Nietzsche and the Post-War Left

[Anonymous No.14199768]

So how is it possible that French postmodernists and their academic left offspring were able to appropiate Nietzsche and Heidegger- one whos Will to Power and post-ethics was incredibly influential to Nazism in clear ways, and the other who literally was one- while having a pathological opposition to and diminutive view of Fascism?
Its actually pretty pathetic how they could have such conceitful pride in critiquing Truth and social values, or making Power the meaning of discourse and society, when its obvious that the fully manifested ends and original precursors of this is Fascim?
And how can they posture as edgy post-moral Nihlists of Power while having deeply humanitarian leftist convictions and appropriating implictly fascist thinkers? Is it cowardice or cope?

[Anonymous No.14199778]

>>14199768
Nietzsche was popular with all edgelords since day one not "post-war"

[Anonymous No.14199783]

>>14199768
French postmodernism is essentially crypto-fascism and has been appropriated and integrated by the modern right, so it's alright.

[Anonymous No.14199792]

>>14199768
>how is it possible that French postmodernists and their academic left offspring were able to appropiate Nietzsche and Heidegger
Read their books and you'll know it

[Anonymous No.14199795]

THIS BAIT THREAD IS SHIT

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POST SMALL PUTIN AND REPEAT AFTER ME

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OP OP

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[Anonymous No.14199803]

THIS BAIT IS SHIT

OP OP

GO SUCK A DICK

[Anonymous No.14199813]

>>14199803
>>14199795
What does Putin have to do with contemporary leftists butchering French post-war crypto-fascists?

[Anonymous No.14199815]

>>14199778
He went through a clear rehabilitation by french post war thinkers around 62 with Foucault and Delueze, mainly because he actually did prefigures postmodernism, but then that means the modern right wing tradition isnt so stupid and reactive after all, and with heidegger and sartre actually creates the main currents of continental and postwar french philosophy

[Anonymous No.14199818]

The more you learn about the French the more you learn they were determined by fashion and opportunism. I have a hunch they all picked up on Nietzsche because Klossowski was shilling him right around 1965-1970 and Klossowski was the bete noire archetype they all wanted to imitate, just like how they all claimed to be "Hegelians, tragically struggling with Hegel!!!!" right after Kojeve (an actual philosopher, which is why he didn't associate with them much but preferred to associate with Germans and German Jews) was shilling Hegel. Same way that they also claimed to be "breaking with Husserl and Heidegger" right after Merleau-Ponty and Ricoeur (honorary non-Frenchmen because they were a real philosophers; Ricoeur famously fled the French pomo scene and despised it, preferring to work with Germans) were actually meaningfully grappling with Husserl in the Husserl archives.

Everything French comes down to this. There are two layers: first, they copy their philosophy from the Germans by sifting whatever has risen to the top of German philosophy in the last generation. In ca. 1960 France, this was phenomenology and historicism. Then they read whoever seems trendy and avant garde, whoever has "stage effect" and comes across like a mystic sage, like a Klossowski, a Bataille, or a Kojeve. They write basic German philosophy, sprinkle it with some French sloppiness and sensualism that makes it both slightly obscure and considerably less incisive than the German original, and then they take whatever the Kojeve guy seemed to be talking about, like Hegel or Nietzsche, and pretend that they were always already in the know about that thing and in agreement with the Kojeve guy about how that thing is really important.

Because of their fundamental sloppiness they end up as boring LARPing neoliberals who at best are regurgitating commonplaces from 1930s German philosophers like Heidegger and Jaspers, with dashes of French sensualism and dystopian social engineering like "maybe if we were all carefree fags the world would fix itself?" While they're doing this, they distract from the fact that they are brutally repressing their former colonial empire and that their government is allying itself with pro-American juntas in the third world. The French are the ultimate posers.

