Funniest GREEDILY Babies PRAY Before Meal | Funny Babies
Description: "Thank you, God, for this food. In Jesus' name, Amen."
The little babies in the video below is sitting at the dinner table. When Parents says it’s time to pray, just watch how they reacts! They immediately reache out their tiny hands to grab both Mom and Dad. They then closes their eyes tight and listens carefully to the prayer Dad is about to give. You can just tell that she’s patiently waiting for Dad’s prayer to end, and once that happens, They immediately add “Amen!” How cute is that?!
Link Video: https://youtu.be/TcRW3WzW_NE
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How Debbie Rogers Converted her Family and 30 Friends to Islam!
Listen to my mum's revert story. Hope you enjoy!
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Peace! 💙
Part 2
NC500 ROAD TRIP! Take a peek into what I got up to this summer!
My mum's revert story: https://youtu.be/XTBIyXcC6Ew
My revert story: https://youtu.be/s96p5f68CYY
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Peace!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=duA-T8sRq9I
HAFIZ INDONESIA 2019 | Subhanaallah!! Hafalan Naja | [4 Mei 2019]
Register for Next Convention at http://www.icnaconvention.org/register
For all ICNA-MAS Convention (2017), please visit https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ICW-x...
The ICNA-MAS annual convention is one of the largest gatherings of American Muslims in the U.S. This is the forth consecutive year it has been held in Baltimore. It was attended by over 21,000 Muslims. It featured many top scholars and activists, in addition to many special events like 1000 Meals Distribution in Downtown Baltimore, 750 Mercy Bags distribution to senior homes and Street dawah at Inner Harbor.
For more information:
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/icna
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Phone: 718-658-1199
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Imam Siraj Wahhaj shares his story on Peace TV. Siraj Wahaj, Imam of Masjid Taqwa in New York is well known among Muslims in North America as a dynamic speaker and tireless supporter of Islamic causes. Imam Siraj Wahhaj, currently the Imam of Masjid Al-Taqwa in Brookyn, New York, accepted Islam in 1969. He received Imam training at Ummul Qura University of Makkah in 1978 and has gone on to become a national and international speaker on Islam. Imam Wahhaj has appeared on several national television talk shows and interviews especially about his anti-drug campaigns. He received high praises from the media and NYPD for initiating anti-drug patrol in Brooklyn, New York in 1988. Imam Siraj Wahhaj is originally from New York. Like DigitalMimbar on Facebook: http://www.fb.com/TheMimbar
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"JESUS, THE LION OF JUDAH", according to the Holy Christian Zionist Bible! Let us bless Israel, bomb the hell out of all non Israel-lovers, and let God's Judahite Kingdom come!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xnqW8n36PT0
Former NOI | imam Siraj Wahhaj - Brief History of Nation of Islam - NOI
Véritable artiste inégalé. Derrière cette caricature de la justice française,
se cache une excellente et triste analyse de notre société. Les déviances dans nos tribunaux : - laxisme - communautarisme - favoritisme - passe-droit - subjectivité - aveuglement - politisation
- etc...
Je n'ai connu que
l'injustice et le racisme dans cette merde de France sioniste, satanique et
sataniste, socialiste, judéo-talmudo-marxiste, communiste, laïque (anti-Dieu,
anti-religion...), judéo-vaticaniste, des Cours d'Injustice au service du
capital et des corporations, ...!
BAFS
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FrdhkauIBT0
Turkey, Saudi and the Caliphate Movement | Sheikh Imran Hosein
This 2-part article (6,750 words) is sourced from the Occidental Observerandis published here as an invaluable work of reference. An alternative title for the article would be, Nietzsche’s Conversion: How Nietzsche did a Dramatic U-turn from Anti-Semite to Philosemite.
The article, which takes the form
of a book review, is of value not only for what it reveals about
Nietzsche’s attitude to the Jews but for the penetrating light it sheds
on the Jews themselves and the remarkable stranglehold they had acquired
over Germany even before their full emancipation there in 1871.
Wilhelm Marr’s doom-laden pamphlet, Der Sieg des Judenthums über das Germanenthum,
(“The Victory of Judaism over Germanism”), was published in 1879, the
same year in which the 35-year-old Nietzsche retired from his
professorship at Basel University. Possibly Nietzsche had read and
assimilated Marr’s pamphlet in which the prescient German had predicted
the total subjugation of Germany by the Jews. Marr’s
pamphlet ends with these chilling words: “Let us accept the inescapable,
since we cannot change it. Its name is: FINIS GERMANIAE—the end of
Germany!”
By the late 19th century, the
average German Jew was already three times richer than the average
non-Jewish German. The power and influence of elite Jews had become so
formidable by this time that crossing them in any way was now tantamount
to career suicide, as in America and most European countries today.
Nietzsche was to sense the power of
the Jews very keenly. He knew which side his bread was buttered on. He
was fully aware that, in order to advance his career and achieve the
international fame he craved, he would have to jump through hoops to
please his Jewish masters. The Jews had the power to make or break
anyone; they were the kingmakers as well the destroyers of reputations,
as indeed they are today.
Unlike his older friend and mentor
Richard Wagner, who was to remain entrenched in his lifelong antipathy
toward the Jews, Nietzsche was to shed his initial anti-Semitism—as this
meticulously researched article will demonstrate—and finally pitch his
tent in the camp of the Jews. In order to advance his career, Nietzsche
was either willing to compromise his principles and pretend to love the
Jews when he secretly hated them, or he was somehow able to psych
himself up into loving the Jews genuinely. There was no other way to
succeed in public life except one, as all politicians, famous writers,
artists, musicians, and celebrities know today: if you wish to succeed
spectacularly and become fabulously rich and famous, the easiest way to
do it is to sell your soul to the Jews.
