Holy Hohenstaufen Batman! Frederick II (Nietzsche, cont).

Some dweebs in blogland still catch Nietzsche-fever on occasion. Usually they are failed engineer types, wannabe Jack Parsons, OR, just as pernicious, they are lapsed marxists--suburban Che Guevaras who have lost their faith in La Gente, and turn to Nietzsche for some type of anti-democratic guidance, or something. The Genealogy of Morals is one of the favorite texts (though other texts, even "Thus Spake Zarathustra" however bizarre (Kahil Gibran meets Himmler??) offer a rawer Nietzsche--by the time of his "Antichrist," Nietzsche has his howitzers blazing (and it's sort of sublime--as sublime as like a gyrfalcon attacking a dove).

Nietzsche admired the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II, and called him "the FIRST of Europeans according to my taste, the Hohenstaufen, Frederick the Second". Who the F izz that, inquiring minds want to know--at least a few might. (Here's the Wiki.). There are, we suggest, various curious reasons for Nietzsche's fondness for Fred II. One, he was a Northerner who had moved south. He also battled against the Pope and papal states. AS the Wiki makes clear, Fred. II also had allies among the Muslims--a rather radical (and heretical) policy at the time. Fred. II. supposedly was a bit of a freethinker, skilled in numerous languages, ladies' man, a patron of scientists of the time, and artists--though also a Crusader. He was, circa 1200, a very powerful man. Dante put him in a rather nasty section of the Inferno--near Dis-- with other heretics (though not nearly as nasty as Mohammed's abode). He then represents a type of aggressive Renaissance man for Nietzsche, it would seem--one not bound to ecclesiastical tradition. Politically, Fred. II probably represented a German ruler who could (and did) conquer southern Europe and establish a German, or at least teutonic presence in the Mediterranean.



Die Will Zur Macht!!!

Nietzsche's fondness for Fred. II also indicates his relationship to, shall we say "military totalitarianism". Some might term it fascism, though Nietzsche seems more akin in his political strategies to prussian Junkers, who were monarchist, and mostly evangelical (starting at least with the Hohenzollern, a later development from the Hohenstaufen. The Hohenzollern of course often ruled over brutal, militaristic regimes, as was that of the crusader and proto-prussian Fred II, who had muslim mercenaries in his army). Regardless if Hohenzollern or outright fascist, Nietzsche's certainly supportive of the prussian militarism (and those who read the Antichrist might have note his near-Ode to the prussian army).

Nietzsche's praise of Alcibiades in TGOM--a despotic greek general, whose reckless campaigns destroyed Athens--- also provides evidence of Nietzsche's political thinking, as Bertrand Russell well knew (and Plato had criticized military oligarchies, so, like maybe McX can connect the dots). Of course Russell was British, and a lil' guy--Untermensch-- so probably suspect according to Nietzschean macho-men, regardless of his mastery of mathematical logic, metaphysics, modern science, history, etc.