Actually, it's Nietzsche's hatred for the weak- and wish to leave behind the morality that protects the innocent- that led me to that conclusion. It wasn't the extermination of the Jews that the Nazis followed Nietzsche in this, but the extermination of the disabled.
I think that may be a misunderstanding of Nietzsche. I don't think he hated the weak (he himself was 'weak' and suffered terrible, debilitating migranes). Rather he questioned things that noone else wanted to question.
At the beginning of 'Beyond Good and Evil' he writes something like:
"I am going to ask a question which, to the best of my knowledge, has never before been asked. Despite philosophers claiming to hold no assumption sacred, no philosopher before me has ever thought to question this basic premise. And that is: 'why should we prefer truth over falsehood?'"
Nietzsche forces a re-evaluation of things which we may not have ever bothered to properly evaluate. I myself came away from reading Nietzsche not agreeing with what he *said*, he is not a philosopher who *intended* people to believe him or to be convinced by him. But rather a philosopher who wanted to make people THINK and to re-evaluate their lives, their place in the universe. And I came away from Nietzsche feeling revitalised and invigorated with a fresh perspective on Life, the Universe and Everything; and not Nietzsches perspective! But my own perspective, re-evaluated, searched and examined in more detail than I'd done before. I understood myself better for it.
The fact that (some of) the Nazis read him and came away from that reading thinking that they should do what he (appeared) to suggest would (I think) have appalled him and he would have had a very poor opinion of their intelligence...
In other words, he isn't your normal philosopher. Most philosophers try to make an argument for one thing or another. Nietzsche... provides a gymnasium.
Actually, in my opinion, having studied Shamanism in some depth, I honestly believe that Nietzsche was not really a philosopher at all; he was a Shaman. Or would have been, in another place and time.
Having studied Nietzsche quite closely, I have to disagree.
His concept of 'superman' was quite different to what you describe. Its not about selective breeding or anything like that. Its about a natural progression of the human race. The idea that the human race, AS A WHOLE, is on a journey; from the bestial to the superhuman. This is regardless of race or genetic superiority.
If you think that Nietzsche was about 'creating' the superman, perhaps you read too much into the 'based on the notes of Gene Roddenberry' Andromeda series?
Also; try this in Mongolia and see the population wiped out by mass starvation. Although Mongolians seem to really care too much about how food tastes... so the fact that the meat no longer tastes delicious might not stop them eating it. Then theres hunger.
Vegans in Mongolia require far more resources, money and energy to feed than meativores. Vegetarians who would eat dairy products might not fare too badly though.
I hope you are not suggesting that Nietzsche would have approved of the Nazis?
Nietzsche was vehemently anti-anti-semitic. His sister married a man who was a political leader of an anti-semitic movement. Nietzsche disowned her for it. Among his writings he asserted that "The Jews are the strongest race in Europe", he admired them openly.
The Nazis *did* try to use Nietzsche s work to justify their position but not very successfuly. The 'Nietzschean superman' was never in any way equivalent to the Nazi ideal of the 'master race' nor did it lead to the Nazi 'master race' concept.
Had Nietzsche been alive when the Nazis took power he would have been one of the first people they would have silenced.
The climber has to have food, toilets, sleeping facilities if you are going to take a week to get to GSO, so it's going to have to be more like a mini-hotel (or at least a mini-space station) than an elevator car.
Like a 'mini hotel'? You've never travelled across Russia by train. Those trains have toilets, sure. Sleeping facilities, sure. Dining cars, sure. But 'mini-hotel'? No. It'd be very cool if the 'space elevator' had coal-fired samovars in every carriage though!
That's hardly scientific. Maybe the temperature changed, or the wind, or the driver's style, or whatever. One TV experiment does not good science make.
Mythbusters is to science as pro-wrestling is to sport.
Interesting. This may explain why xenophobia is common throughout the English speaking world. I grew up in the UK and lived in some other parts of the Anglo-Saxon world. Today I cannot think of a single English-speaking, Anglo-Saxon country that I'd want to live in. Give me continental Europe ANY day.
And this is why lobbying and campaign contributions need to be outlawed.
