Drinks with Dead Men: Nietzsche on the Jews

In which I imagine chatting with Nietzsche about the state of the world since Beyond Good and Evil.

Recently, many of us have been observing the Middle East conflict (through media distortions all around) and the reemergence of antisemitism in the West. My thoughts have turned to the ghost of the mustachioed philosopher. (My dear Friedrich, let us have a drink. I know you eventually turned away from booze, as have I. But surely an old ghost can drink a Bierschen with me to discuss the state of the world in your time and mine.)
Nietzsche’s words, from Beyond Good and Evil, are in ordinary Roman.
My replies are in italics.

What Europe owes to the Jews?—Many things, good and bad, and above all one thing of the nature both of the best and the worst: the grand style in morality, the fearfulness and majesty of infinite demands, of infinite significations, the whole Romanticism and sublimity of moral questionableness—and consequently just the most attractive, ensnaring, and exquisite element in those iridescences and allurements to life, in the aftersheen of which the sky of our European culture, its evening sky, now glows—perhaps glows out. For this, we artists among the spectators and philosophers, are—grateful to the Jews.

Were you horrified to learn that your sister, after your death, removed such passages to present your work as a paean to the Third Reich? Even after Elisabeth bastardized your writings through selective editing, Hitler never cared. He referred to you as more of an artist than a philosopher and said your work lacked the “crystal-clear understanding of Schopenhauer.” I suspect Hitler, the artist, was jealous of your artistry and surely appreciated Schopenhauer’s dourness more than his “understanding.” Anyway, you loved life. Hitler worshipped death. So, far from being the *philosopher of the Third Reich*—following the Nazi Professor Baeumler—you turned out to be the philosopher for all people who refuse to be slaves. For that, I raise my glass to you.

It must be taken into the bargain, if various clouds and disturbances—in short, slight attacks of stupidity—pass over the spirit of a people that suffers and WANTS to suffer from national nervous fever and political ambition: for instance, among present-day Germans there is alternately the anti-French folly, the anti-Semitic folly, the anti-Polish folly, the Christian-romantic folly, the Wagnerian folly, the Teutonic folly, the Prussian folly (just look at those poor historians, the Sybels and Treitschkes, and their closely bandaged heads), and whatever else these little obscurations of the German spirit and conscience may be called.

Boy, did such follies culminate in a couple of embarrassing, bitter World Wars for Germany. And of course, the anti-Semitic folly turned into mass death for the Jews that second time around. Yet despite the Allies snuffing out the foul egregore of antisemitism in Germany with a Marshall Plan helicopter drop, it rears its head again all over the West.

May it be forgiven me that I, too, when on a short daring sojourn on very infected ground, did not remain wholly exempt from the disease, but like everyone else, began to entertain thoughts about matters which did not concern me—the first symptom of political infection.

About the Jews, for instance, listen to the following:—I have never yet met a German who was favourably inclined to the Jews; and however decided the repudiation of actual anti-Semitism may be on the part of all prudent and political men, this prudence and policy is not perhaps directed against the nature of the sentiment itself, but only against its dangerous excess, and especially against the distasteful and infamous expression of this excess of sentiment;—on this point we must not deceive ourselves. That Germany has amply SUFFICIENT Jews, that the German stomach, the German blood, has difficulty (and will long have difficulty) in disposing only of this quantity of "Jew"—as the Italian, the Frenchman, and the Englishman have done by means of a stronger digestion:—that is the unmistakable declaration and language of a general instinct, to which one must listen and according to which one must act.

There is nothing new under the sun. And the cycle manifests itself as suspicion and envy, even as the modern Western activist of every race finds it in their hearts to scapegoat the very people who coined the term (scapegoat). Meanwhile, this modern Western activist reserves a collective pity party for the most hateful, ideologically misaligned moors, colonizing the West at a pace, biding their time, waiting to establish a Western Caliphate.

"Let no more Jews come in! And shut the doors, especially towards the East (also towards Austria)!"—thus commands the instinct of a people whose nature is still feeble and uncertain, so that it could be easily wiped out, easily extinguished, by a stronger race.

So, are you saying that the Jews could have been like the Nazis but weren’t? Weird, because after being lined up alongside the Slavs and shot, or put in gas chambers/ovens, only to have their gold fillings and jewelry sold, today’s Jews are being referred to as Nazis, even if they remain neutral as Switzerland on the subject of Israel/Palestine.

The Jews, however, are beyond all doubt the strongest, toughest, and purest race at present living in Europe, they know how to succeed even under the worst conditions (in fact better than under favourable ones), by means of virtues of some sort, which one would like nowadays to label as vices—owing above all to a resolute faith which does not need to be ashamed before "modern ideas," they alter only, WHEN they do alter, in the same way that the Russian Empire makes its conquest—as an empire that has plenty of time and is not of yesterday—namely, according to the principle, "as slowly as possible"! A thinker who has the future of Europe at heart, will, in all his perspectives concerning the future, calculate upon the Jews, as he will calculate upon the Russians, as above all the surest and likeliest factors in the great play and battle of forces.

It seems you had a crystal ball, dear Friedrich. Today, after 139 years since the publication of Beyond Good and Evil, it is the Jews and the Russians who get the most ire. Neither group is sinless. Neither is perfect. But what group is? Those who hurl the most invective at Jews or Russians, respectively, are often the ones making the most trouble for them. Then, from great misdirections and mindwars, a collective animus has re-emerged. Its tropes and distortions have been fantastically successful at tapping into ancient antipathies. Yet both Russians and Jews remain hardened and hearty despite it all.
That’s a hell of a crystal ball you’ve got.

