Nietzsche and the Nazis

[Doc]

a2C90l7YlT8

[NapLajoieonSteroids]

Failed Egoists: The Irrelevance of Right Nietzscheanism

Nietzsche is a man of the right. I will not deny him that. His early reception by people such as Oscar Levy, George Chatterton-Hill, Anthony Ludovici, J.M. Kennedy and others correctly interpreted him as the eugenicist aristocratic radical he was, and Nietzsche was influential in the Edwardian-era England eugenics movement, as documented by Dan Stone in Breeding Superman (2002). Nonetheless, his appropriation by left-wing socialists began contemporaneously, which is the subject of Seth Taylor’s Left-wing Nietzscheans: The Politics of German Expressionism, 1910-1920 (1989). This ambivalence of Nietzsche’s reception persists to this day and reached its culmination in the 1960s when he became the darling of Derrida, Foucault and Deleuze. This was no coincidence. Nietzsche’s works began appearing in the agrégations de philosophie (entry exams for teaching positions in university philosophy departments) in the late 1950s, with Georges Canguilhem playing a pivotal role in this development and indeed in the entire direction of French “theory.”

How could a man with endless contempt for the “chandalas,” a fierce and consistent critic of the socialist movement who celebrated the master morality of the “blond beasts,” become a rallying point for subversives and degenerates? In more recent years, a lot of leftists have wised up to this discrepancy. Among them we can count Domenico Losurdo, Geoff Waite, Malcolm Bull, Luc Ferry, Alain Renaut, Richard Wolin and others, all of whom have awoken to his “proto-fascist,” “fascoid-liberal” or otherwise unsavory nature for those committed to egalitarianism.

Yet even though portraying Nietzsche as some playful meta-ironic witticist is a clear distortion, neither is such an interpretation wholly fabricated when one factors in his ‘middle period’ writings.

...Now to mock this as a prototype of Sam Harris is grossly unfair to the man, and that’s not my point. It is rather to bring up reasons for why so many leftists have been able to appropriate him for their causes. Still, we did very much obtain our “foundation-stones of new ideals” from “our sciences of physiology, medicine, sociology,” which is why everyone now “knows” because of Dr. Benjamin Spock that it’s atrocious to spank your kid, and that we are gripped by an epidemic psychological profile of “right-wing authoritarianism,” as “discovered” by Bob Altemeyer.

For me, the most fruitful interpretive framework for Nietzsche is to place his philosophy as a response to Max Stirner. The controversy over whether Nietzsche read Stirner has raged since the 1890s, though it has not been a major research topic in a long time. We do know for certain that Nietzsche was aware of Stirner from secondary sources like Eduard von Hartmann and Friedrich Albert Lange. Adolf Baumgartner, a pupil of Nietzsche’s at Basel, claimed to have borrowed Stirner’s The Ego and Its Own in 1874 at Nietzsche’s recommendation. German scholar Bernd A. Laska marshals considerable circumstantial evidence that Nietzsche had read Stirner in 1865 while a guest at the house of the Mushacke family, with the father Edward Mushacke having personally known Stirner as a veteran of the Young Hegelian radical scene in 1840s Berlin. Laska claims that reading Stirner was the inciting event for Nietzsche’s personal crisis that culminated in his embrace of Schopenhauer. Given the powerful impact that Stirner tends to have on people (myself included, for I credit Stirner with waking me out of my libertarian slumber and driving me into an intellectual crisis of my own that I fortuitously resolved by my rediscovery of the Christian faith and the counterrevolutionary tradition), I find this perfectly believable. Moreover, the residues of what appear to be Stirner’s can be found across Nietzsche’s philosophy, with this paragraph in The Gay Science being the most explicit example I’m aware of....