It was the same kind of deal Faust had made with the Devil—and with which the Devil had tried to tempt Christ in the wilderness.
(LD)
Nietzsche’s Jewish Problem (Part 1)
. . . by Andrew Joyce
“Wagner himself asserts about Nietzsche that a flower could have come from this bulb.
Now only the bulb remains, really a loathsome thing.” — Cosima Wagner, 1878.
Friedrich Nietzsche’s puzzling stance on Jews and Judaism has
perplexed me for the better part of a decade, so I was intrigued and
optimistic about Princeton University Press’s 2015 publication of Robert
Holub’s Nietzsche’s Jewish Problem: Between Anti-Semitism and Anti-Judaism.
Broadly speaking, I’m sympathetic to certain elements of Nietzsche’s
philosophy, particularly its rejection of equality and the concept of
the ‘will to power.’ However, I can’t say I ever came close to
describing myself as a ‘Nietzschean’ in the same way that the late
Jonathan Bowden was fond of doing. One of the reasons for my hesitation
in claiming affinity with Nietzsche’s worldview was that I couldn’t
escape the impression that its nihilism was often destructive ‘for the
sake of it,’ a quality that has endeared it to the Left, past and
present. Then there was Nietzsche’s, to my mind unforgivable, habit of
lauding the Hebrew over the German. More importantly though, I couldn’t
perceive any true coherence or solidity in Nietzsche’s writing beyond
his celebrated aphorisms. Taken as a whole, the philosophy of Nietzsche
was apt to strike me as too intentionally fluid; too deliberately open
to interpretation. Nowhere was this non-committal stance more apparent
than in Nietzsche’s sparse, vague, contradictory and often quite
opportunistic references to Jews and Judaism. As one might expect of a philosopher as enigmatic as Nietzsche, his
work has been approached awkwardly and suspiciously by scholars and
ideologues alike. His attitudes towards Jews, in particular, have been
debated, discussed and fought over from the very beginning of his public
career. Nowhere, and at no time, was a consensus ever reached. During
the Third Reich he was both ‘recruited for the cause’ by some, and
rejected outright by others. His foundational place in the National
Socialist philosophical canon was thus never assured, primarily because
of his nihilism, his hostility towards Nationalism, and his ambivalence
regarding Jews. Confusion still reigns. Modern scholarship has been
divided between those who condemn Nietzsche outright as a ‘racist’
reactionary and a proto-Fascist, and those who highlight his vocal
opposition to political anti-Semitism as thus seek his social
exoneration and academic rehabilitation. As noted above, elements of
Nietzsche remain strongly attractive to the Left. Therefore, where total
exoneration of anti-Semitism has been found difficult, blame for
‘corrupting’ Nietzsche and shaping him as an ‘anti-Semite’ has been
attributed variously to his one-time guru, Richard Wagner, or his sister
Elisabeth, who married Bernhard Förster, perhaps the leading figure in
nineteenth-century political anti-Semitism. The result of these battles
has not been a clarification of the historical record, but an
ever-thickening web of biased interpretations, white-washing, and
pseudo-history. Holub’s book postures as an attempt to disentangle Nietzsche from the
tug-of-war waged on all sides by those who have wished to claim or
condemn him, and who have represented his position on Jews and Judaism
with biased motives. The book essentially claims to offer the clearerst
picture yet on what exactly Nietzsche thought and felt about Jews and
Judaism. The first chapter, ‘The Rise and Fall of Nietzschean
anti-Semitism,’ returns to the primary problem facing such a project by
dealing exclusively with how others, over historical time, have
interpreted Nietzsche’s attitudes towards Jews. I found this one of the
more interesting chapters of the book. The story begins in Nietzsche’s
own lifetime when he was initially suspected of anti-Jewish leanings not
because of the content of his writings but because of his
brother-in-law and also his publisher, Ernst Schmeitzner, who published
anti-Jewish content and was a well-known supporter of political
anti-Semitism. More crucial however was the fact that Nietzsche was
considered an acolyte of Richard Wagner’s cultural mission, at least
until the early 1880s. Since Wagner’s circle was widely associated with
anti-modernist, anti-Enlightenment, and anti-Jewish tendencies, these
naturally came to be associated with Nietzsche also. Quite apart from
the fact Nietzsche’s public remarks on Jews “were infrequent and
ambiguous,” based purely on such associational links, many of the
leading political and social agitators against Jews in Germany
prematurely assumed that Nietzsche was firmly among their number. Nietzsche’s general reception
during his lifetime was mixed to say the least. His oppositional
attitude, his polemics against the status quo, and his vaguely defined
(yet epic-sounding) vision of the future attracted praise from an
assorted collection of writers. There was, it seemed, something for
almost everyone in his philosophy. He drew commendation from Greek
scholars for his treatment of tragedy; plaudits from those who agreed
with his stance on morality; and admiration from those who delighted in
his cutting critique of the hypocrisy of middle-class norms. Those who
resented Christianity could find what they wanted in his “ruthless
criticism of the Church and its oppressive restriction on human
development.” Although he heaped scorn on anarchists and socialists, it
is a telling feature of Nietzsche’s abstractions that his writing
nevertheless appealed strongly to both. Germany’s conservative nature at
that time made Nietzsche’s adversarial quality infinitely more
attractive to the Left, and even in the United States he was received
primarily as sympathetic to the ‘working-class struggle’ and a champion
of individual liberties. Leftist intellectuals chose to ignore
Nietzsche’s disparaging comments on socialism, anarchism and feminism
because they were so enraptured with his critique of the institutions of
middle-class society, which they also hated. Since Jews also hated the
culture and institutions of Christian middle-class German society, it
should come as no surprise that we also find Jews among his earliest
supporters. Like the anarchists, socialists and feminists, some Jews
simply chose to block out less appealing aspects of Nietzsche’s
philosophy, and it is interesting that most of the earliest Jewish comment on his work studiously avoided discussion of its alleged anti-Jewishness. However, there were some murmurs from wary Jews. Max Nordau,
cofounder with Theodor Herzl of the World Zionist Organization, was a
searing critic of Nietzsche but tended to avoid directly confronting any
anti-Jewish qualities he may have perceived in the philosopher’s work.
