Nietzsche and Jihad: History of a Misunderstanding
In 1968, Stanley Kubrick created 2001: A Space Odyssey, a cultural and cinematic milestone that’s been influencing artists and audiences to this day. There are countless references to the aesthetics and the philosphical background of the film. And interior design: I could imagine my hallway looking like the room in the picture above.
Imagine the face of your guests when you tell them the powder room is first door on the right. His vision of a dystopian future is in a curious contradiction with how our lives actually looked like in 2001. Among other stuff it was after the paranoid premonitions of the Millenium bug, for those who remember. Civilisation didn’t come to an end, but it’s hard at work to push our ecosystem into the abysss with a little help from pollution, wildfires and melting ice.
You might say that a director’s vision took too much liberty with their expectations of the future but that’s what art is for: to explore possible and impossible ideas, in their full extent and circumstance. Be it as it may, whatever we’re reading into Kubrick’s work nowadays is rather harmless. But there are two phenomena distorted beyond comprehension by ideologies that misused them for their own ends, robbing them of their original substance.
In particular, we’re talking about the Nietzschean Übermensch and the Muslim concept of jihad. The German 19th century philosopher gained considerable prominence for his work, but also considerable infamy after Adolf Hitler took certain liberties with interpretation. The Führer appropriated this ideal of striving to reach beyond one’s boundaries in order to built his own political Frankenstein.
After Nietzsche, he also appropriated Wagner and his work for Aryan culture. Maybe because of the monumental character of his music, it was the ideal boost for what he tried to achieve. Of course, it’s unlikely that many of his subjects ever heard of Wagner before or listened to classical music at all. What they listened to instead was his orders and obeyed them. My favourite part of this whole sick narrative was a pageant for the prettiest Aryan baby, which would then have its photo displayed all over the country to suggest what a real German is supposed to look like. That’s grooming. A word we like to throw around now as if it were confetti.
When you peel back everything that history piled up on Nietzschean philosophy, you see why he was the bad boy in the field back then. He wasn’t afraid to open doors to let some fresh breeze into the world of academia. His book Thus Spoke Zarathustra was published in 1833, in a poetic tone that turns the famous nihilist into a mystic that’s aesthetically almost on the same level as the New Testament. The author was familiar with epics like Gilgamesh, though there were certain differences, especially related to their focus. Few books by philosophers are such a popular source of quotes, because what makes him profound is much easier to understand in this particular shape without banalizing it:
“I am a forest, and a night of dark trees: but he who is not afraid of my darkness, will find banks full of roses under my cypresses.”
There’s been too much self-help gurus lining the shelves of bookstores that you might feel it’s some sort of kitsch you can find here too. But that would be a mistake, because this is one of those trees that bore fruits like the Alchemist, Paulo Coelho’s ripoff that made him a household name today. But depending on which one of the two you discover first, it will influence your outlook in a different way. The original isn’t s popular because it’s still in the waiting line for Oprah’s Book Club while Coelho’s raking in profit from his cocktail between Gibran and Nietzsche. I do get it: a quote like that is a perfect Twitter bait, making you sound intelligent and spiritual. The perfect way to hide the fact you’re not really either of the two.
The problem that still persists among less educated right-wing nationalists is the mythical Übermensch. They’re just as wrong about it as they were back in the 1930s. It has to be said that the author’s sister Elisabeth did help push it in this direction due to her ethusiastic Antisemitism. They parted ways when she moved to Paraguay with her husband to start an Aryan settlement with 14 German families.
Appropriately, it was called Nueva Germania. After his suicide due to mounting debts and the failure of the project, she continued on her own until returning to Germany in 1893. By that time, her brother was already a household name in Europe. The prevalent theory is she edited his work to fit Hitler’s ideology. What’s more, Hitler attended her funeral in 1935 along with other prominent Nazis.
Unfortunately, there wasn’t much the philosopher could do to prevent her from whatever she wanted to do because by then he was already severely incapacitated with fading lucidity. The most beautiful, complicated minds are always prone to turning into a cold tomato soup when age knocks on their door.
