New Book: Julius Evola in the Third Reich
Alexander Jacob’s book on Julius Evola as seen by four intellectuals in the Third Reich. From the Amazon blurb:
How was Julius Evola viewed in the Third Reich? This book presents assessments made by 4 leading intellectuals of the regime: Walther Wüst, Joseph Otto Plassmann, Wolfram Sievers and Kurt Hancke. Translated with an Introduction by Alexander Jacob, this scholarly work is essential reading for anyone with a serious interest in Evola or the history of National Socialist Germany.
Julius Evola in the Third Reich
Alexander Jacob
Uthwita Press, 2023
Introduction to Julius Evola in the Third Reich, Uthwita Press, 2023
Julius Evola (1898–1974) is today known as a major exponent of the movement that has come to be called Traditionalism and the author of several important works on Hermeticism, Buddhism and Yoga. However, in the thirties, he also published pamphlets on subjects that had come into prominence since the establishment of the Third Reich, namely, the Aryan mythos and the Jewish Question. Evola was not a Fascist and in his earliest publications on politics, such as notably the Imperialismo pagano of 1928, he criticised the Italian Fascist state as a soulless entity that did not rise above petty populism and nationalism to the transcendental sources of an ideal hierarchical society. The pagan imperialism that Evola admired was that of ancient Rome, which he believed had been ruined by the rise of the Roman Catholic Church, which assumed an undue power alongside the state and thereby separated the state from the church. However, when he published a German translation of this work in 1933 (Heidnischer Imperialismus), he made radical changes to it. For instance, the Roman paganism of the Mediterranean world pointed to in the Italian edition was replaced by a Nordic Aryan one emanating from the Hyperborean North of a legendary Thule. While he had shown little sympathy for Italian Fascism, he now evinced an unusual interest in the racialist ideology of National Socialism.
Mussolini, for his part, had initially encouraged public denunciations of Nazi racial doctrine and Evola’s two major contributions to this campaign appeared in late 1933 and early 1934. The first article (‘Osservazioni critiche sul “razzismo” nazionalsocialista’)[1] presented, as Staudenmaier puts it,[2] some ‘critical observations’ on the excessively ‘naturalistic’ components of Nazi racial ideology:
Here Evola outlined his philosophy of ‘spiritual’ racism and contrasted it to the ‘materialist’ racism that predominated within National Socialism. While the materialist ignored the ‘metabiological’ aspects of race, Fascism had pointed to the ‘higher reality’ proper to the ‘Aryan peoples’ … The second article (‘Razza e Cultura’)[3] applauded Nazism’s revival of ‘Aryanism’ and its contrast between ‘superior races and inferior races,’ but cautioned that biological theories of race were not aristocratic enough and did not grasp true racial nobility. Evola insisted that standard forms of ‘materialist’ racism were not equal to the task of confronting the ‘Jewish menace’ in its full depth and breadth since race was ‘not merely physical.’[4]
Then, in 1936, Evola wrote a pamphlet on Tre aspetti del problema ebraico (‘Three Aspects of the Jewish Problem’) which betrays his main concern in all racial discussions — namely, to exonerate the Jews of the various racial, cultural and economic accusations made against them by anti-Semitic thinkers in Germany and within the National Socialist regime. According to Evola, the Jews are indeed guilty of various crimes of social and political subversion in Europe — however, they are not the major force of corruption but only a small part of a larger metaphysical force of evil working against the pure original realm of Tradition.
Like the philo-Semitic Nietzsche,[5] Evola believes that the most ancient Jewish cult was manly and warlike whereas the later cult revolving around the prophets degenerated into a Messianism that culminated in the servile religion of Christianity.[6] Similarly, he considers Jewish subversion of the culture of Indo-European countries not due to any plan of the Jews[7] but as part to a larger process of degeneration in which the racial character of the Jews only plays a small though important role. Thus, a spiritual change is needed that will not allow the Jewish element to benefit from the natural tendency towards decay that is apparent in Western societies. Populist solutions, mass deportations, etc. are plebeian ways of viewing a problem that is metaphysical in essence.
The fact that Evola wrote this pamphlet just before his lectures to the Germans on the Aryan question and the fusion of National Socialist ideology with Fascism suggests that his visits to Germany were not accidental but impelled by an urgent desire to soften the anti-Semitism of the Reich by pointing out its supposed metaphysical shortcomings.
In 1941, Evola published a work detailing his own racial ideology, Sintesi di dottrina della razza, which decried all biological racialism and raised the notions of spiritual race and of racial souls above it. In his discussion of degenerate races, he significantly does not specify the Jewish race but generally designates the ‘Semites’ — along with sub-Saharan Africans — as inferior racial types. Evola concludes by suggesting that the National Socialist racial doctrines are a hopeful sign of the possible recreation of the original superior race that inhabited the lofty world of Tradition. We see therefore that the sources both of racial perfection and of corruption are pushed back by Evola to an ideal realm that is so far removed from the present world that it is virtually impossible to alter the current course of the latter. And Evola’s professed hopes of the rise of a new type of enlightened humanity out of the realm of Tradition are, consequently, somewhat fantastic.
⊛
In the late thirties and early forties, Evola undertook frequent trips to Germany, going on speaking tours, meeting with SS officials, and attending conferences. For him, the climax of a 1934 visit to Germany was a speech he delivered at Berlin’s Herrenklub, the conservative political establishment inspired by Moeller van den Bruck’s book Das dritte Reich (1923).[8] As he later recounted in his autobiography — ‘Here I found my natural habitat. From then on a cordial and fruitful friendship was established between myself and the club’s president, Baron Heinrich von Gleichen … That was also the basis for certain activity in Germany, grounded on common interests and objectives.’[9] German editions of his works that appeared at this time included Heidnischer Imperialismus (1933) and Erhebung wider die moderne Welt (1935).
Further, as Staudenmeier informs us,
In 1937 he took part in an international antisemitic convention in Erfurt and wrote a report for Italian readers. A lecture tour in spring 1941 took Evola to Munich, Stuttgart, Frankfurt, Cologne, and Berlin. This was followed by lectures on race in April 1942 in Hamburg and Berlin, depicting a shared Aryan heritage that bound Italians and Germans together.[10]
⊛
Everything in Evola’s doctrine is based on the primacy of spirit so that the racial question too cannot be determined by reference to biological realities but rather to spiritual ones. He considers race itself to be a spiritual condition first, then a question of ethnic identity (Clauß’ racial soul), and finally an individual biological phenomenon. The effort to recreate the primal perfect race that is characteristic of the original realm of tradition should be undertaken, according to Evola, not through biological discrimination but through spiritual elevation.
