RadixJournal - Nietzsche on the Jews

00:00:00.000 So thanks for being on. Your appearances are always quite popular. And we were I was talking with Mark and we were we were kind of suggesting talking about the Jewish question as it's relayed by by Nietzsche, because he has a very complicated and contradictory conception of of the Jews and particularly the Jews in his time, which is more or less our time.

00:00:29.380 That is the Jews in modern Europe. We're also obviously going through this traumatic period in Palestine and Israel with this terrible war that's ongoing. And it's, you know, a lot of these energies, I think, were dormant for some time, but they're cropping up. It's like they're flaring up almost like a rash. 0.95

00:00:52.040 And so you have a obviously a lot of anti Israel and anti Zionist sentiment. And I don't think the elites in the United States in particular, but but also Europe recognize the depth of this anti Israel and anti Zionist sentiment and the illegitimacy that's emerging.

00:01:16.200 And then on the other hand, you you have something else cropping up, which is these biblical fundamentalist or dispensationalist who will simply quote a Bible verse to you about bequeathing the land of Canaan to Abraham.

00:01:33.980 And then that's all they need to say. And effectively, we need to support Israel till the end of time. And Israel can't do any wrong, in fact. So I think just due to this conflict, which is extremely ugly on both sides.

00:01:49.520 But you know, we're watching the Israeli ugliness at the moment, a lot of these things that were kind of lying dormant have cropped up. So I think it is worthwhile reexamining the Jewish question, and and what that means. But anyway, what do you think about that? And then maybe we can kind of lead into, you know, Nietzsche's concept thereof. 0.99

00:02:13.020 Well, I think Nietzsche is an interesting person to consider when it comes to this, because I think with what the internet represents is a little bit of a Protestant revolution, you know, it's the printing press returned again. 0.82

00:02:24.500 And so everybody can suddenly start reading, reading reality for themselves, if you so will, or the Bible for themselves. And all of us start to have our own opinion and our own perspective.

00:02:32.280 We all we all get, you know, we all get woke, we all read. And we're like, wait a second, the Pope is out there banging prostitutes. What's going on? We all start to freak out. And this is sort of happening with the internet. There was a regime in place since 1945, I guess you could say, that was very stable. And the television and all those systems of media were very stable. 0.99

00:02:52.400 And they kept like a coherent meta narrative shrouded across the West. And like, this is my perception of it. I didn't live through this period of time, but I look back and I kind of feel like the boomers lived through a sort of united America was one Western hegemony was sort of all in, in with it, like Western Europe kind of supported it as well. 0.55

00:03:11.860 And a part of that, of course, was a very prestigious status for the Jewish people, which in some sense they've won. And that's, it's sort of, they're sort of reaping the rewards for the last two or 300 years, which Nisha will talk about.

00:03:23.800 And then of course, now the internet shows up and 4chan shows up, Twitter shows up and people start to dispensate alternate perspectives. And this begins, I remember this is, I was very young at this time, still a teenager, but there was a movie called the Zeitgeist.

00:03:37.840 And this is sort of a really good representation of, of what this stuff is like, you know, the Zeitgeist movie is saying like, Jesus is not real. Jesus was actually a amalgamated myth of Horace from, from, from Egypt. And 9-11 was, was fake. 9-11 was done by the American government on the American people because they hate the American people. They're evil capitalists and all this type of stuff. And it was like the, and David Icke, you know, this type of stuff.

00:04:02.920 It was actually the Federal Reserve money printing that, that does kind of boggle the mind when you think about it. There's not enough money in the universe to pay off, pay the interest on the debt. So it's this inherently contradictory system. I mean, it's, it is rather mind boggling.

00:04:17.760 Just briefly, the mythicism in the film is just kind of bad mythicism, right? It's sort of, he's making these kind of shoddy parallels when there are very strong parallels that you can make between the cult of Bacchus and the cult of Adonis and so forth.

00:04:31.920 So that's a kind of irony of the film because it, again, it was popular as, as Uwe Boyo was saying, it really struck a chord or resonated with people, but isn't it just sort of kind of characteristic that the guy didn't really know what he was talking about in terms of the mythicism?

00:04:47.800 It's almost like this, it's, it's almost like the stupider or crazier things are more liable to go viral than the things that are kind of sound and coherent.

00:04:57.520 I think that there's, there's a sort of innocence to it. Like I look back and they were saying, you know, the kind of story that they're presenting is, is so it's, it's weirdly kind of quaint and innocent, you know, like it's compared to the conspiracy theories we have now, which is like the Jews are trying to eradicate the white race off the face of the planet. 0.98

00:05:14.860 Or COVID-19 was a scam to genocide every person in existence and make them sterile. Like you, I heard like, you know, you hear about the Muslims saying that like the Israel is Satan themselves or the Jews are like, oh, the, the, the Nazis are trying to set up the Fort Reich from behind the Western governments.

00:05:32.100 They're all, they're all secretly not, you talk to the left and they say that same things like this. And you, you listen to those conspiracy theories and you're like, Jesus, they're pretty hardcore compared to like the zeitgeist, which is like the capitalists are trying to exploit you.

00:05:44.860 And sometimes it was just a little bit more innocent and a little bit more early internet, if you so will. But it was showing the kind of trend that was coming up. And that really cascaded. Like when, when I was starting to around about Trump and I was like early mid twenties around about Trump, when that was cascading, I remember that's when a lot of it really began to kick off. Like I didn't really come across any of that stuff, like the zeitgeist and all that.

00:06:07.860 And I came across that, but the, I remember around about Trump is when that really kicked into a different gear. And that's when you started to see like politics get into it and stuff like this. And people, the regime would start to bite back at, at some of these conspiracies. Like you could have the zeitgeist up on YouTube, but you didn't see YouTube censorship until we got it into like 2016, 2017, 2018.

00:06:29.040 And that was really a big deal because that was showing that like, oh shit, something big is going on. And what, to kind of pull this all to some sense, what I started to learn, because I had been reading Nietzsche long before Trump came around.

00:06:41.700 Nietzsche actually provided some incredibly, a lot of Nietzsche that I never understood. So just him bitching about antisemitism or him talking about the Jews. I never quite got it. But then around about the Trump election and all of these topics, you know, get shoved into the forefront and realities about, about like all these things get, get brought up and people start talking about them and the internet starts promulgating these things.

00:07:03.420 All of a sudden I look back at Nietzsche and I'm like, this dude had coherency around all of these topics, really well formed ideas that are very explanatory towards our situation. Like I've got a couple of quotes pulled up here. I won't read them now, but like one of them is, for example, the philology of Christianity, where he's talking about that psychology of Christians claiming that Christians are the true people of Israel, trying to say that the Jews are fake and stuff like this.

00:07:24.740 And it's, it's just amazing because right now that's actually an enormous kind of swing narrative. That's just so funny to watch where you have a lot of like hardcore Christians saying that they hate the Jews, but then of course they are in some sense fully affirming the Jewish Old Testament is like the, the, the meaning of the earth, if you want to put it this way.

