Rome vs Israel (Nietzsche, continued)


Following the current PC fashion, cafe-Nietzscheans insist that Nietzsche was not anti-semitic. This is not entirely accurate. Nietzsche may have balked at the extreme right of Bismarck's era (unlike Wagner, who did sign on---one hopes both FN and RW would have objected to a Himmler sort of final solution, but that is not entirely clear), yet anti-semitic passages can be found a plenty in Nietzsche's writing. This section from "The Genealogy of Morals" indicates quite clearly that Nietzsche was not only attacking Christianity but the Jews as well, "the priestly nation of ressentiment par excellence":

"""How, on the other hand, did the Jews feel about Rome? A thousand signs tell us; but it suffices to recall the Apocalypse of John, the most wanton of all literary outbursts that vengefulness has on its conscience. (One should not underestimate the profound consistency of the Christian instinct when it signed this book of hate with the name of the disciple of love, the same disciple to whom it attributed that amorous-enthusiastic Gospel: there is a piece of truth in this, however much literary counterfeiting might have been required to provide it.) For the Romans were the strong and noble, and nobody stronger and nobler has yet existed on earth or even been dreamed of: every remnant of them, every inscription gives delight, if only one divines what it was that was there at work. The Jews, on the contrary, were the priestly nation of ressentiment par excellence, in whom there dwelt an unequalled popular-moral genius: one only has to compare similarly gifted nations—the Chinese or the Germans, for instance—with the Jews, to sense which is of the first and which of the fifth rank. [4]

Which of them has won for the present, Rome or Judea? There can be no doubt: consider to whom one bows down in Rome itself today, as if they were the epitome of all the highest values [5]—and not only in Rome but over almost half the earth, everywhere that man has become tame or desires to become tame: three Jews, as is known, and one Jewess (Jesus of Nazareth, the fisherman Peter, the rug weaver Paul, and the mother of the aforementioned Jesus, named Mary). This is very remarkable: Rome has been defeated beyond all doubt. [6]

There was, to be sure, in the Renaissance an uncanny and glittering reawakening of the classical ideal, of the noble mode of evaluating all things; Rome itself, oppressed by the new superimposed Judaized Rome that presented the aspect of an ecumenical synagogue and was called the "church," stirred like one awakened from seeming death: but Judea immediately triumphed again, thanks to that thoroughly plebeian (German and English) ressentiment movement called the Reformation, and to that which was bound to arise from it, the restoration of the church—the restoration too of the ancient sepulchral repose of classical Rome.[7]. . ."""

Really one tires of the grand generalizations. Notwithstanding the typical bombast, we should note the attack on the Book of Revelation. That's the somewhat rational side of Nietzsche creeping out (a rarity). Jefferson, hardly the machiavellian that Nietzsche was, considered the Book of Rev. "merely the ravings of a maniac." (both were most likely fond of Voltaire's writings)

One might question whether identifying the Book of Rev. with jewish tradition is correct: for one, some biblical scholars suggest that the Revelator was a Roman, or at least converted gentile of some sort. Who cares, really. AS both Nietzsche and Jefferson realized, the Book of Rev. reveals the madness of Scripture as a whole (though that's not to yawp, Hitchens style, that it's all BS. The Beatitudes will do for beat poesy--so will the book of Psalms. FN might have agreed). For Nietzsche the madness speaks of Judea, and the ressentiment of the jewish and then jew-Christian scribes. One can hardly fail to term that a type of anti-semitism, and anti-zionism--not quite Himmler, but a profound dislike for judeo-christian tradition and culture (and we might also recall that roman historians such as Tacitus took Xtians to be a jewish sect). That hardly implies that one should toss TGOM or Nietzsche as a whole. That is the raw honest power, the wolf-sublimity of Nietzsche that must be acknowledged, however much it offends the regs at Cafe-Gauche.

And there's another somewhat rational point (one that TJ himself might respect). Nietzsche indicates the essential paradox (even dangerous paradox) of Scripture, and of the New Testament, that supposed Gospel of Luv: as Nietzsche says, "one should not underestimate the profound consistency of the Christian instinct when it signed this book of hate with the name of the disciple of love, the same disciple to whom it attributed that amorous-enthusiastic Gospel." Das stimmt! That same hysteria and irrational faith characteristic of the Revelator (that both Nietzsche and Jefferson attack) exists today, mainly in the protestant churches, whether that of a Hagee (McCain's pastor-general) or Wright (Obama's pastor-panderer (at least until a few weeks ago).