Perhaps the most important political lesson he derived from his time in Vienna, however, was a deep contempt for the state and the law. There is no reason to disbelieve his later statement that as a follower of Schönerer he considered the Habsburg monarchy to be the oppressor of the Germanic race, forcing it to mix with others and denying it the chance of uniting with Germans in the Reich. ‘If the species itself is in danger of being oppressed or utterly eliminated,’ he wrote, ‘the question of legality is reduced to a subordinate rule.’ Racial self-preservation was a higher principle than
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This way of thinking is, obviously, so dangerous. Especially when attached to such awful ideas as antisemitism and racial purity. I guess any idea can become attached to the idea that nothing else is as important as that idea, including the law, ethics, morality.