00:07:44.400 And then of course, on a day two or five, the people of Israel, where he talks about the next century is the process of European Jews, which in some sense, I think just so perfectly predicts the destiny of the Jewish people. 0.52

00:07:55.740 It's quite amazing. Beyond good and evil is another one as well. He has a lot of things in there.

00:07:59.940 So what I find so amazing about Nietzsche is that he was obviously grappling with these and he presents basically these perennial problems, but with a lot of clarity that gives us a lot of ability to understand our situation from a very level perspective, because when we're in the flux of the Protestant revolution, emotionalism is, it's very easy to get caught up in that.

00:08:20.280 It's very easy to get caught up with some of the fear inside these, some of these, these theories. And he's coming from 150 years ago and sort of explaining what he saw. And you're like, wow, if it's, if these trends are this old, there might be a broader perspective. I could be looking at this stuff out that allows me to be less kind of panicky. So I'll leave it there.

00:08:37.200 Yeah, he had some very interesting comments on the Germans as well in Beyond Good and Evil. And it's very typical of Nietzsche that when you think he's polemically attacking someone, he's also kind of complimenting them. And the reverse is also true. When he compliments people, he's in a way engaged in a polemical attack.

00:08:59.740 I actually think he does foresee Nazi Germany, in fact, in those comments about Germans and how they are going to be kind of leveled and flattened and impressed with a monstrosity. And they're going to remain true to that vision, in fact, till the end. 0.96

00:09:19.880 And he also kind of suggests that there, you know, there can be a leveling of a people through democracy and capitalism and technology, etc. But then that people is becoming ripe for tyranny. And so you need these Hitlers or Donald Trumps or Elon Musk. They're bigger, they're bolder, they're worse in many ways, they're richer than men of the past.

00:09:46.560 And they're almost kind of rising as a organic process of the leveling that's taking place. And Nietzsche, again, he's always, there's always a kind of like reversal in his thought where he'll say, you know, these things are kind of great in their way.

00:10:05.460 But then, as one people gets leveled, another people is deepened in this sense. And I think that gets at his ambivalence about the Jews, because, you know, you can read particularly on the genealogy of morality. I mean, you can pick out quotes or pick out whole paragraphs and say, well, Nietzsche is just clearly an anti-Semite.

00:10:27.460 It's Rome versus Judea, Aryan versus Semite, blonde beast versus rabbi. I mean, these are the dialectics. This is the, this is like the battle of world history taking place. 0.90

00:10:40.380 And the Semites found a way of attacking Aryans via morality. And they proved in a way that morality was stronger than steel or iron, that demoralize someone or make him question himself or reverse his psychology and up is down and left is right and cats are dogs. 0.97

00:11:03.200 You can, you can, in a way, destroy him or attack him or at the very least neuter him. And that this is what the Jews were up to in their creation of morality and ultimately their creation of Christianity. 0.97

00:11:16.580 I mean, you can read all of that and say that Nietzsche, you know, is siding with the blonde beast and he's anti-Semitic and all that kind of stuff. And, you know, there's some truth to that. 1.00

00:11:28.060 But he also suggests that they deepen us. In the self-introspection that was implied by this revolution of morality and was just hammered home with something like the Protestant Reformation, that we became deeper.

00:11:46.460 Now, we might have become hamlets in the process, but we were, in fact, deepened by it.

00:11:52.380 And so the Jews invented morality in the grand style. They moved beyond simply good and bad or weak and strong. 1.00

00:12:02.820 And they created a kind of cosmology of morality and certain reversals that the meek shall inherit the earth, etc. 0.98

00:12:13.320 Certain reversals, to be sure, but also a kind of a kind of deepening.

00:12:17.780 I mean, there's something radical about the Protestant message of you're deserving of hellfire. 0.99

00:12:25.360 There is, in fact, nothing you could do that would conceivably allow you to escape God's wrath.

00:12:33.520 But, you know, you can truly give yourself a kind of audit, a psychological audit, and you can just throw yourself out there to Jesus and he can offer you grace.

00:12:46.040 And he's a sacrifice to pay the debt.

00:12:49.440 There's just something unbelievably radical about that type of thinking.

00:12:53.820 That type of thinking, you know, for better and for worse, is going to lead to a kind of introspection that you see in figures like Hamlet or Luther or Nietzsche himself, etc.

00:13:07.220 It's going to lead to a kind of new way of thinking.

00:13:10.000 In some ways, you should be grateful to the Jews. 1.00

00:13:14.480 You shouldn't just think of them as like, oh, these pathetic people and their priests and they're tricking us with morality. 0.99

00:13:21.400 And so that's the kind of cheap anti-Semitism that he saw around German nationalism, where it's just, you know, blame the Jews, basically. 0.97

00:13:29.760 I think he didn't, I mean, again, it's not like he even fundamentally disagrees with that, to be honest.

00:13:35.880 It's about embracing fate, accepting that, and recognizing their contribution. 0.95

00:13:42.460 That you can't have, you're a German Christian, you hate Jews. 0.83

00:13:45.840 All of your concepts, your moral concepts, your myths, these are all a fulfillment of Judaism. 0.92

00:13:52.040 They're not alien to Judaism.

00:13:54.620 You're hating from, you know, the thing from whence you derive.

00:13:59.320 I mean, it's bizarre in a way, and schizophrenic or ambivalent.

00:14:03.420 What Nietzsche is offering is this kind of like giving credit in a way to something.

00:14:08.600 And even if it was based on resentment, and even if it was poison on some level, drinking that poison is going to some way make you stronger or make you deeper.

00:14:20.660 Yeah, there's some like amazing ideas that you bring up that I'd love to go into.

00:14:25.440 First of all, the idea of like politics in the grand style, and I have a kind of spin on this that I think is actually very useful when you come to think about the Jews and their contribution towards European thought.

00:14:35.200 And in some sense, like two fighters, you know, like an UFC fighter goes up and he fights against another guy like Conor McGregor fighting against Nate Diaz.

00:14:44.100 And the first time Nate beats him and Conor realizes, oh, shit, I'm not good enough, and I have to go and train and become better in order for me to be able to actually beat this guy.

00:14:51.600 And it's very similar, like the Jews, and I guess you could say the Aryans or Europeans, they're vastly different. 0.62

00:14:57.060 And Nietzsche points out probably one of the best people are pointing out the differences between these two people.

00:15:00.760 But the sort of priestly mode as operandi, people don't want to cast respect upon it per se, but it doesn't mean that it's in any way lacking value.

00:15:12.160 You know, it may be crafty, it may be sly, it may even be like toxic and bitter with resentment, but it's not without its own virtues.

00:15:18.560 And oftentimes, I think this is one of his biggest complaints about anti-Semitism is that they just refuse to see the virtues in, I guess you could say, their enemy.

00:15:26.400 They refuse to acknowledge that, like, you know, this tech and fighter has things going for them.

00:15:32.100 And from Dawn of Day, this is the people of Israel.

00:15:35.460 I'm going to read a little bit of this because he just explains it better in his own words than I could say.