Nordau instead labelled Nietzsche an “egomaniac” and specifically cited
his condemnation of Jews, ‘Israel,’ and Christianity for overthrowing
earlier moral systems with a ‘slave morality’ as “insane gibberish,”
“delirious sallies,” and “fabulous stupidity.” The French Jewish
intellectual Bernard Lazare more openly accused Nietzsche of
anti-Semitism in his L’Antisemitisme: Son Histoire et ses causes (1894) for practically the same reason, writing:
After [Eugen] Dühring, Nietzsche, in his turn, combatted
Jewish and Christian ethics, which according to him are the ethics of
slaves as contrast with the ethics of masters. Through the prophets and
Jesus, the Jews and Christians have set up low and noxious conceptions
which consist in the deification of the weak, the humble, the wretched,
and sacrificing it to the strong, the proud, the mighty.
Negative attention from Jews was rare however. More vocal
contemporary opinion on Nietzsche’s attitudes towards Jews came from the
anti-Jewish ideologists themselves. These opinions were often shaped as
much by personal relationships as by considered philosophical or
ideological evaluation. Theodor Fritsch, author of The Anti-Semitic Ten Commandments,
made numerous failed attempts to solicit support from Nietzsche before
publishing a series of frustrated criticisms of his philosophy. Similar
treatment followed from Eugen Dühring and his disciple Ernst Jünemann.
Jünemann was particularly worried by the fact that Nietzsche appeared to
be enjoying Jewish promotion: a sure sign to the former that there was
something rotten in the writings of the latter. He would write in 1897:
The writings of Friedrich Nietzsche, who several years
ago fell into a state of deep derangement, are currently being purchased
and read with great enthusiasm by the public since Hebrew
advertisements in particular have propped him up, and Jewish opinion, as
is well known, is unfortunately fashionable, which is evidence of how
low the intellectual and moral level of today’s dominating social powers
have sunken.
Jünemann represented Nietzsche’s philosophical trajectory as a
“steady decline into insanity and Judeophilia.” Jünemann outlined “a
promising beginning when [Nietzsche] engaged productively with Richard
Wagner and Arthur Schopenauer, [but] he strayed from the nationalist and
anti-Semitic path in his aphoristic period and descended into
irrational argumentation and pandering to Jewish interests in his last
writings.” Jünemann attacked Nietzsche for arguing that Jews “are the
true bearers of culture and the creator of values,” and raised suspicion
over the fact Nietzsche’s fame and financial fortunes improved
significantly following his public repudiation of Wagner. Faced with a
philosophy that amounted to a “Jewish junk shop” of ideas, the German
public would have to decide whether Nietzsche was a master psychologist
and Nature a “comedian,” or rather that Nature was true and honest and
Nietzsche was “spiritually and morally defective.” Jünemann was clear in
his opinion that Nietzsche had no place in the movement. But Jünemann’s rejection was not entirely representative of contemporary nationalist opinion. There were substantial numbers of völkisch figures
who found Nietzsche’s statements about Jews and race difficult to
reconcile with their own worldview, but who nonetheless found value in
the same oppositional aspect of his work that appealed to the Left. One
of them, Adolf Bartels, argued in his 1902 essay “Friedrich Nietzsche
and Germanness” that the latter’s attacks on German society were
fundamentally different from similar pejorative statements by Jewish
writers like Heinrich Heine whose arguments sprang from racial animus.
Instead, argued Bartels, Nietzsche had gotten carried away in the heat
of a “highly spiritual and ideal temperament.” The philosopher had
become “ensnared” in Europeanism and the Enlightenment and had
mistakenly turned away from nationalism. Although rejecting the
anti-Semitic movement, Nietzsche was merely acting against his
brother-in-law, and in truth he was well aware of the ability of Jews to
“easily obtain power over Europe and its nations.” But Bartels’ apologetics for Nietzsche’s work were weak and
unconvincing for most nationalists, and Nietzsche’s first great adoption
by völkisch elements only occurred during World War I. It was
during this great European conflagration that his ruminations on war,
battle, struggle and related notions found an urgent resonance. Again,
quite apart from specific content, the context of the times allowed for
the flexibility of his vague works to lend themselves to militaristic
and ethnocentric interpretations. Seizing on the new trend, the Germany
Army circulated 150,000 of the cryptic Thus Spoke Zarathustra to
the troops, and forty thousand copies of the tome were sold in 1917
alone. Mussolini soon announced his enthusiasm for Nietzsche and
asserted that the Fascist movement was the concretization of a national
“will to power.” Oswald Spengler, author of Decline of the West (1918)
declared Nietzsche, along with Goethe, one of his greatest
inspirations. Nietzsche had been transformed, by context more than
content, into a Nationalist. During the Weimar period nationalists displayed a desire to ‘keep’ Nietzsche. Franz Haiser admitted in The Jewish Question from the Standpoint of Master Morality (1926)
that Nietzsche was “culturally leftist and contradictory” but argued
without further elucidation that he “is irreplaceable for us.” One of
the most important texts incorporating Nietzsche into the Right was
Alfred Baeumler’s Nietzsche the Philosopher and Politician (1931).