[NapLajoieonSteroids]

Nietzsche and Soviet Culture: Ally and Adversary (Cambridge Studies in Russian Literature) Reissue Edition

Reviews

"...the essays succeed in unearthing 'the hitherto buried Nietzschean elements of Soviet culture,' demonstrating the profound influence--direct and indirect--Nietzsche exerted on the birth and evolution of the 20th-century colossus." H.I. Einsohn, Choice

"Bernice Glatzer Rosenthal has, with this volume...established a sumptuous site for excavation." Lesley Chamberlain, TLS

"Cambridge University Press's series on Russian literature includes a number of admirable volumes....this collection of essays on the impact of Friedrich Nietzsche's ideas on Soviet culture adds tho the distinction of the Cambridge list....Readers will be drawn to individual essays by their own particular interests, but the entire volume is characterized by meticulous research and a uniformly high standard of scholarship. The book is a significant addition to Soviet cultural studies and to modern intellectual history." American Historical Review

"The collection of essays edited by Bernice Glatzer Rosenthal carries forward the impressive work inaugurated in her earlier collection, Nietzsche in Russia, by tracing Nietzsche's influence forward into the obscurity of the Soviet era, when official censorship forced all Nietzschean streams underground." Journal of Modern History

"Many of the essays collected here are excellent and present findings that, as Rosenthal expects, will probably surprise many observers of Soviet culture....any scholar of Soviet culture, and even those who have investigated the role of Nietzsche in Russian culture, will find that Rosenthal's book is well worth reading..." Slavic Review

[NapLajoieonSteroids]

Armin Mohler presents a list of names in his "The Conservative Revolution in Germany, 1918-1932" of fin de siècle Europeans of some fame, arguably as a proto-fascist/elitist intellectual vanguard, who supported a plan to move Nietzsche's remains/ashes to Weimar and construct a temple around them where they would have public readings of his work.

In other words, he was already a big deal culturally.

And with the war, he was certainly popular with a lot of young german men who went to war in 1914 and never quite left it.

These would be the overlapping streams with the National Socialists.

It's not a particularly special bond.

[noddy]

germanic culture has always been that way.

harsh people, harsh climate, northern europe wasnt for the timid.

nobody talks about how the scandanavians ended up so... homogenous and well organised.

[NapLajoieonSteroids]

germanic culture has always been that way.

harsh people, harsh climate, northern europe wasnt for the timid.

nobody talks about how the scandanavians ended up so... homogenous and well organised.

18th century european stereotypes had the Germans as "openhearted" and "very good"



but the Swedes are "cruel", the Poles, "more cruel", The Hungarians "most cruel", the Russians are like the Hungarians and those Greeks and Turks (whichever) are just plain lying devils!

[noddy]

chances of that chart being prepared in germany are sitting at about 95% in my head.

[noddy]

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/V%C3%B6lk ... teiermark)

i win!

[NapLajoieonSteroids]

hah, who else would take to time to chart it out?

[NapLajoieonSteroids]

More to the point, however much the stereotype is true all those jerrys hang around like a wet fart.

That is why I hyperlinked to that "Nietzsche and the Soviets" book. They're all over the place for all of us; can't seem to shake 'em off.

[noddy]

,

[noddy]

Armin Mohler presents a list of names in his "The Conservative Revolution in Germany, 1918-1932" of fin de siècle Europeans of some fame, arguably as a proto-fascist/elitist intellectual vanguard, who supported a plan to move Nietzsche's remains/ashes to Weimar and construct a temple around them where they would have public readings of his work.

In other words, he was already a big deal culturally.

And with the war, he was certainly popular with a lot of young german men who went to war in 1914 and never quite left it.

These would be the overlapping streams with the National Socialists.

It's not a particularly special bond.

the current back and forth about if nazism is right wing or or left wing is part of the absurdity of it all.

[noddy]

id have to read more than the summary pages of those books to comment on the detail.

[noddy]

i think a lifetime of people getting called nazis or commies or fascists or whatever has left me incoherant on the philosophical foundations of it all.

add a layer of atheist vs christian poo flinging - "religion is the cause of all wars" "atheists are capable of anything, they believe in nothing" yadda yadda.

then the reality ive seen so many groups of humans act like complete cnuts, or thoughtful, and in those times it hasnt been rhetoric or philosophy, its been the social mood of the day that defined the behaviour, any philosophy was backfill on an instinct.

and thats just it for me, philosophy is the rhetorical cherry on top of a mood, its the introspection and description of the behaviour.

this is why banning books, and blaming the literature is so weak a response - barring the fact it can inflame and provide focus for the mood, its that underlying mood which needs to change before the fire goes out.

