Nietzsche was not the inventor of the German master race idea. It was floating around a lot in Germany at the time. Ironically, its inventor, or certainly one if its most prominent early proponents, was a Frenchman, Gobineau. His rap was that the French aristocracy was superior because it was descended from the Germanic Franks, as was most of the aristocracy of western Europe.
Hitler's line on Christianity was that it was weak because it was partly Jewish. Christians had weakened the pure German volkish pagan religion one finds glorified in Wagnerian operas. Barkley Rosser -----Original Message----- From: Charles Brown <CharlesB at CNCL.ci.detroit.mi.us> To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com> Date: Wednesday, November 08, 2000 11:05 AM Subject: Re: Allies against fascism?
>
>
>>>> rosserjb at jmu.edu 11/07/00 05:37PM >>>
> The clearest statement of Nietsche's opposition
>to anti-Semitism is in his essay, "Nietsche contra
>Wagner." Of course, Hitler famously identified
>himself with Nietsche's ubermensch who would be
>"beyond good and evil." I fully agree that Nietsche
>would have vomited if he had known how his concepts
>were being used.
>Barkley Rosser
>-
>
>((((((((((
>
>Hello Barkley,
>
>It is interesting. In _Existentialism and Alienation _ ( International,
1965), Sidney Finkelstein says:
>
>"Nietzsche can be quoted for quite opposite attitudes,; as one who gave a
fresh ideological impetus to anti-Semitism, and as a critic of anti-Semites;
as a German nationalist, jingo, and proto-fascist, and as a critic of
jingos; as one who exalted aristocracy, and one who scorned the Junkers and
aristocrats in the German government of his time; as an atheist, who
proclaimed in _Thus Spoke Zarathustra_ "God is dead", and as a religious
thinker who upheld "myth" against science. ..."
>
>-clip
>
>(continuing to quote Finkelstein who is quoting Nietizsche at first)
>
>quoting Nietzsche:
>
>""Exploitation" does not belong to a depraved, or imperfect and primitive
society; it belongs to the nature of the living being as a primary organic
function; it is a consequence of the intrinsic Will to Power, which is
precisely the Will to Life."
>
>Finkelstein continues ," In _The Genealogy of Morals_ (1887), Nietzsche
implemented these thoughts with an invented history of Europe, and in the
process, provided a virulent new ideology for anti-Semitism. The basis for
this peculiar chauvinism ahd been laid in _The Birth of Tragedy_, where he
had invented a "pure" German "character" or "spirit" based on German "myth".
Whether he meant by this something so crazy as that the German people of his
time represented a pure-blooded race in direct descent from the early
Germanic tribes, it is impossible to say, for Nietzsche here, as always,
ignores historical data. However, he insists on this purity. "So highly do
we rate the pure an vigorous kernel of the German character that from it
alone may we venture to expect this elimination of forcibly ingrafted
elements." In this earlier book, where Nietzsche gloried in the victory over
France, the "foreign" element referred to was the "Romantic", or in other
words, French (racially as mi!
>xed as the Germans). Now, in _The Genealogy of Morals_ , it is the Jews. He
gives a new twist to medieval anti-Semitism which , ignoring the fact that
the early Christians had considered Christ and themselves to be Jews,
indicts the Jews as the killers of Christ. To Nietzsche now, the Jews
conspired to invent Christianity out of hatred for the Gentiles. To revenge
themselves, they decided to transmute all values and invented a
slave-morality.
>
>Nietzsche :" It was the Jews who, in opposition to the aristocratic
equation (good equals aristocratic equals beautiful equals happy equals
loved by the gods) dared with a terrifying logic to suggest thae contrary
equation...namely, "the wretched alone are the good; the poor, the weak, the
lonely, are alone the good; the suffering, the needy, the sick, the
loathesome, are the only ones who are pious, the only ones who are blessed,
for them alone is salvation - but you, on the other hand, you aristocrats,
you men of power, you are to all eternity the evil, the horrible, the
covetous, the insatiate, the godless"
>
>Then, Nietzsche goes on, the Jews killed Christ to pretend that he was
their adversary, and so to entrap the Gentiles into following Christ's
teachings. " Is it not due to the black magic of a really great policy of
revenge, of a far-seeing, burrowing revenge, both acting and calculating
with slowness, that Israel himself must repudiate before all the world the
actual instrument of his own revenge and nail it to the cross, so that all
the world - that is , all the enemies of Israel - could nibble without
suspicion at this very bait ? "
>
>The truth which these Jewish-Christian teachings tried to obscure,
Nietzsche says, is that the "Will to Power" is the guiding principle of
history, as it is the organization of society. " I used the word, 'State';
my meaning is self-evident, namely a herd of blond beasts of prey, a race of
conquerors and masters, which with all its war-like organization and all its
organizing power pounces with its terrible claws on a population, in numbers
possibly tremendously superior, but as yet formless, as yet nomad. Such is
the origin of the 'State'. That fantastic theory that makes it begin with a
contract is, I think, disposed of. "
>