00:15:39.960 Dawn of Day, Daybreak, Aphraism 205, the people of Israel.

00:15:43.960 Well, in Europe, however, the Jews have gone through a schooling of 18 centuries such as no other nation has ever undergone. 0.72

00:15:50.120 And the experiences of this dreadful time of probation have benefited not only the Jewish community, but even to a greater extent the individual.

00:15:57.000 As a consequence of this, the resourcefulness of the modern Jews, both in mind and soul, is extraordinary.

00:16:02.680 Amongst all the inhabitants of Europe, it is the Jews least of all who try to escape from any deep distress by recourse to drink or to suicide, as other less gifted people are so prone to do. 1.00

00:16:13.200 Every Jew can find in the history of his own family and of his ancestors a long record of instances of the greatest coolness and perseverance amid difficulties and dreadful situations and artful cunning and fighting with misfortune and hazard.

00:16:26.720 And above all, it is their bravery under the cloak of wretched submission, their heroic spurnace and spurny that surpasses the virtues of all the saints.

00:16:35.440 Now, this is actually quite high praise, and he's very good at layering this onto the Jews. 1.00

00:16:40.000 And I remember when I read this, we'll say post-2016, and I kind of thought about it.

00:16:46.080 And, like, this is actually really true.

00:16:48.020 If you look through Judaism, for example, like Malachi is one of the characters from the Bible, and he's the court Jew. 0.91

00:16:55.380 And he's all the way back in, like, prehistory.

00:16:57.500 But he's the model for the Jew of, like, staying quiet in the courtroom and being very useful. 0.97

00:17:01.980 And people will often say, like, you know, the conspiring court Jew who's, like, grim a worm tongue or something like this.

00:17:07.980 That's the frame that maybe the sort of the European or the Westerner would have upon this.

00:17:12.900 But from their perspective, the way they're seeing out of their eyes, Malachi is about being super useful to the king and making himself very benevolent.

00:17:21.760 And they have a very good attitude towards themselves.

00:17:24.540 Joseph, for example, in Egypt is the exact same character, a very benevolent, good organizer, clever man that comes in and helps the pharaoh

00:17:32.460 and is able to actually redeem his entire community through basically just being a hard fucking worker, a good politician, a good sort of urban organizer, this type of thing.

00:17:41.460 The prophet Daniel is another brilliant example.

00:17:43.640 So they have, like, prophets inside of the – they have, like, these, you know, shamans, these dream readers inside the court of – I think it's Darius or something like this.

00:17:52.540 And Darius – or the one Persian king is having nightmares and he's like, tell me what my nightmare means.

00:17:57.620 And he's like, I don't know, you should eat less eggs or something like this. 1.00

00:18:00.260 And Darius just kills them all because it's a stupid answer. 0.99

00:18:02.720 And then Daniel comes up very innocent and kind and very benevolent, you know, very timid and none of this, like, rubbing the hands together or anything like this. 0.99

00:18:10.160 And he solves the guy's dream and he presents himself as a very benevolent type of character.

00:18:14.640 And you can see from their perspective this idea of how you should act around power.

00:18:19.120 And this is something that actually enormously helped them during their emancipation as Europe liberalized.

00:18:25.540 And you can see built into their Bible, you've got all this stuff.

00:18:28.240 Now, you compare this to our Aryan myths, if you so will.

00:18:31.160 I look at, like, Irish myths and it's all about Cú Chulain, you know.

00:18:33.800 You look even on the internet now and all of us are trying to romanticize the past because we feel our identity is getting crushed. 0.97

00:18:38.660 And we're running around saying, like, Hernán Cortés went in 400 men and killed all the fucking Aztecs and we fucking took over everything. 0.99

00:18:45.860 Badass super warrior or Caesar or Napoleon, you know, Napoleon, the big fucking Chad who went in and fucking murdered everyone. 0.99

00:18:53.740 And William the Conqueror and Cú Chulain, as I said. 0.99

00:18:57.600 And it's all super warriors is who we idealize.

00:19:01.400 We idealize the man of bravery, the man of strength.

00:19:03.580 And that certainly is a set of virtues that you don't really see in, I guess you could say, modern Jews especially.

00:19:10.360 But it's interesting to be able to pull yourself out of that perspective and go and look at what these guys are focusing on as values, as things that are important.

00:19:18.160 And they build into themselves over the course of centuries, of millennia.

00:19:21.440 They build into themselves all these attributes, almost like an evolutionary process that allowed them to be very effective community organizers.

00:19:29.360 Like, it's not romantic.

00:19:30.600 It's not like they're charging into battle, cast in glorious armor, charging down French knights, charging down Muslims in tours or something like that.

00:19:38.780 They don't do stuff like that.

00:19:39.940 They're not a warrior people.

00:19:41.460 But it's not like they're without their virtues.

00:19:43.320 They don't drink themselves to death.

00:19:45.300 They are very realistic.

00:19:47.540 Like the one thing that Jung would speak about this as well.

00:19:49.740 The Europeans are very idealistic, romantic, in some sense, delusional, out of touch. 1.00

00:19:54.160 Nietzsche hated this in Wagner famously.

00:19:57.000 The romanticism of his time, he thought, was an escapism, a weakness.

00:19:59.940 It was like drink.

00:20:01.220 You know, it was like alcoholism, Christianity and escapism. 1.00

00:20:03.640 The Jews don't have a trace of that in themselves. 0.63

00:20:05.480 They're actually brutally realistic to the point of almost like they need more romanticism, if you want to put it this way.

00:20:11.980 But failing to see those things as virtues is really selling yourself short is how could I put it?

00:20:17.880 Like us Europeans, I have a lot of friends now who are very distressed about what's going on with the migration projects.

00:20:24.560 And a lot of people complain about Muslims, for example, meet some of the boys.

00:20:28.000 And it's like, oh, they're hung over, you know, on a Sunday.

00:20:31.020 And I'm like, bro, you know, the Muslims are doing so well, perhaps because they don't drink.

00:20:36.080 They spend all their time working together with their family.

00:20:38.000 They collect to collectivize their money and buy up these churches.

00:20:40.860 They make huge families.

00:20:43.180 Maybe they're getting health welfare and all this, but it's like you're busy getting drunk, being a hedonist, not having any children.

00:20:48.680 It's like, you know, your virtues are as much as you don't like them.

00:20:52.380 It's not very impressive to see that these guys have all these these these this this discipline.

00:20:57.280 And the same with Judaism, you know, like I'm sure we all know there's many, many dodgy things going on. 1.00

00:21:03.060 Like Sam Bankman Freed is a very famous recent example of like basically running a giant scam, a Ponzi scheme.

00:21:08.740 But a lot of them are doing well are doing well because of these same virtues that we're just discussing here.

00:21:13.920 So, again, Nietzsche is just so brilliant at cutting through and seeing that and giving credit where its credits do.

00:21:18.440 And also being able to criticize as harshly as is needed, as you said, in Genealogy of Morals.

00:21:23.260 Yes.

00:21:24.200 Yeah.

00:21:24.400 So it's real quick.