Baeumler was a close associate of Third Reich intellectual Alfred
Rosenberg, and his monograph was by some degree the most important
National Socialist work on the philosopher, running into several
editions. Baeumler lauded Nietzsche’s opposition to Wilhelmine Germany,
but, in relation to the philosopher’s position on Jews, he was forced to
“employ strained arguments that are never entirely convincing.” In the
end Baeumler resorted to arguing that Nietzsche only praised the Jews in
order to goad the Germans to greatness. The gulf between Jünemann and
Baeumler starkly illustrates how literally anythingcould be
read into Nietzsche’s work. Even more stark is the fact that while he
was lauded by many in the Third Reich, Nietzsche continued to be admired
by the Frankfurt School in exile in the United States. The post-war period would witness yet another radical
re-interpretation of Nietzsche’s work. Liberals had by this time started
believing the awkward völkisch reading of Nietzsche and were
now confronted with the task of either condemning or somehow absolving
the newly discovered ‘racist’ philosopher. Many settled on blaming his
sister, Elisabeth, who, as noted, had married a well-known anti-Jewish
activist and had forged a relationship with Hitler himself. Writers like
Henning Ottmann and R.J. Hollingdale hastened to argue that Elisabeth
(a “virulent Christian anti-Semite”) had produced editions of
Nietzsche’s work that emphasized themes “friendly to the ideas of
National Socialism.” Elisabeth’s ‘influence’ was of course a lie built
on top of another lie — that Nietzsche was a bona fide ‘anti-Semite.’ In
a post-war West obsessed with its ‘racist’ past, using Elisabeth as a
scapegoat provided the means for Leftist Nietzsche enthusiasts to
absolve the object of their admiration from the most grievous accusation
that could possibly have become attached to him. Holub’s analysis of these arguments is quite excellent. Using
archival correspondence, he deconstructs entirely the notion that
Elisabeth in any way doctored her brother’s work after his death, and
throws significant doubt over the stereotype of Elisabeth as a violent,
fulminating fanatic. Holub’s portrait of Elisabeth is balanced and often
sympathetic. This interesting first chapter ends by pointing out that
Nietzsche has been claimed by so many, so often, and with so many
differing motives, that any sense of clarity on his position regarding
Jews has been lost. The only way to regain this clarity, Holub argues,
is to return to a close analysis of primary texts and contextual
factors, and the rejection of all received wisdoms, including the
conventional understanding of terms like ‘anti-Semitism.’ With the slate
now ostensibly cleared, we move forward to Holub’s history of
Nietzsche’s true view of Jews and Judaism. Holub surveys an unprecedented amount of Nietzsche’s private and
public correspondence as well as his published writings to write what
amounts to a biography of Nietzsche’s attitudes towards Jews.
— § —
Chapter Two, ‘Youthful Remarks and Encounters,’ is
an enjoyable stroll through Nietzsche’s childhood and very earliest
writings. A survey of his family tree debunks the accusation, made by
Jünemann, that he had Jewish ancestry. His childhood town of Röcken had
no Jewish inhabitants, and in the whole of Prussian Saxony Jews
constituted just 0.3% of the population. It is perhaps not surprising
then that Jews are entirely absent from Nietzsche’s writings and
correspondence right up until he moved to Leipzig to enrol at the
University, at the age of 25, having first completed a degree at the
University in Bonn. Leipzig was a city famous for its trade fairs, which attracted a
large influx of Jewish traders and merchants. For the first time,
Nietzsche was exposed to a significant number of Jews in one place.
Coming from a ‘Jew-free’ environment, Nietzsche is actually the perfect
case study for the rational development of negative attitudes towards
Jews. A handful of letters to his mother and sister dating from this
time reveal that he regularly emphasized the unsavory impact of the
Jewish tradespeople on the city. Importantly, he does so without
referencing ‘stereotypes’ or appealing to Christian traditions about
Jews. Nietzsche’s commentary is much more journalistic. His attempts to
finish a book are hindered by the disruption of the trade fair, and
“everywhere you look there are Jews and associates of Jews.” Writing on
the final day of the fair in October 1868 Nietzsche expresses relief
that the city will soon be free of “the smell of fat and the numerous
Jews.” Remarks like these are fairly self-explanatory. To Nietzsche, the
crowds, the exchange of money, and the influx of a foreign people among
the citizens of Leipzig were simply unhealthy and unwanted distortions
of the city’s normal, healthier life. Holub’s analysis, however, follows the standard Jewish-academic line.
He can’t accept that anti-Jewish feeling can be this logical or
natural, and so he argues instead that Nietzsche’s remarks “must have
emanated from personal contact with friends and acquaintances.” No
evidence is presented in support of this argument. Holub is left
perplexed about where the remarks could have come from because “during
his student years there is no evidence that Nietzsche read or pursued
authors who exhibited Judeophobia or texts that contained Judeophobic
themes.” The simple fact that Nietzsche, like many Leipzig citizens,
found this mass orgy of Jewish trading distasteful is overlooked in
favor of theoretical abstractions about ‘anti-Semitism.’ Disappointingly
then, very early in the book Holub reveals that a primary thesis
underpinning the study is that anti-Semitism is simply an ideological,
psychological, and prejudicial virus that is contracted from others
rather than a natural reaction to direct experience with Jews. My
initial enthusiasm for the book began to evaporate at this point.
— § —
Chapter Three, ‘The Wagnerian Vanguard,’ covers
Nietzsche’s early relationship with Richard Wagner. By the time
Nietzsche had been introduced to Wagner, the latter had already become
well known for his animus towards Jewish influence on German society.
Many Leftist apologists for Nietzsche have found easy prey in Wagner.