Unfortunately thats impossible to achieve through the democratic process.
The people who make the laws are the ones who benefit most from this corruption. They cannot possibly fund an election campaign without huge amounts of cash from corporate donors. Any politician who stands up against this corruption won't get any campaign contributions and therefore they will effectively vanish from the political scene. There will be no media coverage of them. They won't be able to make any advertisements or phone campaigns or anything.
No, I am afraid that the USA and much of the so-called democratic world are lost and the only way to fix the situation is through some kind of revolution.
Look at voter turnout in the USA. Its abysmal. Why? I would argue that most people who do not vote either do not actually care whether they live in a democracy or not or they understand that they do not actually live in a democracy and that voting changes nothing. This is especially true in the USA which is, in effect, a one-party state. Democrat and Republican are basically two factions of one political party and shut all competition out of the process.
Look at the way that the democratic system is so dampened by 'noise' that many elections in many parts of the world end up almost even matches with very close counts.
What we have come to call 'democracy' in the western world actually makes a mockery of democracy.
I've been an Elections Inspector in New York State since 2004. You are seriously underestimating the logistical difficulties in counting the votes by hand. My precinct has more than 800 registered voters in it. In the last two Presidential elections we've seen 65%+ turnout. The last two Gubernatorial elections both exceeded 50%. The polls are open from 6am to 9pm; we are mandated by law to be there 45 minutes before and after these times. There is no way that we can physically count hundreds of votes in 45 minutes. It would take several hours; now multiply this by our collective $41/hr salary ($11 for the chairman, $10 for each of the other three) and multiply that by the tens of thousands of election districts across New York State. Where is that money going to come from?
Wow.
So you guys would be in deep shit if a meaningful percentage of voters turned out!
Its probably a good thing that you have such a pitiful turnout of voters or your electoral system would likely collapse under the strain!!
My thoughts exactly. This is getting ridiculous. Unfortunately, I don't think there's any solution as long as government is bought and paid-for by corporations.
OK, we've had a few posts here offering unsubstantiated implications that RMS is guilty of anti-semitism. I just did a bit of googling, and all I found was a few articles regarding his position regarding Palestine. Conflating an opinion on judaism with one on the nation of Israel doesn't work. Most of the world recognises that Israel is behaving badly towards Palestine, and for RMS to say so doesn't mean he's anti-semitic.
Because "anti-Jewishness" is so reviled, anyone who does not support the nation-state named "Israel" is conveniently labeled "anti-Jewish" and the term used for that is, unfortunately, 'anti-Semitic'. Its not as if people who are opposed to the nation-state named 'North Korea' is labeled "anti-Korean" or someone who despises Italy is labeled "Anti-Caucasian".
Some people apparently believe that, for example, Italians are a race and thus its possible to be "racist against Italians" which makes NO sense at all really.
'Anti-Semite' is almost always used incorrectly; it should be used to describe someone who is racist toward the Semite race, which includes Arabs. However its used, wrongly, to describe someone who is specifically racist toward the Hebrew branch of the Semite race.
Someone who supports Palestinians will always be labeled an 'Anti-Semite' by the US or other international media. I can't think why that would be.
It is possible for someone to be anti-Semitic and to still produce rational arguments on subjects not dealing with Jews. It is also possible that if he was 17, his ideas changed later and he could be rational even about Jews.
But strangely people can be anti-Semitic and have no problem with Arabs, only Jews. Which is really wierd since the average Arab is far more representative of the Semitic racial type than the average Jew (who typically has a lot of European blood in them).
In fact the hatred many Arabs have of Jews is often referred to as 'Anti-Semitic' which is hilarious considering they are of the same race. I've even heard Jews insult one another by using 'Anti-Semite' in the same context that I might use "bastard!", "asshole!" or "cunt!".
The evident hatred of Arabs among many Americans would also be 'Anti-Semitic' but its rare to hear it described as such.
Ie chances of someone who is anti-Semitic also having poor rationality in general seem fairly high. Racism is a bit like conspiracy theoryism; its not so much about unintelligence as about having ones horizons in thought limited or curtailed in some way.
