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Was Nietzsche MAGA? (new edit)
🕑 Added 2025-03-13 17:46:50 +0000 UTCHello lovely Patrons!
A new episode drops tomorrow on YouTube. You've already gotten early access to one version as paid patrons or through Nebula. This is a slightly edited version.
A sentence has been deleted: "[Nietzsche] was pretty much a white supremacist."
Let me explain. A few nights ago I went to see Judith Butler live in London, and one of the things they talked about is how on social media there's a tendency to slap a label on someone that acts as a simplistic judgement. But what philosophy and theory can (ideally) do is allow us to sit with complexity and difficult material; to suspend judgement and stay in that tension with patience to see what it brings us; to look at material through a variety of different lenses and thereby sharpen our critical faculties.
Butler's comments got me thinking about the way I wrote these two Nietzsche videos, and I think I fell into that trap a little bit. It's way too late to go back and edit Part 1, or to do any kind of rewrites or reshoots, but I went back and deleted that sentence from Part 2, which was the part that was bugging me the most. It's not that I think it's false per se: I do think that we could learn something interesting about Nietzsche and white supremacy (including how antisemitism functions as a part of white supremacy) by looking at his work through that lens. But that's not the words I used. In my haste, I did the thing Butler warned about - slapped a label on someone that came with a judgement, and used that as the end of the conversation rather than the beginning of one. In 'educational Youtuber' there are two words, right? And I think I let 'YouTuber' flex just a little too much over 'educational.' A bit of intellectual humility would have been a better approach - 'curiosity not ambition,' as you've heard me say before.
So I went back and removed it. It was a bit of extra work to re-render the video and then redo all the subtitles, but it was the right call. I've edited the Nebula version too: you'll see it change over shortly, and matching subtitles will follow.
I'll say more about this in the postmortem livestream to this Part 2 video. I'll remember this lesson for the next episodes too. I hope you find Part 2 of the Nietzsche series interesting and entertaining when it drops tomorrow!
Abi XXx
Comments
Gail
I'm glad you decided to edit that part. That's the one thing I cringed at a bit when I watched the video. Just didn't fit with all that I've read about Nietzsche over the years. He was a complex intellectual with ideas that make some folks bristle, but you have to keep reading and learning to dig through the layers to better understand his thoughts (although I'm not claiming to be done with that -- yet!). He wasn't afraid of putting his own philosophical evolution on display, either.
Jeanne H-B
Ah, thanks for this. My son has been reading commentary on Nietzsche, and reading some Nietzsche, recently. He has wondered about translations, and publication choices (by a Nietzsche relative, I don’t recall her name), and how all that affects the way different commentary presents the guy’s notions. I will give him these videos (including the one on Nebula I have not watched) to add to the mix. Nihilism, yeah. The abyss is my inconvenient, familiar companion these days. And I am still surprised when I am reminded that a large swath of people think all my actions and relationships are about “will to power.” That every interaction is specifically, and consciously, transactional in this way. That anyone assumes that I - or themselves - are so self-aware and calculating, seems to hold a very high regard for human consciousness. Also, their assumption of a basic shared, greedy venality may be countered with evidence of humans’ basic neurology, showing that we are wired for affinity more deeply than for commerce. But I am not interested in any essentialist arguments, (because they like essentialism so much to support so many bad ideas).
Zachary Yaro
I really appreciate that! It didn't even cross my mind when you said it in the previous version, so I appreciate this calling attention to it! You (and Butler) are right—that sort of essentializing people to a label is so frequently used on YouTube (and conversations in general) to end any further exploration.
Figgy Starship
I'm very glad you did. And I have such respect for your introspection and drive to always do better.
ComicTF
Respect. I saw Butler speak when they were in New York and it felt like eating one of the most intellectually nutritious meals I've ever had. Considering how fraught the creative process can be, I admire when people go back and update their work after having taken a chance to reevaluate.
Amyphist
Oh hey, didn’t realise you were also at the Judith Butler talk! Though not exactly surprising. Good, weren’t they? I still haven’t got round to watching this video, so will just watch it when it premieres normally on YouTube I guess.
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