Was Nietzsche a Nazi?

Was Nietzsche a Nazi?

Friedrich Nietzsche, the guy who claimed “God is dead” is famous for quite a few things. Perhaps most important of these is his impressive stache. I mean just look at that thing. Nietzsche was a pretty quirky guy. His actual gravesite features two naked versions of himself staring at him. The two copies only have a top hat to cover their private regions, which really is a shame. Could you imagine the moustache down there?

Nietzsche’s a hard thinker to pin down. He’s the source of inspiration for basically every diametrically polar social, ethical, and metaphysical philosophy that followed him. He has more interpretations of his work than he has pronunciations of his name. (Niche, nichya, Nietzschi, Neeche, etc).

But one of the stickiest and maybe stinkiest interpretations of his work comes from fascists and anti-Semites who are quick to quote him. White nationalist and all-around turd nugget Richard Spencer, the guy who coined the term “alt-right” and praised Trump with a sigheil, also said he was “red-pilled by Nietzsche.”

How could Nietzsche have had such a profound influence on white nationalists, anti-Semites and fascists? Could it be that Nietzsche was a Nazi?

Nietzschean philosophy’s brush with Nazism all begins when his sister, Elisabeth Forster-Nietzsche took over her brother’s writings after Friedrich had a mental breakdown. According to legend, Nietzsche went for a morning walk and witnessed an exhausted horse being whipped by his owner. Nietzsche fell on the horse, weeping. From that point forward his mind was changed. The pictures from late in his life capture this. The silly moustache isn’t so funny when you realize these pictures were taken while he was totally out of it.

Elisabeth took advantage of her brother’s mental state and began publishing edited versions of his manuscripts, pitching them to fascist leaders at the time. In 1932, Adolf Hitler gave Elisabeth a bouquet of roses, and two years later he personally presented her with a wreath for the grave of her brother with the words “To A Great Fighter.” That same year, Hitler was pictured near a bust of Nietzsche and his biographer noted the “German philosopher” “fertilized two great popular movements: the national socialist of Germany and the fascist of Italy.”

It seems Nietzsche was a hero for anti-Semitic nationalist regimes. Ironically, he was also popular among Zionists. Nietzsche’s ideas had “a particular resonance for some Zionists,” including Theodor Herzl.

For some Germans, Nietzsche was a Nazi. For some Israelites, Nietzsche was a Zionist. For some Italians, he was a fascist. For all of them, he was a nationalist icon. But what does his philosophy say?

In truth, Nietzsche’s work today isn’t considered by many (if any) serious philosophers to be nationalist. His moment as the Nazi poster boy relies on his Nazi sister’s warping of his work.

This is obvious since Nietzsche was a major critic of German nationalism. And although he was relentless in his critique of Hebrew religions, he was an admirer of Jewish people and called out the “accursed anti-Semite deformities” of his time. He further said he’d “have all anti-Semites shot.” To him, the “Jews are without a doubt the strongest, purest, most tenacious race living in Europe today…it might be practical and appropriate to throw the anti-Semitic hooligans out of the country.”

Any first time reader will pick up on all of Nietzsche’s talk of Aryans in his work, which admittedly is a bit sus... But Nietzsche used the term to describe a culture of people who were pre-Christian and pagan. It’s not a racially specific concept, and it includes several peoples. Nietzsche was not a racial purist in the slightest. His hope was to create a new European citizen, “one free of group attachments, be they racial or ideological or nationalistic.”

So it’s pretty clear why scholars are dismissive of painting anti-nationalist, anti-anti-Semitism Nietzsche as a Nazi sympathizer. But at the same time, Nietzsche didn’t exactly do himself any favors for some of the more aggressive interpretations of his work. I’ve always found it funny how defensive Nietzsche nerds get when an ungenerous interpretation of Nietzsche’s philosophy is presented.

But this is probably the reason for the thinker’s appeal to this day. Countless readers can take his work in totally opposite directions. There is not one way to understand Nietzsche. Maybe that’s why even at his gravesite there isn’t just one of him, but three.

0:00 Was Nietzsche a fascist?
1:26 Nietzsche's Sister
2:10 Hitler and Zionism?
3:18 Anti-Anti-Semitism

---------------------------------

If you like the video, make sure you hit the like button.
Subscribe to our channel
Follow us: Facebook | Twitter | LinkedIn (just kidding, we don’t have a LinkedIn)

[philosofried]

A thousand likes on this comment and I'll grow a bigger mustache than Nietzsche...

[csabas.]

Yeah that is kinda true. Kinda. But there are other elements of Nietzsches work that fit quite right to fAR rIgHT ideologies. Like: Not all men made equal; The lower kind of man is trash, conflict is good, the world favours the strong, the weak shall perish, compassion is a way to death, also not just nationalism but also socialism sucks, democracy sucks, reason sucks, science sucks, all forms of egalitarianism sucks. Also the darling of Nietzsche was the Roman Empire - an aristocratic, militaristic, and imperialist empire.

I dont want to speak against Nietzsche, in fact I admire him. But man should be conscious that a lot of his ideas are just fit really well with the right. Also some of his ideas are a lot more cruel and radical than anything the Nazis came up with.