No wonder we’re so hellbent on AI, when we’re too scared of our own slow intellectual degeneration. World War II proved that it’s not that slow when it needs to be quick. Otherwise dangerous dictators would have a much tougher way to power. People were desperate and needed a quick fix for problems that was thrown on the shoulders of European Jews. But that’s not what the philosopher’s most famous creation was about.
The Übermensch was supposed to be the ideal being or person who successfully managed to overcome supernatural pretensions of religion and focused on a unison with the spirit of nature beyond the comforts of home instead: what is great in man is that he is a bridge and not a goal. In other words, finding fulfillment in our experience of this world. That’s why he retreats into the mountains where he hopes to live in accordance with this. The philosopher himself shared this attitude. He spent seven years vacationing in Sils Maria, a Swiss town, starting in 1881. There, he would spend his time writing and walking. It proved beneficial not only to his health but his output too, influencing the basic principles of Zarathustra.
After my trip to lake Geneva, I can confirm it. There’s something in the air here that puts you at ease. Sils Maria is one of those idyllic spots that seem to be far away from the troubles of the world. But he’s not the only one to find inspiration here. Olivier Assayas filmed Clouds over Sils Maria in 2014 with Juliette Binoche playing an actress who spends time there to prepare for a play that made her famous and confronts her demons at the same time. Kristen Stewart plays her assistant and this is one of the few movies where she doesn’t utterly irritate me. It’s basically a dialogue between one’s past, present and coming to terms with the passing of time, in serene Alpine landscapes that make even the most sore throats sing.
An another misunderstanding occured on the other side of the world and has been equally misused for quite some time now, though its origins and semantics were notably in contrast to its perception nowadays. It’s called jihad and due to various terrorrist groups and the media, we primarily associate it with radical Islam that frequently steals the spotlight from its humble and compassionate counterpart.
Since the attacks on the Twin Towers in 2001, it spread out in the public domain as some sort of a curseword, almost. Ambiguous and frightening, it quickly turned into a synonym for terrorism that sought to seek revenge on all of those who insulted the Prophet or strived to spread their own edit of Quran, a little bit like Elisabeth Nietzsche. This one was cruel, merciless and out to punish infidels everywhere for their way of life, freedoms and politics.
In order to understand what I want to say, again we have to go back to the roots. According to the website Learning for Justice, the jihad is divided into two: superior and lesser. That’s due to the difference where the higher kind is the one most similar to the Nietzschean Übermensch. Namely, a fight against one’s own weaknesses and the effort to overcome obstacles that prevent us from living our best life, to translate it into wellness English.
Something worth while that ultimately purifies your spirit and enables it to flourish. The lesser sort is an “outward struggle”, aimed at others. A task that requires a lot of our time, energy and devotion. Motherhood is a good allegory, because of everything it involves in order to be successful as the ultimate test of altruism. Unfortunately, this is completely lost on those who (ab)use the word in a political context.
Actually, were it not for this research, I wouldn’t be aware of its complexity either. That is the power granted to ignorance, or to paraphrase, lack of knowledge is the biggest power of all. If you take something, distort it and rub it in my nose long enough, I’ll take it as the ultimate truth, instead of questioning your intentions and origins of what you’re trying to tell me.
This is where islamophobes find the monopoly over the narrative they are targeting. We’re too lazy to invest any time into education which is substituted by dubious podcasts spreading wild conspiracy theories. They go unchecked because those who are supposed to teach you rarely use the same means to set the record straight. They can’t participate in the game.
The destruction of any system is achieved from within through the nurture of distrust. First we lose trust into journalism, then intellectuals, artists and teachers. When those four barriers fall, we’re left all on our own. Up for grabs for the next predator because we no longer trust each other. But we decide if these barriers stand or fall. It’s your call and it starts with you.
On the cover of a newspaper, the first thing you see is bad news of all kinds so instead of facing challenges that will catch up with us, you go for the crossword. As long as you believe that it’s none of your business unless it’s on your doorstep, you’re sleepwalking into darkness. Don’t wait to step into it: let Zarathustra’s hand be your guide into the light on the other side.