00:21:25.500 It's Nebuchadnezzar that is one of the kings that that that Daniel is living among in the captivity.

00:21:33.820 But your point is remains, of course, Mark, I'll just throw it to you.

00:21:39.740 I mean, you can pick up on anything, of course, but isn't there there's a kind of fascinating trend among Jews of being dream interpreters or mind readers. 0.97

00:21:52.960 You can see this with a whole host of figures.

00:21:55.300 Daniel, Joseph.

00:21:56.600 You can see this with modern Jews of Freud is an interpreter of dreams. 0.99

00:22:02.100 That's a pretty good point.

00:22:03.520 Didn't never even taught it out.

00:22:04.660 Wow.

00:22:04.800 That's very interesting.

00:22:06.380 Yeah.

00:22:06.860 So there, you know, and Freud's a really interesting Jew. 0.99

00:22:10.500 He's he's obviously very bourgeois, highly assimilated in the Vienna of his time.

00:22:15.420 But then someone who's, you know, Jewish identity was was still very much there as well.

00:22:21.360 Something he was aware of.

00:22:22.400 But he was also a kind of atheist Jew as well.

00:22:24.620 I mean, he's he's a fascinating study.

00:22:26.800 But but, Mark, do you want to pick up on on any of these things?

00:22:30.220 Yeah.

00:22:30.320 I mean, so in these myths as well, I think there are both instances where king or host of the Jew is asking that his dream be interpreted.

00:22:42.360 But there's also cases as well where the Jew is is also giving telling him what his dream was.

00:22:48.580 So he needs to know what his dream is.

00:22:50.040 So the Jew is also giving him the dream. 0.86

00:22:52.500 But in the former case where he's interpreting the dream, there's there's also he's also in a way giving him a dream.

00:23:00.520 Right. Because it's also about the interpretation of the dream.

00:23:03.160 It's the understanding the dream, which itself represents a kind of prophecy.

00:23:07.340 And in these myths, it explicitly represents a prophecy.

00:23:11.300 It's it's what's going to occur.

00:23:13.040 It's what's going to happen.

00:23:14.300 The Jew is essentially taking a kind of matter or substance or creativity the Gentiles producing and interpreting it, telling him what it means and what it what it ordains, what it prophesizes for his future. 1.00

00:23:30.680 But this idea of prophecy, and this is something that we discuss in the book as well, is that art, myth, certainly religion represents prophecy.

00:23:38.320 The prophecy is not just, you know, miraculously telling us what's going to happen in the future.

00:23:43.600 It's creating the future because people believe the prophecy.

00:23:46.820 So on a subconscious level, you could say that people coordinate in a way kind of subconsciously to fulfill the prophecy or esotericists collaborate consciously to fulfill the prophecy or work toward the end of that prophecy.

00:24:00.420 So it becomes a it becomes a way of creating the future, not just predicting the future to prophesize is also to create the future.

00:24:08.540 And so I think that that's why it's that's why this motif is a kind of reoccurring motif.

00:24:14.340 To use the example of Freud, it also becomes a way of saying, for example, to the Gentile, really, what what is latent here are these kind of sexual desires, for example, or these unresolved relationships with parents and this sort of thing. 0.75

00:24:27.380 That's what you're feeling. That's the problem. And therefore, the problem could become, for example, sexual repression in a society is a problem.

00:24:36.280 The authoritarian personality type, right? These are all ideas coming out of the Frankfurt School is the problem that leads to, you know, is a consequence of sexual repression, leads to anti-Semitism in this sort of thing.

00:24:48.980 So in that case, it's it's a diagnosis of something that's not even necessarily a problem.

00:24:55.340 It's just a characteristic that could be a healthy characteristic that is being diagnosed as a problem, for example.

00:25:01.960 So it becomes a way to interpret the dream or to diagnose becomes a way to psychologically influence the subject.

00:25:08.740 Of course, that's obviously what's occurring with Daniel and Joseph.

00:25:11.840 Daniel is in a way demoralizing this Babylonian king through these kind of dark prophecies.

00:25:18.300 He's predicting a dark future and therefore he's he's demoralizing this king who fears for a dark future now and anticipates a dark future.

00:25:28.780 And through his demoralization fulfills this dark future that becomes a way of kind of psychologically poisoning the well, you could say.

00:25:35.960 So on Nietzsche, I guess I'll just comment briefly.

00:25:39.200 Sure.

00:25:39.420 There is a kind of general kind of coherency to his thinking, you know, even where he seems to kind of contradict earlier writings, for example.

00:25:47.120 We see a direction, a coherent direction where we see where he's headed.

00:25:52.000 Right. And we see him kind of working through problems, as it were.

00:25:54.860 But I think ambivalence does it does kind of characterize in a lot of ways.

00:25:59.140 And that doesn't make him less coherent on the question of Jews, certainly.

00:26:03.060 But I think it is a good characterization of his view of Jews, as he expressed in his writings.

00:26:10.660 For example, he has some he says some.

00:26:13.160 And again, part of this is the time that he's living in.

00:26:16.440 So there there there's a different criteria for what is considered anti-Semitic when Nietzsche is writing than what is considered anti-Semitic now, of course.

00:26:25.580 And we weigh that, of course, when when we're considering his view on Jews.

00:26:29.080 I would say that one kind of striking thing that he says is that and they seem like they're kind of contradictory to things, but they're not really.

00:26:36.340 On one hand, he says that Jews are the opposite of degenerates.

00:26:40.240 He has a quote where he says they're the opposite of degenerates. 0.96

00:26:42.980 In another passage, he'll say we find Jews at the head of every degenerate movement. 0.99

00:26:47.780 What emerges is Jews as a kind of drug dealer that doesn't sample their own supply, as it were. 1.00

00:26:52.960 Bacchus, right?

00:26:53.780 So this this is a kind of picture of Bacchus as well, is is this deity who is himself a dying and rising God who is in some sense immortal and indestructible, but is causing these kings to be torn apart by Mayonids, causing Orpheus to be torn apart by Mayonids. 0.51

00:27:11.380 There is contained within that you could argue there's a kind of anti-Semitism, but if it is true and he so he's just kind of describing phenomena, as it were.

00:27:20.840 And I think it is a kind of a description of phenomena.

00:27:23.760 But that's just to use one example.

00:27:25.440 I'll let you guys talk.

00:27:26.520 Yeah, I'd actually love to go back to the prophecy and question, because there's some very interesting things Mark brought up the whole idea of like prophecy shaping the future.

00:27:34.380 Because this comes down to, again, Nietzsche digging into Judaism, and he's just so brilliant at this. 1.00

00:27:39.040 He's he like comprehends the extreme European biases that we have.

00:27:44.440 For example, his famous passage where he compliments the Muslims.

00:27:47.120 And like I was saying earlier, he says, like, alcohol and Christianity, these things that puts the Europeans to sleep and obviously no proud patriotic German or any Westerner, really.

00:27:56.000 Like you talk to any right wing conservative American and they'd be disgusted at hearing this, you know, Muslims are based.

