States of Exile

Attempt by antipaganism to found and make itself possible philosophically: predilection for the ambiguous figures of the old culture, above all for Plato, that instinctive Semite and anti-Hellene—also for Stoicism, which is essentially the work of Semites (—"dignity" as strictness, law, virtue as greatness, self-responsibility, authority, as supreme sovereignty over one's own person—this is Semitic. The Stoic is an Arabian sheik wrapped in Greek togas and concepts). - Nietzsche, The Will to Power Nietzsche also theorizes (baselessly) that Plato may have been taught by Egyptian Jews. Walter Kaufmann claims Zeno of Citium (Cyprus), the founder of Stoicism, was probably a Semite. Swami Abhayananda goes so far as to claim he was a Jew from Phoenicia. Stoicism is certainly a philosophy of spiritual exile. T.E. Lawrence comments in Seven Pillars of Wisdom ( source ): I had believed Semites unable to use love as a link between themselves and God, indeed, unable to conceive su...

Anti-Semites cite the following passage from Genealogy of Morals to enlist Nietzsche into their cause: All the world’s efforts against the “aristocrats,” the “mighty,” the “masters,” the “holders of power” are negligible by comparison with what has been accomplished against those classes by the Jews—the Jews, that priestly nation which eventually realized that the one method of effecting satisfaction on its enemies and tyrants was by means of a radical transvaluation of values, which was at the same time an act of the cleverest revenge. Yet the method was only appropriate to a nation of priests, to a nation of the most jealously nursed priestly revengefulness. It was the Jews who, in opposition to the aristocratic equation (good = aristocratic = beautiful = happy = loved by the gods), dared with terrifying logic to suggest the contrary equation, and indeed to maintain with the teeth of the most profound hatred (the hatred of weakness) this contrary equation, namely, “the wretched are ...

Only the Messiah himself consummates all history, in the sense that he alone redeems, completes, creates its relation to the Messianic. - Walter Benjamin, Theologico-Political Fragment All 'It was' is a fragment, a riddle, a dreadful chance - until the creative will says to it: 'But I willed it thus!' - Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra All theological concepts must be tranvaluated in immanent terms.

Truthful I call him who goes into godless deserts, having broken his revering heart. In the yellow sands, burned by the sun, he squints thirstily at the islands abounding in wells, where living things rest under dark trees. Yet his thirst does not persuade him to become like these, dwelling in comfort; for where there are oases there are also idols. - Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra Mitzrayim, the godless desert of the real.

Aryan influence has corrupted all the world - A lot is said today about the Semitic spirit of the New Testament: but what is called Semitic is merely priestly - and in the racially purest Aryan law-book, in Manu, this kind of "Semitism," i.e., the spirit of the priest , is worse than anywhere else. - Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power Methinks Nietzsche is too harsh on the Aryans. But that might just be my Occidental Brahmanism speaking.

Mark's Jesus is a lonely and restless, mysterious stranger. His mission is dark and obscure. Everything he tries fails. By the end there is no God, no loyal followers, just torture by crucifixion, climaxing in a colossal death-scream. The story closes without a resurrection from the dead. There is just an empty tomb, and three women fleeing in terror. - John Carroll, The Existential Jesus As yet had he known only tears, and the melancholy of the Hebrews, together with the hatred of the good and just—the Hebrew Jesus: then was he seized with the longing for death. - Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra Look on his works, ye mighty, and despair.

There is a concept of deity worth entertaining, the holy storm-God Jehovah, wreathed not in the holiness of moral goodness or of aesthetic beauty, but in a dreadful uncanniness. Believe in him or not, at least he would be a worthwhile character, president of an order that is neither benign nor moral, an order adequately represented in religion only by the God beyond good and evil that Nietzsche discerns in parts of the Old Testament. - Stephen N. Williams, How Nietzsche Found Jesus Justice is divine only insofar as it makes no human sense. Christ is God bowdlerized. YHWH's lost commandment: épater la bourgeoisie .

One pays heavily for coming to power: power makes stupid. The Germans - once they were called the people of thinkers: do they think at all today? The Germans are now bored with the spirit, the Germans now mistrust the spirit; politics swallows up all serious concern for really spiritual matters. Deutschland, Deutschland uber alles - I fear that was the end of German philosophy. - Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols Am Yisrael Chai - I fear that was the end of Jewish spiritual genius. Nationalism has become the ersatz religion of a godless people. I am not opposed to nationalism, but I subscribe to what Hans Kohn called a "nationalism of inwardness." Franz Kafka internalizing the Jewish feeling of exile and universalizing it through writing is a greater nationalist than a New York settler setting fire to olive trees. Jewish nationalist excesses are justified through reference to Arab perversions. Without denying the latter, let me quote Martin Buber with my own emphas...

It astounds me how little anti-Semites know about Judaism. Not "Judeo-liberalism" or "Judeo-Bolshevism," but the religion itself. This point was brought home to me by the following remark from an article on Julius Evola , an otherwise interesting thinker whose anti-Semitism is his most vulgar aspect: The dualistic conception of body and soul born of the Jewish spirit, whose abstract and fatalistic contemplativeness is “devoid of any interest in the heroic and supranatural affirmation of the personality,” cannot, as a result, but level the higher values associated with the Aryan’s Olympian spirituality. Surely a writer for a magazine called The Occidental Quarterly should know that the dualistic conception of body and soul originates with Plato. In fact, "the dualistic conception of body and soul" is entirely foreign to biblical Judaism and absent from the Torah. Anti-Semites apparently assume that everything they dislike about Christianity emerged from Jud...

From a recent article by Gideon Levy: Israel's only real existential danger is losing U.S. support. Yes, there is no Israel without America - not only the $30 billion annual defense aid (without which the IDF would be a shadow of itself), or the market for one-third of Israeli exports, but also international support. Israel, which has become a leper in many circles, is lost without Washington's sponsorship. There is no alternative superpower - having Micronesia alone on our side at the UN will not get us very far. There is Israel without America - the nation of Israel, not the state of Israel. Recall the words of the righteous gentile Friedrich Nietzsche from Thus Spoke Zarathustra : State is the name of the coldest of all cold monsters. Coldly it lies; and this lie slips from its mouth: "I, the state, am the people." It is a lie! The most fanatical Zionists and the most fanatical anti-Zionists have united to propagate that lie. The result has been to bind the Jewish...

Alas, my brothers, this god whom I created was man-made and madness, like all gods! Man he was, and only a poor specimen of man and ego: out of my own ashes and fire this ghost came to me, and, verily, it did not come to me from beyond. - Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra Their idols are silver and gold, the work of human hands. They have mouths, but do not speak; eyes, but do not see. They have ears, but do not hear; noses, but do not smell. They have hands, but do not feel; feet, but do not walk; and they do not make a sound in their throat. Those who make them become like them; so do all who trust in them. - Psalm 115 Friedrich Nietzsche was the modern idol-smasher par excellence. The Jews were the ancient idol-smashers par excellence. The reason Jews are not the modern idol-smashers par excellence is because too many Jews have taken on new idols like revolution, "the wretched of the earth", the American dream and the nation-state. The difference between ancient...