Alt-right, like most, misreads Nietzsche

Richard Spencer, leading light of America’s alt-right, said in an interview last year that he was “red-pilled” by reading the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. The reference is to “The Matrix”; in the film, popping the red pill allows you to perceive reality. Scales fall from your eyes. Spencer’s recalibration threw up white nationalism, antifeminism, racial and cultural purity.

But Nietzsche repeatedly wrote against all of the above. He insisted he’d rather be a good European than a good German, calling “Deutschland, Deutschland über alles” (“Germany, Germany above all”) the death of German philosophy. His numerous close friendships with early feminists included Meta von Salis, the first woman in Switzerland to gain a PHD. One of his last letters proposes all anti-semites should be shot.

So how did Nietzsche come to be commonly perceived as a racist, misogynistic nationalist?

Two reasons. One: His proto-nazi sister took charge of the legacy after his death. Two: He had a terrific talent for coining catchy phrases like the Übermensch and the blond beast. Read his blond beast passages, however, and you’ll discover there’s nothing racial in the phrase at all. It’s just his shorthand for our common ancestor, the lion-maned hunter