00:28:01.540 Well, what are you talking about? 1.00

00:28:02.560 And Nietzsche's there like, yeah, they're fucking based. 1.00

00:28:04.320 And you're a drunk, delusional, like, you know, religious person or whatever. 0.99

00:28:07.820 And this is he's really good at this.

00:28:10.320 And so, of course, he looks into Jews and I see him seeing many of these virtues.

00:28:14.380 And again, he's he's accurate.

00:28:16.240 He categorizes them as priestly.

00:28:17.680 And he points out that they're hardly respectable.

00:28:19.860 They're not they're not brave warriors.

00:28:21.780 They're not they've got many, many things that we would consider ugly and decrepit, but he's able to be morally relative here.

00:28:27.640 He's able to flip into their perspective and try to comprehend how how is this evolutionary organism capable of succeeding using its strategy?

00:28:35.780 It's looking at this weird ant farm or like this weird fish or something like this.

00:28:39.920 Why? Why is this working for this thing?

00:28:41.400 And I think what one of the keys is actually this priestly capacity for enormous thinking, the capacity for visionary thinking, big thinking, dream thinking, the mastery of the mind, if you so will.

00:28:54.920 So he says in Beyond Good and Evil, what does the European owe to the Jews?

00:28:59.220 Richard mentioned this earlier.

00:29:00.820 Nietzsche says many things, good and bad.

00:29:02.420 And above all, one thing in the nature, both of the best and of the worst, the grand style in morality, the fearfulness and majesty of infinite demands and infinite significant significations, basically infinite meanings.

00:29:14.400 The whole romanticism and sublinarity of moral question of this.

00:29:18.540 I can I'm so illiterate, man.

00:29:19.860 I'm such a drunk Irishman. 0.84

00:29:20.840 I can't even read this properly.

00:29:22.160 But as you can see, what he's when he says something like infinite demands, infinite meanings.

00:29:28.460 Why?

00:29:28.960 Why does he assign this to something like the Jews?

00:29:30.960 Because if you read through the Bible, there's this epicness to it.

00:29:34.520 He often talks about this with the Bible as a whole, is that it's got more profound characters, more more big moments, big dramas, great speeches than Greek mythology and Hindu mythology.

00:29:45.220 It puts them to shame.

00:29:46.360 It's got this world defining demands to which, you know, they're making these prophecies about the meaning of the earth, about the idea that this entire world is going to be destroyed in hellfire and God is going to create a kingdom in heaven.

00:29:57.560 It's enormous in their scope.

00:29:59.820 The prophecies are massively motivating.

00:30:02.480 You know, they're they're they're they're really captivating stories and comparatively.

00:30:07.280 And he talks about this again and beyond good and evil. 0.98

00:30:09.380 Us Europeans, us good Europeans, us northern Europeans, whatever you want to say, we're actually quite shit at this. 0.97

00:30:15.080 You know, we might be awesome at organizing Roman states or organizing massive militaries or colonizing the world, but we're actually a little bit weak on this front. 0.97

00:30:24.400 You know, we're a little bit kind of weirdly in the earth, in nature.

00:30:28.700 And we don't think about infinite significations and we don't we don't create religions of prophecy per se, although maybe there's a little bit of that.

00:30:36.540 It's just not it's not something that we're we're biased towards.

00:30:40.180 We don't max out on that stat, if you want to put it this way.

00:30:42.500 And so our pagan religions are like about cyclical universes and they're a little bit more like sprite like and fun.

00:30:49.160 And they don't call into the question these enormous, dramatic destinies and things like this.

00:30:54.320 This stuff is not as as much of a feature, I guess you could say.

00:30:57.820 And how do you translate this into modernity, I think, is a fascinating question, because, again, if you look at like many of the right wing Christians now and their relationship to this whole Israel thing, like a big motif is that Israel is trying to push forward the prophecies and create the Antichrist.

00:31:13.560 You know, they're talking about stuff like that. And you can see, again, like just the Jewish prophecy, the Jewish big thinking is just so captivating that it's bewitched half of America still. 0.97

00:31:23.500 Apparently, the base right wing America that's woken the Jews, if you so will, they're still bewitched by the incredible style of thinking that the Jews have about defining the nature of the world. 0.98

00:31:32.980 And I always try to relate this to another Nietzschean idea, which I again, this is a little bit my own concept, but I'd love to actually to throw it to you, guys, because you're so well read in them.

00:31:42.500 And his whole notion of like grand projects or he says grand style and morality or grand politics, if you so will.

00:31:49.100 And I try to simplify this into like thinking big the idea that like we need enormous goals, projects and destinies to justify our efforts and our will and our work in the world.

00:32:00.300 Like Elon Musk and his promise of taking people to Mars.

00:32:03.700 Actually, the promise is what took him to becoming one of the most wealthy people in the world.

00:32:08.520 The promise of electric cars, the purpose, the great destiny, the great project, the grand thing that's going to save the world, the tikam olam of the world of making electric cars, all these types of things.

00:32:19.020 This grandness, this big thinking is actually what captivates people.

00:32:23.880 And if you're able to possess the vision, these the visions of the purpose creating visions of a culture, you in some sense own the warriors like the Crusades is a grand project that was able to dictate what all the kings of Europe were going to do for about 400 years.

00:32:39.320 And I think what Nietzsche is pointing out is that these Jews are brilliant at being able to grab that part of the imagination that what the Europeans owe to the Jews, many things good about they owe them the they've taught us how to do this.

00:32:53.840 And weirdly, in the era of nihilism, I think Nietzsche is pointing out that like all we have to do is realize that this faculty to aim big, to think big, to prophesize grand visions is actually in our possession.

00:33:06.860 There is no morality around this. There's no biblical prophecy tethering us to some type of logic to this at all.

00:33:13.320 Like it's actually just the capacity within the human imagination to make this.

00:33:16.560 And oftentimes we restrict ourselves and limit our ability to think big.

00:33:20.320 And and we could actually learn a lot from them and say to ourselves, like, how could we create something like this for ourselves?

00:33:25.400 I think I really think the Ubermensch was Nietzsche's attempt at doing something like this and and his sort of personification of and he says this himself, Isaiah,

00:33:33.600 the prophet of the Europeans as opposed to the Jews and maybe setting us in for the first time ever formalizing that that instinct inside of ourselves, which we've in some sense disrespected.

00:33:43.880 So I'll leave it there. And I'd love to pass it on to see what you think.

00:33:46.360 Yeah, I mean, this is a very almost banal example of what you're saying.

00:33:52.120 But I remember seeing this study of Republican Democratic voters and Republicans were largely working class.

00:34:02.560 That is, they're they're taking a salary from another guy employing them or they're in the world of small business.

00:34:10.140 So they're they're an employee or they might own their own small business effectively.

00:34:16.020 And it is this it's it's a good life choice.

00:34:19.460 You learn some skills and you make money.

00:34:23.580 But you saw the other side of this where it's like the Democrats control government workers, obviously, but they they control professors.

00:34:33.600 They control teachers. They control, I'm sure, many in theology, including Christian theology.