It's easy to be xenophobic when all of your neighbors have been trying to destroy you for 50 years and the rest of the planet has been trying since last rebellion was crushed.
I'm sure that if they carry on being xenophobic their neighbors will soon come to see how wrong they were. Maybe they need to be a bit more xenophobic though, so far it hasn't worked but more of the same has got to help.
And yet, as many of the comments attached to that article pointed out, the paragraph you quoted didn't appear in any of the original reporting but only in versions published on IndyMedia. No sourcing for it, no evidence for it, most likely to be nothing other than the usual Jew Hating you'll find all over IndyMedia.
I'd just like to say this;
You don't have to hate Jews to hate Israel.
Unfortunately most of the Israeli Jews I have known have been raving xenophobic racists. The Israeli government and military policies seem horrific, they maintain a kill ratio of about 100-1 against Palestinians. They don't accept that the Palestinian people even exist; the way it was explained to me was this "They are Arabs, they should be happy to live anywhere in the Arab world. Israel is not part of the Arab world and they should leave."
Most of the NON-Israeli Jews I have known have been peaceful tolerant people and I'd count all that I've known among my friends.
And now they are buying japanese properties like their is no tomorrow. Would you like to see a film on Yamato Space Cruiser in american terms ? It would suck royally (at least the japanese did a great CG film on Yamato).
You laugh, but that was long planned. The American adaptation had a redesigned USS Arizona crewed by a team of misfits and criminals flying to Gamilon instead of the Yamato crewed by the best and brightest in the world. Fortunately, it was a story treatment that was officially killed when Bob Iger replaced for Michael Eisner at Disney.
A bunch of misfits and criminals? Why is that just SO American?
Does America just not have any regard for "best and brightest" as hero material and all their 'stars' have to be asshats?
those who effected communist policies leading to mass death proudly waved the communist banner, conscious of their ideology, their supposed counterparts (Custer? English landlords?) were not consciously waving some "capitalist" flag.
Hitler's genocide was committed in the name of eugenics, anti-semitism and a generalized virulent racism. He did not send the Jews, the Roma, gays, the disabled and so many others to death camps while chanting "All hail capitalism and the free market!" At worst, "capitalism" (if you wish to lump all economic activity under such) was a tertiary beneficiary of the reduced cost of medicine/care due to the eugenics aspect.
The Nazis were many things - are all of those things evil because of what the Nazis did?
I thought that they were just groping for an example where capitalists did horrible things, not whether capitalism drove them to do those horrible things.
Capitalists do horrible things all the time. Though its usually because they put human life second to acquisition of capital. Bhopal for example.
What I am getting that these Amish-like sheep brains are all over. The Amish, the Hasidic and now some Moslems. I am sure that there has been symbolic burning amongst "peace-loving" Buddhist too...
How many people did capitalism kill 'directly or indirectly'?
....
If we're talking about a country that is capitalist in the full sense (an industrialized market economy, i.e. one that has accumulated much capital), what are the episodes during which many died from following a capitalist policy rather than some superior "socialist" (or other) alternative? I'm prepared to accept that there may be such an example, but I doubt it approaches anything close to the massive and tragic waste of life that resulted in the last century's pursuit of communism.
The Nazis were capitalists.
"Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power."
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, it's Nietzsche's hatred for the weak- and wish to leave behind the morality that protects the innocent- that led me to that conclusion. It wasn't the extermination of the Jews that the Nazis followed Nietzsche in this, but the extermination of the disabled.
I think that may be a misunderstanding of Nietzsche. I don't think he hated the weak (he himself was 'weak' and suffered terrible, debilitating migranes). Rather he questioned things that noone else wanted to question.
At the beginning of 'Beyond Good and Evil' he writes something like:
"I am going to ask a question which, to the best of my knowledge, has never before been asked. Despite philosophers claiming to hold no assumption sacred, no philosopher before me has ever thought to question this basic premise. And that is: 'why should we prefer truth over falsehood?'"
