An Evangelical Christian says...
"Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900), a fervent philosopher who was anti-democracy, anti-Christianity, anti-Judaism, anti-socialist and self-acclaimed Anti-Christ, expressed his belief in a master race and the coming of a superman in many of his works."
Just about everything in that paragraph is factually incorrect. Let's explore the facts...
The Misrepresentation of Nietzsche
Introduction
During a discussion of the vicious, anti-Semitic books and sermons by Martin Luther, this comment was made in defence of Luther's anti-Semitism...
"Luther's anger towards the Jews was a long and slow progression and was only fully manifested in his later years. The Nazis were influenced by Darwin. Darwinian ethics had a real influence on Hitler and the Nazis. And here's someone who REALLY had a profound influence on Hitler's thinking and shaped his views that would lead to the mass murder of millions of people: Friedrich Nietzsche - who was a fervent philosopher who was anti-democracy, anti-Christianity, anti-Judaism, anti-socialist and self-acclaimed Anti-Christ, and expressed his belief in a master race and the coming of a superman"
Apart from being a clumsy way to deflect attention away from Luther, most of this is factually incorrect as we will see shortly. It's a shame, because Christian apologists have no need to be ashamed by evil people who use the Bible to "justify" their evil actions. The blame obviously lies with the evil people - not with Christianity. And the same argument applies to Nietzsche. We can certainly criticise his works for being ambiguous and often unfathomable, and therefore open to many contradictory interpretations. But that argument also applies to the Bible. Certainly the Lutheran Church has had no problem publicly apologising and denouncing Martin Luther's anti-Semitism and his influence on the Nazis.
Most of the references in this Wiki come from the book "Nietzsche and the Nazis" by Stephen Hicks, including these two quotations from Martin Luther, which illustrate the stark difference between Luther's explicit and violent anti-Semitism (which requires no interpretation) and Nietzsche who would have been horrified by the actions of Nazis.
“The Jews deserve to hang on gallows, seven times higher than ordinary thieves.”
"We ought to take revenge on the Jews and kill them.”
- Martin Luther (from his Sermons). See Stephen Hicks - Nietzsche and the Nazis - Appendix 3
So, nothing that Nietzsche wrote comes close to the specific and explicit anti-Semitism provided by Luther. But Is there anything in Nietzsche's work that justifies the Nazis adoption of Nietzsche? As Hicks says - it is a "split decision" (page 77). Nietzsche can be interpreted both for and against the argument, and that's why an entire library of books has been created attempting to explain what he might mean. Even Steven Hicks - widely quoted here - has had to subtitle his book on Nietzsche "A Personal View". There can be no definitive text on Nietzsche. And that in itself, is a criticism of Nietzsche.
There's no way a single wiki page can address all the contradictions in Nietzsche's philosophy, but some obvious points and misunderstandings can be addressed.
The problem of Interpretation
Nietzsche must take some responsibility for being misrepresented. He indulged himself in stylish, pretentious writing at the expense of clarity, showing off turns of phrase and plays on words which would obfuscate meaning. He was also prone to hyperbole and often wrote for effect. All this lends itself to misinterpretation. Hence Nietzsche has spawned an entire industry devoted to books on the subject of What Nietzsche Really Said. In fact there is actually a book by that name.
Compare Nietzsche's situation to say, Bertrand Russell (and I should disclose Russell is my favourite philosopher). If we need to know what Russell meant, all we have to do is read his books. If we need to know what Luther wanted to happen to the Jews, all we have to do is read his books and sermons. Clear, explicit writing is difficult to misinterpret - there's no market for a book called "What Bertrand Russell Really Said".
Nietzsche fans will say that his contradictions and tangled language are a virtue because the reader is forced to think through the seemingly contradictory and shocking ideas, and this is a useful process, forcing the reader to think. And I've experienced this myself - reading a paragraph (or even a sentence) of Nietzsche and feeling I've read something profound but on reflection realising that it resonated with me because of my values and forced me to examine my values - and knowing that the same text could resonate differently with someone who held totally different values to me. Well if that was Nietzsche's intention, it backfired. As the translator and Nietzsche biographer Walter Kaufmann explains in his book The Portable Nietzsche
"Doubtless Nietzsche has attracted crackpots and villains, but perhaps the percentage is no higher than in the case of Jesus. As [Jacques] Maritain has said: "If books were judged by the bad uses man can put them to, what book has been more misused than the Bible?"
But is that really a good reason to let Nietzsche off the hook? "Misuse of the Bible" is a subjective idea. If the Bible says adulterers are to be stoned to death, are we misusing it if we stone adulterers to death, or are we misusing it if we don't? If the Bible has been "misused" does that defend the Bible, or does it highlight a major flaw in the Bible? After all - if people can misinterpreted a book so as to "justify" mass murder - whether it's the Bible or Nietzsche - is that a point in favour of the book or against it? Religious apologists will say the Bible itself can be used to highlight the misuse of the Bible. Aside from the obvious error of recursion in this logic, this is just another example of the Bible being used to suit the pre-existing values of the interpreter. A good Christian will of course interpret the Bible to mean something good. And the same applies to any book.
Nietzsche and the Nazis
When we think of historical revolutions, we can often find a link to philosophy. For example, with the American Revolution, we naturally think back to the philosopher John Locke. What philosophers can we cite in the case of the Nazis? Several names are candidates: Georg Hegel, Martin Luther, Johann Fichte, even elements from Karl Marx. But the real bogeyman for the Christian Apologists is Friedrich Nietzsche. The Nazis often cited Nietzsche and even though he died 33 years before the Nazis came to power, references to Nietzsche crop up regularly in Nazi writings and activities. In philosopher Heidegger’s lectures, for example, “Nietzsche was presented as the Nazi philosopher.” In his study, Adolf Hitler had a bust of Friedrich Nietzsche. In 1935, Hitler attended and participated in the funeral of Nietzsche’s sister Elisabeth. In 1938, the Nazis built a monument to Nietzsche. In 1943, Hitler gave a set of Nietzsche’s writings as a gift to fellow dictator Benito Mussolini. Hitler’s propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels, was also a great admirer of Friedrich Nietzsche. In his semi-autobiographical novel, Goebbels has the title character Michael die in a mining accident—afterward three books are found among his belongings: the Bible, Goethe’s Faust, and Nietzsche’s Thus Spake Zarathustra. The Nazis also made references to other philosophers and theologians and even the Bible.
