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The cancellation of "alpha male" influencer Andrew Tate continues to raise concerns about those who proclaim themselves defenders of masculine virtue. The rhetoric of those among Tate's milieu—from the more tame like Jordan B. Peterson to absurdists like the Bronze Age Pervert—models itself largely as a reaction against detractors of "toxic masculinity" and the broader discourse of identity politics.
From cultural commentators to "theorygrammers," there's been a steady flow of content on the internet analyzing the extent to which today's woke orthodoxies have trickled down from statements of Friedrich Nietzsche, like "there are no facts, there are only interpretations." The 19th-century German philosopher's radical calling into question of all objective moral "foundations" has opened the door to critical theorists who question the fixity of social norms and identity categories. The current discourse on the fluidity of gender identity is indebted to American philosopher Judith Butler, whose dismissal of the gender binary is directly inspired by the Nietzschean claim that "there is no being behind doing," which is to say that it is our personal tastes and choices, rather than our given nature, that determine who we are.
But few have picked up on the Nietzschean strains of thought within the anti-identitarian, responsibility-focused rhetoric of figures like Peterson and Tate. Nietzsche's commitment to autonomy, his celebration of the "will to power" and "master morality"—the fostering of one's inner-strength and eschewal of any form of weakness or dependence—have shaped conservative reactions to the postmodernist renderings of Nietzsche now popular in our universities. Conservative figures like Allan Bloom relied on a different reading of Nietzsche to challenge the moral relativism and culture of victimhood that Nietzscheans of the Left were propagating. Bloom, according to historian Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen, asserted that the "American mind," in taking too many cues from the "New Nietzsche," had become "too radically open, too indiscriminate to understand Nietzsche's subtle moral criticism and his warnings about nihilism."
This Nietzschean reactionary rhetoric also undergirds the Bronze Age Pervert's critique of technocratic bureaucracies and the "feminizing" effect they have on men, as well as his pagan aestheticism. Similarly, Nietzscheans like the dissident feminist Camille Paglia—who has criticized the Left's aesthetic relativism, metaphysical vapidness, and bourgeois view of gender relations—set precedence for contemporary critics of wokeness like the hosts of the popular podcast Red Scare (who also frequently cite Nietzsche).
Ratner-Rosenhagen's book American Nietzsche is quite possibly the most useful resource in uncovering Nietzsche's influence on the various factions within American culture. Ratner-Rosenhagen's treatment of Nietzsche's esteem for the American thinker and activist Ralph Waldo Emerson and his emphasis on self-reliance reveals the overlap between America's battling factions. When Nietzsche's ideas first made their way over to the U.S. toward the end of the 1800s, they became wildly popular among bohemians and political radicals of the far Left and Right.
The "soil" in America—with its lack of ties to tradition, valorization of independence, and newness as a nation—allowed the "seed" of Nietzsche's thought to take root and blossom in a way it could not in Europe. Despite the deep cultural divides Americans find themselves caught between today, we are still seeing the "flowers" of these seeds blossoming across the ideological spectrum.
The mainstream narrative holds that Tate fans—who value lifting oneself up by his own bootstraps—are pitted in a deadlock opposition against proponents of vulnerability, self-care, and prioritizing social change over individual transformation. And yet the same self-referential logic that the Left relies on (albeit with a different accent) fuels contemporary right-wing voices like Tate and Peterson who exalt strength over weakness, personal responsibility over vulnerability and victimhood, and the imperative to face up to competition.
This overlap extends to the clash between religious believers and secular atheists. "I think," said Dasha Nekrasova, co-host of Red Scare, on a recent episode, "as Christians we should actually be grateful to Nietzsche." While postmodernism can lead to a deeply secular and ungodly position, it can also reopen doors to God and traditional religion that were shut by Enlightenment rationalism.
That is why theologians—from Luigi Giussani and Henri De Lubac to Pope Benedict XVI—have relied on Nietzsche's intuitions about God, metaphysics, and foundational truth claims in formulating their vision of how Christians should navigate their way around secularization. This also speaks to the "horseshoe" phenomenon of artsy bohemian hipster types being drawn to traditional Catholicism as an alternative to the unimaginative moralism and drab aesthetic imagination that has taken over mainstream progressive rhetoric.
Nietzsche's rejection of foundational truth claims and authorities external to the self, his extreme self-reliance and strongman ethic, left him in misery toward the end of his life. Lonely, physically ailing, and mentally deteriorating, his philosophical vision didn't exactly carry him to the heights he expected them to.
As he conceded in The Gay Science, Nietzsche's "urge for the truth," for something greater that transcended himself, persisted until the very end. As much as he "detested it," he couldn't deny that his self-referential ideology didn't provide him the fulfillment he longed for. As he wrote in one letter, "my life now consists in the wish that it might be otherwise with all things that I comprehend, and somebody might make my 'truths' appear incredible to me." He went as far as admitting that he was "in a mood of fatalistic 'surrender to God.'"
A close reading of Nietzsche's influence on American culture ought to call into question whether the mainstream Left and Right represent two combatants in a deadlocked culture war—or two sides of the same coin of American individualism. Perhaps the way forward is not to buckle down in the name of one's preferred ideology, but rather to look beyond it. The answer more likely lies somewhere outside the paradigm of strongman self-reliance and self-determined identity. As Nietzsche himself intuited toward the end of his life, it may be revealed instead in the forging of meaningful relationships that can enable one to discover their "true self."
Stephen G. Adubato (@stephengadubato) teaches philosophy in New Jersey, and hosts the Cracks in Postmodernity blog and podcast. He also was the co-curator of Nietzsche's "Urge for the Truth," an exhibit featured at the 2023 New York Encounter.
The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.
Uncommon Knowledge
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
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