Nietzsche and Fascism.

 

The philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, has been called the "godfather of fascism" but he wasn't into German nationalism or nationalism in general, and he certainly wasn't an anti-Semite. He proposed marriage to Lou Salome, a Russian-born Jewess. He also embraced cosmopolitanism. I believe that it was his friendship with Jewish people that led to the break-up of his friendship with Richard Wagner and his wife. It was his sister and her husband, Bernhard Forster, who were the anti-Semites. I believe Nietzsche refused to attend their marriage. It is largely because of his sister (Elizabeth), that Nietzsche's name is associated with the Nazis.

As a philosopher, Nietzsche is elitist and anti-democratic. He believed that morality came from the herd instinct of the individual. He wrote: "Morality is just fiction used by the herd of inferior human beings to hold back the few superior individuals." He saw the vast majority of people as the "bungled and botched", and he didn't think much of mass politics or the big state. To Nietzsche democracy or fascism would have been the politics of the mob. Neither did he think much of socialism which he called the "tyranny of the meanest and dumbest." He said it attracted inferior people who are motivated by resentment.

The philosopher Bertrand Russell, wrote: "What Caesar Borgia was to Machiavelli, Napoleon was to Nietzsche: a great man defeated by petty opponents."