Psychology prof the new Hitler? What’s So Dangerous About Jordan Peterson?

[Syne]

.

And?

And I guess you have nothing of substance or consequence.

[Secular Sanity]

The thing that seems to have really provoked his critics, particularly feminists and gay activists, is his opposition to Canada's Bill C-16. This added 'gender' and sexual preference to the list of legally protected categories, made any remarks by less favored individuals that might be perceived as critical of any more favored category into "hate-speech" and proscribed criminal penalties.

Personally, I agree with Peterson about that. I believe that real criminal laws need to be enforced. If somebody assaults somebody else, there are already laws against assault. It doesn't really change the assault whether it was motivated by antipathy to gays, or antipathy towards somebody who was wearing a red MAGA hat or speaking in favor of Donald Trump. It's assault either way. If we start punishing motivations, we have slipped over towards introducing a new Orwellian category of thought-crime.

I agree with that, as well. Hate speech isn’t regulated here in the states, but as you know, I also disagree with the Canadian defamation laws.

"The bill is intended to protect individuals from discrimination within the sphere of federal jurisdiction and from being the targets of hate propaganda, as a consequence of their gender identity or their gender expression. The bill adds "gender identity or expression" to the list of prohibited grounds of discrimination in the Canadian Human Rights Act and the list of characteristics of identifiable groups protected from hate propaganda in the Criminal Code. It also adds that evidence that an offence was motivated by bias, prejudice or hate based on a person's gender identity or expression constitutes an aggravating circumstance for a court to consider when imposing a criminal sentence."

Funny thing is, though, Peterson doesn’t think that discrimination and hate speech should be illegal but he does believe that it’s okay to threaten people that he feels are racist with physical violence.

"You a sanctimonious prick? If you were in my room, at the moment, I’d happily slap you. You arrogant racist son of a bitch Pankaj Mishra: How dare you accuse me of "harmlessly romancing the noble savage." That’s how you refer to my friend Charles Joseph, who I’ve worked with for 15 years." source

We know that he’s not against using physical violence to solve problems because he said that’s one reason men can’t control "crazy" women. It’s forbidden to use physical force against a woman.

"Here’s the problem, I know how to stand up to a man who’s unfairly trespassed against me and the reason I know that is because the parameters for my resistance are quite well-defined, which is: we talk, we argue, we push, and then it becomes physical. If we move beyond the boundaries of civil discourse, we know what the next step is," he claims. "That’s forbidden in discourse with women and so I don’t think that men can control crazy women. I really don’t believe it. If you’re talking to a man who wouldn’t fight with you under any circumstances whatsoever, then you’re talking to someone to whom you have absolutely no respect." source

Whenever we’re noncompliant, we’re crazy, misandristic, overly emotional, or as you put it earlier, hateful, is that it, Yazata?

Yes, this whole thread seems to be SS's attempts to trash and demean Jordan Peterson. In other words, it seems to me to be motivated primarily by her hatred for the man. That hatred is what interests me, not the arcane ins and outs of Canadian defamation law.

Peterson’s statement is similar to what my son’s friends said.

His friends are young but they’re not dumb.  Most of them graduated from college this year with degrees in philosophy, political science, and economics.  I asked them why they can’t be friends with girls.  Do you know what they said?  They didn’t think of them as equals simply because when push comes to shove, they can overpower them.

Yep. "Wisdom The private reason oft comes from the mouth of babes."

[Yazata]

This thread certainly went off the rails quickly. The craziness from the other thread just moved over here.

So I continue to ask --- why do some people hate Peterson so passionately? Why all the emotional arousal?

To me he appears to be another in a seemingly endless collection of rather light-weight humanities/social-"sciences" intellectuals. Interesting (perhaps a little) but not particularly important. What little I know about his ideas (typically at second hand, since I'm not interested in watching his videos) I generally tend to agree with (perhaps not in detail). His worst fault might be that he is confused or mistaken about some things, but what else is new coming from humanities/social-"sciences" intellectuals?

