It is possible that every nation has a blood and soil myth because the myth serves to legitimize a nation’s claim to land. The Nazi blood and soil myth is perhaps the most obvious version, but it is one of many, all of them odious. In the hopes of recognizing broad cultural patterns, I have created a chronological list of the blood and soil myth as it has been conceived by Anglo-American culture. It is an index of primary source material to use to understand how the myth gets employed, and re-languaged, by different cultural actors over time. (It cannot be complete and is a “best hits playlist”: a work in progress.) Each iteration is a puzzle piece that fits with others in ways that surprise! For Anglo-American culture there are 2 basic blood and soil myths: the Athenian and the Abrahamic. Both feature, as protagonist, the autochthon, or “earth born, born of the soil”.
The Athenian autochthon is native to the soil.
The Abrahamic autochthon is an invader who, commanded by its deity, takes another’s soil through bloody violence and claims that soil so its future generations will be born from it.
The Athenian and Abrahamic versions as binary opposites, as antagonists: the native versus the colonialist. In Anglo-American history, the goal is to live Athenian myth, for democracy is one of its features. Think of Jefferson’s Monticello. To achieve this goal, the Abrahamic myth is re-enacted, for Anglo-American culture is colonialist. Think of “cowboys and indians”.
Recall also that in Athens, democracy included slavery.
There is no small element of horror involved as Anglo-Americans spend 400 years taking others’ soil so they can—someday—live in peace. Peace never arrives. Bloody violence is the norm. Democracy is always promised and never realized.
The Blood and Soil myth is our masterplot, the national story we live in. No matter its variations, it serves to make us feel at home on a planet our species has barely woken up to. Perhaps by tracking the retellings over time of this primitive story, we will not only understand it; but understand it as a concentration camp that must be demolished so we can be free to perceive this world and this life as it presents healthier and more beautiful possibilities. The Blood and Soil myth is fecundly intersectional. The “blood” aspect involves birth, procreation, death—all “body” functions, experiences and destinies, on personal and collective levels, immediately and over time. It also involves war, racism and eugenics. The “soil” aspect involves our ways of habitation, the placement and ordering of our actions, the source of food, shelter, clothing, and the earth in its local, regional and global forms.
There is no past, for the past exists only in the present. What is present will not be in the future. Clinging to masterplots that make us villainous characters ensures we remain villainous, even if we assure ourselves that we aren’t. A prime function of the Blood and Soil myth is to make its re-tellers feel innocent of any crimes. That alone could explain its popularity and persistence—we don’t make the myth up; it makes us up.
A sign that the Blood and Soil myth’s power to control and shape character and behavior is when it is examined closely, and interpreted as a “big lie”: a way of masking crimes against humanity. And that’s what we are doing here—
The Blood and Soil Myth: An Anglo-American timeline: Bronze and Iron Age Autochthons (3000 BC - 200 AD)
Jefferson’s Autochthon (1600-1860)
Lincoln's Autochthon (1860-1870)
Darwin’s Autochthon (1870-1930) Hitler’s Autochthon (1930-1945)
Netanyahu’s Autochthon (1945-present)
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