[Anonymous No.14199820]

You're asking how French intellectuals reconciled Nietzsche with Leftist/post-Left politics and yet you already have your mind made up that Nietzsche is inherently aligned with fascism, that the critique of truth and power inherently culminates in fascism, and that the Left-Nietzschean critique is nothing more than a "pathological opposition to" Fascism.

Why even make the thread? You ask the question and then immediately retract it in your assumptions like you've made up your mind already. I am certain you have not read Foucault or Derrida or Deleuze or else you wouldn't be asking such stupid questions, but you don't want this explained either.

You are a brainlet poisoned by Us vs Them ideology and you will never be anything more than a pseud and a useful idiot to more powerful men.

[Anonymous No.14199826]

>>14199795
>>14199803
Lmao i guess you fall into their same camp of cope and cognitive dissonance

[Anonymous No.14199830]

Wow no one here reads theory...or anything. What a surprise.

[Anonymous No.14199833]

>>14199820
>Nietzsche is inherently aligned with fascism, that the critique of truth and power inherently culminates in fascism
Nietzsche was an aesthetic elitist not Nationalist, im saying the post-ethical Will to Power is the most fundamnetally Fascist idea possible and was treated as such

[Anonymous No.14199836]

>>14199830
your suicide clock is counting down tranny

what will life be like as a 35 year old twitter tranny e-personality? how about at 40, 45, 50? shouldn't you set up some kind of back-up plan for when you get tired of being a discord tranny as your primary identity?

[Anonymous No.14199843]

>Nietzsche
>influential to Nazism

[Anonymous No.14199846]

>>14199820
>>14199830
Literally nothing of substance here, try and make a point, ive made about four and have read Deleuzes and Focaults book and essay on nietzsche

[Anonymous No.14199865]

>>14199843
>they weren't
Embarassing desu
Even in the Anglophone narrative Nazis were famous for "misconstruing" him, there was an objective and conscious use of him, despite the later anti-nationalism and anti-anti-semitism

[Anonymous No.14199885]

>>14199820
>brainlet poisoned by Us vs Them ideology
Implying mutual self-consciousness and social exclusion wasnt the nadir of postwar french hegelianism, but right im the one who doesnt read theory lmao

[Anonymous No.14199924]

>>14199768
In many ways, the French postmodernists reversed his philosophy and discarded his final conclusions, considering Nietzsche is as anti-"left or right dichotomy" and anti-"nihilism as a matter-of-fact of the human condition" as you can get. They were only able to appropriate Nietzsche because they had the political and cultural upper hand after the war.

[Anonymous No.14199938]

>>14199820
>>14199830
Literally nothing of substance here, try and make a point, thats what "making up your mind" means, im assuming if you disagree you have as well which is the point of discussion

[Anonymous No.14199952]

>>14199833
>the post-ethical Will to Power is the most fundamnetally Fascist idea possible
Only if we already presuppose fascism as some kind of utopia, which is completely aphilosophical and abstract as a fundamental position.

The post-left argue from the inverse perspective, that the will to power is better exercised - at least by the proletarian masses - through emancipatory and anti-elitist politics. Neither Deleuze nor Foucault are perplexed by those in positions of power seizing on fascist doctrine to empower themselves.

Foucault is primarily a critic of political limits. He has been criticizes for having no positive theory and called from time to time a crypto-fascist for it. Foucault is interested in the way modern political institutions oppress the will to power of individuals, schools, hospitals, prisons, etc. Foucault's theories are particularly interested in the expansion of the individual in societies which afford a superficial power to define oneself and keep beauraucratic tabs on everybody - the proliferation of the self becomes a proliferation of surveillance and disciplinary means under central power. Foucault in his debate with Chomsky argues that revolution is an eternal struggle of power, that the proletariat risen to positions of power would revert to the same oppression as the bourgeoise held over them - a nihilism which Chomsky's own utopian anarchism cannot stand and leads him to evaluate Foucault as "the most amoral man" he'd ever met. Foucault is not the "humanitarian" you believe him to be. He is a post-ethical theorist of power working for the largest number of individuals.

In Deleuze antifascism is primarily a combatting of dialectical reduction, molarization, centralization, and the limiting of human potentials. As an accelerationist anticapitalist Deleuze sees fascism as a paranoid falling back on the strength of unity but a deceleration, a force of antiproduction against the forging of new experiments and new constructs in human evolution.

[Anonymous No.14199988]

>>14199952
What if school was designed as a way to punish the descendents of civilizations who have persecuted Jews?

Would that not be the worst thing ever? Wouldn't that make school something to destroy?

[Anonymous No.14200016]

>>14199988
Sure. The thrust of your paranoid anti-semitism is not necessarily at odds with post-left theory so much as it is at odds with the shared image of life. If you believe such a project is immanent to your survival I think Deleuze would encourage your seizing upon it whilst himself playing the role of opposition. We cannot chose who or what we are you see, and we all have roles to play in the social field's bigger picture and it would be best for all of us if all sides make themselves known and play the field earnestly.

[Anonymous No.14200018]

>>14199952
>Only if we already presuppose fascism as some kind of utopia
Im sorry what? I dont see how positing inherently exploitative systems of Power is utopian, if anything this thinking is directly anti-utopian, and thus anti-communist egaltarian and deeply a-liberal reflection of social nature.
The point where Fascism fully works off this is recognizing that, and then seizing the Power through manifesting the intangible Will of an in-group in order to upturn social values and systems to impose the Will and ends of the Vanguard
Which is to say, its the Politics of full systematic amoral Power, can you see how this is justified and even implied by this thinking now?

[Anonymous No.14200030]

>>14199768
>that the fully manifested ends and original precursors of this is Fascim?
Fascism also had left roots in Mussolini who took in more elitist influences like Nietzsche and Paretto. So it circled back, in a way.

It's hard to conciliate many aspects of Neetch with fascism as it occured, though:

-Foremost, there was the anti-semitism and german nationalism in Germany which he was outspoken against.

-Then was the strict moral and policing with a traditionalist bent in every country broadly considered fascist from Germany, through Italy, to Portugal and Spain, which clashes with his call for the strong to make values for themselves.

-His sponsoring of hybridization of races/cultures and internationalization of the elites clashes with the ethno-state and nation-state paradigms, and puts him closer to pre-Westphalian aristocracism or current neoliberalism.

[Anonymous No.14200092]

>>14200018
I see. Not utopian then, but ideally preferential for You. For many, be they weak, poorly connected, or just unlucky, fascism would not be advantageous to the exercise of one's will to power. Unless you are implying a kind of reverent submission to the will to power and the differential of power itself, a post-individual affirmation of the will to power which is itself a self-limiting ideology but an interesting position of metaphysical allegiance to take.

Even then however the distinction still to be made is on what grounds one wants this differential of wills to take place. If it is on asymmetrical grounds (the many/molar conquering the molecular and few) then this allegiance is profoundly anti-Nietzschean (the ressentment of the few, the domination of greater forces by the limiting powers of collected lesser forces) and ultimately a protest in ideology only, a laissez-faire fatalism that says let the cards fall where Nature lets them and ends up back here at the present in modern market capitalism.

If instead you seek to elevate the differential to a place of aristocratic nobility and protect the strong from the limiting of the weak then I think you have come through to rejoin both Nietzsche and the post-Left and in your fascism are only disagreeing politically on terms of immanence/opportunism (as you would have it) or ideological self-repression (as I would).

[Anonymous No.14200148]

>>14200018
>The point where Fascism fully works off this is recognizing that, and then seizing the Power through manifesting the intangible Will of an in-group in order to upturn social values and systems to impose the Will and ends of the Vanguard
While this may make sense on a world stage, consider the levelling and slave-submission required within the walls of this in group. Considered how these mobilized masses of will collapse the difference of wills and ignore the strongest individual wills in favor of those best adapted (even if hierarchically) to the mass population. This is a submission of wills to herd mentality, and if it is a strength enough to prey upon the less stable stable powers of its molecular enemies, it is the case of the weak and deindividualized overwhelming the strong and distinguished by number so as to limit its exercise and not truly conquer the force of its power.

A thousand who have subjugated themselves to unity can destroy one overman, but this is not a triumph of strong wills, it is a vulgar circumstantial domination. I am not surprised by fascism as a political doctrine. I am opposed to it philosophically.

[Anonymous No.14200151]

>>14199768
It’s not that hard to see how Nietzsche, Heidegger, and yes, even Nazism could be assimilated into left wing thought. To be honest though, it seems to me less of the left appropriating the thought of proto-post-modernists like Nietzsche and Heidegger and more the post-modernists appropriating the left.

[Anonymous No.14200189]

>>14200092
How does
>If instead you seek to elevate the differential to a place of aristocratic nobility and protect the strong from the limiting of the weak then I think you have come through to rejoin both Nietzsche
Not implying exploiting this group?
>For many, be they weak, poorly connected, or just unlucky, fascism would not be advantageous to the exercise of one's will to power.
Because there are places, especially regarding the Greeks, where Nietzsche justified the exploitation of a slave class, so that the Greater Men could create Greater culture and meaning, as long as they are the ones imposing superior social values and not the other way round
Which is to say, because of its collective Nationalist basis, (National-)Fascism isnt even as far Right as what might be implied by making the ends of society a productive enabling of the Willing to Power by the Greatest Men
But why does Fascism need to be Popular or herd mentality, when the point of it is that the Ideological Vanguard imposes totalitarian control of the masses, top down values not bottom up; or when the whole post-war theoretical development was to say Fascism is a disposition and proclivity which can be manifested or sublimated on the micro-level, differential Fascism as it were, how far is that from Egoist Will to Power?
And even then its not that hard to just transpose the values of supra-moral Will to Power from Overman Individuals, to a self-interested collective like the Nation

[Anonymous No.14200194]

>>14200151
>it seems to me less of the left appropriating the thought of proto-post-modernists like Nietzsche and Heidegger and more the post-modernists appropriating the left.
This. The postmodernists were certainly no of the conservative establishment so how else, how better to survive as experimental philosophers than in post-68 than to align oneself with the largely anarchic left?

"It is forbidden to forbid."

This is not the left of today.

[Anonymous No.14200206]

>>14200148
>it is the case of the weak and deindividualized overwhelming the strong
No that sounds like democratic liberalism which presupposes egalitarianism, Fascism is totalitarian control by a Vanguard, its controlling and using the herd not following it

[Anonymous No.14200211]

>>14199768
>Nietzschean fascist
>appeals to values and slave morality

[Anonymous No.14200253]

>>14200148
>>14200092
Moreover how is the ends of Eugenics not social enabling more Overmen?

[Anonymous No.14200259]

>>14200253
>>14200206
>>14200189
I'm going out for some beers. If this thread is still up later I may try to respond. I'm enjoying your conversation.

[Anonymous No.14200572]

There's a book about exactly this called the Seduction of Unreason but it's by Richard Wolin who I've seen memed about here so I hesitate to say that I read it. The book is kinda meh but it attempts to connect Fascist theory to French postmodernist theory and Nietzsche is the first subject (and no, neither Wolin nor I claim that he is a Fascist, just that there is an air of it about him).

His critique of the PoMo and by extension the anarchist-leftist Nietzsche is twofold. First, that they mistake his Overman principle for an exhortation to individualist self-expression in the sense of "I am my own work of art", which is implicitly coupled (I see this here constantly) with a vague sense of "everyone can become the Overman once Capitalism is overthrown". Second, they see his perspectivism and anti-traditionalism as ends in themselves; Nietzsche becomes for them an amorphous figure of rebellion and never the promulgator-to-be of a new moral law that he was. He also says that Foucault shouldn't look to Nietzsche as a "power theorist" but I don't personally see anything wrong with this PoMo appropriation.

Honestly a lot of this confusion just comes from the current battle-lines of politics. The political Nietzsche is difficult to understand because he was (by his own admission) a "radical Aristocratist". To anyone that doubts his inegalitarian credentials, he explicitly says that political hierarchy even unto slavery is a prerequisite for breeding choice types of men and providing for their spiritual development in "What is Noble" (Part 9 Bey. G and E.), just to provide one of many possible examples. BUT...Aristocrats are very far removed from the enemies of the modern left, that is, the nationalists, the racists, and the lumpenproletariat conservatives. And Nietzsche himself was not a conservative or a racist. But herein is the confusion: leftists, forgetting that Aristocrats are some of their oldest enemies, mistake them as friends because they are "not like" the current incarnations of the Right. Does all this pin Nietzsche as a Rightist or a Nazi? No, not really, but he isn't an Anarchist or an egalitarian either.

[Anonymous No.14200941]

No creature but an anglo could ever make this thread.

[Anonymous No.14200953]

>>14200941
An American*

[Anonymous No.14200962]

>>14200953
Americans do philosophy rather than talk about it.

[Anonymous No.14201024]

>>14199783
Import the shitskins to... Well what was the plan of these 4d modern rightists again?

[Anonymous No.14201150]

>>14200941
you could post this under literally every thread on this website butthurt frog

[Anonymous No.14201974]

>>14200572
>the anarchist-leftist Nietzsche is twofold. First, that they mistake his Overman principle for an exhortation to individualist self-expression in the sense of "I am my own work of art", which is implicitly coupled (I see this here constantly) with a vague sense of "everyone can become the Overman once Capitalism is overthrown".
This is more a matter of political expedience than a reading of Nietzsche. What is a left-revolutionary who is also a Nietzschean going to say? "Communism is going to be better but not that much better, many of you will still effectively be slaves and struggle to survive unless we have really exceptional access to resources."

>Second, they see his perspectivism and anti-traditionalism as ends in themselves; Nietzsche becomes for them an amorphous figure of rebellion and never the promulgator-to-be of a new moral law that he was. He also says that Foucault shouldn't look to Nietzsche as a "power theorist" but I don't personally see anything wrong with this PoMo appropriation.
Nobody has ever used Nietzsche as an egalitarian. And he doesn't need to be a Leftist or anarchist for left/anarchists to make use of him. His call to self empowerment and self expression - whether he meant it as universal or not - is useful in building an autonomous people and shifting the weight of law further onto them as individuals. His theories of power and perspectivism like his genealogies and critiques (Christianity, Nationalism) are intellectual tools useful regardless of his intentions for them. And between Zarathustra and "The Prejudices of Philosophers" there is hardly anyone more challenging the reader to challenge and go beyond him.

[Anonymous No.14202412]

>>14201974
>What is a left-revolutionary who is also a Nietzschean going to say?
Nothing, because such a revolutionary can't be Nietzschean, unless you narrow Nietzsche down to an extremely simplified and falsified form just like the French postmodernists did. People forget, or are just ignorant to, the fact that Nietzsche called the French Revolution a Christian movement.

[Anonymous No.14202570]

>>14201974
My post was mainly a response to people on here (there are a few prominent ones) that explicitly claim Nietzsche as a “leftist” or as a Stirnerite. There are of course left-anarchist readings of Nietzsche (insofar as there are ideological readings of anything) but they involve, much like Fascist readings of Nietzsche, ignoring large parts of his thought. Perhaps in either case this is for “expediency” but we shouldn’t forget that Nietzsche himself condemns ideological reading through his “plundering soldier” aphorism.

[Anonymous No.14202582]

>>14201024
What does this have to do with the post you quoted?

[Anonymous No.14202596]

>>14202412
This is another good thing to point out, Nietzsche’s critique of Christianity was reactionary and completely alien to the typical “Christianity is oppressive to my impulses and individuality” critiques that come out of the liberal-left. He saw Christian doctrine as an expression of the will to power of the weak and oppressed, which is not so far from what people like Ludendorff and Rosenberg said about it. In fact, since Nietzsche, a majority of the radical right has been anti-Christian lol

[Anonymous No.14202621]

>>14199768
>So how is it possible that French postmodernists and their academic left offspring were able to appropiate Nietzsche and Heidegger
The same way the Nazis did? Nietzche and Heidegger's respective philosophies were strictly apolitical.
Fuck off, brainlet.

[Anonymous No.14202748]

>>14199768
>making Power the meaning of discourse and society, when its obvious that the fully manifested ends and original precursors of this is Fascim?
Fascism=being a little bitch and giving away your individual rights for bullshit abstract concepts like "the nation". Liberalism (in the broad sense of post enlightenment moral discourse) is based on putting personal freedom above societal norms or tradition, hence it's closer to Nietzsche in spirit than Fascism, which is all about sacrificing the individual in favour of the collective. Where Nietzsche differs is that his view is purely egotistical, while liberalism (again, in the broad sense) has a positive vision for society.

[Anonymous No.14202825]

>>14202570
The only good post in the thread

[Anonymous No.14203714]

>>14199818
>>14199820
good posts

[Anonymous No.14204537]

freddy "i developed a retarded aristocratic cope where the higher position is determined by abstract nonexistent copes because of my inferiority and low place in sexual hierarchy" nichee

or

micky "my retarded abstraction of how power functions in society is strongly based off gay bdsm sex i had and being a closeted homosexual (prison)" fuckall

[Anonymous No.14204550]

>>14199768
Humanitarianism is a liberal invention not a leftist one

[Anonymous No.14206356]

>>14202748
Nietzsche applied politically is national socialism and every other view is 100% wrong.

[Anonymous No.14206700]

>>14202621
>Nietzche and Heidegger's respective philosophies were strictly apolitical.
>Implying an life-philosophy can be a-political
So what did Nietzsche mean by this, in response to the 1871 Paris Commune? And can I get you a side of cope as well?

[Anonymous No.14206703]

>>14202748
See
>>14200189
Imagine thinking Nietzsche is more liberal-democratic than fascistic lmao

[Anonymous No.14207248]

>>14199768
They've given him up now.

[Anonymous No.14207290]

>>14199768
>So how is it possible that French postmodernists and their academic left offspring were able to appropiate Nietzsche and Heidegger- one whos Will to Power and post-ethics was incredibly influential to Nazism in clear ways, and the other who literally was one- while having a pathological opposition to and diminutive view of Fascism?
"muh autonomy" as far as I can tell

[Anonymous No.14207966]

bump

[Anonymous No.14208425]

>>14206356
Argument or btfo

[Anonymous No.14208448]

>>14207248
Jacobin also dropped Foucault

[Anonymous No.14208470]

>>14208425
Nazism was an attempt at establishing a better aristocracy. The problem was that the Germans were unworthy of it.

[Anonymous No.14208693]

>>14201024
Uuuuuuh postmodernism uuuuh marxism uuuuuuuuh leftism uuuuuuuuuuuh European liberals uuuuuuuuh refugees yea

[Anonymous No.14209209]

>>14199792
>knows the answer
>doesn't share

Why are you people like this

[Anonymous No.14209214]

>>14199815
They were just following in Kaufmann's wake.

[Anonymous No.14209221]

>>14208470
Neech's thought changed over the course of his life, evolved, flourished, aged, rotted. Are we supposed to be surprised to see bitterness at the end of a man's life? Are we supposed to focalize the great works of the man through who he was at the end?

[Anonymous No.14209318]

>>14201150
Seething

[Anonymous No.14209463]

>BTFOs Foucault