I speculated in my earlier post about the rather fascistic reaction that he attracts. He opposed Bill C-16 and attracted the never-dying antipathy of feminists and gay-activists. (Since anyone who opposes their agendas is a "bigot" by definition, he became identified as a 'bigot'.) And he may or may not attribute more of human behavior to innate biology than the activists are happy with. (I'm inclined to favor evolutionary psychology myself.) Hence my comparison to how E.O. Wilson was treated (disruption of his lectures, even physical assault) for saying similar sorts of things.

What interests me more than Peterson's ideas is the over-the-top and frankly hysterical reaction that they are receiving from the self-styled "tolerant" brown-shirts/red-guards that increasingly dominate higher education with their fists and bullhorns in our brave new age. Regarding that, I'm 100% with Peterson.

If academia turns away from free-inquiry towards enforced conformity, then I'm not hopeful about the future of American or European intellectual life.

[Secular Sanity]

This thread certainly went off the rails quickly. The craziness from the other thread just moved over here.

So I continue to ask --- why do some people hate Peterson so passionately? Why all the emotional arousal?

To me he appears to be another in a seemingly endless collection of rather light-weight humanities/social-"sciences" intellectuals. Interesting (perhaps a little) but not particularly important. What little I know about his ideas (typically at second hand, since I'm not interested in watching his videos) I generally tend to agree with (perhaps not in detail). His worst fault might be that he is confused or mistaken about some things, but what else is new coming from humanities/social-"sciences" intellectuals?

I speculated in my earlier post about the rather fascistic reaction that he attracts. He opposed Bill C-16 and attracted the never-dying antipathy of feminists and gay-activists. (Since anyone who opposes their agendas is a "bigot" by definition, he became identified as a 'bigot'.) And he may or may not attribute more of human behavior to innate biology than the activists are happy with. (I'm inclined to favor evolutionary psychology myself.) Hence my comparison to how E.O. Wilson was treated (disruption of his lectures, even physical assault) for saying similar sorts of things.

What interests me more than Peterson's ideas is the over-the-top and frankly hysterical reaction that they are receiving from the self-styled "tolerant" brown-shirts/red-guards that increasingly dominate higher education with their fists and bullhorns in our brave new age. Regarding that, I'm 100% with Peterson.

If academia turns away from free-inquiry towards enforced conformity, then I'm not hopeful about the future of American or European intellectual life.

And once again, I don’t hate anyone and what interest me is the popularity of Peterson's over-the-top ideas.

Like you said, Yazata, he’s a lightweight that got his 15 minutes of fame. Good for him, but now he’s a public figure, and here in the states, we’re allowed to call people out on their woo without having to worry about a defamation lawsuit.

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/iIfLTQAKKfg

Before he said that he would slap his critic for being racist, though, he should have noticed that he was taking Mishra’s remark out of context and maybe looked up the definition. He started a new paragraph. He wasn’t calling his friend a noble savage.

Peterson, however, seems to have modelled his public persona on Jung rather than Campbell. The Swiss sage sported a ring ornamented with the effigy of a snake—the symbol of light in a pre-Christian Gnostic cult. Peterson claims that he has been inducted into “the coastal Pacific Kwakwaka’wakw tribe”; he is clearly proud of the Native American longhouse he has built in his Toronto home.

Peterson may seem the latest in a long line of eggheads pretentiously but harmlessly romancing the noble savage. But it is worth remembering that Jung recklessly generalized about the superior “Aryan soul” and the inferior “Jewish psyche” and was initially sympathetic to the Nazis. Mircea Eliade was a devotee of Romania’s fascistic Iron Guard. Campbell’s loathing of “Marxist” academics at his college concealed a virulent loathing of Jews and blacks. Solzhenitsyn, Peterson’s revered mentor, was a zealous Russian expansionist, who denounced Ukraine’s independence and hailed Vladimir Putin as the right man to lead Russia’s overdue regeneration. Pankaj Mishra

The claim that he’s referring to is just one of Peterson’s little boasting episodes.