Stephen Hicks - Nietzsche and the Nazis - page 49
Nietzsche can seem elitist but again that's not clear cut. He didn't advocate elitism in the sense that a powerful few deserve to be favoured. He saw the ancient Greeks as superior to European Christianity and admired the great empires of the past, in comparison with 19th century Europe. The Nazi commentator Heinrich Härtle in his 1937 book Nietzsche und der Nationalsozialismus, presented Nietzsche as "a great ally in the present spiritual warfare." Härtle realized that Nietzsche's advocacy of European unity, his apparent elitism and individualism, his critique of the state, his approval of race-mixing, and his opposition to anti-Semitism were incompatible with Nazi ideology. By relativizing these shortcomings as minor issues and selectively quote mining Nietzsche's work, and by ignoring the 19th century context within which Nietzsche was writing, Härtle could present Nietzsche as a precursor of Hitler.
Sadly, such crude distortions were echoed in Allied war propaganda and in newspaper headlines in Britain and the United States, which (continuing the traditions of the First World War) sometimes depicted the "insane philosopher" as the source of a ruthless German barbarism and as Hitler's favorite author. Phrases torn out of their context such as the "Overman", the "blond beast," "master morality," or the "will to power" were all too easily turned into slogans (even by distinguished philosophers like Sir Karl Popper) to demonstrate Nietzsche's imagined identification with German militarism and imperialism, though nothing had been further from his mind. [1]
Politics
Nietzsche gives the impression of having no normative ethics, or normative politics, and this has helped his ideas to be misappropriated. His countering of the values of the Enlightenment and what he perceived to be Christian morality were, with hindsight, potentially dangerous ideas. Nietzsche apologists such as Walter Kaufmann attempted to sever Nietzsche altogether from Nazi ideology by saying Nietzsche was apolitical. It's true that Nietzsche rejected German Nationalism and anti-Semitism. But that doesn't mean he wasn't political. In fact, it misrepresents Nietzsche - the political content of his philosophy makes his anti-Fascism clearer. We should not forget the last sentence Nietzsche had a chance to write before his final collapse which was obviously political in nature…"Wilhelm, Bismarck und alle Antisemiten abgeschafft" ("Wilhelm, Bismarck and all anti-Semites abolished"). [1]
Nietzsche had the opportunity to explain and defend his perspective against accusations to the contrary
Nietzsche's final work was produced in 1888 and his life as a philosopher effectively ended in 1889 when he suffered a severe mental breakdown followed by a series of strokes, and his death in 1900. Nietzsche's works had a very limited audience during his lifetime. So it's hard to see how Nietzsche could have had an opportunity to prevent his perspective being misused by the Nazis considering the Nazi party didn't exist until 30 years after Nietzsche died. So what clues did Nietzsche have that his ideas could be misused? He could hear the Wagnerian music and see the nationalism of Bayreuth and Nietzsche criticised what he saw there describing Wagner's work as an attempted assassination of basic ethics - but Could Nietzsche have predicted that Wagner would become such an influence on the Nazis? Could anyone predict the Nazism to follow? The philosopher Hegel, whom Nietzsche strongly criticised, regarded the Prussian state of the nineteenth century as the "highest rational manifestation of the Universal Geist" and Nietzsche attacked this idea of statehood which was gaining ground at the time. Perhaps if Nietzsche could have lived for another 30 years hw would have had the opportunity to specifically denounce the Nazis. But it's hard to see what difference that would have made anyway.
Who did Nietzsche Influence?
If it was only Nazis and Fascists who claimed to be influenced By Nietzsche then perhaps those who try to connect him to Hitler would have a point. But he didn't. There is a pantheon of major twentieth century intellectuals whom he influenced. He was an influence on Jean-Paul Sartre and Hermann Hesse, major writers, both of whom won Nobel Prizes. He was an influence on thinkers as diverse as the liberal Ayn Rand and the far-left Michel Foucault. Nietzsche was an atheist, but he was an influence on Martin Buber, one of the most widely-read theologians of the twentieth century. He was admired by Chaim Weizmann, a leader of the Zionist movement and first president of Israel. So what is the attraction of Nietzsche? There is the exciting, sometimes scorching writing style - Nietzsche was a stylist par excellence. There is his romanticism of life as a great, daring adventure. And of course the fundamentality and sheer audacity of the questions he raises about the human condition.
Stephen Hicks - Nietzsche and the Nazis - page 51
God is dead
Nietzsche deliberately used prose that would shock and this is perhaps the most famous example - his way of making people think. He doesn't literally mean God is dead and he is not advocating atheism even though he is an atheist. He is describing the situation that he observed across Europe - religion losing its grip.
Nietzsche's phrase captures the personal and shocking quality of the diminishing of religion. Religion gave us comfort that we will live happily ever after. Many find that hard to believe lately. The rise of science has different answers, we have removed feudalism and we are more individualistic and naturalistic. This has happened very quickly after millennia of religion. There is a suggestion that religion is reaching the end of the road. It’s like your parents disappearing overnight – your support and love is gone. And you are alone. Culturally Nietzsche thinks we always relied on God the Father. But now we are orphaned. Our naïve childhood beliefs have gone. So – how do we face a world without God and religion?
Many people avoid this issue. They sense the game is up for religion but deny it because life without religion is too scary to contemplate. Nietzshe says medieval peasants needed such faith but we shouldn’t need it. Communist States would agree "God is dead" but they put The State in God's place. "The Mighty State will provide for us." Judeo-Christian religions says this is a world of sin and the weak suffer at the hands of the strong. In Heaven the lion will lay down with the lamb and God will bring salvation to the meek and revenge on the wicked. Marxism uses a similar argument - it says this is a world of exploitation and a future, ideal world will exist which empowers the oppressed and eliminates the evil exploiters. Religion and communism recoil from the harsh reality of the world – presenting a safe, future realm.
Nietzsche asks - where are the men of courage who are willing to stare into the abyss? Every generation has occasional magnificent men. They accept life is tough, unequal, unfair and assert their strength with unbending wills. But Nietzsche observes they are rare in the 19th century and he wonders why. He looks back to Japanese feudal nobility and the Samurai, Indian Brahmins, Vikings, expansionist Arabs, the British global Empire. the European conquest of the Americas, and the Roman Empire. Why do some cultures rise to such greatness whilst others seem apologetic and weak?
