Nietzsche And FascismEdit
Friedrich Nietzsche’s body of work occupies a singular perch in modern thought: celebrated for its demystification of morality, its insistence on the primacy of the individual, and its wary gaze at mass politics, while also being pressed into service by movements far outside his intent. The relationship between Nietzsche’s philosophy and fascist ideology is one of the most debated topics in intellectual history. On the one hand, fascist and Nazi thinkers mined certain Nietzschean tropes to lend a fashionable aura of authority to their programs. On the other hand, a careful reading highlights crucial tensions: Nietzsche opposed herd conformity, condemned mass mobilization, and repeatedly attacked the very forms of power that fascism champions. The Nazi appropriation of Nietzsche is as much a story about editing, misreading, and political use as it is about Nietzsche’s own writings.
What follows surveys the terrain from a traditional, order-minded vantage—a perspective that stresses the value of individual responsibility, cultural continuity, and skepticism toward mass politics—while carefully delineating the controversies and the evidence about Nietzsche’s actual aims. The goal is to distinguish misapplication from the substance of Nietzsche’s thought, rather than to endorse or condemn any political movement.
Historical context and misappropriation
Nietzsche lived and wrote in the late 19th century, a period of frenzied nationalisms, rising mass politics, and a widening sense of cultural crisis in Europe. His critique of Christianity, democracy, and egalitarian ethics, delivered with a biting stylistic force, struck a chord with readers who cherished intellectual independence and cultural vitality. Yet the political climates of the early 20th century helped shape how his writings were read and used.
A central figure in the reception of Nietzsche after his death was Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche, his sister, who controlled the publication of much of his posthumous work. Her editorial choices framed Nietzsche in ways that aligned with nationalist and conservative causes in Germany. This coupling of editorship and political climate contributed to a perception—partly accurate, partly exaggerated—that Nietzsche provided an explicit philosophical justification for fascist order. Critics argue that this association rests as much on how Nietzsche was presented as on what he actually wrote. See Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche for background on how editorial practices shaped interpretation, and consider the broader history of Nazism’s appropriation of Nietzschean rhetoric.
The wider cultural uptake by fascist and Nazi movements in the 1920s–1930s further embedded Nietzschean language in the vocabulary of power, hierarchy, and vitality. They highlighted themes such as leadership, strength, and the rebirth of a culture under threat. This was, in many respects, a selective reading designed to confer philosophical gravitas on political programs that valued centralized authority and nationalistic expansion. The contrast between such readings and Nietzsche’s own emphases is a focal point of scholarly debate and a cautionary tale about how philosophical ideas travel.
Nietzschean ideas and fascist readings
Nietzsche’s writings are rich with provocative concepts that fascist thinkers found congenial, but the fit is not straightforward. The following themes illustrate the core lines of tension.
Will to power, leadership, and the non-democratic intuition
The notion often distilled as the will to power appears in Nietzsche as a description of a fundamental drive in life and culture. Some readers interpret this as a justification for aggressive political control or hierarchies. Yet many defenders of Nietzsche argue that the will to power is a descriptive, not prescriptive, account of life’s dynamics; it is a lens for understanding ambition, creativity, and the self-overcoming that Nietzsche prizes. The fascist appropriation tended to cast the will to power as warrant for coercive domination, whereas a careful reading emphasizes the problem of power itself—how societies cultivate life-affirming excellence without collapsing into domination over others. See Will to Power for the primary concept and its contested readings, and Fascism for the political framework that later tried to deploy it.
Übermensch, aristocracy, and the idea of leadership
The figure of the Übermensch or “overman” represents, in Nietzsche, an ideal of self-overcoming and self-masculering authority—an aspirational image of the individual who forges values in the face of decline. Fascist movements seized this image as a symbol of a leadership class and of a supposedly natural hierarchy. But Nietzsche’s text is not a blueprint for a governing caste or a justification of coercive empire; it is a critique of mediocrity and a meditation on what it means to live beyond conventional moral constraints. The fascist appropriation often ignores the negative qualification and the call to create personally meaningful values, in favor of a teleology of power. See Übermensch and Master-slave morality for related ideas.