Raised and toughened in the frigid wastelands of Northern Alberta, Jordan Peterson has flown a hammer-head roll in a carbon-fiber stuntplane, piloted a mahogany racing sailboat around Alcatraz Island, explored an Arizona meteorite crater with a group of astronauts, built a Native American Long-House on the upper floor of his Toronto home, and been inducted into the coastal Pacific Kwakwaka’wakw tribe.

He’s more than just a little confused or mistaken, though, and I wouldn’t put him in the same category as E.O. Wilson. I’d toss him in with Deepak Chopra.

[C C]

[...] So I continue to ask --- why do some people hate Peterson so passionately? Why all the emotional arousal? [...]

And once again, I don’t hate anyone and what interest me is the popularity of Peterson's over-the-top ideas.

Like you said, Yazata, he’s a lightweight that got his 15 minutes of fame. Good for him, but now he’s a public figure, and here in the states, we’re allowed to call people out on their woo without having to worry about a defamation lawsuit. [...]

I appreciate you providing an informative analysis about him from that direction (creating balance). As I perhaps mentioned somewhere in the past, I seem to just go "Zzzzzzz..." eventually with attempts to watch a Peterson video unless somebody rearranges it in an entertaining mode (like a hip-hop rhythm?). MR posted a resource site that haphazardly includes a link to Peterson podcasts, but I seem to be lethargic interest-wise about even testing that (playing such in the background).

The situation in here about Peterson has a vague, occasionally reverse (due to this board's outspoken or non-Mod suppressed traditionalism) similarity to the back-and-forth over MR's ghosts and UFOs (elsewhere, if not fully on Scivillage). Though the paranormal is apparently[?] minus political interests or their strongly playing a role in people's chosen thought orientations pro or con about _X_. While I usually incline toward the skeptic side, I still like to see balance -- the proponent side (believer) being able to express itself without being shut down. Both in terms of the "establishment" being challenged (immune systems need to receive regular attacks) and the rebel views being directly "out there" on a board rather than being mediated second-hand by any heavy-handed administration.

[Leigha]

Personally, I think that Jordan Peterson has a down to earth way about him, and some of his views are somewhat refreshing, because he goes against the grain of the mainstream culture/social media views on post modernism and feminism. That said, I'm always a bit put off when I see a speaker/lecturer/philosopher/professor/author only attract men, or mainly men. In Peterson's case, it seems like he attracts a certain type of guy - men who look to explain the problems of the world in terms of gender. I don't dislike Peterson, but I tend to look at the ''fan club'' of a person, and that usually tells me if the message is going to resonate with me or not. Some of his messages are appealing, but he definitely seems to appeal to men who want to blame women for their lot in life. That might not be his intent, but that is the end result. So, if that's not his intent, why are so many anti-feminist/gender-line-drawing men drawn to Peterson? (That is my general observation and also what I've read from various critics of his, and also some of his ''followers.'')

Now, he does have a small following of women, mainly women who are not feminists, and perhaps could be traditionalists, etc. I'd say the same thing above about a feminist who is popular with jaded women, who wants to blame all of their problems on men. There are a ton of them on youtube, and it's all white noise. It goes both ways for me.

It seems from the little I've read, that Peterson offers some solid life advice for men who struggle with finding their place in life, and purpose. His message seems to be about standing strong, fighting against identity politics, and being one's own person. I think that the ''left'' dislike him because he is against feminism in its present state, and wants to encourage dissent to the cultural narratives of gender equality and mainstream feminism. Admittedly, I'm not super familiar with Peterson, but have read a few things, heard a few things, and read mainly what his critics and fans are talking about to get a general picture of what his intent might be.

[Yazata]

Further below, there's even an example of Peterson, PoMo, and Wilson converging together -- in the second (hit) piece. In the first item here, Nietzsche is recognized in "duh" fashion as an ancestral catalyst for PoMo (and later twists in psychology?).

Maybe. I have to admit that I've never had any interest in Nietzsche. He's always seemed like a proto-Nazi to me, pushing a philosophy most suited to rebellious intellectual adolescents.