That which is at present called a "nation" in Europe, and is really rather a RES FACTA than NATA (indeed, sometimes confusingly similar to a RES FICTA ET PICTA), is in every case something evolving, young, easily displaced, and not yet a race, much less such a race AERE PERENNUS, as the Jews are such "nations" should most carefully avoid all hot-headed rivalry and hostility! It is certain that the Jews, if they desired—or if they were driven to it, as the anti-Semites seem to wish—COULD now have the ascendancy, nay, literally the supremacy, over Europe, that they are NOT working and planning for that end is equally certain.

Speaking of anti-semitic tropes and distortions, one of the claims against the people of Israel is that they are RES FACTA and came to achieve “supremacy” in the Levant. And in certain respects, Israel is a “thing made” by the British and subsequent nationalist movements catalyzed by the likes of Theodor Herzl. Yet in other respects, it’s too easy to dismiss the RES NATA of their ancient Jewish homeland, despite being surrounded by what is arguably the most successful expansionist imperial project the world has ever seen: the Islamic World. The latter is 1,400 times the size of Israel and has 210 times more people, according to AI calculations. Of course, Islamic expansion required countless acts of mass slaughter and ethnic cleansing of Jews and Christians, yet the indoctrinated Westerner is obsessed with what they call “Zionist colonialism.” And even though no less than five neighboring nations—and numerous terrorist groups—have attacked Israel with over 30,000 rockets since 2000, the nation stands. So, the Jews have racked up defensive war victories, not to mention a disproportionate number of Nobel Prizes that inspire as much envy as admiration.

Meanwhile, they rather wish and desire, even somewhat importunely, to be insorbed and absorbed by Europe, they long to be finally settled, authorized, and respected somewhere, and wish to put an end to the nomadic life, to the "wandering Jew",—and one should certainly take account of this impulse and tendency, and MAKE ADVANCES to it (it possibly betokens a mitigation of the Jewish instincts) for which purpose it would perhaps be useful and fair to banish the anti-Semitic bawlers out of the country.

The antisemitic bawlers of your homeland in particular were, in a sense, “banished” after World War II. Some have returned, but post-Holocaust guilt has somewhat inoculated the Germans from this latest epidemic of Jew-hatred. But Jew-hatred rears its head again, even in Deutschland. And it has spread more rapidly around the world, ironically, since Hamas terrorists breached the country in the south and slaughtered more than a thousand. This was greeted with thunderous global applause by far too many. So a paradox lies in the fact that there are still some “wandering” Jews, but at least they have a tiny country of their own to return to as Western Intellectuals and a generation of Marxist-Mohammedan sympathizers spit at them. Even in New York, where one would hope Jews would be “finally settled, authorized, and respected,” that spectre that once plagued Europe is reanimated and ravenous in the Big Apple.

One should make advances with all prudence, and with selection, pretty much as the English nobility do. It stands to reason that the more powerful and strongly marked types of new Germanism could enter into relation with the Jews with the least hesitation, for instance, the nobleman officer from the Prussian border it would be interesting in many ways to see whether the genius for money and patience (and especially some intellect and intellectuality—sadly lacking in the place referred to) could not in addition be annexed and trained to the hereditary art of commanding and obeying—for both of which the country in question has now a classic reputation.

But here it is expedient to break off my festal discourse and my sprightly Teutonomania, for I have already reached my SERIOUS TOPIC, the "European problem," as I understand it, the rearing of a new ruling caste for Europe.

I mean no offense by this, Friedrich…. Despite your claim that the Jews are “the most life-affirming of all peoples,” you would still have been chided for being an antisemite for your freewheeling use of stereotypes about Jews and money, not to mention the tongue-in-cheek way you channeled European attitudes about Jews in your day. Weirdly, though, many of the very same people who would have chided you on October 6th came to use far, far worse language on October 8th. In Western capitals and on the campuses of Western Universities, hatred’s fire burns. Before the Hamas terrorists had had a chance to starve, kill, or rape their hostages, college kids who’d been raised never to use ethnic stereotypes were shouting “Kike!” at ordinary Jewish kids who were just trying to get to class.

Anyway, the Teutonomania you described reached its zenith under Hitler, although the most troglodytic American rednecks still go in for it here and there. The new mania is Muslimania masquerading as multiculturalism. Although any such thinking can be crass and collectivist, you would be horrified if you could see what has happened to Europe, including your homeland. Here in America, the effete musician or pseudo-intellectual of Brooklyn with his manbun and his errant socialist sympathies sits around enjoying the fruits of market entrepreneurs while talking about how much he weeps for the poor, poor, dead kids of Gaza. He blames none of the ‘freedom fighters’ who built IED-booby-trapped terror tunnels under their mosques, hospitals, and schools. He reserves all blame for the IDF—and by extension, the Jews. You can guarantee this malcontent won’t spare a word or shed a tear for the innocents slaughtered in Sudan, Syria, Somalia, or Yemen. Instead, he will invite their killers to the West to recreate the dysfunction they left behind. He will stick his fingers in his ears when anyone mentions grooming gangs, rapes, terrorism, gang bombings, acid attacks, and the slit throats of little girls, which no one may say under the DSA. And he’ll vote for those who would take your money and put these monsters up in nice hotels. Why? He has combined a slave morality with TikTok terrorism.

To my beloved Jewesses: I will always protect you. -MB