Evola is quite ambiguous regarding the materialistic and socially degenerate aspects of Jewry. It is true that he wrote the Preface to Giovanni Preziosi’s 1921 translation of the Protocols as well as an enthusiastic endorsement of Codreanu’s anti-Semitic campaign in his 1938 article, ‘La tragedia della ‘Guardia di Ferro.’[11] But he cannot accept that every Jew is biologically bound to be materialistic and degenerate just as every Aryan is not a superior being — as he declared in his 1937 lecture reproduced in the present edition:[12]
We shall repeat: race is the secondary element, spirit and tradition are the primary because, in the metaphysical sense, race — before it is expressed in the blood — is in the spirit. If it is true that, without racial purity, spirit and tradition are robbed of their most precious means of expression, it is equally true however that the pure race robbed of spirit is doomed to become a biological mechanism and to eventually die out. Spiritual degeneration, ethical weakening, and the slow death of many tribes that have not however committed any of the sins of the blood pointed to by a certain materialistic racial doctrine are a proof of that, and here we are thinking not only of primitives but also of Swedes and the Dutch. It follows therefrom that, without the revivification of the higher spiritual power latent in the Nordic character, even all measures for biological racial protection would have a very relative and limited effect with regard to our higher task of a reconstruction of the West.
In his enumeration of the tactics of subversion employed by the enemies of Tradition, Evola tellingly criticises those — like the National Socialists — who manifest a monomaniacal hostility to the Jews and Freemasons. As SS Obersturmbannführer Hancke paraphrased Evola in his report of June 1938:
In this way National Socialism overlooks its real opponents as a result of its monomaniacal concentration on Jews and Freemasons.
This is perhaps the clearest indication of Evola’s dubious defence of both Judaism and Freemasonry.
⊛
While Evola continued to appeal to the Germans to unite on the question of Nordic or Aryan civilisation and racial differences, in Italy, he aroused staunch opposition from Fascist quarters. As Staudenmaier puts it, ‘His long sojourns in Germany provoked contrary assessments. Some saw him as an unreliable fascist due to his strongly pro-German stance, while others cast him as excessively critical of Nazi policy and an irritant to the Axis partnership.’[13]
The Germans too were in general not fully sympathetic to Evola’s views and the union between National Socialism and Fascism did not come about in any deep philosophical sense before the forced incorporation of Italy in 1943 led to the implementation of the Reich’s uncompromising anti-Jewish measures. During this period of the Italian Social Republic, Evola remained mainly in contact with Giovanni Preziosi, who was like Evola a spiritual anti-Semite, and Roberto Farinacci, whose strict enforcement of the anti-Jewish measures of 1938 were also not based on any biologically based racialism.[14]
In official SS circles, Evola’s lectures were subjected to close scrutiny and a more or less negative evaluation. According to Goodrick-Clarke,[15] already in early 1938, the SS started to investigate his ideas and Karl Maria Wiligut (also known as Weisthor when he joined the SS in 1933) — the seer who became Himmler’s spiritual ‘guru’— was asked to comment on a lecture delivered bv Evola at Berlin in December 1937. Three further lectures were given by Evola in June 1938 and again Himmler referred the matter to Weisthor, with the additional request that he review Evola’s book on pagan imperialism from the perspective of his own traditions. As Goodrick-Clarke recounts, Weisthor replied that:
Evola worked from a basic Aryan concept but was quite ignorant of prehistoric Germanic institutions and their meaning. He also observed that this defect was representative of the ideological differences between Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany and could ultimately prejudice the permanency of their alliance.[16]
Both on the basis of Wiligut’s report and the reports presented in this edition, the SS ordered that Evola’s activities in the Third Reich should be discouraged.
Even after the initial period of his lectures in Germany, Evola faced opposition from both Germans and Italians. Thus, as Staudenmaier relates, when Evola proposed to Mussolini and his German contacts in 1941 the founding of a bilingual journal on racial questions, Werner Hüttig, the racial scientist, ‘submitted a detailed critique of Evola’s racial theories in September 1942, and faulted Evola’s treatment of scientific issues and his obscure mixture of incongruous sources, from ancient Aryan tradition to modern esoteric lore.’[17] In Italy too, ‘The occult aspects of Evola’s spiritual racism were a source of particular controversy. Anonymous denunciations sent to the fascist leadership had warned for years of ‘an epidemic of esotericism’ afflicting Italy.’ In a March 1942 letter to Mussolini, Telesio Interlandi, the scientific racialist, protested against ‘occultist’ perversions of the racist idea.‘ The Jesuit priest, Pietro Tacchi Venturi, too insisted that ‘Evola’s project would lead to problems with the church, which viewed spiritual matters as its rightful territory and frowned on the pagan overtones of Evola’s approach.’[18]
Evola’s critiques of Christianity as a Semitic corruption of Traditional order would naturally be opposed by Italian Catholic priests like Tacchi. The German nationalists equally warned against Evola’s subtle subversion of the Reich by his Traditionalist doctrine and discouraged his influence on German ideological and political programmes.
⊛
In general, Evola’s idealistic political system posits a radical dichotomy between ‘traditional’ society and historical ones. The former is an ideal condition whereas the latter are only increasingly corrupt deviations from the former that have culminated in the horrors of modernity. The race closest to the ideal world of tradition is, according to Evola, the Aryan. Even though he had first celebrated the Mediterranean culture as the highest, by 1933 he had changed his views considerably to adapt them to the rise of Hitler’s German racialist party. Henceforth, Evola sought to wed the two concepts of Nordic and Roman supremacy so as to present a glimpse of ideal social organisation in historical times. Thus, the Roman Empire and the Ghibelline Empire were exemplary moments in the history of the modern West.
The means of understanding and reviving the original world of tradition in modern life are, according to Evola, myths and symbols. It is in these that one recognises the ideal templates that are to be followed. Hence Evola’s interest in the Grail myth in particular, where the crux of the legend is located by him in the restoration of the original ideal empire by the Grail King. The mythological orientation of Evola’s thought is obviously of dubious value since no polity can be directed by constant recourse to ancient myths even as symbols.
A champion of spiritual imperialism, Evola is particularly opposed to nationalism such as those initiated in eighteenth and nineteenth-century Europe by Liberal forces since he believes that it hinders the attainment of a universal spirituality. As Hancke pointed out:
For E. the idea of the nation belongs, according to its origin in the 18th century, to the ideational world of the degenerate modern world. It is therefore to be overcome in the imperialistic, that is, the supra-national, sense in such a way indeed that the Aryan race of Germanic-Roman stamp would have primacy.