That may or may not be fair to Nietzsche, but it explains why I've preferred to direct my attention elsewhere.

Thus supposedly one example of its backhand influence on Peterson. (Nietzsche's expression "will to power" is directly mentioned in "Beyond Good and Evil", an outlook which seems would factor into Peterson's lobster metaphor -- or at least Fluss's take on it.)

My impression is that Peterson's lobster metaphor is just him noting that very different clades of animals, whose ancestors split from ours perhaps as far back as early Cambrian times (in this case our own ancestors and those of arthropods), possess social hierarchies. And he notes that similar brain biochemistry is at work in each case. So he seems to just be suggesting that it's very old and very deeply embedded in the human psyche. You aren't going to make it go away simply with a radical social change program or by destroying capitalism. As the Soviets, Chinese and Pol Pot's Cambodians all discovered, new and often brutal heirarchies take the place of the old ones that the Revolution has swept away.

My own take on this (I don't know if Peterson would agree but wouldn't be surprised if he did) is that these kind of innate human instincts aren't ever going to be eliminated (certainly not in simplistic ways). They aren't matters of good and evil and can't be eliminated by shouting, waving one's finger in another person's face and shaming people into surrender. (That's just another eruption of the very same hierarchical impulse.)

But things aren't hopeless, since I expect that these tendencies can be managed in a variety of ways, so that they work for us rather than against us. They are a large part of what drives ambition after all, of what motivates us to strive and accomplish.

(But the way forward is most emphatically not Nietzsche's concept of the Superman throwing aside all wimpy "slave morality" like compassion. That road leads straight to Hitler.)

[C C]

Further below, there's even an example of Peterson, PoMo, and Wilson converging together -- in the second (hit) piece. In the first item here, Nietzsche is recognized in "duh" fashion as an ancestral catalyst for PoMo (and later twists in psychology?).

Maybe. I have to admit that I've never had any interest in Nietzsche. He's always seemed like a proto-Nazi to me, pushing a philosophy most suited to rebellious intellectual adolescents.

That may or may not be fair to Nietzsche, but it explains why I've preferred to direct my attention elsewhere.

[...] (But the way forward is most emphatically not Nietzsche's concept of the Superman throwing aside all wimpy "slave morality" like compassion. That road leads straight to Hitler.)

Nietzsche's sister became steward of his work after he became incapacitated. She reframed it to fit her and her husband's proto-Nazi ideology.

Many young males probably either first learn of nihilism from Nietzsche or they fail to understand that he was prescribing a remedy for it, not endorsing it or its most negative consequences. "...the Übermensch acts to create new values within the moral vacuum of nihilism ... In order to avoid a relapse into Platonic idealism or asceticism, the creation of these new values cannot be motivated by the same instincts that gave birth to those tables of values. Instead, they must be motivated by a love of this world and of life. Whereas Nietzsche diagnosed the Christian value system as a reaction against life and hence destructive in a sense, the new values which the Übermensch will be responsible for will be life-affirming and creative."

OTOH, however, perspectivsim opened the door to the 20th-century result of postmodernism (after mingling with para-Marxist offspring from elsewhere on the continent). And what seems to amount to mere faith itself that all these experimental worldviews and diverging cultures will take a positive ("life-affirming" or whatever) route of getting along with each other. (Just do such and such and magic will happen, it will turn out alright.)

That result also perversely, ultimately allows the return of the pre-modern religious stuff as part of different, but equally "valid" perspectives or coping tools across a multi-ethnic spectrum. Or at least "perverse" from the standpoint of whatever elements are descended from Marxism. Somewhere along the way -- the '60s at the very least -- the emphasis shifted from class struggle to social justice struggle and adoption of French philosophy. But the original impetus and marching template came from Karl's "good old time gospel" (ideology) which once included frowning on religions and gods.

---

[...] Now, he does have a small following of women, mainly women who are not feminists, and perhaps could be traditionalists, etc. I'd say the same thing above about a feminist who is popular with jaded women, who wants to blame all of their problems on men. There are a ton of them on youtube, and it's all white noise. It goes both ways for me. [...]