Edit: more than a year later I find this comment of mine a little bit simplistic or even somewhat inaccurate. For example he was very fond of the ancient greek warrior nobility rather than the Roman Empire. Also his severe style and methods are often confused with kind of a personal cruelty. However the overall point is still correct I think, that Nietzsche is more often associated with the political right for his hierarchical thinking, his positive evaluation of conflict and his critical attitude towards reason.
That being said I find it quite annoying and problematic, that fascism exists as a metaphisical evil in the heads of many people, so they evaluate almost everything in light of that worldview. It makes sense to study how Nitzsche influenced the fascists and national socialists, but it does not make sense to understand Nietzsche as a metaphisical seed that is destined to blossom into a specific set of political ideas...

[DomNicky]

Nietzsche: *Disavows citizenship*

Nationalists a decade later: "Oh yes, truly a wonderful example of the nationalist icon who we all should aspire to replicate"

[dylanmcewan]

I found this very helpful and I love the work you put into this. Don’t stop, keep going!

[epicgaymer]

"-that with the Jews there begins the slave revolt in morality: that revolt which has a history of two thousand years behind it and which we no longer see because it-has been victo-rious."

“The tale of Prometheus is an original possession of the entire Aryan family of races and documentary evidence of their capacity for the profoundly tragic”


" These regulations are instructive enough: we encounter Aryan humanity at its purest and most primordial; we learn that the concept of „pure blood“ is very far from being a harmless concept. On the other hand, it becomes obvious in which people the chandala hatred against this Aryan „humaneness“ has become a religion, eternalized itself, and become genius—primarily in the Gospels, even more so in the Book of Enoch. Christianity, sprung from Jewish roots and comprehensible only as a growth on this soil, represents the counter-movement to any morality of breeding, of race, privilege: it is the anti-Aryan religion par excellence."

[vladioanalexandru]

How many times did Nietzsche write about the state trying to use people and to fight against. How people frame him as any bit nationalistic is a mystery to me. He seems like a rugged individualist that wants to see everyone fight for themselves and their personal ambitions.

[Goooogle]

Good video, what music is playing in the background?

[beauhendershot]

“Turd nugget” is a perfect word to describe Richard Spencer😂

[gaspard]

great video! you deserve more views tbh!!

[janelleherrera]

Thanks for the video! I recently found myself really resonating with some of the work of Nietzsche and decided to do some more research and found some sources claiming he was a nazi. To me if didn’t really line up with some of his philosophies so it makes more sense now knowing his last few works were warped by an outside perspective.

[beebag]

Nietzsche was a great man with amazing ideas that could be used for evil and good. He is no Nazi nor any modern political extreme but I am sure people will try to convince of it.
Great video!

[nikolademitri]

Good and fair for a quick dispelling of his “being a Nazi”, or a fascist, or a nationalist (though that last one is less crazy an interpretation). Definitely a good point to say at the end there that he didn’t do himself any favors, though.

I’ve heard Nietzsche described as a “brilliant reactionary”, and that’s not to say, “brilliant for a reactionary”, but to say that he was both brilliant AND a bit of a reactionary. I’d agree with this description of him, but again, that’s far from equivalent to being a Nazi or a fascist.

Anyway, good vid!

Side note: *I highly recommend Rick Roderick’s lectures on Nietzsche, all of which can be found on YouTube, in multiple playlists if his lectures.* It’s a good 6-7 hours of a crash course in Nietzsche, imo a perfect introduction to his life and work. ✌️

[t.]

good video my man, i just picked up genealogy and was a bit confused by his mentions of aryan people lol

[mozartwolfgang]

Nietzsche was polish. Not even german.

[Flex_]

This video was fantastic, the perfect amount of information learned from my Google search, thanks yo

[notproductiveproductions]

Look, let's clear the air here : you can be framed, and also guilty. It happened to OJ, happened to Nietzsche too. No, he was not a proto-Nazi; yes, his sister coopted and edited his writings in the service of anti-Semitic German nationalism; yes, Nietzsche's remarks on race need to read with some nuance, as he's immensely smarter than your garden-variety nineteenth-century race realist. But with all that being said, the guy still made hundreds of remarks that would be considered P R O B L E M A T I C by today's critical standards, and they deserve every bit as much scrutiny as some celeb's five-year-old tweets. Just one example that leaps to mind is in the second essay of the Genealogy of Morals where he reports completely credulously, without a hint of his trademark irony, that Africans are, like non-human animals, less sensitive to pain than Europeans. Not only is that a perennial racist trope, it is even more damning in the context of his argument where pain plays a crucial role in the genesis of memory and abstract thinking. We need to put aside this Frau Forster-Nietzsche story for a moment and actually pay attention to the stuff the man wrote. Of course I'm not saying he needs to be "cancelled" - you can't cancel Nietzsche, he's one the architects of modernity, and he gives us invaluable critical resources in contemporary struggles for justice. But let's not be lazy or disingenuous, either.

[Claude_the_Reaper]

Nationalism bad semitophilism good ZZzzz

[ronlacker]

I don't think he was, but I think he would be if he was around during that time. I certainly would have been. o/