Apart from the dangerous proximity of this doctrine to universalist schemes such as those of Theosophy and Freemasonry, its utopian quality too was quickly noted by Hancke:
That which separates him especially from the National Socialist worldview is his radical neglect of the concrete historical data of our racial past in favour of an abstract-spiritual and fantasy-based utopia.
Plassmann/Sievers too, in their response to Evola’s lectures reproduced in this edition, made it clear that:
Evola does not seem quite familiar with the pragmatic political forces and so he could easily associate in good faith with orientations that represented this idea only apparently but in reality employed it against the racial idea (Othmar Spann)[19] or do not have any political dynamism of their own (Goga).[20] In general, when one attempts to organise such an idea, there arises immediately the danger of a certain ideal cosmopolitanism that must lead to unforeseeable consequences.
Along with nationalism, Evola also denounces the tendency to populist demagogy that was evident in both Italian Fascism and National Socialism. Evola posited instead a rule by an elite ‘Order’ that would represent the world of Tradition and assert its innate authority regardless of the masses. As Hancke put it:
After E. had earlier rejected the idea of the Volk, in the same way he now champions an ‘ethnic community,’ which in turn, as the principle of spiritual realisation, works against every collectivity. The real community, by contrast, is for E. the caste of rulers, an elite of the spirit, bound together in the battle for Tradition against the modern world.
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These objections to Evola’s political views do not however mean that Evola’s missionary work on behalf of Traditionalism was wholly lacking in intellectual merit. His notion of universal spirituality that is not the rule of a single religion has a certain idealistic allure. For example, in his lecture of December 1937 reproduced in this edition, he suggests that:
It is necessary to arrive at a solidarity which should be as trans-nationalistic and spiritual as, for example, the Bolshevist-Communist is anti-nationalistic and materialistic. The first and indispensable precondition for that is, however, the determination of a universal worldview whose principles and values should be valid as a uniform, shared and unchangeable axis for all those who declare that they are against the enemies exposed by us.
However, it is clear that such an ideal international policy is marred by its impracticality. Apart from the difficulty of the implementation of such a spirituality among the diverse peoples of the world, the acceptance of a Nordic Aryan spiritual hegemony over the world is also a matter of uncertainty. Yet, Evola does clarify in his 1937 lecture that his Aryanism is not limited by biological differences:
The Nordic tradition is not half-naturalistic, that is, to be conceived only on the basis of blood and soil, but as a cultural category, as a primordial transcendental form of spirit of which the Nordic type, the Aryan race, and the general Indo-Germanic ethos, are only external phenomenal forms. The idea of race itself is, according to its higher tradition-bound significance, something that cannot and must not have anything to do with the rationalistic ideas of modern biology and mundane science. Race is above all a basic attitude, a spiritual power, something that is formative in a primordial way, of which the external, positively tangible forms are only a final echo.
With such a loose definition of Nordic Aryanism, Christianity too may be regenerated if reoriented to the original spirituality of the ‘Nordic Hyperborean’ realm of Tradition:
It is possible to intervene in a creative way against Christianity if one has fulfilled the tasks already pointed to, that is, if one has raised the Nordic idea and the idea of the Reich to a level of true spirituality that is universal and solar, then we would really have something more authentic than Christianity, encompassing the heroic and the sacral, the worldly and the otherworldly, the regal and the spiritual, that is, something that leads decisively beyond every worldview that is merely religiously Christian. Our principle should, moreover, always be: not to reject but to overcome. Even in regard to the Catholic and the pagan question, the task of the new elite should consist in fixing the chief principles of the general worldview from the Nordic spirit on a fully metaphysical and objective, thus ‘supra-religious,’ level. These principles would then be able to extract, clarify and intensify that which is valid in the Christian tradition itself.
Evola’s ideal society is a heroic one based on what he calls the solar and manly character of the ‘Nordic Aryan’ tradition that is opposed to the lunar and womanly quality of the ‘Semitic’:
Two fundamental attitudes are possible with regard to the supra-natural reality. One is the solar, manly, affirmative one corresponding to the ideal of the sacred royal power and knighthood. The other is the lunar, womanly, religious, passive one corresponding to the priestly ideal. If the second attitude is chiefly characteristic of the Semitic southern cultures, the Nordic and Indo-Germanic lordly man, on the other hand, has always been solar; the subjection of the creation and the pathos of its fundamental distance from the Almighty was fully unknown to him. He felt the gods to be like him, he considered himself to be of a heavenly race and the same blood as them. From that arises a conception of the heroic that is not exhausted in the physical, soldierly, or even tragic-choreographic and a conception of the higher man that has nothing to do with the Nietzschean-Darwinistic caricature of the handsome blond beast because this Nordic higher man exhibits at the same time ascetic, sacral and supra-natural traits and culminates in the type of the Olympian ruler, of the Aryan Chakravarti as the commander of the two powers and king of kings.’
This classification of Aryan as solar and Semitic as lunar is, however, vague and not grounded in historical reality since the East Semitic Akkadians worshipped the sun god, Shamash, in the third millennium B.C. long before any solar worship was attested among the Indo-Europeans.
More important is Evola’s firm dismissal of all immanentist pantheism and pseudo-philosophical glorification of science and technology:
We therefore have to free ourselves from every this-worldly mysticism, every worship of Nature and of Life, every pantheism. At the same time we should reject that significance of Aryan initiated by the dilettante Chamberlain[21] that is connected to a purely rationalistic eulogy and glorification of profane science and technology.’
Evola’s elite should be capable of penetrating to the origins of corruption in history and reconstruct the West in a traditional manner:
And this should at the start be the work of an elite who, with the same impersonality and strictness of an ascetic Order, raise the principles and the symbols of the Nordic primordial tradition to a level of spirituality, universality and clear knowledge and put an end to every dilettantish mythic and distorting interpretation.
In closing, we may state that Evola’s doctrine of a universal spiritual politics directed by an enlightened elite is indeed a commendable intellectual exercise, but the mythologizing tendencies of his thought and his reluctance to deal with the concrete realities of the Jewish Question expose the practical compromises upon which any Evolian political project must flounder.
[1] Vita Italiana, November 1933, 544-9.
[2] I am indebted in this summary to Peter Staudenmaier, ‘Racial Ideology between Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany: Julius Evola and the Aryan Myth, 1933-43,’ Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 55, No. 3 (2020), 473-491.
[3] Rassegna Italiana, January 1934, 11-16.
[4] Staudenmaier, ibid.