Couple of random examples at bottom. Of course, the exact numbers (especially if they're of the "few" magnitude) could be subject to doubt by concerned parties prone to conspiracy suspicions. Like maybe the bean counters are classifying females in Peterson's audiences or fan clubs as "male". I.e., intrepreting them as "conservative women" and from there as functionally equivalent to "male" or serving the purpose of maintaining the traditional status quo.

Plays off the MO of how some radical activist intellectuals label black police officers as functionally "white" if they're involved in controversial shootings; and similar with middle-class, latino vigilantes being called "white" by the media. Maybe the Anglophone world could introduce a new classification that's spelled "wight" (which is archaic for generic "human being"). Any blacks, Asians, Hispanics, indigenous peoples, WASPs, LGBT members, Middle Easterners, women, etc would be be labeled "wight" if they do something questionably outside whatever SocJus protocols of a specific year or decade (stray beyond the verbal and behavioral political conformity of that time period).

Why I Love Jordan Peterson (Natalia Dashan)
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/weekl...n-peterson

Santie Engelbrecht (really just a Quora poster)
https://www.quora.com/Are-there-any-wome...n-Peterson

[Yazata]

...I have to admit that I've never had any interest in Nietzsche. He's always seemed like a proto-Nazi to me, pushing a philosophy most suited to rebellious intellectual adolescents.

That may or may not be fair to Nietzsche, but it explains why I've preferred to direct my attention elsewhere.

[...] (But the way forward is most emphatically not Nietzsche's concept of the Superman throwing aside all wimpy "slave morality" like compassion. That road leads straight to Hitler.)

Nietzsche's sister became steward of his work after he became incapacitated. She reframed it to fit her and her husband's proto-Nazi ideology.

She wrote his 'Genealogy of Morals'?

http://www.inp.uw.edu.pl/mdsie/Political...Morals.pdf

That book could have been written by Hitler himself. It extols what Leni Riefenstahl called the "Triumph of the Will" in her truly extraordinary movie, the idea of the "Ubermensch", pervasive antisemitism (Nietzsche blamed the Jews as the primary agents of the degradation of the human race), the idea of the blond Aryan race rolling over all the inferior peoples who are reduced by their clear inferiority to "resentiment", the idea of "master morality" and "slave morality", and the extraordinary idea that Masters don't follow morality, they create it.

The whole book is basically an elegy for what Nietzsche takes to be the warrior ethos of the prehistoric German tribes. (His all-conquering Aryans.)

Many young males probably either first learn of nihilism from Nietzsche or they fail to understand that he was prescribing a remedy for it, not endorsing it or its most negative consequences. "...the Übermensch acts to create new values within the moral vacuum of nihilism..."

"Young males?" Females are above all that foolishness, I take it.

Nietzsche doesn't mean the same thing by 'nihilism' as people typically do today. Today people tend to mean 'anomie', lawlessness, being without social norms. Nietzsche wrote...

"Precisely here I saw the great danger to mankind, its most sublime temptation and seduction - temptation to what? to nothingness? - precisely here I saw the beginning of the end, standstill, mankind looking back wearily, turning its will against life, and the onset of the final sickness becoming gently, sadly manifest: I understood the morality of compassion, casting around ever wider to catch even philosophers and make them ill, as the most uncanny symptom of out European culture which has itself become uncanny, as its detour to a new Buddhism? to a new Euro-Buddhism? to - nihilism? This predilection for and over-valuation of compassion that modern philosophers show is, in fact, something new: up till now, philosophers were agreed as to the worthlessness of compassion..." (p. 7)

The 'nihilism' that Nietzsche condemns seems to be selflessness in the moral sense. Nihilism to Nietzsche seems to be putting other's interests ahead of one's own desires. It's self-sacrifice. Anything that seemingly reduces the sovereignty of the self. It's... caring.

