Date: Wed, 01 Apr 1998 11:43:24 -0800
From: "Evan A. Leeson" <evan-AT-xfind.com>
Subject: Re: Replies


>> 8 - Hacker's paradise
>
>I was a bit overwhelmed by the sheer volume of your response, if not the
>shrillness with which you made it.  Let's see: first we begin with a bit
of >pseudo-philosophical prattle and then, by the third (or was it the
fourth?) >message we get into some substance.  Or what passes for it.  
>
>To wit, that the line to Nazism can be traced, not back to Nietzsche - but
to >Hegel!  And not only Nazism but also Italian Fascism. . . and
Stalinism.  Was >that absurdly absurd claim made only for the sake of
sending up my own?  Or >do you honestly believe that?

I find this claim of lineage to be quite ordinary and much more likely than
the one leading from Nietzsche, whose life work embodies the struggle
against the essence of fascism. There has been reams of good work done
illustrating the fascism inherent in Hegel. Denis Holier's book "Against
Architecture" is a study of Georges Bataille's take on Hegel and an
excellent work in its own right. Pick it up if you like.

>Then, we drag Trotsky through a little mud.  In what possible sense was
>Trotsky "opportunistic"?  As is the common practice of reactionary cur who
>know nothing of Marx,  you liken Fascism and Socialism, while wishing to
>reserve for yourself the prestige of Marx (re: your attribution to him of
>"courage" and your lame, unsubstantiated attempt to distance him from
Lenin - >whom you throw into the shit pile with Stalin - "the Slav"). 
>
>You claim that I rip out of any context the Nietzsche passage?  In what
>context would you have me place it?  In the context of history?  But of
>course it is already there.  And only there can it be profitably read.
Like >so many other thinkers of wishes, you wish to read Nietzsche only in
the >context of himself.  (Perhaps Nietzsche had the same wish.)  But as we
know, >history has its own eyes - and Nietzsche nicely nuzzled in its bosom.

If you wish to place Nietzsche in history, then you should place him in the
the context of the time in which he wrote, not in the time of his
misappropriation. The way you speak of history though...do I hear the
dialectic marching along toward it's metaphysical resolution?

>
>Doesn't it go without saying, that Nazism is not Nietzsche's fault?  And
>further, that under the same conditions, German fascism would have arisen,
>with or without Nietzsche (much less, his disgusting sister)?  But the
form >that fascism took - the neopaganism, the "knightly-aristocratic"
pretensions, >the worship of "strength" and mercilessness - and the
concomitant murder of >tens of millions: could these have been so easily
appropriated (or, as you >wish, misappropriated), without Nietzsche's
constant emphasis on race, his >incessant talk of "Jewish revaluation,"
"Jewish hatred," "shortness of >skull," and, not least, the "raging
Germanic blond beast"?  The >"inextinguishable horror" of Europe is not
extinguished still.

There is no depth to this point. Particularly, the reference to the Blond
Beast from GM is utterly misread and does not in any way lend itself to the
misappropriation you say occurred "easily". Leaders of the White Power
movement in the United States appropriate reams of material from sources
that have no inherent characteristics that support that movement. A close
reading of Nietzsche demonstrates that he does not share the tendencies
around race that were evident under the Nazi regime. In fact, it is far
more -difficult- to appropriate Nietzsche for this purpose than the work of
countless other sophisticated writers from the same period who were overt
anti-semites and supported directly the objectives of the Third Reich. The
current regime in the United States constantly and to great success invokes
the names of their "Founding Fathers" when a reading of the writings of
many of these figures would show great contrast and deep conflict with the
current values pushed by said regime. Successful appropriation of a great
name depends solely on the presupposed and real ignorance among the
populace of the actual message of the thinker behind that name. I spoke a
while back with an old German fellow who lived through the war. He was well
read in both Marx and Nietzsche and he told me that he knew at the time
Nietzsche was being misappropriated but most did not.

Nietzsche's work didn't pop out of thin air. Much of his discourse on race
is in direct dialogue with the other writers of his day and his
predisposition to ward "hardness" and "aristocratic values" is certainly
not novel. The values you say Nietzsche presented for appropriation to the
Nazis were present in other works. Nietzsche was a cultural icon at the
time of the rise of the Third Reich. Hitler appropriated that icon just as
the US politician appropriates the founding father. This is successful
because of ignorance, not because of fit. To agree with all this and yet
continue to insist Nietzsche made it easier for the Nazis evidences some
other agenda. Pick any one you like, but my favourite debunking of the
supposed fit is published in English as a collection of essays by Georges
Bataille called "On Nietzsche".

>
>The value of Nietzsche lies in none of these things and does not require
>them.  The value of Nietzsche lies precisely in his formulations of
>"becoming" and "self-overcoming."  And just as Marx had to turn Hegel on
his >head ("or rather, on his feet"), in order to extract his immense value
from >the morass of metaphysics in which he had squarely sequestered
himself; so >must we invert Nietzsche, to extract from him what is ours: a
"becoming" that >denies the legitimacy of the "elite;" a "self-overcoming"
that contains the >history we maybe have only to seek. 

Nietzsche need not be inverted. Nietzsche is available to be read as is and
I encourage you to do so.

evan

Evan A. Leeson	
Xfind Systems Inc.
voice: 250-216-0043


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