[5] “After Wagner, in the late 1870s and early 1880s, Nietzsche developed intense relationships with several ethnic Jews, all of them atheists, and made explicitly positive pronouncements about Jews.” Nietzsche even wrote: “The Jews, however, are beyond any doubt the strongest, toughest, and purest race now living in Europe.” (Soros, Alex. “Nietzsche’s Jewish Problem: Between Anti-Semitism and Anti-Judaism, by Robert Holub.” Intellectual History Review 28, No. 2 (2018): 344-348.)
[6] Cf. Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, 52: “The Jewish ‘Old Testament,’ the book of divine justice, has people, things, and speeches in such grand style that it is without parallel in the written works of Greece and India … Perhaps he will still find the New Testament, the book of mercy, more to his liking (it is full of the proper, tender, musty stench of true believers and small souls).” (Tr. Judith Norman)
[7] Cf. Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, 251: “The fact that the Jews, if they wanted (or if they were forced, as the anti-Semites seem to want), could already be dominant, or indeed could quite literally have control over present-day Europe — this is established. The fact that they are not working and making plans to this end is likewise established.” (Tr. Judith Norman).
[8] See Ferraresi, Franco. “Julius Evola: Tradition, Reaction, and the Radical Right.” European Journal of Sociology/Archives Européennes de Sociologie 28, No. 1 (1987): 107-151.
[9] Il cammino del cinabro (1963), 137.
[10] Staudenmaier, ibid.
[11] In La vita italiana, 309 (December 1938).
[12] The present edition by Gerd Simon (http://www.gerd-simon.de). presents the December 1937 lecture of Julius Evola as well as the commentaries of Joseph Plassmann/Wolfram Sievers and Kurt Hancke on Evola’s 1938 lectures in Germany.
[13] Ibid.
[14] See A. James Gregor, Mussolini’s Intellectuals: Fascist Social and Political Thought, Princeton, NJ, 2005, p.258n.
[15] See Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, The Occult Roots of Nazism: The Ariosophists of Austria and Germany 1890-1935, Wellingborough, 1985.
[16] Ibid.
[17] Staudenmaier, op.cit.
[18] Ibid.
[19] Othmar Spann (1878-1950) was an Austrian philosopher who developed an idealistic doctrine of ‘universalism’ to counter the individualism of liberal sociology and economics. As an Austrian nationalist and Catholic, he was not fully favoured by the German National Socialists.
[20] Octavian Goga (1881-1938) was a Romanian politician and man of letters. He was a member of the Romanian National Party in Austro-Hungary and joined forces in 1935 with A.C. Cuza’s anti-Semitic National-Christian Defence League to form the National Christian Party. In 1937 Goga served briefly as Prime Minister of Romania and enacted several anti-Semitic measures to maintain the electoral support of Corneliu Codreanu’s Iron Guard.
[21] Houston Stewart Chamberlain (1855-1927) was a British philosopher who became a naturalised German and wrote many works extolling the spiritual superiority of the Aryan race and of the Germanic peoples in particular.
Re :
“Evola’s ideal society is a heroic one based on what he calls the solar and manly character of the ‘Nordic Aryan’ tradition that is opposed to the lunar and womanly quality of the ‘Semitic’.”
Yes, Judaism is matriarchal—as is Christianity,
Physicality doesn’t necessarily
reveal the psychological
sex of an individual; e,g. Bill
Clinton is female, and his sex
with women is of a lesbian-type
experience.
Study my report about which
Jesus one may obey/abide :
[[ needn’t post here,
as this is an FYI for
the editor ]]
Forwarded Message :
Dear Creation Ministries Editors,
To which Jesus do you obey/abide :
—the “sell your cloak and buy a sword” Jesus;
—the “I came not to bring peace but a sword” Jesus;
—the “whipped the money changers from the Temple” Jesus;
—the “be as little children” Jesus;
—the “be as wise as serpents” Jesus;
—the “resist not evil” Jesus;
—the “turn the other cheek” Jesus;
—the “he who is without sin cast the first stone” Jesus;
—the “love your enemies” Jesus;
—the “render unto Caesar” Jesus;
—or the Jesus who failed to carry forward the Civilizing/Protecting
Ten Commandments ( Saul/Paul may be to blame for that mistake ) ?
Are you suffering a bit of
COGNITIVE Dissonance
trying to reconcile New
Testament contradictions ?
Politically Conservative
Christians Suffer Those
Confusing Passages :
=====
©1994
– THE JESUS CONNECTION –
Christianity’s Role
in
Destroying
the
Roman, British and American Empires
Was Jesus liberal or conservative?
Does the Religious Left or Religious Right fairly claim
Jesus’ condonation?
Is there a common ground for the two churches:
the Old-Testament Christian Church
and
the New-Testament Christian Church?
And do the fundamental tenets of the New Testament church
undermine good civil society while the Old Testament church
preserves it?
Richmond Times-Dispatch Editor Ross Mackenzie invites those
questions in his commentary, “Modern Schism: the Religious
Left vs. the Religious Right,” [[Richmond Times Dispatch,
Sept. 22]].
“There’s a profound religious schism going on, and it is
spilling over into the political arena . . . The schism that
now even some mainline clergy are recognizing has been
recognized by many parishioners for years,” Mackenzie
correctly opines. But the schism isn’t just many years old
or even many thousands of years old, but as old as Man–or
as old as the age when Man fell into his two-brained dual
nature and lost the Paradise his once-whole-brained
condition afforded him.
Each of us is a two-brained creature, and from the beginning
of our self-consciousness ((our ego-self as opposed to the
spiritual condition of God-Self, within which ego identity
is impossible: Unity, Nirvana, At-onement, or Heaven)) we
have been cursed by this duality; cursed by the internal
conflict this dual personality engenders, as expressed by
our two distinct natures found in the left and right
hemispheres of the brain. [[For an excellent report on the
nature of self-consciousness, read Julian Jaynes’ book,
“THE ORIGIN OF CONSCIOUSNESS IN THE BREAKDOWN OF THE
BICAMERAL MIND”]].
The battle between the Right’s Old Testament conservatism
and the Left’s New Testament liberalism in Christian
politics ((The secularists would deny it, but all politics
spring from the search for authority, which has been from
the beginning a spiritual quest)), is the battle each one
of us fights; it’s an internal struggle between the right
brain ((emotional, spatial, and musical)) and the left brain
((rational, algorithmic, and constructive)), where each side
provides us with a distinct approach for relating to one
another and to the world. This battle of the brains is the
source of most personal and social conflict.