Stephen Hicks - Nietzsche and the Nazis - pages 54-56
Nietzsche's Invented Religion
Nietzsche is an atheist but seems inspired by Biblical prophets - people who are special because God has chosen them and speaks through them. The prophet is a tool of God - his power comes from God and he is a mouthpiece through which God speaks his message. He is a localised vehicle through which the real force (God) works.
Nietzsche invented the great prophet Zarathustra (or to be precise - Zarathustras - special individuals in the distant future who are the products of evolution - the tools of some kind of "higher power". Note what Nietzsche is saying the real causal power is: The "will to power" works through those individuals; it is not that those individuals develop and use power.
Nietzsche and morality
Religious Apologists who try to link Nietzsche to Hitler will point to Nietzsche's atheism and suggest that atheism naturally results in a lack of morality - so Nietzsche was proposing an extreme moral relativity - where there is no way to tell what is wrong or what is right. This is another misunderstanding of what Nietzsche was saying.
Nietzsche observes two species "types" – herd animals and loners. Prey and predators. Some are sheep mice, cows, some are wolves, hawks, lions. He says this runs through the human species. Some are fearful some are fearless. Some are sluggish some are full of purpose and need adventures. Some are born to be slaves and some are born to be masters. And there's not much you can do about it. Each of us inherits from our genetics a long line of inbuilt traits. The master types live by strength, creativity, independence, assertiveness, and related traits. They respect power, courage, boldness, risk-taking, even recklessness. It is natural for them to follow their own path no matter what, to rebel against social pressure and conformity. The slave types live in conformity. They tend to passivity, dependence, meekness. It is natural for them to stick together for a sense of security, just as herd animals do.
Nietzsche says for a long time we have been wrongly taught that morality is a matter of religious commandments set in stone thousands of years ago. What we take to be moral depends on our biological nature—and different biological natures dictate different moral codes.
Morality, as Nietzsche puts it paradoxically, has become a bad thing; morality has become immoral: “precisely morality would be to blame if the highest power and splendor actually possible to the type man was never in fact attained? So that precisely morality was the danger of dangers?” Accordingly, Nietzsche concludes, “we need a critique of moral values, the value of these values themselves must first be called in question—and for that there is needed a knowledge of the conditions and circumstances in which they grew, under which they evolved and changed.”
Stephen Hicks - Nietzsche and the Nazis - pages 57-59
intuition Rules over Reason
Another religious concept hijacked by Nietzsche is an idea strongly advocated by Martin Luther namely "Reason is the greatest enemy that faith has". Nietzsche sees an opposition between conscious reason and unconscious instinct, and he disparages those who stress rationality. He believes that rationality such as the scientific method is the least useful guiding powers humans possess. Nietzsche says our unconscious drives are infallible. He says… “‘instinct’ is of all the kinds of intelligence that have been discovered so far—the most intelligent.”
Nietzsche and Darwin
Nietzsche famously misunderstood what Darwin had to say about natural selection. He accepted that evolution occurred, but he fell into the naturalistic fallacy trap and he did not believe evolution accounted for the variety of species. Nietzsche says... "I call an animal, a species, an individual corrupt, when it loses its instincts, when it chooses, when it prefers, what is injurious to it."
In fact when species do this they become extinct. Some organisms will do things, make a living and grow in ways that are relatively better than other forms of life, and some will survive because of it, and others will die off. But this is not a virtue or a moral claim.
Nietzsche had the view of life as a struggle, and the superior forms survive, but he confuses "superiority" for power or strength which is not the Darwinian concept of "fit" as in appropriate for the environment. Nietzsche believed in an absolute scale for “superior” and “inferior”, which has no basis in evolutionary biology. If the "meek and mild" will inherit the earth by subjugating themselves to the will of stronger cultures, forms or races, then they will be the superior species no matter what Friedrich Nietzsche felt about meekness.
"Nietzsche’s “higher type” would not “survive” in a Darwinian world because he standard of “survival of he fittest” in itself reflects the power of a particular will or constellation of wills. For example, the momentary success and survival of a specific social group – let us say, the industrial and technocratic classes of he 19tha and 20th centuries – does not prove heir intrinsic “fitness” or superiority over any other classes at the time or in “history.” Rather, it represents the momentary success of a common constellation of biological wills in asserting their existential conditions in relation to other competing “historical wills”. Correspondingly, the relative success and propagation of a particular class along with its interpretation does no eliminate competing wills. It just signifies the temporary prioritisation and marginalisation of one specific strand of interpretation vis-a-vis others."
See "Nietzsche's Anti-Darwinism" by Dirk R. Johnson http://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/philosophy/nineteenth-century-philosophy/nietzsches-anti-darwinism
Ironically, creationists will often argue that evolution is all about brute strength, and "survival of the fittest" without realising that their misundersanding of Darwinian evolution is the same as that of Nietzsche - their philosophical bogeyman!
Religion and Morality
Nietzsche suggests that the morality of the weak has become dominant. He is not suggesting that this is a bad thing or that it should be eradicated. He is merely observing. Democracy means giving power to the majority and the majority are conformist, want a peaceful life, happy to be comfortable . And in a democracy that sort of person gets power, so democratic law reflects the taste of that sort of person – not the minority who are trailblazers and risk takers.
Nietzsche says Judaism and Christianity both have the same roots and approach to morality which can be traced back to the enslavement of Jews in Egypt – Jews were slaves under Egyptian masters. The Jews survived this and still exist – The Egyptian masters have perished. The Jews kept their religion alive and surviving is obviously good. Nietzsche asks what keeps you alive if you are a slave and what will cause you to be killed? If you want your children to survive what will you teach them to do so?
Therefore what is good and bad, moral and immoral, is not a matter of supernatural commandments - it is a matter of real life practical circumstances and appropriate moral strategies. If you are a slave, what strategy will be "moral" that is - help you survive? Clearly you must obey the master. This does not come naturally. Nietzsche says all living things have an instinct to express themselves. If the master strikes you, the desire for revenge is natural but you train yourself to stifle it. The slaves who don’t obey end up dead. Obedience and humility are sutvival value and that’s what you teach your children. Slave virtures become cultural values. So The Jews slave experience produced their internalised values. Patience and humility are not moral because of God, but because of circumstances, because of practical “how to survive” considerations.
