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Using Nietzsche Like a Hammer
Like many people, I had known for years that Nietzsche was not respectable. But it wasn’t until I saw lefty Helen Lewis actually saying out loud that Nietzsche was “the Nazis’ favorite intellectual” that I decided to go full Nietzsche.
My last major Nietzsche piece was literally titled “Nietzsche, the Nazis’ Favorite Intellectual.”
And, in reading the deadly serious book about Nietzsche: The Nietzsche Legacy in Germany 1890-1990 by Steven E. Aschheim, I have read about just about everyone who has connected Nietzsche to Nazis, and Nazis to Nietzsche.
And yes, Nietzsche says that if you are an Úbermensch you can change the world. No, let’s put this another way. If you want to change the world, you need to be an Übermensch, an exceptional individual. So, if you are in German politics in the 1920s after Germany had been defeated in Flanders in 1914-18 and punished at Versailles in 1919 you would be looking for a narrative to restore Germany to the glory of German philosophy and science and the German Nation established in 1870.
Yes. It’s a pity that the savior of Germany turned out to be Literally Hitler rather than Goethe, and he literally Made Things Worse.
Now, the interesting thing about Hitler was that he was living in Vienna in the pre-WWI period. And I am reading a book about Fin-de-siècle Vienna: Politics and Culture by Carl E. Schorske.
Schorske’s take is that “liberalism” had a very short life in Vienna, say, in the 1860s and 1870s. But as soon as Austria extended the franchise and started to develop a democratic politics, liberalism fell by the wayside. Rising democratic politicians like Georg von Schönerer (who was not an aristocrat) and Karl Lueger discovered that the way to power involved getting the votes of the lower classes: shopkeepers and workers. And the way to rile up your supporters was with class war and anti-Semitism.
We fans of Nazi jurist Carl Schmitt understand this. Politics is about — and only about — friend vs. enemy. But if you are raised in the liberal culture you think politics is all about educated people wisely setting up the rule of reason and justice.
In other words, to get all Jungian, politics is about connecting with the archetypes that lurk in the labyrinthian underworld of the human unconscious. Isn’t it curious that all this got going in the decades after German philosopher Friedrich Schelling invented the unconscious (Google AI):
Friedrich Schelling (1775–1854) was a pioneer in conceptualizing the unconscious as a dynamic, foundational force of nature and spirit, rather than merely a, passive, dark substrate.
In other words, logic and reason have nothing to do with the case, contrary to the notions of generations of philosophers and theologians.
Now analyze the meaning of the “National Socialist German Workers Party.” Literally Hitler is touching all the bases of identity in the German people in the 1920s. Their Nation, newly created by Bismarck in 1970. The promise of socialism that was going to create heaven on Earth. Their German identity, expressed in their German language and culture. Their status as workers.
But what is the anti-Semitism all about? It is simple, as expressed by Curtis Yarvin: “there is no politics without an enemy.” Simply put, there are “Four Kinds of War.” Here is how I make it Real Simple:
Fight against a small country for a quick win.
Fight against a large country for a world war.
Fight against a large minority for a civil war.
Fight against a small minority for a quick win.
Do you see the point? Since the Jews are almost always a small minority, it is real easy to unite the country against them. Every politician has this instinct in his jeans. Otherwise he will not have much of a career as a politician.
But, Adolf old chap, going to war against Poland when the Brits and the French will go to war over it is not a good idea, because then you are not in a war with a small nation.
Notice that our own beloved politicians do the same thing, going after the small minority of “the rich.”
Taxing billionaires, à la Sen. Warren (D-MA).
Fighting Oligarchy tour, ã la Bernie and AOC.
Millionaires tax in Washington State.
But when they go against half the nation, not so smart:
Reparations for slavery.
Affirmative Action, quotas, DEI.
Allyship, fighting for the oppressed against white oppressors.
What is my point? I am saying that modern politics is all about finding a nice convenient small enemy for a politician to unite his supporters against. Literally Hitler just happened to be a natural in figuring this out, until he wasn’t.
Now the experts have glommed onto the notion that Nietzsche’s notion of the Übermensch was an inspiration for the Nazis and their Führerprinzip.
I think, rather, that Nietzsche was giving expression to the notion in the modern era that change is possible, that a creative and energetic person can make a difference. That humans are not stuck forever in the semi-starvation of the agricultural age.
That’s because, in the last 500 years, humans have vaulted into a new era, including global navigation, a developed market economy, and technological revolutions, that have given humans the notion that human action makes a difference in this world of sorrows. Deidre McCloskey has called this “The Great Enrichment,” during which real per-capita income has increased 3,000 percent.
You would think, given the remarkable events of the last few centuries, that philosophers and theologians and experts would have got the notion that exceptional people can make an exceptional difference. Hello Nietzsche.
And those exceptional people would include politicians, inventors, capitalists, scientists, you name it. Some of them would be real nice people, and some of them not so nice. But all of them, I’d say, come under the heading of Übermensch.
| Thu, 16 Apr 2026 23:49:15 GMT |
When the World Changes
I don’t know what you think, but I think that we have just lived through a month in which the world has changed.
And if you don’t think it’s scary, well, there is no help for you.
Who would have thought, back in February, that the US and Israel would conduct a bombing of Iran “like we’ve never seen.”
Or decapitate a regime, “like we’ve never seen.”
Or turn the global oil market upside down, with mega-oil tankers streaming across the world to fill ‘er up in the ports of the Gulf of America.
Or conduct a brief negotiation and roll it up in 21 hours, because we don’t think the Iran representatives have the authority to commit the Iranian regime.
Or expose the Euros as so last century.
Or expose the Euros as “weak, feeble.”
Or tell the Iranians threatening to block the Strait of Hormuz “no, you don’t block us, we block you.”
Or upset China’s nice little arrangement with Iran to get nice cheap oil.
Or make us all wonder what’s going on in Ukraine if we can bomb Iran back to the Stone Age in a month and Ukraine and Russia can’t.
Or wonder what it means if we are now entering an age when the first act of war is to decapitate the enemy regime.
Or have a president that told the pope that maybe it was time to start saying something about an Iran regime that has slaughtered “at least 42,000 innocent, completely unarmed, protesters”
Or show that the whole climate change claptrap exposes modern nations to existential peril “like we’ve never seen.”
And so on…
I think the most disturbing event is the assassination of the top leadership of Iran, of the Ayatollah on down. Imagine if some other nation — Russia? China? — blew up the White House and the US Capitol and killed the president and the congressional leadership, all in a single afternoon. But left the Washington Monument standing.
So I have a question. What exactly are the new Rules, after the last month?
I am sure that political leaders all across the world would like to know.
Other than the obvious. That the United States of America is the world hegemon for better or for worse. In case you haven’t been paying attention since the Great White Fleet sailed around the world in 1908.
I asked Grok who put together the current US strategery. It really didn’t have an answer, but just fumbled:
The ideas draw from pre-existing restraint/American nationalist thinking.
Seriously. Who thought all this stuff up? It seems to me that it goes way beyond the usual policy stuff from the usual suspects. Right now Marco Rubio is both Secretary of State and National Security Advisor, and I know that everyone is having the time of their life thinking up new Marco Oval Office memes. But all this didn’t come, like Athena, from the head of Zeus.
I want to know who put all this together, Senator. And so do you.
| Wed, 15 Apr 2026 22:11:36 GMT |
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Christopher Chantrill
He runs usgovernmentspending.com, the go-to resource for government finance data, and is a frequent contributor to the American Thinker. He lives in Seattle, Washington. Click for more.
“I love this guy.” — Steve Ballmer
A Commoner Manifesto
Commoners have nothing to lose but their shame
Politics for men: I will fight for you! Politics for women: I will protect you!
At the end of the Middle Ages courtiers enjoyed LARPing battles in their tournaments. In our age activists enjoy LARPing revolution in their mostly peaceful protests.
The simplest way to understand human society is as Three Layers such as Nobles, Yeomen, and Serfs.
My take on Three Layers is my Three Peoples Theory of Creatives, Responsibles, and Subordinates.
I believe that we moderns live in Three Worlds: the War World of politics, the Market World of the economy, and the Life World of family and neighborhood.
And the trouble with politics is that it reduces human society to a war against the enemy, as determined by Nazi jurist Carl Schmitt.
The world that we all live in today is the one created by the German Turn in philosophy, psychology, science, and meaning.
But our modern elite, the educated elite, has taken, I believe, a Wrong Turn and has imposed a cultural Great Reaction on the world, a lurch back to the primitive. This manifests in the elite’s conceited Activism Culture and its patronage of Subordinate people as its Little Darlings.
The principal reason for the elite’s Wrong Turn has been that it does not understand and does not want to understand how the Three Peoples’ Religions are necessarily different.
The root of the educated elite’s Wrong Turn is its conceit that it knows what the world needs. I think there is a better way; I call it “A Good Life Better than the Left”.
ABC of Politics – Activism Culture – “Anatomy of Revolution” – Allyism – Critical Theory – Downstream-ism – Dutch Finance – German Turn – Good Life – Great Reaction – Little Darlings – Perfect Plan – Women in the Public Square – Ruling Class – Three Layers – Three Peoples – Three Peoples Religion – Tribalism – Two Cultures – Wrong Turn
Today’s topic: Aristotle