This male/female dynamic in Christianity has its origins in
hemisphericity:
the Father-Authoritarian/Old-Testament Jehovah
represents the masculine/left-brained nature
while
the Mother-Communitarian New-Testament God ((which
Jesus presented)) represents the feminine/right-
brained nature ((Physicality doesn’t necessarily
reveal the psychological sex of an individual. It
can’t be denied that Jesus displayed a feminine
nature, albeit entirely heroic and worthy of
absolute respect)).
The Christian Old/New Testament Bible mirrors Man’s split
brain ((as does America’s two-party political system, which
is the best system for any democratic government. The rise
of more than two political parties in democratic institu-
tions reflects a shift towards social and political chaos)).
The New Testament Jesus behaved and taught like a right-
brained liberal, as we define the term “liberal” for the
Religious Left today. Rather than teaching the hungry
multitude how to fend for themselves, Jesus performed
miracles of abundant giving ((Liberals’ present-day
welfarism borders on the miraculous in its gargantuan
capacity for taking from the productive and giving to the
nonproductive)) and he chastised the self-reliant ((actually
frightened them)) by pointing out the difficulty of getting
a camel through the eye of a needle or a rich man into
Heaven, just as present-day liberals use fear and guilt to
wring money from the productive.
Jesus also spent much time with sinners ((social deviants))
without rebuking them for the harm they cause to themselves
and to their communities. After all, he was interested in
saving souls not in maintaining good civil society. And
Jesus admonished those who would defend themselves or
retaliate against their enemies, much like what today’s
Religious Left does in advising the Religious Right to turn
the other cheek whenever America suffers terrorism. Those
conservatives who try citing New Testament passages to
support self-defense or retaliation miss Jesus’ intention
and purpose altogether.
The Religious Right has a tremendous psychological conflict
in reconciling its Old Testament approach to Christianity
with what Jesus actually taught ((or what others reported
that he taught)). The Religious Right’s mind-twisting,
convoluted, left-brained irrationalities over Jesus’
teachings are remarkable.
The New Testament Jesus asks us to give up the world and
follow him, not try to make the world a better place and
remain attached to it ((Fearful Christians construct clever
ideas like “live in the world but don’t be of it” to avoid
Jesus’ true calling)). Jesus taught us to love our enemies,
which means handing over our pants if a crook grabs our
shirt; and if he should whack us before taking off with our
clothes, we must invite him to whack us once again to
display our faith in Jesus’ words.
HIS UNCOMPROMISING PURPOSE:
Jesus came to defeat the world ((Satan
didn’t use the things of the world to
tempt Jesus just because the world was
handy, but because the manifest universe
is Satan)), and he came to atone for
Man’s fall into matter and to bring him
back to his original state–to his
spiritual At-Onement with the Father,
which goal has nothing to do with the
material universe, except in so far as it
may be used for learning truth ((True
Man is a spiritual creation not a material
one. To understand and accept this, one
must study the esoteric underpinnings of
Christianity, which requires an examina-
tion of Jewish mysticism and the occult)).
If you’re conservative and religious, then my observations
ought to make you very uncomfortable. While Ross Mackenzie
accuses the mainstream churches of abandoning their
parishioners for left-wing “political longings,” thus
driving parishioners out the door, the whole of Christendom
stands accused — old and new — of abandoning Jesus ((an
old saying: “The nearer the Church the farther from God”)).
Jesus still remains the only one, true Christian.
THE CRUX OF THE MATTER:
Was Jesus the Old Testament’s prophesied
messiah? If he was, then membership in
Religious Left churches is the closest
any would-be Christian can get to his
teachings.
Like today’s Religious Left, Jesus would have embraced
homosexuals and prostitutes without judging them ((“Father
forgive them, for they know not what they do”)). And Jesus
would have ordained them since, upon asking it of him ((“Ask
and you shall receive”)), he could not refuse them and
remain faithful to the tenor of his own teachings. But if
Jesus wasn’t the messiah, then both the Left- and Right-wing
churches are temples of falsehood, and testaments to the
gullibility of their parishioners.
Whether or not Jesus was the messiah, the aftermath of his
living in the world, of his teachings ((or, that is, Paul’s
interpretation of his teachings)), had caused the decline of
three grand civilizations: the Roman, the British and the
American empires ((The latter two actually are resurrections
of the first, so that the Roman empire hasn’t actually been
wholly defeated–yet)).
Christianity grew in strength while the Roman empire
declined, as second-century Christian apostles fanned out
over Rome’s domain to quietly win converts and teach them a
passivity for worldly cares–and promising a glorious
afterlife. And while few wholly abandoned the struggles of
bettering their existence, those early believers carried
with them the seeds for giving up on the world and
surrendering to a deep longing for Paradise.
Under the auspices of the first-century spiritual church,
and after constructing in the fourth century the all-
powerful temporal church through Constantine’s conversion,
the die was cast:
Rome’s progeny and the Western world careened
toward the Dark Ages by surrendering to the
spiritual pieties, the self-sacrifices, the
long-sufferings, and the superstition-wielding
authorities within the Catholic Church ((Before
the forced conversion of Constantine’s charges,
Christendom comprised only 10 percent of the
pagan population)).
Christians’ abandonment of concern for improving the world
in exchange for the glories of a purported afterlife in
Heaven, and their relinquishment of any interest in studying
human nature and the physical world, ushered in an
unparalleled Dark Age of human misery.
The early Christian churches were split between Old
Testament rules for living, which could maintain good civil
society, and which gave hope for a better material future,
and Jesus’ “give up the world and follow me” teachings. So
the necessity of choosing one of the two paths — or
compromising Jesus’ teachings to find a middle path — was
present from the beginning.
That dichotomy hasn’t changed. It infects today’s Christian
churches.
Throughout subsequent generations, Jesus’ followers
struggled with the same paradoxes that the apostles must
have wrestled with after the crucifixion–in their giving to
the poor what corrupted the rich; in having to work to
sustain themselves while others lived by begging or deceit;
in accepting an assault without retaliation and possibly
inviting death blows; in forgiving an adulterer without
punishment while she continued whoring; in rendering unto
Caesar all his things and hoping that his domain —
especially his criminal and civil laws — remained in good
working order; and in suffering frustration for lack of
sufficient faith to manifest abundant fishes and loaves
((out of thin air)) or to heal bodily afflictions while the
truly faithful believers argued that such miracles would be
forthcoming but for lack of sufficient faith–miracles they
couldn’t perform themselves.
What dragged Western civilization out of the Dark Ages?:
PAIN.
