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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   30732 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 3, 2023

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The 20th century saw dictatorships and aristocracy on a never-before-seen scale. Unimaginable blood and treasure backed up the ambitions of a few men. Regimes warred against Christian thought, not to mention liberalism itself. “Will to power” in action. And what did it buy them? Most went out with a bang. The USSR, a whimper. Outcompeted by the essence of materialist pluralism.

War was certainly one factor Nietzsche thought would contribute to the realisation of the overman (I'll quibble on the point about this being the same as bringing back master morality, he says too many good things about slave morality for the overman to be a mere negation of the slave revolt), but if we're discussing how Nietzsche missed his chance - the wasted opportunity he saw in the Jews as a partial antidote to the nationalistic small-mindedness which was holding the Europeans back from truly becoming clay in the hands of a deserving ruling class should be mentioned. From Beyond Good and Evil 251 (bolding mine):

That Germany has ample quantities of Jews, that the German stomach and the German blood have difficulty (and will continue for a long time to have difficulty) coping with even this number of “Jews” – as the Italians, the French, the British have coped, due to a stronger digestion –: this is the clear statement and language of a universal instinct that needs to be listened to and acted on. “Don’t let in any more Jews! And lock the doors to the east in particular (even to Austria)!” – so commands the instinct of a people whose type is still weak and indeterminate enough to blur easily and be easily obliterated by a stronger race. But the Jews are without a doubt the strongest, purest, most tenacious race living in Europe today. They know how to thrive in even the worst conditions (and actually do better than in favorable ones) due to some virtues that people today would like to see labeled as vices, – above all, thanks to a resolute faith that does not need to feel ashamed in the face of “modern ideas.” The Jews change, if they change, only in the way the Russian empire makes its conquests (being an empire that has time and was not made yesterday): namely, according to the fundamental principle “as slowly as possible!” A thinker who has Europe’s future on his conscience will, in every sketch he draws of this future, consider the Jews, like the Russians, to be the most certain and probable factors at present in the great play and struggle of forces. What gets called a “nation” in Europe today (and is really more a res facta than nata – every once in a while a res ficta et picta will look exactly the same –) is, in any case, something young, easily changed, and in a state of becoming, not yet a race let alone the sort of aere perennius that the Jewish type is: these “nations” should be on a careful lookout for any hotheaded rivalry and hostility! 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. Meanwhile, what they wish and want instead, with a unified assertiveness even, is to be absorbed and assimilated into Europe; they thirst for some place where they can be settled, permitted, respected at last and where they can put an end to the nomadic life, the “wandering Jew” –; and this urge and impulse (which in itself perhaps already reveals a slackening of the Jewish instincts) should be carefully noted and accommodated – in which case it might be practical and appropriate to throw the anti Semitic hooligans out of the country. Approached selectively and with all due caution, the way it is done by the English nobility. It would clearly be unproblematic for the stronger and more strongly delineated types of new Germanism (the officers of noble rank from the Mark, for instance) to get involved with them: and it would be very interesting to see whether the genius of fortune and fortitude (and above all some spirit and spiritedness, which are in very short supply in the place just mentioned –) could not be added into, bred into, the hereditary art of commanding and obeying – both of which are classic features of the Mark these days. But I should really break off my cheerful speeches and hyper-Germania here, since I am already touching on something I take seriously, on the “European problem” as I understand it, on the breeding of a new caste to rule Europe.

Yeah, BG&E has a number of interesting takes on Jews. A motivated antisemite could cherrypick any number of quotes to support his position. Same for a motivated philosemite!

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