00:34:40.260 They get ninety nine percent of every professional artist in the world is voting left wing.

00:34:49.400 And I think that's almost telling it all.

00:34:51.520 And I'm not saying that the Democrats are the Jews or something.

00:34:54.800 But what I am saying is that they they're an expression of that type of capacity, that capacity to interpret something in this change, your perspective, that capacity to read the law or maybe manipulate the law to kind of create a different outcome.

00:35:11.820 That capacity to create authority, that capacity to create beauty is just not present in a guy who owns his own mechanic shop for better and for, you know, it just is what it is.

00:35:24.100 There's nothing wrong with that person.

00:35:25.880 It's just the level of influence.

00:35:28.020 I mean, someone with two hundred thousand dollars of student loan debt who makes twenty thousand dollars a year interning at an art gallery is probably more influential.

00:35:39.880 It's probably going to have more of a say of the direction of a country than a guy who makes three hundred thousand dollars a year owning a successful car dealership.

00:35:51.080 That just is it just is what it is.

00:35:53.340 So it's like Daniel, even in captivity, Daniel's like inflecting.

00:35:58.340 He's he's maintaining Judaism and being loyal, but he's also kind of changing the world in in a really profound way.

00:36:07.300 I mean, I think it is inspiring in a way of like the the power of being an artist or being a philosopher, like the the ability.

00:36:17.480 And this is something that Nietzsche obviously endorsed.

00:36:20.580 I mean, it's like the world, you know, what what what makes the world go round?

00:36:24.600 Is it money?

00:36:25.800 OK, is it sex? 0.82

00:36:27.800 Sure.

00:36:28.460 I mean, those those those suggestions are wrong, of course, but it's ultimately values.

00:36:33.620 Yes. And that those make the world go round.

00:36:37.600 And if you can control the values, you are a master of the universe.

00:36:43.200 Yeah, this is like such an enormous.

00:36:45.800 This is actually something that I think people absolutely bungle with Nietzsche.

00:36:50.120 They don't seem to really get what he was saying here.

00:36:52.980 And I think it's so funny because maybe you have to get into like the very hardcore right wing extreme narratives about the Jews to really be able to see what he meant when he was talking about the Jews.

00:37:04.300 And I think the Jews are actually one of the keys for helping you understand exactly what he was coming at with.

00:37:09.500 It's exactly as you've said that the capacity for you to be like the Jews in ancient Judea and like just create a whole world vision and a whole value system. 0.86

00:37:19.320 The idea that that's not incredibly impressive is delusional.

00:37:23.380 You know, like that is one of the most incredible things that has happened in human history.

00:37:26.500 He said himself, it made human history interesting.

00:37:29.960 And this is what he's this is like the ultimate white pill.

00:37:32.880 You know, he's basically turning around to the Europeans and saying you get haggard by your the way we do philosophy in Europe is like this rigid.

00:37:42.060 Maybe like you could say slightly like the logic, you know, can't talking about the logical imperatives, morality.

00:37:46.980 And we get stuck in these frames of thinking that are just not generative or not fertile or not creative.

00:37:53.300 We get caught up with this sort of neurotic way of thinking or Christianity, which is essentially just turning off our philosophical, creative, visionary mind and allowing the Jews and the Old Testament and the frozen part of ancient history to dictate that part of our mind and what it does. 0.96

00:38:09.320 And he's saying that if you break free from those two cornerstones, which is essentially Plato and Christianity, you realize that the world is in some sense like a Buddhist samsaric flux and you can literally inject into it whatever will you so wish.

00:38:23.820 And of course, your vision is the version of that will, if you want.

00:38:27.240 And he's sort of like, I don't think any European has ever fucking done that, like on that level of like the theological scope of the destiny of the world. 0.68

00:38:33.940 He's never seen that. 0.93

00:38:35.320 And in some sense, he was trying to do that first.

00:38:37.580 Plato, I think.

00:38:38.460 Yeah, and someone like Nietzsche in his limited way, because Nietzsche was limited due to his impoverished state and fairly short life and etc.

00:38:50.660 And maybe a little bit to the kind of casual slapdash quality of life.

00:38:56.200 I mean, that is a compliment, actually, of his writing.

00:38:58.260 It's very accessible, but it's kind of deeply insightful, but not, you know, as thoroughgoing.

00:39:04.580 But yeah, I mean, I definitely think Plato is a figure like this.

00:39:09.780 I mean, he offers a just world shattering or world directing type of philosophy where it is fair to say that all philosophy is just footnotes on this man.

00:39:22.100 And I think that Jesus Christ is also a similar figure.

00:39:27.120 Martin Luther, I think, is also a similar figure.

00:39:29.940 And Napoleon.

00:39:30.620 But yeah, it's really about changing values, which is the thing.

00:39:36.560 And I have one other point.

00:39:37.580 But if you want to respond to that, you you can.

00:39:39.700 I've kind of a new another little direction.

00:39:42.280 I want to take.

00:39:43.580 Well, there's so much to say to this, because, like, as I said, I was originally bringing this up with in reference to Mark talking about prophecy and like making a very great point about this is that this capacity to prophesize, to set your own agenda.

00:39:56.160 I guess you could put it this way and and use the visionary part of your mind to direct people's consciousness like it is an incredibly powerful tool.

00:40:05.100 And like even this is very kind of like casual neo pagan versus Christianity.

00:40:11.060 But again, you look at how Christianity has just such an emotional grip on people like it's prophecies. 0.86

00:40:18.240 I've spoken to lots of Christians and actually get on really well with a lot of them.

00:40:21.660 But it's so fascinating to me to see how they decide Christianity is true.

00:40:26.880 The vast majority will say something like, oh, well, I read the Bible and the Bible predicts all these prophecies and Jesus fulfills them.

00:40:34.780 And therefore, that is the truth.

00:40:36.500 That is reality.

00:40:37.380 That is exactly what happened.

00:40:38.600 And it's like these these people will make decisions about the entire shape, nature of the world and all sorts of consequential decisions that come after that, all based on the essentially like, you know, the stories in the Bible, the stories in the Jewish Torah, if you so will, the promise of prophecies, the inherent internal logic of something like this.

00:40:57.540 And I'm not saying that Europeans should set up a Bible part two or something like this, the space Bible or something.

00:41:02.800 But I'm more pointing out that that capacity, that part of the human like Tolkien sits down and makes Lord of the Rings using that fantasizing mind, whereas the Jews all those years ago use that same fantasizing mind. 0.90

00:41:15.240 But they just asserted that this is reality.

00:41:16.800 And it's like, it's that capacity that we have where we write our novels and we make Lord of the Rings and we write fiction and all that.

00:41:23.140 Is it actually something that we could possess and we could utilize and we could push in a, as Nietzsche said, this worldly reality, not a romantic fantasy, not caught up with some other promise of some different direction, but actually like somehow inject that capacity that the Jews possess so well into this world. 0.84

00:41:40.240 And would it lead to some type of answer, I guess, a solution, some type of vision, would it, would it be effective, you know?