Humans can stand just so much pain before they’re compelled
to examine the cause and find remedy. Christians,
especially the intellectually gifted within Church
hierarchy, began questioning the “natural” order of things–
questioning the authority of the Church and the need for
long-suffering. In their questioning, the more rational
minds ((left hemisphere)) began deep and prolonged study
of “God’s” universe. And the scientific method eventually
was born, the schism between science ((left hemisphere)) and
religion ((right hemisphere)) was constructed, and confused
and fearful Christians torturously plodded out of the Dark
Ages’ cavernous depths to flee utter despair.
Today’s “Roman” empire is under assault, again, by the
emotionality of the right brain–by the emoting feminine
mind of both the religious and secular Left ((Within the
religious and secular Lefts’ shared right-brain perspective
is found common ground, and only the facade of the Religious
Left’s spirituality separates the two)); a coalition
allowing wrong-doers to feel right about wrong by
withholding judgment and punishment, supplanting science
with the “intuitive” voices of feminism’s New Age
“channelers,” and subjugating the rational masculine mind by
plying it with entertainment: with promiscuous sex,
recreational drugs, and something-for-nothing gambling and
Lotto games.
I believe that the biblical story of Eve’s temptation in the
Garden is an allegorical warning for us–that evil comes to
Man through the feminine side ((the right brain)), through
emotion-based liberalism. Eve could be tempted because of
her right-brained nature, her weakness for surrendering to an
emotional argument. And Adam, being more rational, fell for
Eve’s temptation only because of his weakness for her sexual
seduction ((how rational conservatism has been emasculated
by emoting liberals’ sexual revolution)). The serpent didn’t
choose to tempt Eve by happenstance, but in the knowledge
that Adam’s rational mind would have rebuffed the emotional
ploy.
Again, the brain’s male/female dynamic is the cause of most
personal and social conflict. It is the presence of the
feminine ((emotional)) and masculine ((rational)) natures
within each one of us, along with the separation of those
dominant natures into male and female bodies ((usually
correspondent)), driving the conflicts.
When pundits write about the political or religious “left”
and “right” of any issue, be mindful that they’re addressing
what are the most fundamental, intrinsic natures of the
human mind–the RATIONAL left-brain nature and
EMOTIONAL right-brain nature.
The Christian churches, both Left and Right, are responsible
for most of America’s social ills because they share a
common thread–an emotionality of the bleeding heart and a
lack of rational mindedness ((One of the symbols for Jesus’
life is the bleeding heart, which represents better the
Christian faith and life. Note that Toynbee referred to
Christianity as “the way of gentleness”)). But compassion
can destroy as well as heal, as the bad after-effects of
Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society attest, proving that giving
one a handout, rather than a hand up, can imprison both the
giver and recipient to the recipient’s dependency.
Ross Mackenzie writes of the Religious Left’s lie–of its
claiming to hold moderate views while it charges the
Religious Right with radicalism. But both sides are
culpable.
The Religious Right now tries to undo what they helped
to foment in their silence at the pulpit and in their winking
at their own and their peers’ immoral transgressions these
past forty years. Those of the Religious Left are only
being themselves in their radical assaults on common sense
and good civil society, and they mirror much better than the
Religious Right Jesus’ exoteric teachings ((an exact
reflection would be for them to withdraw from worldly
concerns altogether and follow Jesus)).
The first question that would-be Christians must ask
themselves, in trying to live what Jesus actually taught,
is “How much pain can I stand?” And then ask a second
one, “Am I really my brother’s keeper?”
I’m not my brother’s keeper if by “keeper” is meant
“jailer.” I’ll teach my brother how to fend for himself,
but not imprison both of us to his dependency, which is what
the Religious and the secular Left have done to America.
Or should I sell everything I own, give the proceeds to the
poor and follow Him?
Such is the quandary Christians face in reconciling the two
minds–in deciding whether to build a better world or suffer
in giving up the world, in hope of winning Paradise.
-Rick
Well, I find Your opinions interesting and inspiring to further research on the subject.
But, this statement : “Yes, Judaism is matriarchal—as is Christianity” contradicts a little bit an opinion which goes like that: ” the battle between the Right’s Old Testament conservatism and the Left’s New Testament liberalism in Christian politics.” If Judaism is matriarchal (like Christianity) We should not talk about “the Old Testament conservatism” – because, according to this principle: matriarchal means liberal.
I will be grateful for Your response to the raised question.
It’s sometimes said that Jews are slave-like in their obedience to commands, but we also see them act as a group, like the Aliens movie creatures, which makes them dominant. So, I question whether their religion is truly slave-like. I know that wording wasn’t used here.
Judaism has other beliefs like Kabbalah. So, the social structure might be more complex than first appears. It’s fascinating, to me anyway, how Abrahamic faiths destroy every competitor, but Kabbalah is tolerated.
where can I order this book?
I put in links to the Amazon page which is also linked by the publisher.
You are completely mistaken when you say Nietzsche was “philo-Semitic.” He had a deeper grasp of the Jewish problem–and hence, the Christian problem–than the standard “right-wing” ideologues do. Both the anti-Semites and the Semites suffer from “ressentiment,” which will always prove THE stumbling block to understanding and therefore accomplishing anything great.
Ah, the old “deeper understanding” dodge; as always, it’s “don’t listen to those vulgar anti-X people, follow my own more sophisticated analysis down some rabbit hole. You won’t get anywhere, but you can bask in my reflected intellectual superiority.”
For example, this was how Marx derailed the socialist movement: don’t attack the bosses who are exploiting you, the Laws of History have revealed to ME that they are a necessary stage, and the revolution is inevitable once you are completely crushed, but NOT before, so don’t go off in “premature” directions, just wait and take it, go and hard.
Unwittingly, you just proved Wollzo’s point with your reference to “intellectual superiority” which you apparently envy or ‘begrudge.’
Nietzsche never read Marx, thus naming him here proves only one thing: your try to kill the argument with a thought-terminating cliché—which, again, proves precisely what Wollzo opined about “standard ‘right-wing’ ideologues.”
My intuitive understanding, based on reasoning and thus unreliable, is that Marx wanted capitalism to grind the world into a proletariat mass of individuals who lack any sort of history, group ties, or division. He praised this destruction in his comments on free trade and in other areas.
He then wanted this mass to revolt. But I question whether freedom or utopia was his aim.
So, it makes sense that he’d value the capitalist “phase.” Liberalism/capitalism is unstable. The Marxists are correct on that.
Nietzsche has been appropriated by many groups — from left to right — and imbued with their own biases. The fact is that Nietzsche was not an anti-semitic far-right ubermensch, a fallacious trope that grows from his initial endorsement by the Nazi party (appropriated for their own purposes). He was a Basel philo-semite who was endorsed by Jews and later by the Nazis.