The maestro, more than anyone, is held responsible for an increase in
Nietzsche’s alleged hostility towards Jews. Although Holub postures his
book as a retort to scholars like these, he actually makes essentially
the same argument. Referencing the innocent college letters from
Leipzig, Holub writes that as a young man “Judeophobia was not well
developed in [Nietzsche’s] writing or thought, but it formed an unstated
background for his intellectual endeavors, ready to be activated by the
right person. Wagner was that person.” Nietzsche first met Wagner, via mutual friends, following an invitation from the composer in 1868. Wagner played from the Meistersinger and
the small group discussed Schopenhauer until late evening. The pair
instantly hit it off, and when Nietzsche received his professorship at
Basel in 1869, he became a frequent visitor at Tribschen, where Wagner
and his family lived until 1872. While 1869 was a pivotal year for
Nietzsche’s career, it was also a memorable one for Wagner. In 1850
Wagner had published the essay Jewry in Music under the
pseudonym K. Freigedank (K. Freethought). In 1869, despite advice from
his friends and even his wife, Wagner re-published the piece as a
pamphlet, divulging his authorship of the original and adding further
thoughts and reflections. The move provoked a predictable storm, as
influential Jews moved quickly to destroy the composer. His operas were
disrupted, and the every organ of the Jewish media was used to
annihilate his reputation. Nietzsche never personally commented on ‘Jewry in Music,’ but his
correspondence reveals that he did read it in its entirety and that he
claimed to agree with its message. When a friend wrote to him admiringly
of the pamphlet in 1870, Nietzsche replied: “That we are now also in
agreement with regard to Richard Wagner is for me completely reliable
evidence of how we belong together. Because it isn’t easy and demands a
vigorous, manly courage not to be led astray by the alarming racket. …
Our ‘Jews’ — and you know how widely this concept extends — in
particular despise Wagner’s idealistic manner.” Although overlooked by
Holub, the last sentence prefigures an ambivalence in Nietzsche’s
attitudes to Jews that would last throughout his life. True, Jews were
an oppositional element of society, but they were difficult to define. A
German, to Nietzsche, could be just as ‘Jewish’ as a Rothschild if he
or she displayed enough ‘Jewish’ traits. This certainly opened the door
to a justified critique of those non-Jews serving Jewish interests, but
by blurring the boundaries and obfuscating the role of race and
ethnicity, Nietzsche also moved dangerously close to an erroneous
worldview. Though perhaps ambivalent towards the Jewish Question, Nietzsche was
undeniably in tune with Wagner when it came to animosity towards those
aspects of modernity most closely linked with the rise of the Jews in
Germany: the hegemony of journalists, the press, newspapers, new
‘trends’ in art, and the stock market. He was a critic of both Berthold
Auerbach and Felix Mendelssohn, whom he argued produced works typified
by foreignness, jargon, mawkishness and internationalism. Even if we
accept that Wagner had some influence on Nietzsche in adopting certain
positions in the ‘culture war,’ we can by no means place too much weight
on the composer’s influence. At Basel one of Nietzsche’s closest
colleagues was the historian Jacob Burckhardt, described in one
dedication as “my honored friend.” Burckhardt was unequivocally opposed
to Jewish emancipation, and believed that everything of worth in
European culture was due to its Greek and Roman heritage rather than the
Jewish tradition. He would have baulked at the idea of Europe as a
‘Judeo-Christian’ cultural entity, and he was firmly convinced that Jews
were responsible for the worst manifestations of modernity. Early in
his career Burckhardt wrote to a friend that the presence of Jews in a
theatre would be sufficient to entirely destroy his enjoyment of the
event. Although Holub makes the argument that Nietzsche was awed by the
likes of Wagner and Burckhardt and adopted their views out of
star-struck mimicry, I read a quite different history in the evidence
provided. I do not believe that Nietzsche ever became as fully versed in
the Jewish Question as many of his contemporaries, but I do see a
gradual learning process between 1868 and 1873 where he gains a grasp of
the fundamentals. In addition to this, he continually articulates a
natural and impulsive distaste for aspects of Jewish culture and
behavior. His letters to his mother show that he associated Jews with
unsavory business practices, tastelessness, and low cultural attributes.
Writing to his mother about a tour around Switzerland in 1872, he
describes his fellow travelers before commenting “unfortunately there
was a Jew among them.” In 1872 these feelings and ideas came closest to intellectual
expression. In January and February of that year Nietzsche delivered two
lectures, ‘The Greek Music Drama’ and ‘Socrates and Tragedy.’ Despite
their fairly innocuous titles, the lectures dealt with key aspects of
the Wagnerian cultural program: that modern opera had become greatly
distanced from its ancient cultural roots, and that Jews were having a
deleterious impact on contemporary art and culture. Nietzsche, taking
his cue from Wagner, argued that genuine tragedy was mysterious,
instinctive and profound. It was also able to be conceived and
appreciated only by Europeans. By contrast, ‘Socratism,’ identified with
rationalism and dialectic, eradicates instinct and with it art.
‘Socratism’ had also become a historical force in its own right, in the
form of this-worldly Judaism. Nietzsche would conclude his second
lecture by stating:
Should the Teuton have nothing else to place at the side
of that vanished artwork of the past except the ‘grand opera,’ something
akin to the ape appearing next to Hercules? This is the most serious
question of our art: and anyone who, as a Teuton, does not understand
the seriousness of this question, has fallen into the Socratism of our
times, which, to be sure, is neither capable of producing martyrs, nor
speaks the language of the wisest Hellene. This Socratism is the Jewish
press: I’ll say no more.