[NapLajoieonSteroids]

Armin Mohler presents a list of names in his "The Conservative Revolution in Germany, 1918-1932" of fin de siècle Europeans of some fame, arguably as a proto-fascist/elitist intellectual vanguard, who supported a plan to move Nietzsche's remains/ashes to Weimar and construct a temple around them where they would have public readings of his work.

In other words, he was already a big deal culturally.

And with the war, he was certainly popular with a lot of young german men who went to war in 1914 and never quite left it.

These would be the overlapping streams with the National Socialists.

It's not a particularly special bond.

the current back and forth about if nazism is right wing or or left wing is part of the absurdity of it all.

It's a great anxiety. The whole world would collapse if we don't answer this question right.

[Doc]

Armin Mohler presents a list of names in his "The Conservative Revolution in Germany, 1918-1932" of fin de siècle Europeans of some fame, arguably as a proto-fascist/elitist intellectual vanguard, who supported a plan to move Nietzsche's remains/ashes to Weimar and construct a temple around them where they would have public readings of his work.

In other words, he was already a big deal culturally.

And with the war, he was certainly popular with a lot of young german men who went to war in 1914 and never quite left it.

These would be the overlapping streams with the National Socialists.

It's not a particularly special bond.

the current back and forth about if nazism is right wing or or left wing is part of the absurdity of it all.

It's a great anxiety. The whole world would collapse if we don't answer this question right.

Given that Big Tech and Big corporation and the woke left are all practicing Fascism, seems like it might be important.

[NapLajoieonSteroids]

I didn't know Mussolini still holds that kind of sway.

Poe is the law of the land. Any talk about fascism or national socialism or falangists or the general milieu of early 20th century european authoritarians is a conversation stopper.

Whether there is anything to add or if it adds anything is almost besides the point because the well is too poisoned.

And defining or seeing fascisms has for decades now been the sort of commanding speech which can't be argued out of.

[noddy]

philosophies and religions are all capable of being used as warnings and lessons for introspective humans to improve themselves.

and they are all equally capable of being used as cudgels to punish others for not meeting the standard (tm).

in this particular case, the differences between the marxist shitholes and the fascist shitholes is only interesting on a tiny sliver of economic policy at the start of the excercise, the outcomes are largely the same.

as for the rise of the tech giants - they will neither be communistic nor fascist, nor left nor right.

it will be a new fucked up global hybrid system of interlocking government and corporate concerns, that will have different mixes of public/private depending on which countries it operates in.

the neoliberal reductionism of public bad, private good will be woefully inadequate to even know how to discuss this or challenge it - they will get the worst outcomes, because they are intellectually unable to use the public system as a competing/mitigating factor.

the europeans will probably be the ones that set the standard on how to control the tech giants - their attempts so far are clumsy but they are making those attempts.

the ugly underlying truth that all this new linkage and tracking is present no matter how angelic and perfect the system is, is never going anywhere.

this is a constantly lost battle of ever decreasing wins, just be glad you will be dead before the worst of it becomes apparent.

the borg will not be formed in our lifetimes, hopefully, but the precurser will be.

[Doc]

philosophies and religions are all capable of being used as warnings and lessons for introspective humans to improve themselves.

and they are all equally capable of being used as cudgels to punish others for not meeting the standard (tm).

in this particular case, the differences between the marxist shitholes and the fascist shitholes is only interesting on a tiny sliver of economic policy at the start of the excercise, the outcomes are largely the same.

as for the rise of the tech giants - they will neither be communistic nor fascist, nor left nor right.

it will be a new fucked up global hybrid system of interlocking government and corporate concerns, that will have different mixes of public/private depending on which countries it operates in.

the neoliberal reductionism of public bad, private good will be woefully inadequate to even know how to discuss this or challenge it - they will get the worst outcomes, because they are intellectually unable to use the public system as a competing/mitigating factor.

the europeans will probably be the ones that set the standard on how to control the tech giants - their attempts so far are clumsy but they are making those attempts.

the ugly underlying truth that all this new linkage and tracking is present no matter how angelic and perfect the system is, is never going anywhere.

this is a constantly lost battle of ever decreasing wins, just be glad you will be dead before the worst of it becomes apparent.

the borg will not be formed in our lifetimes, hopefully, but the precurser will be.

