| Essential Nietzsche |
Friedrich Nietzsche on anti-semitismIn Genealogy of Morals: I also do not like these latest speculators in idealism, the anti-Semites, who today roll their eyes in a Christian-Aryan-bourgeois manner and exhaust one's patience by trying to rouse up all the horned-beast elements in the people by a brazen abuse of the cheapest of all agitator's tricks, moral attitudinizing (that no kind of swindle fails to succeed in Germany today is connected with the undeniable and palpable stagnation of the German spirit; and the cause of that I seek in a too exclusive diet of newspapers, politics, beer, and Wagnerian music, together with the presuppositions of such a diet: first, national constriction and vanity; the strong but narrow principle “Deutschland, Deutschland über alles,” [nationalism] and then the paralysis agitans of “modern ideas” [socialism]). it might be useful and fair to expel the anti-Semitic ranters from the country the foremost moral bigmouth today--unexcelled even among his own ilk, the anti-Semites it lies in the interest of a noble mankind, thus of a true humanity and culture, that this obscurantism of religion which has upto now covered and protected the worst characteristics of the Jews with its darkness be fully removed so that the Jew may be revealed to us in his natural and inalienable constitution. Nietzsche was sent several unsolicited mailings of anti-semitic literature, by Theodor Fritsch a leading writer in the anti-semitic movement, eventually losing his patience, Nietzsche sent the following response to Fritsch: Herewith I am returning to you the three issues of your correspondence sheet, thanking you for your confidence which you permitted me to cast a glance at the muddle of principles that lie at the heart of this strange movement. Yet I ask in the future not to provide me with these mailings: I fear, in the end, for my patience. Believe me: this abominable ‘wanting to have a say’ of annoying dilettantes about the value of people and races, this subjection to “authorities” who are utterly rejected with cold contempt by every sensible mind (e.g., E. Dühring, R. Wagner, Ebrard, Wahrmund, P. de Lagarde -- who among these in questions of morality and history is the most unqualified, the most unjust?), these constant, absurd falsifications and rationalizations of vague concepts “germanic,” “semitic,” “aryan,” “christian,” “German” -- all of that could in the long run cause me to lose my temper and bring me out of the ironic benevolence with which I have hitherto observed the virtuous velleities and pharisaisms of modern Germans. And finally, what do you think that I feel when the name of Zarathustra is mouthed by antisemites? my writings lie completely buried and unexhumeable in this antisemitic hole The Jews, however, are beyond any doubt the strongest, toughest, and purest race now living in Europe Incidentally, the whole problem of the Jews exists only within national states, inasmuch as their energy and higher intelligence, their capital of spirit and will, which accumulated from generation to generation in the long school of their suffering, must predominate to a degree that awakens envy and hatred; and so, in the literature of nearly all present-day nations (and, in fact, in proportion to their renewed nationalistic behavior), there is an increase in the literary misconduct that leads the Jews to the slaughterhouse, as scapegoats for every possible public and private misfortune. In a draft to Ecce Homo: Jews among Germans are always the higher race--more refined, spiritual, kind it should be noted that Nietzsche was not, despite his post-humus association with Nazism, anti-Semitic. He became furious when the anti-Semitic press took him for a supporter of prejudice We are not nearly “German” enough, in the sense in which the word “German” is constantly being used nowadays, to advocate nationalism and race hatred and to be able to take pleasure in the national scabies of the heart and blood poisoning that now leads the nations of Europe to delimit and barricade themselves against each other as if it were a matter of quarantine. For that we are too openminded, too malicious, too spoiled, also too well informed, too “traveled.“ How can one praise and glorify a nation as a whole?--Even among the Greeks, it was the INDIVIDUALS that counted. More on Nietzsche's opposition to socialism. All the above components may be found in Nietzsche's rejection of Wagner, the Christian-centricism of Wagner and Hegel compared to Nietzsche's extreme opposition to Christianity, and the fact that socialism was a Christian schism. |