Nietzsche, Schmitt, and the Alt-Right

Journalist Graeme Wood recently interviewed Richard Spencer, one of the leaders of the alt-right and a noted fascist. Spencer draws inspiration from philosophers Friedrich Nietzsche and Carl Schmitt. But is his interpretation of those philosophers fair?

The journalist Graeme Wood, author of the groundbreaking investigation on ISIS titled “What ISIS Really Wants,” recently interviewed Richard Spencer, one of the leaders of the alt-right, a noted fascist, and coincidentally on of Wood’s high school classmates. The entire profile, titled “His Kampf,” is worth reading, but in particular, I’d like to bring out Wood’s exploration of Spencer’s philosophical background. 

Spencer draws inspiration especially from the philosophers Friedrich Nietzsche and Carl Schmitt, the former appropriated by the Nazis and the latter a devoted member. Starting with Nietzsche, Spencer began by reading “On the Genealogy of Morals, a systematic dismantling of the moral and religious truths of European civilization. Nietzsche saw Christianity as a slave religion, a consolation to the weak. Spencer says that the general effect, an inversion of his moral universe, was ‘shattering.’”

Schmitt, on the other hand, provides the bulk of Spencer’s critique of liberalism. Schmitt has experienced a resurgence in academic political theory, especially since a special issue of the journal Telos was devoted to reconsidering his work. Since then, both the radical left and the right have found him useful toward critiques of the basic assumptions at the heart of liberal democracy. He was, however, a fully-fledged Nazi, so this revival has not come without its controversies. Wood testifies that Spencer’s understanding of Schmitt is actually “fair and reasonably nuanced.”

It isn’t everyday that you read Schmitt and Nietzsche, or philosophy at all, as serious theoretical influences for a rather large movement in the morning paper. But Spencer’s fascist reading of Nietzsche and Schmitt represents only one strand of interpretation of either philosopher. Nietzsche, for example, has been contested far longer than Schmitt, and there has been considerable work in trying to disentangle Nietzsche from the deep anti-semitism his sister contorted his works into. 

Have you read Nietzsche and/or Schmitt? What do you think of Spencer’s interpretation? 

Read the full article here: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/06/his-kampf/524505/