So time passes and people forget where this code came from or don’t think about it. And some people don’t mind being slaves. But some resent it. Some of those Jews who are slaves have the desire to grow and express who they are but they can't because they are frustrated slaves. Such slaves will resent the masters strongly and start to hate themselves for having to do what the master says. If you knuckle under long enough and resent long enough you start to hate the master and hate yourself for being a weakling. It starts to destroy your soul. The more energetic and alive you are, the greater your frustration. And that results in psychologically ugly things. “The outward discharge was uninhibited and turned backward against man himself … “that is the origin of the bad conscience” .
You can't take real revenge but you can take fantasy revenge. And this is how Nietzsche explains the existence of priests and religious leaders. They are clever and ambitious, and feel the battle between power and selfless morality. Inside such priests, says Nietzsche, we find disturbing psychological phenomena. He says “As is well known, the priests are the most evil enemies — but why? Because they are the most impotent. It is because of their impotence that in them hatred grows to monstrous and uncanny proportions, to the most spiritual and poisonous kind of hatred. The truly great haters in world history have always been priests; likewise the most ingenious haters: other kinds of spirit hardly come into consideration when compared with the spirit of priestly vengefulness.”
Priests are selling a huge revenge fantasy – they talk of being obedient to God, but he’s not around so it means people being obedient to God's representatives. Who are they? Priests. They form a power base of obedient followers, and large quantities of people are a powerful weapon.
Priests condemn the rich and powerful and assertive and urge them to give away their money. Sermons against the rich and powerful will console the weak in the congregation who are envious, and so this sounds good to them. And it is also a direct weapon against the rich and powerful – it instills guilt. The weak use psychological weapons because physical weapons are not available. The priests use morality as their weapon. Praise the meek condemn the strong. The Judeo-Christian moral code becomes part of a revenge strategy so the weak can survive in a harsh world and undermine the master type's confidence and eventually bring them down. The weak, sick and poor will triumph in the end and God will bring vengeance on the rich and powerful.
Nietzsche believes that the slave morality of the Judeo-Christian tradition is a two-fold strategy: (1) it is a survival code that enables the weak to band together for survival; and (2) it is as revenge and a power play in their battle against the strong.
Stephen Hicks - Nietzsche and the Nazis - page 63-70
Nietzsche and anti-Semitism
Nietzsche's detractors will quote-mine his work to find disparaging comments about Jews. Not difficult for two reasons: He made disparaging comments about everyone, and it's hard to find any 19th century literature that didn't disparage Jews. In any case there's a big difference between a disparaging comment, and the explicit calls for violence from Martin Luther, and the actions of the Nazis. Despite Nietzsche's disparaging comments, he was a fierce opponent of anti-Semitism - disgusted by it - and upset when his work was being misused in such a way. The blame for this lies largely with his sister who was a German nationalist and anti-Semite and became a supporter of the Nazi Party. After Hitler came to power her Nietzsche Archive received financial support and publicity from Hitler's government, in return for which Nietzsche's sister allowed the Nazi regime to gain prestige from the support of the archive and she produced her own anti-Semitic interpretations of her brother's work.
In Nietzsche's own words...
"You have committed one of the greatest stupidities — for yourself and for me! Your association with an anti-Semitic chief expresses a foreignness to my whole way of life which fills me again and again with ire or melancholy. ... It is a matter of honor with me to be absolutely clean and unequivocal in relation to anti-Semitism, namely, opposed to it, as I am in my writings. I have recently been persecuted with letters and Anti-Semitic Correspondence Sheets. My disgust with this party (which would like the benefit of my name only too well!) is as pronounced as possible, but the relation to Förster, as well as the aftereffects of my former publisher, the anti-Semitic Schmeitzner, always brings the adherents of this disagreeable party back to the idea that I must belong to them after all. ... It arouses mistrust against my character, as if publicly I condemned something which I have favored secretly — and that I am unable to do anything against it, that the name of Zarathustra is used in every Anti-Semitic Correspondence Sheet, has almost made me sick several times."
- Objecting to his sister Elisabeth, about her marriage to the anti-Semite Bernhard Förster, in a letter (1887) Friedrich Nietzsche's Collected Letters, Vol. V
Nietzsche's Hatred of Nationalism
Given Nietzsche's hostility to Christianity, liberal democracy, and socialism, it is not totally surprising that Nazis were drawn to him. Some aspects of his admiration for ancient Greek culture and for "Romanitas" were used by both fascists and Nazis, who thoroughly distorted Nietzsche's philosophical intent. Though he took the ancient Greeks as cultural models, he did not subscribe to their self-conception as a "breed of masters," which prompted them to brand non-Greeks as "barbarians," fit only to be slaves. Indeed, all forms of xenophobia were profoundly alien to Nietzsche's outlook, none more so than the hot-headed nationalistic rivalries so typical of the European nation-state system into which he was born. This explains his revulsion from the German nationalism that had come into vogue in the 1880s following the unification of Germany and the success of Bismarckian power politics. In fact, Nietzsche was in many respects the least patriotic and least German of his philosophical contemporaries in the Second Reich. [1]
This was one of the major reasons for his abandonment of Wagner and the Bayreuth Festival, which had degenerated into a chauvinist celebration of "German Art," "German virtues," and a so-called "Germanic essence," deeply contaminated by "the humbug of races" and antiSemitism. The fact that the Wagnerites gave a romantic Christian veneer to their cult of "Germanism" further provoked his antagonism. Nietzsche reserved a special animus for the ways in which the Christian churches in Germany had allowed themselves to be swept along by the national intoxication after 1870. Above all he denounced the corruption of the German "spirit" by the new practitioners of power politics. Hence it was one of the worst Nazi distortions of Nietzsche's philosophy to claim that his notion of "the will to power" was consonant with what was being advocated in the Third Reich. [1]
Far from relating to nationalist obsessions, Nietzsche had asserted a life-affirming outlook that sought to empower the individual to overcome his or her limitations by questioning all our assumptions concerning truth, logic, beliefs, culture, values, and history. As Jacob Golomb has shown, what Nietzsche prized above all was spiritual power (Macht) not the brute political force (Kraft) that he denounced with all the sarcasm at his command. This spiritual power of the sovereign, emancipated individual who is "master of a free will" involved a long and difficult process of sublimation, which would eventually culminate in self-mastery. It was a vision fundamentally antithetical to the totalitarian collectivism of both the Right and the Left. [1]
