-political writings deal with the origins and the philosophical and cultural currents that formed Nazism. He endeavored in his work to explain the intricacies of monarchist concepts and the systems of Europe, cultural movements such as Hussitism and Protestantism, and what he perceived as the disastrous effects of American policy derived from anti-monarchical feelings and ignorance of European culture and history. Some of his significant critiques are of Wilsonian foreign policy activism (of which traces can be seen again in the policies of Roosevelt all the way to the presidency of George W. Bush today), which seemed to him to stipulate that democracy was the premier political system and misunderstanding of much Central European culture, including but not only the Austro-Hungarian Empire, was one of the contributing factors that led to the rise of National Socialism (as Nazism was formally known). He also highlights characteristics of the German society and culture (especially the influences of both Protestant and Catholic mentalities) and attempts to explain the sociological undercurrents of National Socialism.
Contrary to the common historical view, Von Kuehnelt-Leddihn claims that National Socialism was a leftist, democratic movement rising out of the French Revolution that unleashed forces of egalitarianism, identitarianism, materialism and centralization. He essentially stipulated that Nazism, Fascism and Communism are all basically democratic movements, which are all based upon motivating the masses to revolution and which include the destruction of the old forms of society. Furthermore, he claims that all democracy is basically totalitarian and that all democracies turn into dictatorships. His research is diagrammed here: and .
In Liberty or Equality, his flagship work, Von Kuehnelt-Leddihn contrasts monarchy with democracy and offers his opinions regarding the superiority of monarchy (all his points are naturally hotly contested by other historians). His contentions include that diversity is upheld better in monarchical countries than in democracies; monarchism is not based on party rule; and that monarchism "fits organically into the ecclesiastic and familistic pattern of Christian society". Thus he argues that monarchical government is actually more "liberal" (using the European definition of liberalism, which he preferred, and which would more likely be called conservatism in the United States, emphasizing tradition, order and capitalism).
As modern life becomes increasingly complicated across many different sociopolitical levels, Kuehnelt-Leddihn submits that the Scita — the political, economic, technological, scientific, military, geographical, psychological knowledge of the masses and of their representatives — and the Scienda — the knowledge in these matters that is necessary to reach logical-rational-moral conclusions — is incessantly and cruelly widening and that democratic governments are totally inadequate for the job.
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