Master-slave morality, democracy, and the herd
Nietzsche’s distinction between master and slave moralities targets the social psychology of resentment and the leveling projects of what he calls the herd. Critics on the right have sometimes used this vocabulary to argue for a society that respects exceptional individuals and cultural continuity over mass egalitarian projects. Critics on the left have warned that such language naturalizes domination. A nuanced read recognizes Nietzsche’s critique of democratic leveling, while also noting his resistance to any system that reduces human dignity to a mere instrument of state or mob power. See Master-slave morality for the key framework and Democracy as a foil in Nietzsche’s critique.
Religion, nihilism, and anti-totalitarian stakes
Nietzsche’s public stance against Christianity and his diagnosis of nihilism as a cultural condition inform a broader argument about how a stable culture avoids both doctrinal dogma and unbridled violence. Fascist movements often claimed the mantle of cultural revival, but Nietzsche’s own program includes a rigorous rejection of dogma and a call to preserve genuine life-affirming culture through self-overcoming rather than through militarized faith or state-centered belonging. See God is dead and Nihilism for related concerns.
The editing problem and the problem of misinterpretation
A decisive factor in why Nietzsche’s work has been read in fascist terms is how his writings were compiled and published in the decades after his death. The posthumous Will to Power notebooks, among others, were organized by editors who shaped their own political meanings into Nietzsche’s voice. Contemporary scholarship stresses careful textual work to separate what Nietzsche actually argued from what later editors or propagandists claimed he argued. See Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche and Friedrich Nietzsche for more context on how interpretation evolved.
Scholarly debates and the conservative-reading spectrum
Scholars disagree not only about whether Nietzsche influenced fascism, but about what such influence would have consisted of if it existed at all. A central point of contention is whether Nietzsche’s anti-democratic and elitist tendencies constitute a philosophical seedbed for totalitarian politics, or whether they simply describe a cultural critique that runs counter to modern mass movements.
The critical position emphasizes Nietzsche as a critic of collective fanaticism and a defender of individual moral responsibility. Prominent scholars such as Walter Kaufmann have argued that Nietzsche’s thought has been distorted by later political agendas, and that his most emphatic targets were herd morality, conventional religion, and the shallow triumph of the crowd—not a blueprint for racial or national domination.
A minority view in the literature argues that Nietzsche’s themes of power, vitality, and the subversion of herd morality contain elements that powerful actors could repurpose to legitimate aggressive or exclusionary programs. Critics of this view stress that Nietzsche’s texts often critique both the church and the state and that any such appropriation misunderstands Nietzsche’s broader anti-dogmatic stance and his occasional skepticism toward nationalism.
A broader, more cautious reading emphasizes the historical contingency: fascist movements encountered Nietzsche at a moment when European elites were anxious about mass politics, social upheaval, and the fragility of liberal norms. The problem, then, is not simply Nietzsche’s vocabulary but the political contexts through which his ideas were filtered and weaponized.
In this sense, a right-of-center reading tends to stress Nietzsche’s defense of cultivated independence, the importance of cultural continuity, and the suspicion of mass mobilization—while insisting that, properly understood, Nietzsche does not supply a program for coercive power or racial supremacy. The core danger lies in allowing powerful abstractions (like the will to power or the Übermensch) to become slogans for coercive regimes, rather than staying with Nietzsche’s insistence on self-overcoming and the cultivation of character.
Contemporary reception and political implications
Today, Nietzsche’s philosophy is read across a spectrum of political leanings, but with a notable emphasis on the tension between individual excellence and social cohesion. From a traditionalist vantage, his emphasis on striving, cultural renewal, and skepticism toward mass conformity can be framed as a cautionary counterweight to crowds, propaganda, and moral relativism. The critical lesson for readers concerned with political order is to distinguish the liberating impulse toward personal flourishing from any impulse toward domination, coercion, or racialized hierarchy.
The fascist misreading of Nietzsche remains a cautionary tale in the broader history of ideas: intellectual legacies are vulnerable to appropriation when editors, propagandists, or political movements shape quotation and context to fit a preexisting program. A disciplined scholarly approach seeks to re-anchor Nietzsche to his own themes—the cultivation of individual integrity, the critique of universalist dogma, and the relentless interrogation of received moralities—rather than to a political project he would not have endorsed.