The pure egoism of the self-proclaimed "Superman" may indeed look like a solution to 'nihilism' to female as well as male adolescents (make your own desires into your (and everyone else's) Law), but it's nothing close to a functional social philosophy in my opinion.

Nietzsche again:

"The noble type of man feels himself to be the determiner of values, he does not need to find approval, in his opinion, 'What harms me is harmful as such', he knows that he himself is the one to first confer honour on a thing, he creates values. He honours everything which he knows pertains to himself: a morality like this is self-glorification." (p. 155)

"This man who is now free, who actually has the prerogative to promise, this master of the free will, this sovereign - how could he remain ignorant of his superiority over everybody who does not have the prerogative to promise or to answer to himself, how much trust, fear and respect he arouses - he merits all three - and how could he, with his self-mastery, not realize that he has necessarily been given mastery over circumstances, over nature and over all creatures with a less enduring and reliable will? The 'free' man, the possessor of an enduring, unbreakable will, thus has his own standard of value: in the possession of such a will: viewing others from his own standpoint, he respects or despises..." (p. 37)

Nietzsche on race and the Aryans:

"In the Latin word malus the common man could be characterized as the dark-skinned and especially the dark-haired man ('hic niger est -') as the pre-Aryan occupant of Italian soil who could most easily be distinguished from the blond race which has become dominant, namely the Aryan conquering race... the same holds good for virtually the whole of Europe, to all extents and purposes the subject race has ended up by regaining the upper hand in skin colour, shortness of forehead and perhaps even in intellectual and social instincts: who can give any guarantee that modern democracy, the even more modern anarchism, and indeed that predilection for the 'commune', the most primitive form of social structure which is common to all Europe's socialists, are not in essence a huge throw-back - and that the conquering master race, that of the Aryans, is not physiologically being defeated as well?" (pp. 14-15)

"These bearers of oppressive, vindictive instincts, the descendants of all European and non-European slavery, in particular of all pre-Aryan population - represent the decline of mankind! These 'instruments' of culture' are a disgrace to man... We may be quite justified in retaining our fear of the blond beast at the center of every noble race and remain on our guard: but who would not, a hundred times over, prefer to fear if he can admire at the same time, rather than not fear, but thereby permanently retain the disgusting spectacle of the failed, the stunted, the wasted away and the poisoned? (p. 24)

Nietzsche on the Jews:

"Nothing that has been done on earth against 'the noble', 'the mighty', 'the masters' and 'the rulers', is worth mentioning compared with what the Jews have done against them: the Jews, that priestly people, which in the last resort was able to gain satisfaction from its enemies and conquerors only through a radical revaluation of their values, that is, through an act of the most deliberate revenge..." (p.17)

... In order to avoid a relapse into Platonic idealism or asceticism, the creation of these new values cannot be motivated by the same instincts that gave birth to those tables of values. Instead, they must be motivated by a love of this world and of life.

Or more accurately a love of one's self, a self pictured through the distorting lens of an idealization of the prehistoric German warrior.

"I used the word 'state': it is obvious who is meant by this - some pack of blond beasts of prey, a conqueror and master race, which organized on a war footing, and with the power to organize, unscrupulously lays its dreadful paws on a populace which, though it might be vastly greater in number, is still shapeless and shifting. In this way, the 'state' began on earth: I think that I have dispensed with the fantasy which has it begin with a 'contract'. Whoever can command, whoever is a 'master' by nature, whoever appears violent in deed and gesture - what is he going to care about contracts?" (p. 58)

But unless that idealized warrior-aristocrat, that creator-of-values, has something more to go on than his own desires, we are headed nowhere.

I'm inclined to agree with Nietzsche that there aren't any objective moral values written into the universe, Platonic fashion. I agree that gods probably don't exist and have little or nothing to do with morality if they do.

Some academics apparently attribute Nietzsche's views at least in part to his reaction to Darwin. If evolution is "survival of the fittest", then Nietzsche championed what he took to be the fittest - his warrior conquerors, his "blond beasts". And he's obviously influenced by late 19th century German nationalism. The heroes of history as he sees it are his Aryans, which presumably he identifies with and identifies with northern Europeans. But this caricature of "social Darwinism" isn't the only way to conceive of humanity and human nature in evolutionary terms.