As Christoph Steding pointed out (see Jacob’s recent translation of Das Reich):
———————————————————————————————————
“Significantly, Burckhardt or Bachofen or Nietzsche or Kierkegaard had very competent admirers and interpreters among Jews such as those of the George Circle or those of Klages or Karl Jaspers, who belonged to or stood intellectually close to it.”
“Not accidentally the Jews, with Georg Brandes and Leo Berg and Maximilian Harden, grasped Nietzsche most quickly and best and took care of the popularisation, and that means also liquidation, of the erratic portions still lying around here and there in Nietzsche’s work.”
“Nietzsche, Bachofen, Burckhardt, Lagarde, Langbehn, all these apparent enemies of liberalism and decadence, are also the sharpest enemies of the state [Reich] as the most visible expression of the health of a nation.”
“In the name of ‘culture’ or ‘freedom’ did Nietzsche, Burckhardt, Overbeck and many others protest, openly or covertly, from Basel, against the Reich. […] In this way the objection made from Basel against the Reich and all Reichs, that they lack ‘culture’ — culture understood in the sense of Burckhardt, Nietzsche, Overbeck — is exposed as the demand that Germany must be made Basel-like.”
“Brandes is considered the ‘Voltaire of the North,’ Burckhardt may be called the ‘Voltaire of Basel.’ How much did he value his Geneva predecessor! And it rounds out the picture that we sketch of these connections when we recall that the ‘Voltaire of the North’ discovered and understood Nietzsche first and that Nietzsche dedicated the first edition of one of his major works to [the Enlightenment liberal and Freemason] Voltaire.”
——————————————————————-
One may contrast this with the fact that Nietzsche developed intense relationships with ethnic Jews and even wrote:
“The Jews, however, are beyond any doubt the strongest, toughest, and purest race now living in Europe.”
As Nietzsche himself teaches, there is no ‘neutral’ perspective, thus it comes as no surpise that whoever reads him reads him “imbued with their own biases.” The perspective you state here is the conventional postwar one of a tolerant, liberal Nietzsche as anti-anti-Semite, which raises the question of the objective you are trying to achieve by adopting this left-leaning stance on Nietzsche?
Besides that, neither Karl Jaspers nor Ludwig Klages were Jewish, the latter has even repeatedly been accused of anti-Semitism. For a more recent, similar stance on Nietzsche, see Robert Holub’s “Nietzsche’s Jewish Problem: Between Anti-Semitism and Anti-Judaism.”
As to the last quote from “Beyond Good and Evil,” it would be wise to consider the context which may make—as in this case—all the difference. Just this much: Nietzsche is talking here before the background of the “European problem,” as he sees it, i.e., the “the breeding of a new ruling caste for Europe”, and with this problem in mind he “who has Europe’s future on his conscience” draws attention to the relative strength and weakness of the Jewish and European peoples, respectively.
What I meant was that Nietzsche is, like many figures, often misunderstood. This is common with laymen who think that they can crack open a book and start understanding a historical work with objective clarity and truth without understanding the context of the work, its history and the tradition it came from.
The claim “there is no ‘neutral’ perspective” reeks of relativism given no further clarification. Everyone may be biased relative to their own perspective but that doesn’t discount the fact that truth exists and is important in the area of scholarship. If we look at everything that Nietzsche has written, there is much more evidence to support the case that he was a philo-semite. The anti-semite Nietzsche is built on a pile of subjective speculation.
“For a more recent, similar stance on Nietzsche, see Robert Holub’s ‘Nietzsche’s Jewish Problem: Between Anti-Semitism and Anti-Judaism.'”
Holub’s book is well addressed in one of the footnotes above by Alex Soros (yes, quite funny). Nevertheless, he does a good job of addressing Holub’s shortcomings. As he wrote in his review:
“Most reviewers have either embraced Holub’s account as implicit rejection of Nietzsche or rejected Holub’s account in affirming Nietzsche. Among the latter, Brian Leiter sets out in detail how Holub misrepresents Nietzsche’s outlook ‘largely through letters and unpublished material – as well as a good deal of innuendo and speculation – rather than systematic engagement with Nietzsche’s actual philosophical work’.”
Holub condemned Nietzsche as an anti-Semite — unsurprising given that he was a White liberal and a philo-semite himself. How many liberal college professors do we think we could get to positively state that Nietzsche was an anti-semite? Perhaps we consult a book by an Afrocentrist for evidence of how Whites are the devil because they lack melanin.
A more informed reader would have known about Holub’s problems. A more careful reader would have more carefully reviewed the footnotes.
I have, however, no major gripe with your interpretation of the quote. Clearly Nietzsche (the philo-semite) saw Jews as the master race. We can contrast it with his other philo-semitic comments, a plethora of which are available.
You have clearly demonstrated that the “Nietzsche-was-anti-semitic” position is built on intellectual shortcomings, especially when your argument is in essence nothing more than “read the opinions of a White liberal college professor who loved Jews because he thought Nietzsche to be an anti-semite.”
Still, you have not stated your objective in representing Nietzsche not even as anti-anti-Semite, but as positively philo-Semite. Is this supposed to be your reason to reject Nietzsche?
Since you say that Alex Soros “does a good job of addressing Holub’s shortcomings,” thereby reasserting Nietzsche’s purported philo-Semitism, shouldn’t you then reject Alex Soros (as well as Holub) for precisely the same reason: their own philo-Semitism? If so, Soros’ thesis on Nietzsche would also have to be nixed.
Besides that, Leiter’s argument, on which Soros’ own depends, is grounded in the old dispute over the role of Nietzsche’s “Nachlass” and where his “‘actual philosophical work'” is to be found. By invalidating Nietzsche’s unpublished writings, it is clear which side Leiter takes, but his side is not by any means the only one nor is it uncontroversial (not even today)—thus it proves nothing.
Also your final paraphrase of my argument’s purported “essence” exhibits a small logical imperfection that makes it seem rather unlikely to be a reasonable candidate for proving—or even merely corroborating—your self-proclaimed “fact that truth exists” (at least if said “fact” was to “exist” as one of your own more or less exclusive personal assets), for, logically, our “White liberal college professor” would have “thought Nietzsche to be an anti-semite” because he (our professor) “loved Jews,” rather than the other way around. (Why, you ask? Because your original statement, as well as its contrapositive, is evidently untrue, see 20th century history, whereas the contrapositive of my restatement of your original statement is strikingly true, at least in your case, and from logic we know that if the statement is true, then the contrapositive is also logically true, thus at least one contradiction of your original statement has been resolved by my restatement.)
