Today is the 175th anniversary of the birth of Friedrich Nietzsche, my spiritual mentor and—or, perhaps, because he was—the finest writer who ever lived. Yet, this is a date that few will observe, for the serious reader of Nietzsche is nigh as rare today as he (or she!) was in Nietzsche’s lifetime. Much to our discredit and our disadvantage, as there may be no stronger tonic, no superior antidote, to our pervasive social toxins than the joyous polemics and ironical ethnography of history’s only truly apolitical intellectual. We sink our nails and fangs into our neighbor’s throat in search of the solution to our political questions, questions which Nietzsche swiftly dismissed as the symptoms of “a diet of beer and newspapers”. I couldn’t even write that without feeling guilty for partaking in, and contributing to, our ubiquitous and incurable political obsession, especially because I have done so only with the best intentions. Even this essay, wherein we yoke Nietzsche into the political maelstrom, risks a betrayal of his anti-political stance!
Would we commit this betrayal on the man’s birthday, no less? Would we reduce ourselves to the miserable state of Ayn Rand, whose only unforgivable mistake was her persistent attempt to apply Nietzschean thought politically? Not so fast: Nietzsche’s hostility to politics must not be mistaken for political silence. It is not that he had nothing to say about politics, or that he would never argue against a political perspective, but that he would never argue for a political position or ideology. In other words, one can refer to Nietzsche’s writings when disproving a political claim, but one is forbidden to use his writing in defense of the opposite, or in defense of anything strictly political.
In fact, when reading Nietzsche, it is nigh impossible not to reflect on our modern state of political dysfunction. Consider this entry, titled “On the critique of saints”, which appears in his book, The Gay Science:
“To have a virtue, must one really wish to have it in its most brutal form—as the Christian saints wished—and needed—it? They could endure life only by thinking that the sight of their virtue would engender self-contempt in anyone who saw them. But a virtue with this effect I call brutal.”
Of course, a brutal virtue isn’t virtuous at all: it is moral malignancy disguised as virtue, morality inverted and, finally, perverted. Could one imagine a more suitable description of the social justice warriors, those gluttonous parasites who attach themselves to the strong and who punish them for their strength by devouring them? The social justice warriors, who feast exclusively on that which they deem to be immorality, yet who have never, not once in their lives, produced anything in the way of morality. Their carnivorous behavior is strictly consumptive, and what is more: it is never constructive.
How could it be otherwise? To reiterate, the SJW is a parasite that has no identity and redemptive purpose of its own. Its only function is to kill anyone and everyone whom it perceives as its enemy. It kills by seizing upon the productive function of its supposed enemy and declaring, “Immorality!” Yet, there is no credible criteria whereby the SJW determines who is or is not its enemy, any more than there is a stable definition of what constitutes immorality. Is immorality racism? Only when it is directed against some groups, some of the time, and not necessarily with any specific terms or intent. Is immorality sexism? Again, there is a plethora of variegated conditions, permitting sexism under some circumstances and in some situations. Could it be a call to violence? Depending on the conversational climate.
It is clear that the SJW adheres to an omnivorous diet, devouring whatever happens to be available, and only during the digestive process stating, “That was immorality!” However, let us assume that the SJW is unerring in its comestible cognizance and that it does, in fact, consume only that which is immoral—and here Nietzsche shakes his head, as if to remind us of his observation that there is no such thing as a moral or an immoral action, only a moral interpretation of an action. But let us politely ignore Nietzsche for the nonce, although it is his birthday, and assume that the SJW rightly identifies immorality each time: what then? What will the SJW do, once the last immoral action in human history has been performed and there is no cruelty left to consume? How will the SJW carry on?
It can’t, of course. Without an incessant procession of appalling conduct to castigate and chew, the SJW would starve; it would waste away as a social anachronism, one whose passing ought to be celebrated, for it heralds a new age of moral evolution. Alas, the SJW is a self-preserving specimen, and so, it must continually seek out new prey, new evidence of immorality—in short, it must seek out new immorality. Fortunately, redefining morality is the simplest of all human endeavors: as Nietzsche tried to warn us a moment ago, morality is a fully arbitrary calculation and assessment, and it can be altered or replaced without a moment’s notice. All of this redounds to the SJW, who helps itself today to that which was denied unto it yesterday. What is moral now can, in times of scarcity, can be deemed immoral, and we have no choice but to sacrifice ourselves to the SJW’s inexhaustible hunger.