That's where the whole idea of social instincts comes into play in evolutionary ethics. People just naturally care about those closest to them, their family, friends, tribe, nation... Even humanity in general in some vague idea of 'human rights'. Contra-Nietzsche, people just naturally feel empathy and compassion. It's a psychological fact.

Humans evolved in social groups, not as solitary predators as Nietzsche seems to imagine. The Jews weren't the ones who invented compassion as some kind of slave-morality favoring the weak. It was there from the very beginning, probably predating the appearance of human beings. (My dog displays compassion for those who are obviously suffering.) Members of paleolithic bands cared for one another and their doing so increased the evolutionary fitness of all the members of their group. I see ethics arising from the rationalization and conceptualization of that, not from an imposition by 'masters' of power and will. (Though certainly lawgivers and ethical authorities soon made their appearance.)

Whereas Nietzsche diagnosed the Christian value system as a reaction against life and hence destructive in a sense, the new values which the Übermensch will be responsible for will be life-affirming and creative."

Life affirming for the Ubermensch presumably, but not so much for everyone else. I still viscerally dislike Nietzsche. (One of the most over-rated philosophers in the canon, in my opinion.)

[Image: 220px-Triumph_des_Willens_poster.jpg]

[C C]

[...] Nietzsche on the Jews:

"Nothing that has been done on earth against 'the noble', 'the mighty', 'the masters' and 'the rulers', is worth mentioning compared with what the Jews have done against them: the Jews, that priestly people, which in the last resort was able to gain satisfaction from its enemies and conquerors only through a radical revaluation of their values, that is, through an act of the most deliberate revenge..." (p.17) [...]

Due to having to trudge through those incredibly long sentences and dense paragraphs of older German writers (when a translator hasn't tried to adapt such to accommodate English format better), I'm not going to play Devil's advocate for Nietzsche beyond this one instance. It's too exhausting, and I'm similarly not a particularized expert on him beyond the usual generalized trappings retained in memory.

I don't know all the specific landmines he shot himself in the foot with that may be scattered throughout his works, and when if after freeing him from the appearance of one pothole I'd then discover he sabotaged himself with the appearance of yet another one elsewhere. (And some may indeed not be misperceptions.) Also, one would be constantly struggling against the anachronism of the current era and the 20th-century placing his passages in the context of what happened in the future rather than the political context of his own era and his own MO that is crouched in that.

In other words, being an apologist for Nietzsche is a job for a deep enthusiast of or expert on Nietzsche. There's a point where he (among many others) can become like Peterson to me (i.e., not interested enough to care whether he's being filleted like a fish or venerated like a god, as far spending hours watching and researching his lectures).

The problem with Nietzsche is that he's literally a writer (like an entertaining non-fiction author or a novelist or short-story author or a newspaper column contributor). Not a philosopher or just a philosopher, who arguably is NOT supposed to be as creatively or artistically lax in style as conventional literature makers. One has to be careful about distinguishing his parroting and mocking of popular rhetoric from what his own actual views are. His style makes that all the more difficult, in discerning where sarcasm and rambling metaphor ends and he finally takes a turn toward clarity.

Below is an excerpt from Beyond Good and Evil. He starts out referring to political "follies" that have infected German society, then shifts specifically to those public views about the Jews among his countrymen and others. What's highlighted in bold is presumably his own take on Jews (or one of them). Also notice him finally switching to his "SERIOUS" objective at the bottom, indicating that the aforementioned as well as his "spritely Teutonmania" is suspect to being facetious hubris. Listening to a rant transpiring on an American porch today (at least in the middle of the country), there would be similar fixation with American interests and Trump echoing America first on a television news segment in the living room. It doesn't mean every person doing that is filing for an application to concretely fill the concept that Nazis or Hitler symbolize nowadays.

