ROBERT S. WISTRICH
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eyes represented the lowest form of European culture- it was synony–
mous with the mentality and outlook of the
Schlechtweggekommene
(an
almost untranslatable German term for misfits) for the bungled,
botched, and envious losers in life.
It
was the epitome of a neurotic cul–
ture of ressentiment, another key word of reprobation in the Niet–
zschean vocabulary and in his analysis of modern decadence. The fact
that Nazi propagandists (and some misguided scholars to this day)
nonetheless present Nietzsche as an anti-Semite must surely stand as one
of the gravest falsifications in modern intellectual history.
Nevertheless, there were ambiguities in the terminology and in the
sweeping historical generalizations of Nietzsche which laid his work
open to misuse. His sweeping rejection of Judeo-Christian values (as
they were mirrored in German Protestantism) misleadingly referred to
their origin in the sublime "vengefulness" of Israel, which according to
Nietzsche, led to its exploitation of movements of "decadence" to
ensure its own self-preservation and survival. Even though Nietzsche's
prime target was Christianity and he sympathized with the critical Jew–
ish spirit, the source of modern decadence nevertheless lay in that fate–
ful transvaluation of values created by priestly Judaism two thousand
years ago. More dangerous still, when describing the "Judaization" of
the world in terms that mixed admiration with disapprobation, Niet–
zsche was unconsciously feeding the myth of Jewish power, so beloved
of both Christian and racist anti-Semites. Though his intentions were
profoundly hostile to anti-Semitism, this provocative technique was
undoubtedly a risky game to play. Though Nietzsche was not responsi–
ble for such distortions, one can find troubling echoes of a vulgarized
Nietzscheanism in the vicious diatribes of Hitler, Himmler, Bormann,
and Rosenberg against Christianity during the last years of the Third
Reich. The poisonous Nazi rhetoric directed against Judeo-Christian
teaching and the Christian churches could partly draw on a debased ver–
sion of Nietzsche's own anti-Christian polemics.
The case of Nietzsche is, however, a good illustration of the pitfalls
in any overly schematic approach to intellectual history which takes
particular strands in a thinker's
oeuvre,
seeking to fit them into more
general constructs like fascism or National Socialism. On the basis of
Nietzsche's declared hostility to Christianity, liberal democracy, and
socialism, it is possible to see him as a precursor of the fascist synthesis.
On the other hand, as we have seen, he was very far removed from Nazi
thinking about race (he scorned the "Aryan" myth and judged people
on individual merit), about the Jews, or about German nationalism.
Some aspects of his admiration for ancient Greek culture and for