We are taught to hate ourselves, to see in ourselves a moral failing so corrosive and widespread, it is a mercy to be slaughtered to appease the SJW. This is the “self-contempt” inspired, and desired, by the saints in Nietzsche’s observation, and it is equally necessary in both instances. Accordingly, the SJW is really consuming . . . not immorality, but self-contempt.
With this observation emerges a new thought: if the SJW feeds exclusively on self-contempt, then it is, by definition, a being of self-contempt. Its constitution, its foundation is one of self-contempt. The social justice warrior is a creature of self-contempt. It despises itself, yet it never declines an opportunity to assert its pride, a pride which we now know to be not only baseless—derived as it is from no internal activity of the SJW—but demonstrably dishonest, as well. The question, then, is why the SJW presents itself as a boastful being when it is so clearly ashamed of itself.
The solution lies within our prior observation that the SJW requires immorality, or the presence of something deemed to be immoral, in order to survive. The SJW will not acknowledge its insoluble ties to “immorality”, yet it struggles with its own deliberate ignorance. The SJW resents itself for needing immorality, and in this state of dependence—which is even more embarrassing when we note that, on the other hand, immorality has no need of the SJW—it becomes bitter and indignant. It scolds immorality for failing to yield to its power, yet at the same time, it is relieved that it cannot compel immorality to do anything, for such a compulsion would be suicidal! The last desperate act is to blame immorality because it is immoral, which is to say, because it is what it is. And here, I am reminded of what Nietzsche had to say about the stoics: mocking them for their desire “to live according to life”, he asked, “How can you live according to anything other than that which you yourselves are and necessarily must be?”
The SJW lacks Nietzsche’s understanding, and in its confusion, it grasps only a sense of its own failure. It is insulted by its failure, and in its desperate search of someone to blame, it seizes on the supposedly immoral, the breathing manifestations of immorality. If this approach seems destined to fail in theory, then witness its disastrous execution in reality: like a flightless phoenix, the SJW was conceived and born in Hillary Clinton’s ashes, scattered in the winds after her (most recent) failed presidential bid. What was the first thing the SJW saw after its emergence into the world? The Trumpeter, of course, the modern icon of immorality, savagery, indecorum, and more. It is ideal prey for the SJW, especially because it refuses to die: no matter how many blows the SJW strikes, no matter how much supposed intellectual evidence it releases in an effort to bury the beast, the Trumpeter endures, and possibly becomes more powerful, besides.
The Trumpeter is the fountain of youth to the SJW, a perpetually replenishing source of sustenance. It is the nourishing mother and the regenerative child, but the sinister nature of this relationship is concealed from the SJW: just as the SJW needed immorality, but not the other way around, so the SJW needs the Trumpeter, though the Trumpeter needs not the SJW. Because the Trumpeter—or immorality; the SJW struggles to distinguish one from the other—cannot be vanquished, lest the SJW perish, the greatest victory possible for the SJW is to reduce the Trumpeter to its level, to make them equals in bloodless intellectual combat, or in bloodless anti-intellectual combat, as the case may be. However, there is no way for the Trumpeter and the SJW to become equals, not when the Trumpeter has power—though only over the SJW—only because Trump is in the White House. The White House can’t be shared or divided among ideological opposites, not under the current system of government, and it can’t be taken by the liberals, lest the seizure prove lethal to the SJW. Therefore, even a levying of the battlefield, a universal parity of power, is unavailable to the SJW, whose entire existence really does depend on its remaining in a state inferior to the Trumpeter, in a state of effective submission, in a state of political masochism.
Now might be the best time to remind ourselves that Nietzsche believed morality, as it is currently constructed, is really a self-destructive and pseudointellectual philosophy of weakness, one which encourages enervation and timidity in the human spirit under the guise of promoting compassion and justice. So it is with the SJW, a parasite whose claim to immaculate morality, to morality incarnate, proves to be all too credible—more’s the pity. Now, while I previously argued against a political application of Nietzschean philosophy, perhaps we could solve this problem most cleanly by allowing Nietzsche to blow out his birthday candles—and, in the same breath, snuff out the flame of the faceless, nameless, and ultimately baseless social justice warriors.
Happy birthday, Nietzsche. I love you.
overwritten.org 