Nietzsche's indictment of the Christian and nationalist Right as well as of the official Machtpolitik and its consequences for German culture, was unequivocal. The break with Wagner is especially illuminating because the Wagnerian ideology and the cult that developed in Bayreuth was a much more real precursor of völkisch and Hitlerian ideas. Once Nietzsche had thrown off the romantic nationalism of his early days, his devastating critique of Wagner--prophetic in many ways of what was to come--revealed his remarkably penetrating insight into its dangerous illusions. National Socialism could plausibly derive inspiration from Wagner but it could only use Nietzsche by fundamentally twisting his philosophy. [1]
Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche
Much of the confusion identifying Nietzsche with National Socialism can be traced back to the disastrous role of his sister Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche (married to a prominent German anti-Semite) who took control of his manuscripts in the 1890s, when he was mentally and physically incapacitated. Already in the 1920s she promoted her brother as the philosopher of fascism, sending her warmest good wishes to Benito Mussolini as "the inspired reawakener of aristocratic values in Nietzsche's sense"; Similarly, she invited Hitler several times to the archive in Weimar, even giving him the symbolic gift of Nietzsche's walking stick in 1934. Nazi propaganda encouraged such (mis)appropriation, for example, by publishing popular and inexpensive anthologies and short collections of Nietzsche's sayings, which were then misused in their truncated form to promote militarism, toughness, and Germanic values. Alfred Bäumler, a professor of philosophy in Berlin after 1933, on seeing German youth march under the swastika banner could even write, "[A]nd when we call 'Heil Hitler!' to this youth then we are greeting at the same time Friedrich Nietzsche with that call." Needless to say, Bäumler played a key role in the increasingly shameless appropriation of Nietzsche as a philosopher of the so-called Nordic race, a kind of intellectual Siegfried - anti-Roman, anti-Christian (which was true), and thoroughly in tune with the spirit of 1914. Aware that Nietzsche had no theory of volk or race, Bäumler nonetheless concocted a spurious link between the philosopher's individual struggle for integrity and Nazi collectivism. With the same sleight of hand, he could explain away Nietzsche's break with Wagner merely as a product of envy and dismiss his tirades against the Germans as expressing no more than his disapproval of certain non-Germanic elements in their character. [1]
Given his disgust with anti-Semitism, it's ironic that Nietzsche has been so widely misused by people he despised. His sister, Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche was Nietzsche's literary executor and biographer, and was married to an anti-Semite whose views she shared. Not only did she misrepresent Nietzsche, but she lent Nietzsche's name to the Nazi cause where it was gladly received by Nazi propagandists. The photo of Hitler posing by a statue of Nietzsche at the Nietzsche Museum may influence some people to assume Nietzsche shared Hitler's anti-semitism and political views. But nothing could be further from the truth. Nietzsche despised the German Reich, which was being consolidated by Bismarck during Nietzsche's adult years. For Nietzsche, Bismarck was a symbol of nationalism, vulgarity and opportunism. http://stockerb.wordpress.com/2013/08/28/nietzsche-and-the-politics-of-his-time-iii/
Under the Nazi regime, the Jews were considered to be an inferior race. Children were taught that Nordic German Aryans were a superior race to the Jewish and Slavic "subhumans". This is how law abiding, Christian Germans could be coerced to support atrocities - because their victims were dehumanised. This also raises a whole new issue around the topic of "race" which is itself a loaded word. In the 19th century it was thought that humanity could be divided into "races" which can be a good thing for groups that draw strength from a strong identity, and a bad thing because it can form the basis of discrimination. DNA does, in theory, allow us to classify groups of human beings genetically - but it's widely considered to be a pointless distinction as we are all one species. Having said that there are Jewish biologists who are using DNA to demonstrate that Jews are different, that they are a race, with a distinctive genetic signature. (The potential political problems with this work is that most Palestinians also carry the same genetic signature). Suffice to say, Nietzsche may have considered the Jews to be a separate race (that was the common perception). But certainly not inferior.
Anti-Semitism is prejudice, hatred of, or discrimination against Jews. Nietzsche was directly opposed to such behaviour despite the prevailing view of Jews in 19th century Europe, largely as the result of Christian (or Biblical) anti-Semitism. Even today, we can see comments from Christians referring to "the Jews' vicious attacks against Christianity and in particular, Christ and Mary." The argument that Nietzsche was anti-Semitic should be put into the context of the times. In Victorian England, Charles Dickens was a great social reformer, but his masterpiece "Oliver Twist" contained hundreds of disparaging references to Fagin "The Jew" - a criminal who with his sidekick Artful Dodger, trains small children to be thieves. Was Dickens anti-Semitic? No. Was he disparaging about Jews? Yes. Did Dickens inspire Hitler to kill 6 million Jews? No!
Translation to Blame?
A Christian apologist once told me...
"Translation of Nietzsche is irrelevant. His native German speakers certainly understood the context and nuances of his works, and they are the ones who seized upon his true implications and inconsistencies".
Using this argument means we need to disregard the translations of every non-German philosopher who ever translated Nietzsche. In which case we can (presumably) safely refer to the German philosophers, writers and thinkers who have debunked his Nazi connections. Except… we would have to translate what those German writers have said, which using the aforementioned logic, would cause us to lose their meaning. So it would seem any discussion on Nietzsche has to be exclusively between "native German speakers" in German! Presumably only native Hebrew speakers are able to fully understand the nuances of the Bible.
Anti-Liberal
For much of the 19th century, a liberal view was formed that war was a thing of the past based on the outcomes of the Enlightenment, ideas such as the individual right to life, liberty, property, the pursuit of happiness, votes for women, the abolition of slavery, etc. 19th century Liberals believed that with rising wealth and education, rational people could learn to respect each others’ rights, that there was more to be gained from trade than from war, and that peace was a natural state that mankind could achieve. The horrors of war could become a thing of the past. It's obvious (in my opinion) that Nietzsche was right-wing politically and opposed to liberalism, hence his appeal to right-wing thinkers throughout history. (And yes I know he has also appealed to left-wing thinkers - such are the contradictions in his work).