Nietzsche’s Jewish Problem [Part 2]
Nietzsche and Wagner
Was Nietzsche bold or stupid? As stated above, I don’t think he quite
fully grasped the scale of the ethnic conflict subtly playing out in
Germany at that time, or the sheer power already enjoyed by
Jews. For someone of his (then lowly) position, his 1872 lecture appears
to me as a step too soon. Wagner had of course taken even further steps
against Jewish influence — but the older man possessed significantly
more stature and legitimacy. Nietzsche sent his lecture notes to Wagner
on February 4, and the composer replied cautiously. Wagner, who was
fully aware of the damage that could be wrought by Jews on lone targets
like himself, responded: “I say to you: that’s the way it is. … But I am
concerned about you, and wish with my entire heart that you don’t ruin
yourself.” Cosima, Wagner’s wife, also wrote to Nietzsche expressing
concern. Starting by citing Goethe (‘Everything significant is
uncomfortable’), she said that his ‘boldness’ and ‘bluntness’ surprised
her. In a later letter she makes her concerns more explicit, stating
that she wanted him to take some “maternal” advice so that he should
“avoid stirring up a hornet’s nest” :
Do you really understand me? Don’t mention the Jews, and especially not en passant;
later, when you want to take up this gruesome fight, in the name of
God, but not at the very outset, so that on your path you won’t have all
this confusion and upheaval. I hope you don’t misunderstand me: you
know that in the depths of my soul I agree with your utterance. But not
now and not in this way.
According to Cosima’s diaries, Nietzsche was summoned to a meeting
with her and Wagner on February 12 to discuss the lecture. We can only
speculate at what precisely was said, but Nietzsche dropped the Jewish
reference from the published version of his lecture and nothing similar
to it would ever again appear in his speeches or published writings. He
would continue to attack the evils of the press, newspapers, financial
affairs, the stock exchange, modernity, urban life, and cosmopolitanism — but
he would never again mention them in conjunction with Jews or Judaism.
Holub argues that the episode taught Nietzsche that he should not
mention the Jews by name and certainly not attack them in print. He
would thereafter adopt the same ‘cultural code’ that many anti-Jewish
intellectuals were forced to utilize as a means of fighting the culture
war without being labelled ‘anti-Semitic.’ My reading of the cited material is divergent from Holub’s from this
point on. I agree that Nietzsche was in some respects chastised by this
incident, and by Wagner personally. But Nietzsche also possessed an ego
and arrogance that led to antagonism towards his artistic mentor rather
than appreciation for sage advice. Nor am I convinced that Nietzsche was
a convinced crusader in the anti-Jewish fight. Nietzsche distanced
himself from Wagner for the remainder of his life, beginning in the
mid-1870s. In early drafts of Untimely Meditations (1876)
probably dating to around 1874, Nietzsche searched for criticisms of the
composer. Among them was the accusation that Wagner was a tyrant who
could not appreciate the validity of anyone but those among his most
trusted associates, causing him to be blind to “the validity of Brahms,
etc. or the Jews.” He also accused Wagner, ironically in view of the
latter’s crucial advice, of a grave political error in attacking the
Jews “who now possess the most money and the press in Germany.”
— § —
Chapter Four, ‘An Ambivalent Course,’ deals with the
fallout of the split from Wagner and his circle, and the manner in
which Nietzsche gradually came to surround himself with Jewish
associates. Nietzsche’s dedication to Voltaire ofHuman, All Too Human (1878–1880)
marked the final stage of his break from the Wagnerian cultural
mission. The rationalist Frenchman was anathema to the German romantic.
The Wagners read the book, only to find it “strangely perverse” and full
of “pretentious ordinariness.” The reason behind the change in quality
of Nietzsche’s writing was, in their opinion, his growing association
with the Jewish philosophy student Paul Rée. The association dated back
to 1873, and Rée had accompanied Nietzsche on visits to the Wagners on a
couple of occasions during those years. However, in 1876 Cosima’s
suspicions were raised by aspects of Rée’s personality. In October 1876
she wrote in her diary: “In the evening we are visited by Dr. Rée, whose
cold and precise character does not appeal to us; on closer inspection
we come to the conclusion that he must be an Israelite.” Their conclusion was of course correct. Holub is dismissive of
Wagner’s theory that Nietzsche was being intellectually corrupted by
Rée, but Wagner was extremely insistent that the Jew had ensnared his
young former friend. Cosima around this date wrote to her husband that
Nietzsche was essentially just a mirror that reflected the ideas or
thoughts of whoever surrounded him. Nietzsche’s writings, borrowing
heavily from Schopenauer and indeed Wagner himself, were “just
reflections of something else, they did not come from within.” Wagner
replied magnificently: “And now they are Rée-flections.” Cosima would
later write to a friend that Human, All Too Human bore an undeniable Jewish imprint:
The author has undergone a process that I saw coming for a
long time, and that I struggled against with my meagre powers. Many
things came together to produce that deplorable book! Finally Israel
intervened in the form of a Dr. Rée, very sleek, very cool, at the same
time being captivated by Nietzsche and dominated by him, though actually
outwitting him: the relationship of Judea to Germania in miniature. … I
know that here evil has been victorious. … Wagner himself asserts about
Nietzsche that a flower could have come from this bulb. Now only the
bulb remains, really a loathsome thing.
A key weakness of Nietzsche, the loathsome bulb who would never
flower, appears to have been his incomplete understanding of the nature
of Jewish influence in German culture and society, and his egotistic
willingness to accept Jews as friends and associates if he perceived
them to be useful in advancing his own personal fame and fortunes.
Around 1877 he began receiving fan mail from the Pernerstorfer Circle, a
group composed mostly of Jews studying at the University of Vienna.
Eagerly absorbing their praise, Nietzsche entered into months and then
years of correspondence and co-operation with its members. He would read
their works, praising them effusively and incorporating their ideas
into his own work in a kind of symbiosis. He was also well aware of the
Jewish background of this group, described by Holub as Nietzsche’s first
fan club. Indeed, he sycophantically appealed to it. In 1877 he wrote to one
member: “Tell me then with complete candor if with regard to your
ancestry you have any connections to Jews. I have recently had so many
experiences that arouse in me very great expectations,
especially from young men of this ancestry.” Holub seems to indicate
that Nietzsche had in some respects ‘sold out’ when he points to a
growing realization Nietzsche had about Jews as a group.