@ Thankmar
Who said anything about rejecting Nietzsche? I didn’t write anything of the sort. The fact that you strongly associate the labelling of Nietzsche as philo-semitic with rejection of Nietzsche is quite telling of your own biases and presuppositions. Thanks for making them clear to us.
“Since you say that Alex Soros “does a good job of addressing Holub’s shortcomings,” thereby reasserting Nietzsche’s purported philo-Semitism, shouldn’t you then reject Alex Soros (as well as Holub) for precisely the same reason: their own philo-Semitism? If so, Soros’ thesis on Nietzsche would also have to be nixed.”
You have completely misunderstood a basic argument. In fact, you have misunderstood most things I have written in simple English hitherto. You seem to be too wrapped up in your emotional-religious attachment to Nietzsche to properly analyze critical things people write about him that do not suit your idealistic, phantastical view of him. One can in fact accept Nietzsche as a philo-semite and a gifted writer at the same time. I have not made any value judgments about Nietzsche.
Your following point on Leiter is moot. Holub ignores evidence to make his case for the anti-semite Nietzsche, as Soros points out. This brings me back to one of your earlier questions:
“which raises the question of the objective you are trying to achieve by adopting this left-leaning stance on Nietzsche?”
There is nothing inherently political about making the argument that Nietzsche was philo-semitic. Again, it is obvious you want to drag the non-scholarly into a scholarly debate. Furthermore one could just as easily ask you why you are referencing for your (non “left-leaning”) argument the position of a liberal college professor who liked Jews?
Your final paragraph is unclear. Would you like to argue that truth does not exist? That is fundamentally self-refuting.
My intuitively grasped theory has long been that the race that makes up our being is native to the North Sea region. This is the central melting and starting point of the Northwest European species, the home of the Nordic race.
This region is still a unique ecological and biological system today. The world language “English” was only created by overcoming this barrier, which ultimately led to the conquest of the world. This is our common “Urgrund”.
https://www.dict.cc/deutsch-englisch/Urgrund.html
The Spanish and French may be offended that their adventurous spirit also conquered a part of the world, but if you look at this part of the world, you can see the civilizational incompetence of its colonialists.
The Germanic Sea, today called the North Sea, is the cradle of western civilization. The displacement of the Celts by the Germanic tribes is related to this. Antlantis, if it ever existed, must have been located here.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7f/North_Sea_map-en.png
Hi Kevin, why did you withhold my links to the Dogger-
land research and the reference to the beautiful music
of the North Sea Radio Orchestra from the public?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTL6MCsXS0A
The last battle above the Dogger Bank took place
on your birthday 29 years before you were born.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Dogger_Bank_(1915)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mS8jtRdH2ss
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IuFgJULHI7g
Several submarines and ships that were named as such.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_ship_Doggerbank
Excerpts from a probably not completely preserved Bundeswehr film entitled “Auf Tauchstation”. The film follows the training boat “U-Hai” (S-170), which sank in 1966, as it sets sail and prepares for a diving maneuver in Neustadt Bay. The film was presumably made between 1965 and 1966. Incidentally, the first shot of a submarine surfacing shows U-Hecht (S-171), U-Hai’s sister boat. [Hai = shark] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TbblBA4oqTY
https://www.dict.cc/?s=Tauchstation
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_submarine_Hai_(S_170)#Post_war_service
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_Breath_(2019_film)
https://upmovies.to/watch/qvoVYJ8d-last-breath.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dn-oytGFgI0
https://genius.com/Musketeer-the-north-sea-lyrics
A faceless spectre is haunting. Where to start with such pathetic creatures?
1. cutting off effiminate “hairdo”! 2. getting out your (self)mourning rags and put on light-colored sailor shirt! 3. stopping self-pitying whining instead singing about beautiful homeland and origin! 4. renaming ridiculous stage alias.
Dumbass!
Did you, @PedroGeiss, answer even a single one of the questions I raised in my comment? I don’t think so. Instead the entirety of your most recent reply (see above, dated November 25, 2023) reads to me like subterfuge.
If representing Nietzsche as philo-Semite was not supposed to be your reason for rejecting him, why then don’t you state, if you like “in simple English” (ostensibly very much your preferred writing mode after all), which objective you are trying to achieve by representing Nietzsche as a tolerant, liberal philo-Semite?
“The fact that you strongly associate the labelling of Nietzsche as philo-semitic with rejection of Nietzsche is quite telling of your own biases and presuppositions. Thanks for making them clear to us.” (P.G., see above)
Firstly, who is “us?” Secondly, you are commenting on a site with an intellectual outlook rather critical of philo-Semitism, which is why representing Nietzsche in your comments as a staunch philo-Semite—see your assertion, “Clearly Nietzsche (the philo-semite) saw Jews as the master race.”—would—prima facie, i.e., without checking your comment history—make it seem more likely to entail a corresponding critical view of him, rather than the opposite. Thus my question if this was supposed to be your reason for rejecting Nietzsche; it has less to do with associating and much more with separating possibility from actuality. Thirdly, everyone has their “own biases and presuppositions,” there is nothing remarkable about this, but what is remarkable here is your refusal to make your own objectives and premises clear.
“You have completely misunderstood a basic argument.” (P.G., see above)
I have not; I have merely made a sound inference and rendered the resulting proposition in form of a simple question for you.
“One can in fact accept Nietzsche as a philo-semite and a gifted writer at the same time. I have not made any value judgments about Nietzsche.” (P.G., see above)
And expressly predicating Nietzsche as “a gifted writer,” but not ‘philosopher’ (or whatever cognate), is not a “value judgment?”
“Your following point on Leiter is moot. Holub ignores evidence to make his case for the anti-semite Nietzsche, as Soros points out.” (P.G., see above)
It is not. You could argue exactly the same point about Soros that he “ignores evidence,” viz. Nietzsche’s letters and unpublished writings.
“There is nothing inherently political about making the argument that Nietzsche was philo-semitic.” (P.G., see above)
There is not? A quite interesting and telling assertion, especially since with your own you are exceeding or ‘overbidding’ even the conventional postwar stance on Nietzsche.
“Furthermore one could just as easily ask you why you are referencing for your (non “left-leaning”) argument the position of a liberal college professor who liked Jews?” (P.G., see above)
Why not? To exclude him on the basis of being a “liberal college professor” would constitute an ad hominem, hence fallacious reasoning.
“Your final paragraph is unclear.” (P.G., see above)
I wholeheartedly disagree. And you are welcome to reread it should you want to better your understanding of it!