His style
Deliberately impenetrable, complex, elusive, aphoristic, contradictory, riddled with pathos, yet thought provoking, imaginative, rich and challenging. The Marxist George Lukács referred to the "barren chaos" of Nietzsche's "arbitrary language". Sometimes his work feels like the writings of a prophet or myth maker. I like that he broke the boundaries of taboo subjects such as morality and Christianity and God, but there's a responsibility that goes with that because it can appear to be advocating rather than predicting or observing. A classic example is his proclamation that God was Dead - by which he meant the bourgeois Christian faith of the nineteenth century, But that meaning isn't obvious, and "God is Dead" is a great soundbite. I don't think he realised or cared about the potential power of his words. His writing lends itself to multiple interpretations and there's no doubt that the Nazis exploited that. But they exploited many other ideas too including Christianity. Nietzsche must take some blame for the subsequent misinterpretations. It is not something that could ever happen to the works of say Bertrand Russell and John Stuart Mill. [1]
Sexism
Nietzsche was undoubtedly sexist. The Ubermensch concept is certainly gender specific (in my opinion) and went as far as to advocate arranged marriages.
Democracy
Nietzsche recognised the power of democracy and explained why democracy gives power to the the "meek". But he failed to see the inevitable, global trend towards democracy by assuming it was a by-product of Christianity, and was therefore disparaging of democracy. He didn't mention the inherent instability of dictatorships (but then again he didn't suggest dictatorship was a good thing). But this is where we have to determine whether Nietzsche was advocating or predicting. The totalitarianism of the twentieth century (of both the Right and Left) presupposed a breakdown of all authority and moral norms, which Nietzsche predicted because he had diagnosed nihilism as the central problem of his society
Nihilism
Nietzsche was arguably the first philosopher to study nihilism in depth but he wasn't a nihilist (although again nothing is clear cut - there are different forms of nihilism).
Nietzsche believed there was no way back to the old moral certainties about "good" and "evil" and that humanity, long before 1914, had spiritually burned its bridges. Nietzsche was convinced there was no escape from the "nihilism" of the age he lived in, other than to go forward into a more "perfect nihilism," to use the term of Wolfgang Müller-Lauter. Nietzsche believed that only by honestly facing the stark truth that there is no truth, no goal, no value or meaning in itself, could one pave the way for a real intellectual liberation and a revaluation of all values. Nietzsche was a herald and prophet of the crisis of values out of which Nazism emerged, rather than a godfather of Nazism. Nietzsche was providing a warning - not a template. [1]
So, Nietzsche wrote about nihilism but he did not advocate nihilism. But as always with Nietzsche, it's never that simple. Nietzsche believed there was no longer any real substance to traditional values of 19th century Germany. He observed nihilism in the people around him. which led to his "death of God" statement. But describing nihilism isn't the same as advocating nihilism. But then again, he regarded the "death of God" as being a good thing in the long run, which implies that he was a nihilist. But not quite - a nihilist would conclude that there are no moral values at all. Nietzsche does not say that. He is saying that by being free of the single perspective that is God, we can open the door to the values of any number of different perspectives. Nietzsche is saying that Christian values (and indeed Enlightenment values) are not absolute at all but are a part of a historical and philosophical context.
In fact Nietzsche was critical of nihilism, for example… "Nihilism is…not only the belief that everything deserves to perish; but one actually puts one shoulder to the plough; one destroys." Nietzsche does not agree with nihilists that everything should be destroyed. He wasn't advocating no values - but new values. .
The rejection of Judeo-Christian values (as defined by German Protestantism)
Whilst Nietzsche's explanation of the evolution of Judeo-Christian morality has merit, and his idea that Christianity was largely to blame for the suffering of the Jews is supported by evidence, his aggression and dismissal of Christianity is counter-productive and throws away the baby with the bath water. There are good things that we can learn from Christianity without believing in God, and Nietzsche didn't recognise that in my opinion.
Jewish Power
Nietzsche's admiration of the Jews and his hostility to anti-Semitism also backfired in that it could be interpreted as making the Jews appear more powerful than they really were, especially given his provocative writing style. He never said they were dangerous, but it wasn't difficult to interpret his writing that way. While it would be senseless to hold Nietzsche responsible for such distortions, one can find troubling echoes of a vulgarized and debased Nietzscheanism in the later diatribes of Hitler, Himmler, Bormann, and Rosenberg against Judeo-Christianity. [1]
Jewish Integration
Nietzsche's speculation on the "intermarriage of Jews with Germans" or with the best "European nobility" for the sake of enriching a renewed European culture, are positively bizarre in my opinion. Nietzsche seems to have no idea that Jews don't want to "assimilate" into their Gentile environments, preferring to preserve their purity. Nietzsche's view here is even more confusing because he also acknowledges his admiration for Jewish "purity of race uniqueness, and pride". [1]
Hostility to Liberalism and Socialism
Nietzsche seems hostile to liberal democracy (whilst at the same time recognising that democracy is how "ordinary" people gain power) and this combined with his admiration for ancient Greek culture and "Romanitas" enabled both fascists and Nazis to distort his philosophical intent. [1]
The Differences between Nietzsche and the Nazis
We know the Nazi leaders read Nietzsche and recommended his works. But were their interpretations accurate and justified? The difficulty in interpreting Nietzsche makes this a hard question to answer but it's a fact that Nietzsche would have been horrified in the misuse of his philosophy. Let's examine five key reasons why it's wrong to blame Nietzsche for inspiring the Nazis.
Let's start with "Superman".
The Übermensch
The word has been wrongly associated with the idea of a "master race" of "supermen" hence the Nazi connection. But Nietzsche didn't use the word "Superman". The German word he used in the book Also Sprach Zarathustra was Übermensch which translates as "beyond man". Walter Kaufmann in the 1950s stresses this point, describing the failure of translators to capture the nuance of the German word über (while the Latin prefix super- means above or beyond, the English use of the prefix or its use as an adjective has altered the meaning). The adjective übermenschlich means super-human, in the sense of beyond human strength or out of proportion to humanity.
What Nietzsche had in mind was very different to any concept of a "master race" and the Nazi interpretation - The Übermensch is a being who has abandoned crippling Christian "slave-morality," who has full mastery over himself, thinks for himself, looks at the world as it is, free of illusions and irrational beliefs. In short, Nietzsche's Superman is very much his own man, and is the exact opposite of a slavish, blind follower of a religion, or Hitler or any other dictator. "Caesars with the soul of Christ” says Nietzsche. The overmen will not rely much on reason. Scientific man relies on this but it's an artificial tool of weaklings says Nietsche. Instincts are more important. Because true creativity comes from instincts.