This has all happened before The Robber Barons around the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century. Just minus mass electronic communications. They walked hand in hand with the very same people that became the progressive movement. Just goes around and around. Every generation think it knows more than all the ones before

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uqb819d7S1o

uqb819d7S1o

[NapLajoieonSteroids]

To summarize men are inconsistent and we are at the doorstop of the apocalypse

[Doc]

To summarize men are inconsistent and we are at the doorstop of the apocalypse

Men are very consistent. They just don't realize it. The first age of the robber Barons ended with the great depression. The 1st age of progressives ended with the liberation of the Nazi death camps of WWII.

[noddy]

we are at the doorstop of the apocalypse

in the true meaning, as in the complete destruction of an era and the beginning of a new one.

[NapLajoieonSteroids]

To punish a man because he has committed a crime, or because he is believed, though unjustly, to have committed a crime, is not persecution. To punish a man, because we infer from the nature of some doctrine which he holds, or from the conduct of other persons who hold the same doctrines with him, that he will commit a crime is persecution, and is, in every case, foolish and wicked...

Again:

The doctrine of reprobation, in the judgment of many very able men, follows by syllogistic necessity from the doctrine of election. Others conceive that the Antinomian heresy directly follows from the doctrine of reprobation; and it is very generally thought that licentiousness and cruelty of the worst description are likely to be the fruits, as they often have been the fruits, of Antinomian opinions. This chain of reasoning, we think, is as perfect in all its parts as that which makes out a Papist to be necessarily a traitor. Yet, it would be rather a strong measure to hang all the Calvinists, on the ground that if they were spared, they would infallibly commit all the atrocities of Matthias and Knipperdoling. For, reason the matter as we may, experience shows us that a man may believe in election without believing in reprobation, that he may believe in reprobation without being an Antinomian, and that he may be an Antinomian without being a bad citizen. Man, in short, is so inconsistent a creature that it is impossible to reason from his belief to his conduct, or from one part of his belief to another.

(both quotations may be found on pg.117 and 118 of The Critical and Historical Essays, Contributed to the Edinburgh Review by Thomas Babbington MacCauly

[NapLajoieonSteroids]

in this particular case, the differences between the marxist shitholes and the fascist shitholes is only interesting on a tiny sliver of economic policy at the start of the excercise, the outcomes are largely the same.

The differences only draw interest because of how uncomfortable similar both can appear.

The soviets, if not always the soviet government, was by many accounts totally enthralling to our intellectual class (among others) for a decent chunk of the century. They were as a people of pure virtue in all endeavors.

I don't think it a right-wing exaggeration when hearing [or reading by this point] people talk about their university experiences circa 1930-1960; pre-new left and disillusionment (and cold-warring.)

========================

I heard something interesting brought up while listen to a podcast discussing historiography about an extraneous topic. The podcaster had the historian explain to the audience what historiography is; and for some reason or another during her explanation using WWI as an example, she brought up a curious aside of Germany of being a nation-state after modern academic practices of historiography were already in place whereas England and France had histories well beyond the reach of historiographies.

That doesn't just apply to Germany, but Italy and Russia and...and...and...

[Miss_Faucie_Fishtits]

It gets rather uncomfortable where you dig into the Nazis, you dig into Nietzsche, Marx and Hegel and then into the counter-enlightenment. Then into the Romantic movement. Then into the Enlightenment, the Reformation and to the collapse of the neo-platonic two world vision.....

Talk about unravelling. Considering this guy is like letting the cat get into your knitting box.....'>.....