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From: Ursine@gnn.com (George Lehmann)
Newsgroups: alt.pagan
Subject: Re: Nietzche was evil (he is dead now)
Date: Thu, 04 Apr 1996 13:35:15
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It's obvious that no one responding has actually READ Nietzsche! 
Nietzsche would have been forced to leave Germany -- indeed, he 
left it during his life-time and was brought back after Creuzfeld- 
Jakobs, a rare deterioration of the central nervous system killed 
him in all but name.
	He HATED nationalism in any form. He constantly referred to 
himself as, "a good European." He loathed Bismarck's Reich, as it 
fostered nationalism. He also detested materialism, so he was >per- 
sona non grata< among the Communists. He had no use for anti- 
Semites (a fact which his anti-Semitic sister, Elizabeth, tried to 
repress as did the Nazis).
	Christianity repelled him because it was "a religion fit only 
for slaves": the pie-in-the-sky B.S. The difference between Marx 
and Nietzsche is that Nietzsche believed man had a "soul," while 
Marx was an uncompromising atheist. Nietzsche did not subscribe to 
revealed religion. One found expression of the Light in the 
creation of Beauty and the Shadow (to use Jung's terms) in 
Ugliness. Conformity, mass-man, democracy, all the "levelling" 
forces were the enemy of humanity.
	The famous (or infamous) line in >Also Sprach Zarathustra<: 
Gott tot ist -- "God is dead" was a reflection on how the religion- 
which-leads-to-creation was gone. Hitler and Stalin (and Roosevelt 
II) were the founders of ersatz-religions. Hitler constantly 
referred to Providence, his Historic Mission, and the Destiny of 
the German >Volk<. (That was probably the REAL basis for his anti- 
Semitism: TWO "Chosen People" is ONE too many!) Hitler's religion 
was more Theosophy than anything else.
	Stalin was a drop-out from a seminary: a failed priest. 
Belief in historical determinism, as discovered by Marx (with 
Engel's help), and brought to power in Russia by Lenin (with 
Trotsky's help) was elevated to the status of a religion. (Ironi- 
cally, Stalin was personally as anti-Semitic as Hitler. He couldn't 
be open about it, however, because of the Nazi propaganda against 
Bolshevism as a "Jewish plot." The 1938 show-trials in Moscow 
virtually purged the Communist leadership of Jews, and when Stalin 
died, he was planning a liquidation of the Jews that would have 
made the overblown Holocaust look like a warm-up act!)
	What Nietzsche found was that any "god" would do, if it 
sufficed to create enduring art. He was really much closer to the 
Chinese concept of the >dao< than even he was aware of, and his 
"overman" (the correct translation of Übermensch) very much akin to 
Confucius' concept of Manhood-at-its-Best.
	As the European tradition looks for "holy writ," Nietzsche 
tried to frame his metaphysics in this format with >Also Sprach 
Zarathustra<. He did a much better job, however, in his less 
poetical >Ecce Homo<, written just before his final collapse.
	What he loathed was the rising worship of the mediocre, the 
Last Man, as he called him. Ironically, this is exactly what 
Roosevelt II, Hitler, and Stalin claimed they were championing. 
With Rossevelt II, it found its fullest expression in Aaron 
Coplelands "Fanfare for the Common Man." How many common men have 
ever listened to Copleland's fanfare JUST FOR HIM? The whole New 
Deal was a sell-out to the herd, leading directly to our own age, 
when the Congress might as well be called "The Gang of 535"!
	With Hitler, Last Man was called >das Volk<. Affordable 
radios (with foreign stations blocked out) were called >Volks- 
sender<. And afforable car for every German family was called -- 
you guessed it -- a >Volkswagen<! "Volk" in German means "people," 
but also has a tribal connotation. (Unrelated people are "Leute.")
	With Stalin, Last Man was "the Worker" (ironically, Slavic 
for "worker" is "Robot"!), but since Russia was so rural it became 
Workers-and-Peasants. Robots in any case.
	IT WAS THIS VERY STATE AND THE IMPERATIVE TO RISE ABOVE IT 
THAT FORMS THE CORE OF NIETZSCHE'S PHILOSOPHY. "Overman" isn't a 
democrat, a member of the Volk, or a four-legs-good-two-legs-bad 
sheep on Animal Farm. He is the Western equivalent to Superior Man 
as Confucius called him. (Depends on the translation.)
	Nietzsche was probably the leading philosopher of the 19th 
Century. Only now, a century after his death, is he coming into his 
own!