The Übermensch concept - like much of Nietzsche's work - has ambiguities and several interpretations. Philosopher Alain de Botton explains that the Übermensch is more of an "artistic uprising in man. The Übermenschen are rare people who have lived a life of fulfilment by surpassing themselves with art, literature or music. He refers to people of society who are rich and influential, individuals of high-class German society.". De Botton puts forward whom Nietzsche might have considered Übermenschen - Montaigne, Goethe, Abbé Galiani and Henri Beyle, four individuals Nietzsche admired would have been men that surpassed themselves with art, literature and music. “What had, besides the food and the air, helped to change Nietzsche’s outlook was his reflection on the few individuals throughout history who appeared genuinely to have known fulfilled lives; individuals who could fairly have been described – to use one of the most contested terms on the Nietzschean lexicon – as Übermenschen.” The denial of religion was an essential part in becoming the Übermensch, as explained by Stephen Hicks “the Übermensch would overcome the need for God, which Nietzsche saw as a dead concept.”
Will to power
Another misunderstanding of Nietzsche's ideas is the false equivocation of Schopenhauer's "will to live" with Nietzsche's "will to power". Nietzsche's "will to power" concept says where there is a struggle, it is a struggle for power. There is a big difference between "power" and mere survival. Nietzsche formulated the "will to power" concept because he considered the "will to live" concept inadequate to explain human behaviour. Schopenhauer asserted that the foundation of human behaviour is the drive for simple survival, while Nietzsche's opinion was human behaviour is rooted in the drive to control oneself and one's environment - that is the "will to power." This explains certain human actions such as heroism in which the hero is aware of sacrificing his life which is not explained by Schopenhauer's "will to live" idea.
And so like the Superman concept, the "will to power" concept has been misunderstood, often misinterpreted as meaning power over others whereas Nietzsche intended it to mean power over the environment and power over oneself. In other words...
"The word Nietzsche uses is Macht, not Reich, and thus might better be understood as personal strength rather than political power. It does not mean "power" in the nasty, jackbooted sense ... The term means something like effective self-realization and expression."
The idea that Nietzsche's "will to power" idea was advocating an Aryan "elite" to rule over a slavish population is factually incorrect, and his critics will deliberately equate the "will to survive" of Schopenhauer with the "will to power" of Nietzsche. Religious apologists have also been known to misrepresent Darwin's theory of natural selection as "survival of the fittest" and then to compound that misrepresentation with the idea that this is equivalent to the misrepresented "will to power"!
The Blond Beast
Nietzsche called for “some pack of blond beasts of prey, a conqueror and master race which, organized for war and with the ability to organize, unhesitatingly lays its terrible claws upon a populace.” And he spoke of “the deep and icy mistrust the German still arouses today whenever he gets into a position of power is an echo of that inextinguishable horror with which Europe observed for centuries that raging of the Blond Germanic beast.” And again inspirationally about what one finds “at the bottom of all these noble races the beast of prey, the splendid blond beast, prowling about avidly in search of spoil and victory; this hidden core needs to erupt from time to time, the animal has to get out again and go back to the wilderness.”
What are we to make of these regular positive mentions of the “blond beast”? It was certainly not an endorsement by Nietzsche of the racial superiority of the German Aryan race. In context, the “blond beast” that Nietzsche refers to is the lion, the great feline predator with the shaggy blond mane and the terrific roar. Nietzsche does believe that the Germans once, a long time ago, manifested the spirit of the lion - but they were not unique in that regard. The spirit and power of the lion have been manifested by peoples of many races.
To see this, let us put one of the quotations in full context. The quotation begins this way: “at the bottom of all these noble races the beast of prey, the splendid blond beast, prowling about avidly in search of spoil and victory; this hidden core needs to erupt from time to time, the animal has to get out again and go back to the wilderness …”
Now let us complete the sentence as Nietzsche wrote it: “the Roman, Arabian, Germanic, Japanese nobility, the Homeric heroes, the Scandinavian Vikings - they all shared this need.”
So Nietzsche clearly is using the lion analogically and comparing its predatory power to the predatory power that humans of many different racial types have manifested. Nietzsche here lists six different racial and ethnic groups, and the Germans are not special in that list. So while Nietzsche does endorse a strongly biological basis for cultures, he does not endorse racism of the sort that says any one race is biologically necessarily superior to any other.
This is a clear difference between Nietzsche and the Nazis. The Nazis were racist and thought of the Germanic racial type as superior to all others the world over. Nietzsche disagreed.
Stephen Hicks - Nietzsche and the Nazis - Page 77-78
Contemporary Germans
While the Nazis put the German-Aryan racial type first, Nietzsche is almost never complimentary about his fellow Germans. In Nietzsche’s view, the Germany in the nineteenth century has become a nation of religious revivalism and socialism. Nietzsche says...: “between the old Germanic tribes and us Germans there exists hardly a conceptual relationship, let alone one of blood.” So rather than being proud of their ancient history and accomplishments, Nietzsche believes Germans of his day should feel ashamed by comparison. At the same time, German intellectual and cultural life is prominent the world over - and Nietzsche deplores that fact. Contemporary Germany is a centre of softness and slow decay, so Nietzsche believes that Germany’s weaknesses are infecting the rest of the world. As he puts it in The Will to Power, “Aryan influence has corrupted all the world.”
So rather than celebrating contemporary Germany and its power, as the Nazis would do, Nietzsche is disgusted by contemporary Germany.
Stephen Hicks - Nietzsche and the Nazis - Page 79
Anti-Semitism
The most repulsive sign of Germany’s decline, Nietzsche writes - is its hatred of the Jews, its virulent and almost-irrational anti-Semitism. Although Nietzsche may have said harsh things about the Jews we must also note the following:
Nietzsche speaks of “the anti-Jewish stupidity” of the Germans. He speaks of those psychologically disturbed individuals who are most consumed with self-hatred and envy. He uses the French word 'ressentiment' to describe such nauseating individuals and says that such ressentiment is “studied most easily in anarchists and anti-Semites.” Pathological dishonesty is a symptom of such repulsive characters: “An anti-semite certainly is not any more decent because he lies as a matter of principle.”
Nietzsche saves some of his most condemnatory language for Germans who hate Jews - he considers them to be liars, stupid, disturbed, self-hating pathological cases for psychologists with strong stomachs to study. So it seems a reasonable inference that Nietzsche would have been disgusted by the Nazis, for the Nazis absorbed into their ideology the worst possible kind of anti-Semitism and pursued their anti-Jew policies almost to the point of self-destruction.