00:41:47.360 And I think that's a very interesting question.

00:41:49.240 We can and we have.

00:41:50.340 I mean, if you look at Rome, for example, that would be a kind of imperfect example of what you're describing.

00:41:55.300 Every example, I guess, would be imperfect, certainly.

00:41:57.640 But yeah, I mean, that's the sort of myth makers in Rome essentially accomplished what you're describing.

00:42:02.600 I mean, they created a world, a reality, dreams, paradigms for people to follow, types to emulate, gods to emulate and so forth.

00:42:11.280 So really quick.

00:42:12.040 I mean, we certainly have that capacity without question.

00:42:15.880 But I think that that is something that that is coming in the future.

00:42:18.860 I mean, REM theory is especially concerned with what you're describing.

00:42:22.460 Just really quick on that.

00:42:23.320 And there's a very fascinating.

00:42:25.060 I think I brought up Maurice Samuel last time we were speaking about sports and later in that same book.

00:42:29.700 So he's like, you Gentiles, he's a Jew talking to the Gentiles. 0.99

00:42:32.160 And he says, like, he puts out all these fascinating things about you love sports. 1.00

00:42:35.860 We think it's all bullshit. 0.99

00:42:36.900 Like, it's he talks about frat houses and stuff. 1.00

00:42:39.500 And it's all very funny.

00:42:40.520 You Gentiles. 1.00

00:42:41.520 It's kind of funny.

00:42:42.740 When did he write that?

00:42:44.260 He wrote it in like the 1920s.

00:42:45.780 He was an American Jew.

00:42:46.760 And it's great.

00:42:47.780 It's actually such a great read because he's just like very frank about all this.

00:42:50.980 And like he points out like frat houses and going in and doing the initiations and frat houses and how like the Jews go into that. 1.00

00:42:57.440 And just like, what the fuck are these idiots doing? 1.00

00:42:58.920 You know, it is very funny from an outside perspective, because I remember going through that and getting like grills. 1.00

00:43:04.160 And, you know, you're going, you allow yourself to get beat up and all this.

00:43:07.600 And you're like, what is what is this stuff?

00:43:09.420 Another one he talks about is the contrast between world visions, like the Welton sound between the two and how the Jews have the Tikam Olam. 0.97

00:43:17.500 The world needs to be fixed.

00:43:19.820 Nature needs to be overcome and reshaped into the kingdom of God.

00:43:22.440 And he points out how the Aryan one is Plato's Republic, the Roman Republic. 0.92

00:43:28.320 Our God is a God who fixes reality and he's a super father.

00:43:32.880 Your gods are a republic of like boisterous frat boys that play around and create this like kingdom on earth.

00:43:39.680 They're very earthly.

00:43:40.320 And exactly as Mark's saying, like he actually sort of sees that archetype, too, which I find quite cool.

00:43:45.280 I'll read this quote, if you like.

00:43:47.280 Rome felt that the Jews were something contrary to nature itself, something something like its monstrous polar opposite. 0.98

00:43:55.140 In Rome, the Jew was considered guilty of hatred against the entire human race.

00:43:58.940 And that view was correct to the extent we are right to link the health and the future of the human race to the unconditional rule of aristocratic values, the Roman values.

00:44:09.860 So, I mean, for all those people that think that Nietzsche went soft on the Jews, I mean, he says some stuff. 0.79

00:44:16.160 It's from even a sort of basic bitch anti-semi perspective, I suppose. 1.00

00:44:23.400 Yeah, just I know Richard did want to say something, but just the final point on that, which I think is very fascinating again about Nietzsche is that I'm talking about this idea of him pointing out this capacity for the Jews to prophesize and set the agenda of world visions and paint the biggest pictures, which actually are the most crucial parts of a culture, because they the visions, the dreams, the imagination, the big thinking leads to the decision making and the decision making leads to action.

00:44:49.880 So all the warriors, all the kings are subservient to the vision creators of like the priests and maybe like certain kings might have that capacity, like Napoleon, whatever.

00:44:58.580 And I think this is he's really good at on the he's almost like a priest who confronts the priestly type, the problem of the priestly type.

00:45:06.520 Nietzsche is able to not just complain about the Jews and say, oh, blah, blah, blah, whatever.

00:45:10.980 He's able to say this is why their vision, their prophecies are wrong with the savage logic that he has.

00:45:18.380 And he doesn't just do it in a reactionary sense.

00:45:20.600 He crafts a whole new alternate perspective, the worldly naturalistic and alternate alternate perspective that we probably haven't heard for about 2000 years by the time that he was writing.

00:45:31.040 You know, it's it's it's quite amazing when you think about it.

00:45:33.180 And so he he like broke the Matrix spell, Andrew Tate here being like he broke out of the Matrix type thing.

00:45:37.960 And he saw that this type of thinking had become a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy, a destiny.

00:45:43.460 And there was no reason for us to be trapped at that.

00:45:46.300 We could actually like really break out of that and think think in different directions.

00:45:49.560 And I think that is another core to getting what he was he was poking at.

00:45:53.780 One one more mark, though, on that quote, because this is something that is covered in the book.

00:45:59.420 So this idea and I think it's this is a kind of discovery we make in the book.

00:46:03.580 The idea that Jews are misanthropic or guilty of hatred against the entire race.

00:46:09.040 I mean, this is this is an idea that develops in Greece, if not earlier, of course.

00:46:13.180 But there's this idea, you know, you have these sort of Greek writers accusing Jews of basically hating mankind.

00:46:18.980 Right. The Hebrew Bible.

00:46:20.420 And this is the argument we make in the book, reveals that there's a kind of conscious understanding that they do, in fact, hate mankind.

00:46:29.160 And I think that that especially emerges with the figure of Adam, who we can equate with Edom.

00:46:35.860 Etymologically, the words can be pronounced the same.

00:46:38.260 Adam can be pronounced as Edom and so forth.

00:46:40.740 They both have the same meaning, right, to be read in this in this sort of thing.

00:46:45.040 So they have the same etymology in both are related to Esau.

00:46:49.100 Edom, especially, is related directly to Esau.

00:46:52.500 So the Arian, effectively. 0.82

00:46:54.980 But in, of course, Edom becomes the enemy in Hebrew Bible.

00:46:59.320 The Edomites are a kind of primary enemy in the Hebrew Bible.

00:47:04.240 The Amalekites, for example, are a descendant of the Edomites, if I'm remembering correctly.

00:47:09.440 They're an Edomite tribe.

00:47:10.840 And that's a kind of more famous, you know, at least in the DR, people would recognize that name more quickly.

00:47:17.260 There emerges this idea that they're kind of at war with the human race.

00:47:20.860 That's what they're kind of indicating symbolically in their myth.

00:47:23.760 When the Greeks are accusing them of this misanthropy, it does seem that kind of that their myth makers are esoterically aware of this misanthropy.

00:47:31.840 And, you know, for it, essentially, you know, they understand Adam or Edom as their enemy.

00:47:38.260 That's the argument that we put forth in the book.

00:47:40.700 So it's a kind of remarkable.

