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<\/a>Teaching has brought me back to Nietzsche once again. This is always a revivifying process, a challenge to my faith, my intuited convictions (if that\u2019s not an oxymoron), and every other belief I attest or bear out in my actions. It has, however, led me to consider the extremes possible in this time of rampant extremes. Where there is isolation, there is time for thinking (or its suppression). Perhaps this is all nonsense afforded by too many days spent domestically in suburban New Jersey. Perhaps not. Regardless, it is a personal experiment: how would my politics be changed if I did not have faith?<\/p>\n
In the US, we tend to have a straightforward view: the \u201cLeft\u201d is secular, the \u201cRight\u201d is religious. Just look at the French Revolution after all! Religious people love hierarchy, order and property; the Left is enamored of equality, anarchy\u2014whatever else. Of course, there are exceptions. Even the dogmatists recognize this. They confirm the rule after all. Look at the Abb\u00e9 Gr\u00e9goire<\/a> or Charles Maurras<\/a>\u2014exceptions, exceptions. Exceptions abound.<\/p>\n They abound so much, in fact, that we might call into question this simple binary. It may be that the underlying premises of certain religious (or non-religious) positions may tend otherwise than expected. This Nietzsche has suggested to me. What to make of it?<\/p>\n Without rehashing the story of my conversion<\/a>, suffice it to say that I was moved broadly \u201cLeftward\u201d by becoming more religious. It just made sense to me. What I found laid out in the Bible and in Church tradition simply tended in that direction. I saw saints who took the side of the poor. It was a no-brainer. I don\u2019t say that to convince you, reader\u2014I share it because, in fits and starts, it\u2019s what happened.<\/p>\n On the other hand, reading Nietzsche has reacquainted me with the idea that atheism might (even ought) to pull one to the Right. Here, \u201cRight\u201d does not mean \u201cpro-free market\u201d or \u201cTrumpian.\u201d It means orderly, hierarchical, aristocratic, comfortable with inequity of one sort or another\u2014the kind of \u201cconservatism\u201d we might associate with regimes as distinct as the Ancien R\u00e9gime, Mussolini\u2019s Italy, and death squad-ridden El Salvador. These need not spurn the poor and the downtrodden; perhaps they have a sense of what used to be called \u201cnoblesse oblige<\/em>.\u201d They, however, are united in comfort with relatively rigid hierarchies of power, influence, and class.<\/p>\n My reading Nietzsche once again leaves me perplexed: why do we associated these groups with religion? Certainly, religion has been a force for conservation in this way or that, but that shouldn\u2019t mean such a direct correlation. Things do seem to be changing\u2014the Alt-Right is filled with atheists<\/a>, for example. Many a Right-wing leader seems only superficially committed to religion. The Left, of course, has long had an anti-clerical streak. But not always: there is the ELN in Colombia<\/a>, a liberation theology militant group, or, if you prefer, Martin Luther King Jr.\u2019s campaign for racial and economic equality.<\/p>\n Here Nietzsche comes in (or at least he has come in for me). His criticisms of what he calls variously \u201cslave morality,\u201d \u201cthe priestly ideal,\u201d and the \u201cascetic ideal\u201d directly attack the egalitarian aspects of religious faiths. Specifically, he seems to take issue with Judaism, Christianity, Buddhism<\/a>, and Brahmanic Hinduism (and presumably those groups descended from these). He contends that these faiths are secretly selfish, that they train their adherents in resentfulness and hatred of better; these are the religions of slaves, of those who could not have power in the old world and so forged a new world from the ashes of the splendorous old one. You might say this runs counter to everything you believe: even if it\u2019s wrong, is not religion mostly concerned with sacrifice, love, and other virtues so ubiquitously supported as to be obvious? Are not critics of religion even in the business of saying \u201creligion is great, except\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Nietzsche is not one of these\u2014for him, such faith signals the waning of the great when overwhelmed by a tidal wave of sickening anti-elite prejudice. The primary question, historically and psychologically, for Nietzsche is not, as many might suggest, suffering, but instead \u201cwhy suffering.\u201d A person can take a lot if they have a reason to take it\u2014remove the explanation and you end up with a vain clamoring and tears of strain. Hence, he writes:<\/p>\n The meaninglessness of suffering, not <\/em>suffering itself, was the curse that layover mankind so far\u2014and the ascetic ideal offered man meaning<\/em>! It was the only meaning offered so far; any meaning is better than none at all; the ascetic ideal was in every sense the \u201cfaute de mieux<\/em>\u201d par excellence<\/em> so far. In it, suffering was interpreted; the tremendous void seemed to have been filled; the door was closed to any kind of suicidal nihilism. This interpretation\u2014there is no doubt of it\u2014brought fresh suffering with it, deeper, more inward, more poisonous, more life-destructive suffering: it placed all suffering under the perspective of guilt. (On the Genealogy of Morals<\/em>, 162)<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n In Nietzsche\u2019s story, there were once great aristocratic people, the upper crust of any given society: the early Romans, the Greeks, the ancient Chinese and Japanese; these people truly lived life. They were not paralyzed by guilt in large part because they had no room for such a concept (at least not as we Christians and post-Christians might understand it). They took \u201cgood\u201d to mean whatever they were: strong, wealthy, powerful, swift, propertied\u2014one could go on and on. On the other hand, there were the poor, whom the elite regarded as \u201cbad,\u201d as an afterthought, as those who were: sick, dirty, powerless, low, debased, etc. He backs this up with philological evidence that I, as a non-expert, find convincing enough. The powerful write the rules. The poor are powerless to do much of anything in a world where they lack bronze or iron weapons and armor. Nothing particularly surprising there.<\/p>\n What separates Nietzsche\u2019s narrative from the norm, however, is that he links the shift from this \u201cmaster morality\u201d to \u201cslave morality,\u201d to Judaism and Christianity (at least in the Near East and West). The lowborn grew resentful and angry\u2014they needed some way to make sense of their abject suffering, the pain they seemed unable to escape, stuck in the muck and rot of ancient worthlessness. They had to interpret their suffering. And lo\u2014along came these religious ideals, religious ideals that turned \u201cgood\u201d and \u201cbad\u201d on their head. \u201cRich\u201d was now bad; \u201cpoor\u201d was now good. Powerlessness, moderation, weakness, patience, charity\u2014these were all now virtues. Conversely, the old great markers of status\u2014a willingness to kill, luxuriousness, power\u2014these were now \u201cevil,\u201d markers of one\u2019s hellward destiny. Sounds great if you\u2019re poor and outcast; sounds even better when it takes over the known world, becomes the way by and through which people think.<\/p>\n Thus \u201cslave morality\u201d became our framework; we, even we post-Christians or post-religious folk of the West, we are indebted to this tradition. Sacrifice is good; selfishness is bad. These sorts of values continue to inform who we are, regardless of our faith. Nietzsche thinks this is rubbish; he suspects anyone who believes this of being a watered-down Christian in disguise. Resentment, you see, never left the \u201cslaves,\u201d \u201cthe lowborn.\u201d Their supposedly noble actions are actually ridden with guilt, selfishness, and hatred. Their \u201casceticism\u201d (a term he uses broadly in relation to Judeo-Christian morality as he sees it) is a farce; it lacks honesty. When we thank someone, we do it to equalize power relations. When we do something for someone, when we sacrifice, we do it to indicate our power. When we do good, we perversely and ineluctably delight in others\u2019 knowing. \u201cLook within!\u201d Nietzsche says, and you shall see just how shallow these promises of goodness and kindness really are; indeed, such trifles are bare extensions of a millennia-old anger, an anger at the meaninglessness of suffering, a resentment of the powerful and naturally blessed.<\/p>\n Anyone who holds up these ideals after the loss of faith (which at least attempts to justify itself by grounding its \u201cslave morality\u201d in the divine will), is a schmuck, a person brainwashed into a lazy, bourgeois idealism. Here, he may as well be speaking to Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, et al:<\/p>\n Such noisy agitators\u2019 chatter, however, does not impress me: these trumpeters of reality are bad musicians, their voices obviously do not come from the depths, the abyss of the scientific conscience does not<\/em> speak through them\u2014for today the scientific conscience is an abyss-the word \u201cscience\u201d in the mouths of such trumpeters is simply an indecency, an abuse, and a piece of impudence. The truth is precisely the opposite of what is asserted here: science today has absolutely no belief in itself, let alone an ideal above it\u2014and where it still inspires passion, love, ardor, and suffering <\/em>at all, it is not the opposite of the ascetic ideal but rather the latest and noblest form of it<\/em>. Does that sound strange to you? (On the Genealogy of Morals<\/em>, 146-147).<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n <\/p>\n His alternative is complicated. It makes no sense for me to explore the entire thing here. What is worth pointing out is that his imagined future, while not at all some kind of Nazi state as some seem to think (in spite of Nietzsche\u2019s hatred for anti-Semites\u2014those he thought the most small-minded and resentful of all), must leave room for actions we would now find unthinkable. The killing of the weak by the strong, for one. Executions would likely need to return on a larger scale. What we term \u201ccruelty\u201d would have to make a comeback (though Nietzsche himself would say our Judeo-Christian ideals are the cruelest of them all). Most importantly, there would have to be room for rule by great people, not by the unwashed masses, but by those who are better based on this new \u201cgood-ideal.\u201d Inequality would be the reality. Through the voice of his Zarathustra so Nietzsche speaks:<\/p>\n How do I thank my morning dream for allowing me to weigh the world early this morning? As a humanly good thing it came to me, this dream and consoler of the heart! And in order to do by day what it does, and to imitate it and learn its best, I now want to place the three most evil things on the scale and weigh them humanly well. He that taught to bless here also taught to curse: what are the three best-cursed things in the world? These I want to place on the scale. Sex, lust to rule, sel\ufb01shness<\/em>: these three have been cursed best and slandered and lied about most so far \u2013 these three I want to weigh humanly well. [\u2026]<\/p>\n Utterly disgusting and despicable to it are those who never defend themselves, who swallow poisonous spittle and evil stares; the all too patient, all-enduring, all-complacent: for they are the servile kind. Whether a person is servile before gods and gods\u2019 kicks, or before human beings and stupid human opinions: all servile kind it spits on this blissful sel\ufb01shness! Bad: that is what it calls everything that is struck down, stingy and servile; fettered blinking eyes, oppressed hearts, and those false, yielding types who kiss with broad cowardly lips. And pseudo-wisdom: that is what it calls everything that servants and old men and weary people witticize; and especially the whole nasty nitwitted, twitwitted foolishness of priests! The pseudo-wise, however, all the priests, the world weary and whoever\u2019s souls are of the woman\u2019s and servant\u2019s kind \u2013 oh how their game has always played tricks on sel\ufb01shness! And precisely that was supposed to be virtue and be called virtue, that they played evil tricks on sel\ufb01shness! And \u201csel\ufb02ess\u201d \u2013 that is how they wished themselves, with good reason, all these world-weary cowards and cross spiders! (Thus Spoke Zarathustra<\/em>, 150, 152-153)<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Once upon a time, there were Nietzschean atheists on the Right, people who read his works and saw that the new world he called for required changes in values that would be uncomfortable for people. In many cases, they got Nietzsche terribly wrong\u2014tying his work to overt, racial anti-Semitism, for example. They still, however, saw something we too often miss.<\/p>\n Enter Anthony Ludovici<\/a>:<\/p>\n Ludovici was one of the first and most accomplished translators of Nietzsche into English and a leading exponent of Nietzsche\u2019s thought. Ludovici was also an original philosopher in his own right.\u00a0In nearly forty books, including eight novels, and hundreds of shorter works, Ludovici set forth his views on metaphysics, religion, ethics, politics, economics, the sexes, health, eugenics, art, modern culture, and current events with a clarity, wit, and fearless honesty that made him famous.\u00a0Last year, Counter-Currents issued Ludovici\u2019s previously unpublished autobiography,\u00a0The Confessions of an Anti-Feminist. An excerpt from it, \u201cOn the Jewish Question,\u201d has been published on this site, and F. Roger Devlin has reviewed it in \u201cA Man Out of Season.\u201d (Counter-Currents Publishing)<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n He was, to put it briefly, a eugenicist, a defender of aristocracy, and\u2014most of all\u2014a committed Nietzschean. His ire for religion was unrelenting; he thought it weak, instilling in people instincts that did little more than make them servile vermin. Nowhere is this sentiment clearer than in his poem \u201cCreeping back to the cross\u201d:<\/p>\n (A belated reply to that too-numerous body of field padres of all denominations, who, to the discredit of the fighting men during the Great War, used to boast that the perils and tortures of the Front Line had reaped a rich harvest for the Churches.)<\/p>\n When all advance is stopped and the defeat A few stanzas from his \u201cMy testament\u201d are equally instructive:<\/p>\n Post no priest beside my litter, Sing no hymns when I am buried, [\u2026]<\/p>\n Even if I be instructed If moreover he engages I will range his whole creation, <\/p>\n If I may be forgiven one more long quote from Ludovici\u2019s writings, his obituary for Oscar Levy<\/a>, the first translator of Nietzsche into English is instructive. Ludovici was an anti-Semite; Levy was Jewish. Having to find some way around this conundrum, Ludovici had to make his old friend physically strong, that is, to his mind \u201cnot Jewish.\u201d In doing so, he paints for us a picture of health, of a kind of aristocracy (that is, \u201cvirtue\u201d in the sense of \u201cvirtus<\/em>,\u201d \u201cmanliness\u201d) that betrays his wishes for a eugenicist future. At the same time, note his invocation of Levy\u2019s generosity. Nietzsche too did not forbid such liberality to his \u00dcbermenschen. The selfish man need not be stingy; he merely needs to act from himself, devoid of guilt and pity:<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0His very gait, measured and dignified, proclaimed that he felt himself on parade during this consecrated hour, and he strongly deprecated the tearing, bustling and pointlessly hurrying antics of the crowds about him. It was as if he bore in his breast a crystal vessel full to the brim with the spirit of serenity, and to spill a drop was to him an act of sacrilege. His profession was medicine, but he was as unlike the popular idea of a doctor as can be imagined, and always assured me that, had it not been for his patients, he would have been the happiest of medical men. He was for a time Police Surgeon of the British Museum District of West Central London, but I gathered that the work was most distasteful to him. In sum, Ludovici embodied this strange pseudo-Nietzscheanism. He loved the pomp and circumstance, the manliness, the irreligiosity, and aristocratic verve. On the other hand, he introduced an odd racism, a kind of nationalist anti-Semitism that seems quite far from anything in Nietzsche. The point, however, is that there were many like him (Pound<\/a> and D\u2019Annunzio<\/a> come to mind, among others<\/a>). This was, for better or worse a tradition, one that it is odd to have seen (mostly) disappear. I have met a few people like this (mostly British, in fact), but you\u2019d be hard pressed to find a well-known politician who speaks in these terms.<\/p>\n
\nOf companies that flank you bars retreat;
\nWhen your last cartridges have long been spent
\nAnd all have suffered heavy punishment;
\nWhen friends are lying either maimed or dead,
\nOr else got windy early on and fled;
\nWhen wounds gape menacingly and your thirst
\nInvades your lips and causes them to burst;
\nWhen all that keeps the enemy at bay
\nIs just the gath\u2019ring dusk of dying day
\nAnd morning waits the sun of yonder hill
\nTo come down from the eastern sky to kill.
\nThen, if you\u2019re not the weakling one whose way
\nIn wretchedness and torture is to stray
\nBack to the God of weaklings in dismay \u2014
\nIn short, if you don\u2019t feel the need to pray \u2014
\nThen, be you pagan, boor, or atheist,
\nThe world is yours to do with as you list!
\n(\u201cCreeping back to the cross\u201d)<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
\nCarve no cross upon my bier!
\nAs a Christophobist bitter
\nLet me pass unchurched from here!<\/p>\n
\nPut no pennies in my palm!
\nI\u2019ll not clamour to be ferried
\nTo the shore of peace and balm.<\/p>\n
\nTo appear before the throne,
\nWhence a godhead has conducted
\nWorld affairs since time unknown,<\/p>\n
\nHis recording angel there,
\nTo recite a few score pages
\nOf my sins, let him beware!<\/p>\n
\nFrom the tapeworm to the fly,
\nAnd expect his explanation
\nAs to why, and why, and why?
\n(\u201cMy testament\u201d)<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
\nWhen I first met him in the late summer of 1908, he struck me as being the most handsome Jew I had ever come across, and I soon found that his great popularity with women bore out his repeated contention that \u201cwomen listen with their eyes\u201d. Truth to tell, however, there was modesty in this implicit rationalization of his attractiveness to women, because as a conversationalist he was always extremely entertaining and often witty.
\nHis features were exceptionally finely chiselled and free from any of that heaviness of lips, nose and eyelids which so often characterizes the Jew. The broad\u00a0Schmisse<\/em>\u00a0running along his left cheekbone to his ear and temple revealed him as a man of Academic training, whilst his well-shaped hands, of which he was justly proud, were an indication of his good breeding. His manner was cordial and engaging. He knew what to say to put strangers of all sorts at their ease, and his wide erudition quickly corrected the impression many might at first receive that he was no more than a dandified wag. His\u00a0Stammtisch<\/em>\u00a0at the old Vienna Caf\u00e9, opposite Mudie\u2019s, was always well attended. Old habitu\u00e9s would come there day after day to enjoy his company, and it was usually at this table that new friendships were formed.
\nHe had the appearance of opulence and, at the time of which I am speaking, he was in fact, as things then were, comfortably off. He could afford to be generous, and it was one of his most lovable traits, that he was generous to a fault. Even when he had lost most of his money in World War I, this characteristic remained, and often, at the cost of great personal sacrifice, he continued to make substantial presents to needy friends. No one who ever knew him could fail to testify to his deep humanity, and every struggling artist, poet or author of his acquaintance found an immediate response, if he ventured to make known his need. (\u201cDr. Oscar Levy\u201d)<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n