Stephen Hicks - Nietzsche and the Nazis - Page 80
The Jew
Nietzsche respects the Jews and gives them high praise. Here is a representative quotation from Beyond Good and Evil: “The Jews, however, are beyond any doubt the strongest, toughest, and purest race now living in Europe.”
Here is another, from The Antichrist: “Psychologically considered, the Jewish people are a people endowed with the toughest vital energy, who, placed in impossible circumstances... divined a power in these instincts with which one could prevail against ‘the world.’”
He again praises the Jews for having the strength to rule Europe if they chose to: “That the Jews, if they wanted it - or if they were forced into it, which seems to be what the anti-Semites want - could even now have preponderance, indeed quite literally mastery over Europe, that is certain; that they are not working and planning for that is equally certain.”
And in another book, Nietzsche compares the Jews favorably to the Germans - in fact, he identifies a way in which the Jews are superior to the Germans: “Europe owes the Jews no small thanks for making its people more logical, for cleaner intellectual habits - none more so than the Germans, as a lamentably deraisonnable race that even today first needs to be given a good mental drubbing.”
How do we reconcile this against the harsh things Nietzsche did have to say about the Jews? We must distinguish between blaming the Jews of several millennia ago for devising the "slave morality" , and evaluating the Jews of today as inheritors of a cultural tradition that has enabled them to survive and even flourish despite great adversity. In the former case, Nietzsche suggests the Jews subverted human greatness but that they had no choice - they had to do so to survive. The Jews have hit upon a survival strategy and kept their cultural identity for well over two thousand years. How many other cultures can make that claim? The list is extremely short. And for that, according to Nietzsche, the Jews deserve praise.
Stephen Hicks - Nietzsche and the Nazis - Page 81
For Nietzsche, the history of the Jewish people was a great enigma. He was mesmerized by the example of the Jews in the Diaspora and their ability to establish an effective spiritual-cultural kingdom in Europe without any state or territorial basis. Despite their lack of such support and other adverse and taxing conditions, they had manifested a "plentitude of power without equal to which only the nobility had access". Nietzsche's reference to the Jews as the most "powerful race," in spite of their obvious political and physical weakness, clearly showed that there was nothing physical in the sense of brute force (Kraft) in the Nietzschean concept of power (Macht). One might even assert that Nietzsche's vision of a "new Europe" devoid of national boundaries and united not by a common economic interest and financial policy but by the wish to foster a Dionysian, genuinely creative culture was partially inspired by the example of European Jewry. Moreover, Nietzsche stressed the fact that even in the most adverse circumstances, the Jewish people "have never ceased to believe in their calling to the highest things". This abundance of spiritual power could best function creatively without national institutions. Hence Nietzsche bestowed on them a vital role in the extraterritorial and supranational Europe of the future when their plentiful power will flow "into great spiritual men and works . . . into an eternal blessing for Europe" [1]
Echoing the Old Testament prophecy about Israel's magnificent future and its spectacular salvation, Nietzsche claimed that the Jews would once again become the "founders and creators of values." The creation of values is the most significant task in Nietzsche's philosophy, which always returns to the "transfiguration of values" and the nature of Western culture, in which the Jews are destined to play the major role as well as to serve as catalysts. Nietzsche's hope of mobilizing European Jewry to assist him in this transfiguration of values is the background for his emotional exclamation: "What a blessing a Jew is among Germans!"
Judaism and Christianity
One more key difference between Nietzsche and the Nazis is important, and that is their views on Christianity. Nietzsche consistently states that Judaism and Christianity are allies, both stemming from the same source, both advocating a religious ethic that puts the weak, the sick, and the humble first. As with Judaism, Christian morality is a slave morality. The Christians, he writes, “did not know how to love their god except by crucifying man. I condemn Christianity. I raise against the Christian church the most terrible of all accusations that any accuser ever uttered. It is to me the highest of all conceivable corruptions.”
So Christianity does not escape Nietzsche’s wrath, just as the slave morality of the Jews did not escape his wrath - and for the same reason: Christianity is an extension and purification of moral themes first developed within Judaism. In Nietzsche’s own words: “In Christianity, all of Judaism attains its ultimate mastery as the art of lying in a holy manner. The Christian, the 'ultimo ratio' of the lie, is the Jew once more - even three times more.”
This identification of Christianity with Judaism also separates Nietzsche from the Nazis, for the Nazis took great pains to distinguish the Jews and the Christians, condemning Judaism and embracing a generic type of Christianity. Early in the Nazi Party’s history, in its founding document, the 1920 Program, point 24 states the following: “The party, as such, stands for positive Christianity, without, however, allying itself to any particular denomination. It combats the Jewish-materialistic spirit.”
The use of Christian themes and imagery was prominent in Nazi propaganda throughout the 1920s. In Joseph Goebbels’s semi-autobiographical novel, the main character Michael is portrayed as a hybrid Christ-figure and German martyr. And in a 1935 interview, Goebbels was so concerned to separate Christianity from Judaism that he went as far as to deny that Jesus was a Jew. Adolf Hitler argued that the Christians and Jews were fundamentally opposed religions and himself gave Christian moral themes explicitly in public pronouncements such as this one: “When I came to Berlin a few weeks ago… the luxury, the perversion, the iniquity, the wanton display, and the Jewish materialism disgusted me so thoroughly, that I was almost beside myself. I nearly imagined myself to be Jesus Christ when He came to His Father’s temple and found it taken by the money-changers. I can well imagine how He felt when He seized a whip and scourged them out.”
Stephen Hicks - Nietzsche and the Nazis - Page 83-84
Summary
1. The Nazis believe the German Aryan to be racially superior—while Nietzsche believes that the superior types can be manifested in any racial type.
2. The Nazis believe contemporary German culture to be the highest and the best hope for the world—while Nietzsche holds contemporary German culture to be degenerate and to be infecting the rest of the world.
3. The Nazis are enthusiastically anti-Semitic—while Nietzsche sees anti-Semitism to be a moral sickness.
4. The Nazis hate all things Jewish—while Nietzsche praises the Jews for their toughness, their intelligence, and their sheer survival ability.
5. And finally, the Nazis see Christianity to be radically different and much superior to Judaism—while Nietzsche believes Judaism and Christianity to be essentially the same, with Christianity being in fact a worse and more dangerous variation of Judaism.
Stephen Hicks - Nietzsche and the Nazis - Page 85
1 Nietzsche, Godfather of Fascism? On the Uses and Abuses of a Philosophy - Edited by Jacob Golomb & Robert S. Wistrich
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