00:47:42.540 I mean, this is kind of one of the things that's remarkable about Jem or a kind of esoteric reading of the Hebrew Bible,

00:47:48.220 provided you do a kind of close and accurate or correct reading to the extent that you're able to,

00:47:54.160 is that it reveals things.

00:47:55.820 Certainly, I wouldn't accuse, you know, the common Jew of being actively misanthropic.

00:48:01.400 I think that they don't consider themselves to be misanthropic, of course.

00:48:04.940 I think that this understanding is an esoteric understanding that comes from artists and scribes,

00:48:10.720 whether Hollywood filmmakers or the writers of the Hebrew Bible, that, yeah, they're kind of at war with the human race. 0.64

00:48:16.640 But Adam, but it's because Adam has a kind of particular significance.

00:48:19.720 He's related to Esau.

00:48:21.500 He is Arian, effectively. 0.95

00:48:23.200 He's the ruddy faced, you know, to be red, be ruddy faced.

00:48:27.560 So, you know, in other words, to be fair in complexion and capable of blushing and this sort of thing.

00:48:33.600 But in any case, that's just one thing, a kind of fascinating thing that I wanted to remark on is that I think that,

00:48:40.300 again, I don't think the common Sussman Jew thinks of themselves as against mankind or anything like that.

00:48:45.940 But I think that there is that esoteric message in the Hebrew Bible itself is that the Hebrew Bible is anti-mankind, effectively.

00:48:54.940 I've been thinking about this of criticisms of Zionism, and I've been thinking about what a Nietzschean criticism of Zionism might be.

00:49:06.300 So the criticisms of Zionism that you hear now are very immediate of, you know, we're seeing death and destruction, the brutalization of children and women in Gaza.

00:49:20.840 I mean, it is completely awful. 0.94

00:49:23.340 If you're a right winger, you might get at some hypocrisy of Jews. 0.98

00:49:27.540 They're supporting left-wing causes, yet they want nationalism for themselves and Israel, etc.

00:49:33.480 You could even go back a little bit further and say that this state, however well-intentioned, was based on a debacle, the Nakba, the ethnic, an initial ethnic cleansing, kind of original sin. 0.91

00:49:47.720 And, you know, I think all of those criticisms carry water, of course, and should be considered.

00:49:53.660 But I'm not sure those are the criticisms that someone like Nietzsche would make.

00:50:00.200 First off, America and almost every country is based on some sort of brutality.

00:50:05.560 You might have to go back 75 years, 200 years, 1,000 years, but you'll find it.

00:50:13.300 And there always was some original sin to the foundation of any order.

00:50:18.820 But I think in this funny way, I think Nietzsche would criticize Zionists for not being Jewish enough, so to speak. 0.60

00:50:29.700 So it's not that they are hyper-Jewish, etc., it's that they're not Jewish enough. 0.98

00:50:37.420 And this is how I think he would make this criticism, in the sense that Herzl was arising as an intellectual in this period of nationalism.

00:50:50.940 One that had been going on really since the Napoleonic time, particularly in Germany, as it was theorized.

00:50:59.220 One that would reach its fruits in the 20th century with the establishment of all these democratic nation states after the First World War.

00:51:09.500 And even something like the United Nations, which presupposes a global array of nation states that can communicate in a parliamentary manner.

00:51:21.580 It's a kind of nation state of nation states, if you will.

00:51:24.480 But that's never been how the Jews have succeeded. 0.98

00:51:29.680 Obviously, they were promised something.

00:51:32.240 Abraham was promised Canaan by Yahweh. 0.75

00:51:35.840 But the Bible is full of examples of them falling away from Yahweh, losing the land and squandering their inheritance, etc.

00:51:48.280 If you look at an ancient Jew like Daniel, obviously he's a literary figure, but we'll suggest there's some sort of historicity there.

00:51:55.100 Or a modern Jew like Sigmund Freud, etc. 0.92

00:52:01.540 They've succeeded and they've been deeply influential in the world precisely because they haven't engaged in blood and soil nationalism.

00:52:10.940 That they haven't gone the way of Herzl.

00:52:13.660 They've gone the way of embracing and fulfilling a diasporic role in the world.

00:52:21.000 That they all, you know, it's kind of like tomorrow in Jerusalem or something was a toast there.

00:52:27.160 It's not fulfilling that ultimate promise, leaving it out there as a sort of dream and living among others and being a kind of dream interpreter or middleman or intellectual or priest within another society, within a host population.

00:52:47.040 Now, you can maybe dislike that model inherently if you are yourself a blood and soil nationalist to come out or something.

00:52:57.060 Nietzsche obviously had a more complicated view of it.

00:52:59.260 But at the very least, that seems to be how Jews succeed the most. 1.00

00:53:05.060 And this attempt to join the nation states as we're independent, we're blood and soil, this is just about us, get away, we're going to just drive the Arabs out, drive them across the Jordan, and we'll just take this land. 1.00

00:53:22.440 We're going to be farmers and so on.

00:53:24.920 And isn't there something just inherently un-Jewish about these types of motivations? 0.97

00:53:31.320 And isn't it a kind of betrayal of a Jewish spirit and a way of being, a way of existing and managing the storms of the world that actually has been extremely successful for Jews? 0.97

00:53:50.800 Despite the pogroms here and there, despite anti-Semitism here and there, it always crops up, they've ultimately survived as a coherent people, maybe not in spite of their diasporic quality, but because of their diasporic quality.

00:54:06.480 The notion of Zionism as a, we're a blood and soil nation state, we're an ethnic group or a race, it's in a way LARPing as being a Gentile or a Goyim.

00:54:17.300 And that is going to bring them to destruction.

00:54:19.420 The destruction of the temple in 70 AD, I think some people have some romantic fantasies about it.

00:54:26.400 The Romans came in and almost like killed them all because they were anti-Semitic or something.

00:54:31.860 No, there were multiple rebels who wanted independence from Herod, from Rome, etc.

00:54:40.260 They were gauging in all of this internecine warfare and fighting.

00:54:44.040 And maybe the lesson of the destruction of the second temple is you're not going to be a nation state.

00:54:50.680 You're not going to be independent.

00:54:52.320 Your role in life is to kind of live in the shadows, as it were, to be diasporic, to be among others and gain power that way. 0.92

00:55:07.660 Isn't that kind of the message of these Bibles?

00:55:11.360 It's not about blood and soil.

00:55:13.080 It's about living in between.

00:55:15.780 Yeah, I think that's very accurate.

00:55:17.680 And like, it is weird because it's, you know, you're dealing with prophecy and you're dealing with this.

00:55:22.600 And I can obviously see how somebody could read the Bible and be like, oh, the promised land.

00:55:26.340 Well, we should get that back, shouldn't we?

00:55:28.440 And there's Herzl sort of has a little bit of this.

00:55:30.440 But actually, the facts of Herzl is that Herzl was basically a-religious. 0.63

00:55:34.080 He was basically like...

RadixJournal - November 23, 2023

Nietzsche on the Jews

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript