| -Caveat Lector-
Maybe it's just because of life on a sunny
part of the globe that I view this article by Steinberg for the most part
as simply a pile of ignorant gobshyte. Maybe not.
Nietzsche was not a 'Nazi' nor an ideologue of
Nazism. How ridiculous can you get. His name has been tarnished and demonised in
the swill scattered from the cesspool of mewling swine amongst the
clerico-fascists over the decades.
Nietzsche is about the liberation of man.
Liberation from the State, liberation from man and his superstitions, liberation
from the manufactured gods of society. He proclaimed truthfully that the
churches had become mausoleums -- the very tombs of god.
For his bold claims, he is invariably maligned
and hated by the clerico-fascists and their sympathisers the world
over.
Experts on Nietzsche like Douglas Thomas,
curator of the USC Nietzsche web-page reminds us that a sister's greed and
manipulation found Nietzsche's manuscripts placed in the canon of racism
and abuse:
"While it is true that Nietzsche's writings
were used extensively as Nazi propaganda, Nietzsche himself would have been
starkly opposed to Nazism. Nietzsche was a fierce opponent of German
nationalism, and in spite of his critique of Judaism as a religion, he wrote
just as often in praise of Jewish culture. Nietzsche's attachment to Nazism is
largely result of his sister's efforts to edit his work and use it as a means
to advance her own social position during the period of National Socialism in
Germany." (1)
Nietzsche sister, like Hitlerists, abused
his writings to support their personal greed and Nazi and fanatic Nationalistic
causes. Nietzsche gives a scathing review of his outrage at being so
misemployed.
"…You have committed one of the greatest
stupidities—for yourself and for me! Your association with an anti-Semitic
chief expresses a foreignness to my whole way of life which fills me again and
again with ire or melancholy… It is a matter of honor with me to be absolutely
clean and unequivocal in relation to anti-Semitism, namely opposed
[sic.] to it, as I am in my writings. …That the name of Zarathustra is used in
every Anti-Semitic Correspondence Sheet has almost made me sick several
times. …" (2)
Nietzsche maintained that all human behaviour is
motivated by the 'will to power'. In its positive sense, the will to
power is not simply power over others, but the power over oneself that is
necessary for creativity. Such power is manifested in the "overman’s"
independence, creativity and originality.
According to Nietzsche, the masses
conform to tradition, whereas his ideal man, (whom he calls the
Übermensch—"overman" or "superman") is secure, independent, and highly
individualistic. The overman feels deeply, but his passions are
rationally controlled. Concentrating on the real world, rather than on the
rewards of the next world promised by religion, the overman affirms life,
including the suffering and pain that accompany human existence. He is a
creator of values, a creator of a "master morality" that reflects the
strength and independence of one who is liberated from all values, except those
that he deems valid.
Nietzsche is hardly a 'Nazi' Borg as
this ill-informed, 'Jeffrey Steinberg,' implies in his demonising rant against
Strauss.
References
1. Douglas Thomas, Associate Professor in the
Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Southern California.
2. The Portable Nietzsche Walter Kaufman
[trans.] ©1954 Viking Press (ppg. 546-457)
Dave.
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Tuesday, March 18, 2003 2:32
PM
Subject: [CTRL] Leo Strauss - Fascist
Godfather Of the Neo-Cons
-Caveat Lector- http://www.larouchepub.com/other/2003/3011profile_strauss.html
Profile:
Leo Strauss,
Fascist Godfather Of the Neo-Cons
by Jeffrey
Steinberg
In a June 17, 1996 article by Richard Lacayo, Time
magazine named the late University of Chicago philosopher Leo Strauss
(1899-1973) as one of the most influential and powerful figures in Washington,
D.C.—the man most responsible for the Newt Gingrich "Conservative Revolution"
on Capitol Hill, and the intellectual godfather of Newtzi's "Contract on
America" blueprint for vicious fascist austerity.
If Strauss' influence
on politics in the capital of the most powerful nation on Earth was awesome in
1996, it is even more so today. The leading "Straussian" in the Bush
Administration is Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, who was trained by
Strauss' alter-ego and fellow University of Chicago professor Allan Bloom.
Wolfowitz leads the "war party" within the civilian bureaucracy at the
Pentagon, and his own protégé, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, is Vice President
Dick Cheney's chief of staff and chief national security aide, directing a
super-hawkish "shadow national security council" out of the Old Executive
Office Building, adjacent to the White House. According to Bloom biographer
Saul Bellow, the day that President George H.W. Bush rejected Wolfowitz and
Cheney's demand that U.S. troops continue on to Baghdad, during Operation
Desert Storm in 1991, Wolfowitz called Bloom on his private phone line to
bitterly complain. It seems that "Bush 41" was not enough of a Nietzschean
"superman" for Wolfowitz's taste.
However, Strauss' name may also prove
to be a liability, particularly for those neo-conservative ideologues who are
now attempting to steer President Bush into a no-win war in the Persian Gulf,
in pursuit of an illusory world empire, and who are finding themselves under
growing public attack.
On March 3, in a widely circulated radio
interview on the Jack Stockwell Show in Salt Lake City (see EIR, March
14), Lyndon LaRouche had singled out Strauss as one of the leading
intellectual figures, along with Bertrand Russell and H.G. Wells, steering the
United States into a disastrous replay of the Peloponnesian War, which led to
the collapse of Athens. Within days of the LaRouche interview, Leo Strauss was
the subject of a series of public attacks, in the German, French and American
media (see Documentation), for his role in producing the current
generation of neo-conservatives.
Indeed, author Shadia B. Drury, in her
1997 book, Leo Strauss and the American Right, named the following
prominent Washington players as among Strauss' protégés: Paul Wolfowitz;
Supreme Court Justic Clarence Thomas; Judge Robert Bork; neo-con propagandist
and former Dan Quayle chief of staff, William Kristol; former Secretary of
Education William Bennett; the National Review publisher William F.
Buckley; former Reagan Administration official Alan Keyes; current White House
bio-ethics advisor Francis Fukuyama; Attorney General John Ashcroft; and
William Galston, former Clinton Administration domestic policy advisor, and
co-author, with Elaine Kamark, of the Joe Lieberman-led Democratic Leadership
Council's policy blueprint.
Earlier Strauss allies and protégés in
launching the post-World War II neo-conservative movement were Irving Kristol,
Norman Podhoretz, Samuel Huntington, Seymour Martin Lipset, Daniel Bell, Jeane
Kirkpatrick, and James Q. Wilson.
Nobody Here But Us Fascists
A
review of Leo Strauss' career reveals why the label "Straussian" carries some
very filthy implications. Although nominally a Jewish refugee from Nazi
Germany (he actually left for a better position abroad, on the warm
recommendation of Nazi jurist Carl Schmitt), Strauss was an unabashed
proponent of the three most notorious shapers of the Nazi philosophy:
Friedrich Nietzsche, Martin Heidegger, and Carl Schmitt. Recent biographies
have revealed the depth of Heidegger's enthusiasm for Hitler and Nazism, while
he served as the Chancellor of Freiburg University, throughout the epoch of
National Socialism, and was the leader of a Nietzschean revival. Carl Schmitt,
the leading Nazi philosopher of law, was personally responsible, in 1934, for
arranging a Rockefeller Foundation scholarship for Strauss, which enabled him
to leave Germany, to study in England and France, before coming to the United
States to teach at the New School for Social Research, and then, the
University of Chicago. Strauss, in his long academic career, never abandoned
his fealty to Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Schmitt.
The hallmark of
Strauss' approach to philosophy was his hatred of the modern world, his belief
in a totalitarian system, run by "philosophers," who rejected all universal
principles of natural law, but saw their mission as absolute rulers, who lied
and deceived a foolish "populist" mass, and used both religion and politics as
a means of disseminating myths that kept the general population in clueless
servitude. For Strauss and all of his protégés (Strauss personally had 100 PhD
students, and the "Straussians" now dominate most university political science
and philosophy departments), the greatest object of hatred was the United
States itself, which they viewed as nothing better than a weak, pathetic
replay of "liberal democratic" Weimar Germany.
Among the current lot of
neo-cons, Michael Ledeen stands out as the one person who openly flaunts his
"universal fascism." For Wolfowitz, Kristol, and the rest, their association
with Strauss could be a large contributing factor in their looming
downfall—and none too soon.
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sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'�with its many half-truths, mis-
directions and outright frauds�is used politically by different groups with
major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought.
That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and
always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no
credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply.
Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector.
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