Nietzsche forces a re-evaluation of things which we may not have ever bothered to properly evaluate. I myself came away from reading Nietzsche not agreeing with what he *said*, he is not a philosopher who *intended* people to believe him or to be convinced by him. But rather a philosopher who wanted to make people THINK and to re-evaluate their lives, their place in the universe. And I came away from Nietzsche feeling revitalised and invigorated with a fresh perspective on Life, the Universe and Everything; and not Nietzsches perspective! But my own perspective, re-evaluated, searched and examined in more detail than I'd done before. I understood myself better for it.
The fact that (some of) the Nazis read him and came away from that reading thinking that they should do what he (appeared) to suggest would (I think) have appalled him and he would have had a very poor opinion of their intelligence...
In other words, he isn't your normal philosopher. Most philosophers try to make an argument for one thing or another. Nietzsche... provides a gymnasium.
Actually, in my opinion, having studied Shamanism in some depth, I honestly believe that Nietzsche was not really a philosopher at all; he was a Shaman. Or would have been, in another place and time.
Having studied Nietzsche quite closely, I have to disagree.
His concept of 'superman' was quite different to what you describe. Its not about selective breeding or anything like that. Its about a natural progression of the human race. The idea that the human race, AS A WHOLE, is on a journey; from the bestial to the superhuman. This is regardless of race or genetic superiority.
If you think that Nietzsche was about 'creating' the superman, perhaps you read too much into the 'based on the notes of Gene Roddenberry' Andromeda series?
Also; try this in Mongolia and see the population wiped out by mass starvation. Although Mongolians seem to really care too much about how food tastes... so the fact that the meat no longer tastes delicious might not stop them eating it. Then theres hunger.
Vegans in Mongolia require far more resources, money and energy to feed than meativores. Vegetarians who would eat dairy products might not fare too badly though.
I hope you are not suggesting that Nietzsche would have approved of the Nazis?
Nietzsche was vehemently anti-anti-semitic. His sister married a man who was a political leader of an anti-semitic movement. Nietzsche disowned her for it. Among his writings he asserted that "The Jews are the strongest race in Europe", he admired them openly.
The Nazis *did* try to use Nietzsche s work to justify their position but not very successfuly. The 'Nietzschean superman' was never in any way equivalent to the Nazi ideal of the 'master race' nor did it lead to the Nazi 'master race' concept.
Had Nietzsche been alive when the Nazis took power he would have been one of the first people they would have silenced.
The climber has to have food, toilets, sleeping facilities if you are going to take a week to get to GSO, so it's going to have to be more like a mini-hotel (or at least a mini-space station) than an elevator car.
Like a 'mini hotel'? You've never travelled across Russia by train. Those trains have toilets, sure. Sleeping facilities, sure. Dining cars, sure. But 'mini-hotel'? No. It'd be very cool if the 'space elevator' had coal-fired samovars in every carriage though!
lol flamebait?
Pro-wrestling is 'sports entertainment'.
Mythbusters is 'science entertainment'
That's hardly scientific. Maybe the temperature changed, or the wind, or the driver's style, or whatever. One TV experiment does not good science make.
Mythbusters is to science as pro-wrestling is to sport.
All people seem to just be born as scared-to-death xenophobes, and most just don't learn any better as they age.
This is wrong.
Xenophobia is almost certainly a biologically based trait.
Interesting. This may explain why xenophobia is common throughout the English speaking world. I grew up in the UK and lived in some other parts of the Anglo-Saxon world. Today I cannot think of a single English-speaking, Anglo-Saxon country that I'd want to live in. Give me continental Europe ANY day.
Actually, if you had been paying attention to some of the brits here, possessing the knowledge is in fact illegal. Yay terrorism laws!
Indeed, Britain has banned all knowledge.
This isn't about knowing stuff. I just looked up the legislation and the key line I think is this:
-A person commits an offence ifâ"
(a) he collects or makes a record of information of a kind likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism-
How about an A-Z of London? Or a photo of Tower Bridge? Both likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism.
The law is so vague that really anyone could be busted for knowing anything; in effect it bans ALL knowledge.
And this is why lobbying and campaign contributions need to be outlawed.