From his experience with the Wagners he had learned that Jews should not
be attacked in public documents, and that they allegedly have the power
to affect negatively a Gentile’s success in German culture. Now he was
also beginning to recognize that … there was a significant advantage he
could garner from Jews.
Did Nietzsche really believe that Jews were an exceptional
race that would push Europe to greatness? Holub does an excellent job of
portraying a man keen to tell his Jewish listeners what they wanted to
hear while retaining an instinctive dislike of Jews in general, even
harboring a deep aversion to some of his ‘fans.’ One of these fans,
Siegfried Lipiner, was initially indulged by Nietzsche, but after a
number of meetings the philosopher found the Jew’s “pushiness and
deficiencies in decorum and social grace” almost unbearable. In
correspondence with another non-Jew, Nietzsche would write of Lipiner
that “like all Semites, he kills tender things” and that the only talent
he possessed was the sole Hebrew talent of “imitation.” In public and
in private, Nietzsche would often express strong disapproval of
political anti-Semitism, but Holub argues that this was always with a
Jewish audience and Jewish supporters in mind, and that Nietzsche “was
seeking to please and sometimes placate his interlocutor.” What emerges
from this tangled web of correspondence is a man quite aware that Jews
are powerful, and keen to protect his own reputation and position in
German culture. However, Nietzsche also strikes us as an amateur attempting to handle
a deadly snake. Most of his writings on Jews from around this date are
the stuff of awkward fantasy and clumsy eugenics. He advocated the
intermarriage of Prussian officers and Jewish women in the belief that
the putative infusion of Jewish blood would equip the German nation with
improved intelligence, a greater sense of money, and an aptitude for
world politics. In his private writings Nietzsche revealed that he
believed Jewish bankers, as much as military officers, to represent the
personification of the will to power. This is a man ultimately blind to
the concepts of race and ethnicity, which is perhaps unsurprising for an
individual who lived out his life in the delusion that he was of Polish
ancestry. More damaging though was his woeful lack of awareness of the
exclusive nature of Judaism and its negative historical trajectory in
relation to the European peoples. Reviewing some of Nietzsche’s writings from this point on, I am
tempted to concur with Ernst Jünemann that his philosophical trajectory
was one of steady descent into insanity and Judeophilia. In Human, All Too Human Nietzsche
would claim that the Reformation was the result of something called
“the Jewish-heroic impulse.” Nationalism was “artificial,” and he looked
to a time that would witness “an abolition of nations” and the
appearance of “a mixed race” of “good Europeans.” Jews would be
indispensable to such a postnational vision given their status as the
prototypical nomad. Despite some flaws, they possessed an array of
virtues and had produced “the noblest human being (Christ), the purest
sage (Spinoza), the mightiest book and the most efficacious moral code
in the world.” The Jews “carried the banner of the Enlightenment,” and
ensured that Europe’s “mission and history was a continuation of the Greek.”
Because of their lofty place in world history, Europe “may fall into
their hands like a ripe fruit.” Although such an eventuality was
contemplated with horror by Nationalists, Nietzsche viewed such a
prospect with delight, since it would represent “an eternal blessing for
Europe.” Is it any wonder that Nietzsche’s first fan club was a Jewish one? Holub concludes this interesting chapter by remarking that
Nietzsche’s attitudes remain difficult to pin down. Did Nietzsche really
believe that Jews were more intellectually and culturally aware and
thus more receptive to his “message”? Or was he firmly convinced of the
need to appease Jewish interests in order to achieve personal success?
The philosopher, to my eyes, appears no less reprehensible in either
scenario.
— § —
Chapter Five, ‘Anti-Semitic Confrontations,’ deals
with Nietzsche’s hatred for ‘anti-Semites’ and his regular conflicts
with the anti-Jewish movement. Holub writes that, from the late 1870s,
Nietzsche was “unequivocally antagonistic toward what he understood as
anti-Semitism and anti-Semites.” Holub writes that much of this position
was simply opportunistic. Nietzsche blamed his early association with
(the ‘anti-Semitic’) Wagner for his perceived isolation and relative
lack of celebrity. But Nietzsche was also highly critical of moralism of
all kinds and he perceived ‘anti-Semitism’ to be a kind of moralism in
its own right, since it designated Jewish influence in Europe as a moral
as well as political wrong. Political ‘anti-Semitism,’ to Nietzsche,
was also a kind of crusade for social justice in the same way that
socialism was. The fact that leading figures in the movement like Eugen
Dühring were also socialists seemed to corroborate his theory. Nietzsche
thus founded his critique of ‘anti-Semitism’ not on his earlier
effusive praise of Jewry, but more cleverly as part of a general assault
on what he perceived as “Christian ethics, narrow-minded nationalism,
and redemptive socialism.” Nietzsche clashed with Ernst Schmeitzner (his publisher) for a
combination of personal and ideological reasons. Schmeitzner was a keen
participant in the political movement to curb Jewish influence, and
published a number of key books and journals as part of the effort. When
Schmeitzner placed a delay on printing and distributing an edition of Thus Spoke Zarathustra in
1883, Nietzsche wrote in frustration to a friend: “Who will save me
from a publisher who takes anti-Semitic agitation more seriously than my ideas?”
