The #1 religion scholar of the 20th century was a secret Nazi | by Jonathan Poletti | I blog God.

Mircea Eliade left a legacy of lies

I’m reading a 2023 book, Bruce Lincoln’s Secrets, Lies, and Consequences: A Great Scholar’s Hidden Past and his Protégé’s Unsolved Murder, which tells the story of the man called the ‘greatest religion scholar of the 20th century’—and also “a convinced anti-Semite and Nazi.”

He had a Jewish friend growing up, but gleefully adopted the standard Christian anti-Semitism. In 1923, he wrote: “Like all the boys, I’m anti-Semitic out of intellectual conviction and I tremble that the anti-Semitic demonstrations aren’t succeeding.”

He was proud of Romania as a ‘Christian nation’ and saw the country having a special duty to affirm this religious identity—and keep the others out. He went to university, and studied Medieval Christian philosophy.