Unfortunately thats impossible to achieve through the democratic process.
The people who make the laws are the ones who benefit most from this corruption. They cannot possibly fund an election campaign without huge amounts of cash from corporate donors. Any politician who stands up against this corruption won't get any campaign contributions and therefore they will effectively vanish from the political scene. There will be no media coverage of them. They won't be able to make any advertisements or phone campaigns or anything.
No, I am afraid that the USA and much of the so-called democratic world are lost and the only way to fix the situation is through some kind of revolution.
Look at voter turnout in the USA. Its abysmal. Why? I would argue that most people who do not vote either do not actually care whether they live in a democracy or not or they understand that they do not actually live in a democracy and that voting changes nothing. This is especially true in the USA which is, in effect, a one-party state. Democrat and Republican are basically two factions of one political party and shut all competition out of the process.
Look at the way that the democratic system is so dampened by 'noise' that many elections in many parts of the world end up almost even matches with very close counts.
What we have come to call 'democracy' in the western world actually makes a mockery of democracy.
I've been an Elections Inspector in New York State since 2004. You are seriously underestimating the logistical difficulties in counting the votes by hand. My precinct has more than 800 registered voters in it. In the last two Presidential elections we've seen 65%+ turnout. The last two Gubernatorial elections both exceeded 50%. The polls are open from 6am to 9pm; we are mandated by law to be there 45 minutes before and after these times. There is no way that we can physically count hundreds of votes in 45 minutes. It would take several hours; now multiply this by our collective $41/hr salary ($11 for the chairman, $10 for each of the other three) and multiply that by the tens of thousands of election districts across New York State. Where is that money going to come from?
Wow.
So you guys would be in deep shit if a meaningful percentage of voters turned out!
Its probably a good thing that you have such a pitiful turnout of voters or your electoral system would likely collapse under the strain!!
My thoughts exactly. This is getting ridiculous. Unfortunately, I don't think there's any solution as long as government is bought and paid-for by corporations.
Maybe it's time to end corporate personhood?
Either to end corporate personhood or to make corporations have the responsibilities of persons as well as the rights...
I hope you are aware that the whole concept of different human "races" has no scientific base whatsoever.
Well thats the most deliciouly ironic part of it all. What we call 'races' are really nothing more than very large extended families.
OK, we've had a few posts here offering unsubstantiated implications that RMS is guilty of anti-semitism. I just did a bit of googling, and all I found was a few articles regarding his position regarding Palestine. Conflating an opinion on judaism with one on the nation of Israel doesn't work. Most of the world recognises that Israel is behaving badly towards Palestine, and for RMS to say so doesn't mean he's anti-semitic.
Because "anti-Jewishness" is so reviled, anyone who does not support the nation-state named "Israel" is conveniently labeled "anti-Jewish" and the term used for that is, unfortunately, 'anti-Semitic'. Its not as if people who are opposed to the nation-state named 'North Korea' is labeled "anti-Korean" or someone who despises Italy is labeled "Anti-Caucasian".
Some people apparently believe that, for example, Italians are a race and thus its possible to be "racist against Italians" which makes NO sense at all really.
'Anti-Semite' is almost always used incorrectly; it should be used to describe someone who is racist toward the Semite race, which includes Arabs. However its used, wrongly, to describe someone who is specifically racist toward the Hebrew branch of the Semite race.
Someone who supports Palestinians will always be labeled an 'Anti-Semite' by the US or other international media. I can't think why that would be.
It is possible for someone to be anti-Semitic and to still produce rational arguments on subjects not dealing with Jews. It is also possible that if he was 17, his ideas changed later and he could be rational even about Jews.
But strangely people can be anti-Semitic and have no problem with Arabs, only Jews. Which is really wierd since the average Arab is far more representative of the Semitic racial type than the average Jew (who typically has a lot of European blood in them).
In fact the hatred many Arabs have of Jews is often referred to as 'Anti-Semitic' which is hilarious considering they are of the same race. I've even heard Jews insult one another by using 'Anti-Semite' in the same context that I might use "bastard!", "asshole!" or "cunt!".