When sales of his work disappointed him, he claimed that it was due
less to the quality of his work than his publisher’s “antisemitica.” ‘Anti-Semitism’ thus continued, at least in his mind, to rob him of potential celebrity. The association with Schmeitzner also provoked scathing comment from
his Jewish fans. Josef Paneth wrote to Nietzsche asking how he could
allow his poetry to be published in Schmeitzner’s International Monthly,
“a journal for the struggle against Jewry.” Nietzsche dutifully
responded that he hadn’t known Schmeitzner was an ‘anti-Semite’ when he
published in it. When another Jewish fan wrote to him about
Schmeitzner’s latest anti-Jewish publishing venture, Nietzsche responded
that “Schmeitzner’s latest undertaking about which you wrote disgusts
me.” Nietzsche was scathing towards anti-Jewish activism even to his own
sister, who was heavily involved in the work of her husband, Bernhard
Förster. When Elisabeth wrote to him in 1887 asking for a donation to
her husband’s Nueva Germania project, involving the establishment of a völkisch colony
in Paraguay, Nietzsche responded sarcastically that he hoped the
authorities would assist the scheme by “deporting all anti-Semites.” He
wrote that any German who believed himself better than a Jew belonged in
“a comedy” if not “in an insane asylum.” In one draft letter to his
sister, he wrote furiously that “Our name through your marriage is mixed
together with this movement: what haven’t I already suffered from it!”
— § —
The final chapter, ‘Priests, Israelites, Chandalas,’
deals with the final two years of Nietzsche’s sane life, during which
the philosopher appears to have had a series of epiphanies about Jews
and Judaism. In 1887 and 1888 Nietzsche became increasingly occupied
with the origins of morals (as he defined them) and the history of
religion. In his meditation on these themes Nietzsche found himself
gravitating towards a view of Judaism as a slave morality that
contrasted with the more nature-orientated values of a noble stratum
associated undeniably with Aryans and fair-haired peoples. The struggle
between these value systems, and the victory of the Judaic spirit was
apparent to Nietzsche, who must have noted that such conclusions had
already been reached some time earlier by the very ‘anti-Semites’ he
professed to despise. Nietzsche found himself also unable to avoid the
conclusion that Judaism and Jewish values played a prominent role (“the
single most important factor”) in the degeneration of the Roman world
and the decadence of contemporary Europe. To Nietzsche, the history of the Jews is the history of a priestly
caste overturning aristocratic values in order to seize power. In The Genealogy of Morals (1887), he writes that
Nothing that anyone else has perpetrated against the
‘noble,’ the ‘powerful,’ the ‘masters,’ the ‘rulers’ merits discussion
in comparison with the deeds of the Jews — the Jews, that priestly
people who ultimately knew no other way of exacting satisfaction from
their enemies and conquerors than through a radical transformation of
their values, through an art of the most intelligent revenge.
Nietzsche would move still further forward in The Antichrist (1895)
when he would describe Christianity as a vehicle that propagates Jewish
values, and as an instrument for Jewish domination of a formerly
aristocratic and noble continent. What fueled the Jewish ‘slave revolt’
was “Jewish hatred — the deepest and most sublime
hatred, that is, the kind of hatred that creates ideals and changes the
meaning of values, a hatred the like of which has never been on earth.”
Christ, earlier described by Nietzsche as the ‘most noble human being’
is described in The Genealogy of Morals as the continuation of a moral regime that remained inescapably Jewish — the
agent of Judaism in the Roman world. Faced with enemies, Israel
pretended to deny the very instrument of their revenge, crucifying their
‘bait’ and waiting for all the world to bite on it. The Cross, to
Nietzsche, symbolized the defeat of all noble values.
Conclusion
While Nietzsche flirted heavily with ideas and interpretations that
may have resonated, and still resonate, profoundly with nationalists, he
never proceeded to re-evaluate his personal stance on Jewry.
Incomprehensibly, he would never make a connection between his vision of
Jewish history and the role of Jews in contemporary society. Enigmatic,
equivocal, egotistical, opportunistic, selfish, rash — all of these
terms and more could be applied to Friedrich Nietzsche. Robert Holub’s
book is imperfect, as one would expect from mainstream academic
scholarship and from an author who is quite likely to be Jewish.
However, the mostly narrative quality of the text avoids the usual
Talmudic abstractions and apologetics one normally finds in a Jewish
book about ‘anti-Semitism,’ and its presentation of an impressive amount
of primary material make it an interesting and informative read. My own
opinion of Nietzsche wasn’t altered greatly by it, but I think that Nietzsche’s Jewish Problem may provide food for thought for many in our movement who still retain earlier, biased interpretations of his work.
Nietzsche’s general reception
during his lifetime was mixed to say the least. His oppositional
attitude, his polemics against the status quo, and his vaguely defined
(yet epic-sounding) vision of the future attracted praise from an
assorted collection of writers. There was, it seemed, something for
almost everyone in his philosophy. He drew commendation from Greek
scholars for his treatment of tragedy; plaudits from those who agreed
with his stance on morality; and admiration from those who delighted in
his cutting critique of the hypocrisy of middle-class norms. Those who
resented Christianity could find what they wanted in his “ruthless
criticism of the Church and its oppressive restriction on human
development.” Although he heaped scorn on anarchists and socialists, it
is a telling feature of Nietzsche’s abstractions that his writing
nevertheless appealed strongly to both. Germany’s conservative nature at
that time made Nietzsche’s adversarial quality infinitely more
attractive to the Left, and even in the United States he was received
primarily as sympathetic to the ‘working-class struggle’ and a champion
of individual liberties. Leftist intellectuals chose to ignore
Nietzsche’s disparaging comments on socialism, anarchism and feminism
because they were so enraptured with his critique of the institutions of
middle-class society, which they also hated. Since Jews also hated the
culture and institutions of Christian middle-class German society, it
should come as no surprise that we also find Jews among his earliest
supporters. Like the anarchists, socialists and feminists, some Jews
simply chose to block out less appealing aspects of Nietzsche’s
philosophy, and it is interesting that most of the earliest Jewish comment on his work studiously avoided discussion of its alleged anti-Jewishness.