NIETZSCHE: 251. It must be taken into the bargain, if various clouds and disturbances—in short, slight attacks of stupidity—pass over the spirit of a people that suffers and WANTS to suffer from national nervous fever and political ambition: for instance, among present-day Germans there is alternately the anti-French folly, the anti-Semitic folly, the anti-Polish folly, the Christian-romantic folly, the Wagnerian folly, the Teutonic folly, the Prussian folly (just look at those poor historians, the Sybels and Treitschkes, and their closely bandaged heads), and whatever else these little obscurations of the German spirit and conscience may be called. May it be forgiven me that I, too, when on a short daring sojourn on very infected ground, did not remain wholly exempt from the disease, but like every one else, began to entertain thoughts about matters which did not concern me—the first symptom of political infection.

About the Jews, for instance, listen to the following:—I have never yet met a German who was favourably inclined to the Jews; and however decided the repudiation of actual anti-Semitism may be on the part of all prudent and political men, this prudence and policy is not perhaps directed against the nature of the sentiment itself, but only against its dangerous excess, and especially against the distasteful and infamous expression of this excess of sentiment;—on this point we must not deceive ourselves. That Germany has amply SUFFICIENT Jews, that the German stomach, the German blood, has difficulty (and will long have difficulty) in disposing only of this quantity of "Jew"—as the Italian, the Frenchman, and the Englishman have done by means of a stronger digestion:—that is the unmistakable declaration and language of a general instinct, to which one must listen and according to which one must act. "Let no more Jews come in! And shut the doors, especially towards the East (also towards Austria)!"—thus commands the instinct of a people whose nature is still feeble and uncertain, so that it could be easily wiped out, easily extinguished, by a stronger race.

The Jews, however, are beyond all doubt the strongest, toughest, and purest race at present living in Europe, they know how to succeed even under the worst conditions (in fact better than under favourable ones), by means of virtues of some sort, which one would like nowadays to label as vices—owing above all to a resolute faith which does not need to be ashamed before "modern ideas", they alter only, WHEN they do alter, in the same way that the Russian Empire makes its conquest—as an empire that has plenty of time and is not of yesterday—namely, according to the principle, "as slowly as possible"! A thinker who has the future of Europe at heart, will, in all his perspectives concerning the future, calculate upon the Jews, as he will calculate upon the Russians, as above all the surest and likeliest factors in the great play and battle of forces.

That which is at present called a "nation" in Europe, and is really rather a RES FACTA than NATA (indeed, sometimes confusingly similar to a RES FICTA ET PICTA), is in every case something evolving, young, easily displaced, and not yet a race, much less such a race AERE PERENNUS, as the Jews are such "nations" should most carefully avoid all hot-headed rivalry and hostility! It is certain that the Jews, if they desired—or if they were driven to it, as the anti-Semites seem to wish—COULD now have the ascendancy, nay, literally the supremacy, over Europe, that they are NOT working and planning for that end is equally certain. Meanwhile, they rather wish and desire, even somewhat importunely, to be insorbed and absorbed by Europe, they long to be finally settled, authorized, and respected somewhere, and wish to put an end to the nomadic life, to the "wandering Jew",—and one should certainly take account of this impulse and tendency, and MAKE ADVANCES to it (it possibly betokens a mitigation of the Jewish instincts) for which purpose it would perhaps be useful and fair to banish the anti-Semitic bawlers out of the country.

One should make advances with all prudence, and with selection, pretty much as the English nobility do It stands to reason that the more powerful and strongly marked types of new Germanism could enter into relation with the Jews with the least hesitation, for instance, the nobleman officer from the Prussian border it would be interesting in many ways to see whether the genius for money and patience (and especially some intellect and intellectuality—sadly lacking in the place referred to) could not in addition be annexed and trained to the hereditary art of commanding and obeying—for both of which the country in question has now a classic reputation But here it is expedient to break off my festal discourse and my sprightly Teutonomania for I have already reached my SERIOUS TOPIC, the "European problem," as I understand it, the rearing of a new ruling caste for Europe.