The evident hatred of Arabs among many Americans would also be 'Anti-Semitic' but its rare to hear it described as such.
Ie chances of someone who is anti-Semitic also having poor rationality in general seem fairly high. Racism is a bit like conspiracy theoryism; its not so much about unintelligence as about having ones horizons in thought limited or curtailed in some way.
It's easy to be xenophobic when all of your neighbors have been trying to destroy you for 50 years and the rest of the planet has been trying since last rebellion was crushed.
I'm sure that if they carry on being xenophobic their neighbors will soon come to see how wrong they were. Maybe they need to be a bit more xenophobic though, so far it hasn't worked but more of the same has got to help.
And yet, as many of the comments attached to that article pointed out, the paragraph you quoted didn't appear in any of the original reporting but only in versions published on IndyMedia. No sourcing for it, no evidence for it, most likely to be nothing other than the usual Jew Hating you'll find all over IndyMedia.
I'd just like to say this;
You don't have to hate Jews to hate Israel.
Unfortunately most of the Israeli Jews I have known have been raving xenophobic racists. The Israeli government and military policies seem horrific, they maintain a kill ratio of about 100-1 against Palestinians. They don't accept that the Palestinian people even exist; the way it was explained to me was this "They are Arabs, they should be happy to live anywhere in the Arab world. Israel is not part of the Arab world and they should leave."
Most of the NON-Israeli Jews I have known have been peaceful tolerant people and I'd count all that I've known among my friends.
Yes I hate Israel. No I don't hate JEWS.
And now they are buying japanese properties like their is no tomorrow. Would you like to see a film on Yamato Space Cruiser in american terms ? It would suck royally (at least the japanese did a great CG film on Yamato).
You laugh, but that was long planned. The American adaptation had a redesigned USS Arizona crewed by a team of misfits and criminals flying to Gamilon instead of the Yamato crewed by the best and brightest in the world. Fortunately, it was a story treatment that was officially killed when Bob Iger replaced for Michael Eisner at Disney.
A bunch of misfits and criminals? Why is that just SO American?
Does America just not have any regard for "best and brightest" as hero material and all their 'stars' have to be asshats?
I've had more than one communist declare to me that you sometimes have to break a few eggs to make an omlette. What do you think that meant?
I have no idea what they meant, but you certainly can't make an omlette without killing a few people.
Hitler's genocide was committed in the name of eugenics, anti-semitism and a generalized virulent racism. He did not send the Jews, the Roma, gays, the disabled and so many others to death camps while chanting "All hail capitalism and the free market!" At worst, "capitalism" (if you wish to lump all economic activity under such) was a tertiary beneficiary of the reduced cost of medicine/care due to the eugenics aspect.
The Nazis were many things - are all of those things evil because of what the Nazis did?
I thought that they were just groping for an example where capitalists did horrible things, not whether capitalism drove them to do those horrible things.
Capitalists do horrible things all the time. Though its usually because they put human life second to acquisition of capital. Bhopal for example.
What I am getting that these Amish-like sheep brains are all over. The Amish, the Hasidic and now some Moslems. I am sure that there has been symbolic burning amongst "peace-loving" Buddhist too...
Why can't people get over their religion. Sigh...
Amish use cell phones.
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/7.01/amish.html
How many people did capitalism kill 'directly or indirectly'?
....
If we're talking about a country that is capitalist in the full sense (an industrialized market economy, i.e. one that has accumulated much capital), what are the episodes during which many died from following a capitalist policy rather than some superior "socialist" (or other) alternative? I'm prepared to accept that there may be such an example, but I doubt it approaches anything close to the massive and tragic waste of life that resulted in the last century's pursuit of communism.
The Nazis were capitalists.
"Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power."
How was it not 'capitalist'?
the USA could figure out how to scale it to all of our large airports.
Simple. We outsource airport security to Israel.
They are certainly a LOT better at fucking with Muslims than the USA. I mean, if that were ones goal...
Well, ya, but I have a map for that... No seriously, an actual map. :-)
you'd need a very large bag to carry as many maps as I can carry on my very small smartphone.