Richard Spencer

Richard Spencer @RichardBSpencer

@lucycali88 Okay. That's your sincerely held belief. Fair enough. For what it's worth, I, too, think Jesus was a real person, although we misunderstand his teaching. He was a prophet of imminent apocalypse, not too dissimilar from Zarathustra. — PolitiTweet.org

Richard Spencer @RichardBSpencer

@PraticOslo Yeah... — PolitiTweet.org

Richard Spencer @RichardBSpencer

@lucycali88 What in the hell do you mean by Christianity being "literal"? — PolitiTweet.org

Richard Spencer @RichardBSpencer

@FLBL2020 I still have some Latin rattling around my brain. Some French... I wish I wasn't banned in all these countries. I'd improve my foreign language skills. — PolitiTweet.org

Richard Spencer @RichardBSpencer

RT @threadreaderapp: @BoilMaster Hola, please find the unroll here: @RichardBSpencer: It's not wrong—not entirely—to read Nietzsche as the… — PolitiTweet.org

Richard Spencer @RichardBSpencer

@Wolf44114251 @almightygenie @KetaMeanGirl If you want to understand the imagination of millions of people—perhaps every White person in North America and Western Europe—then you must seek to understand someone like Steven Spielberg. He taught us how to dream. Studying him is more important, arguable, than biochemistry! — PolitiTweet.org

Richard Spencer @RichardBSpencer

@Wolf44114251 @almightygenie @KetaMeanGirl People criticizing Mark (and by extension me) for his analysis of pop culture is massively misguided. It's possibly the worst of their bad critiques—and that's saying something! — PolitiTweet.org

Richard Spencer @RichardBSpencer

But again, Nietzsche's response is that we have no choice. We must, in fact, say "yes" to it—live through the catastrophe joyfully. The world is willing it anyway. — PolitiTweet.org

Richard Spencer @RichardBSpencer

The collapse of this 2000-year project is bringing about a catastrophe we can barely fathom. Moving beyond the Christian-Platonic project is, to borrow a metaphor, much like "reentering the cave." It is dark and terrifying. — PolitiTweet.org

Richard Spencer @RichardBSpencer

The catastrophe of today (for Nietzsche and us) is the self-destruction of the Platonic-Christian project. Again, this project was itself nihilistic, in Nietzsche's view, in that it valued the "other world" or "afterlife" over life. — PolitiTweet.org

Richard Spencer @RichardBSpencer

The Platonic and Christian project ended the ancient world—and it smothered the wisdom and approach ("sense of life") that we can glimpse from what remains from the pre-Platonic philosophers. — PolitiTweet.org

Richard Spencer @RichardBSpencer

Christianity ("Plato for the people") is also equivocal in that its conception of rational forms lying behind the universe inspired the application of reason to the world—and ultimately the critical project that undermined Christianity itself. — PolitiTweet.org

Richard Spencer @RichardBSpencer

Plato was a high-born Greek, who was mislead by the wicked and resentful Socrates; he thus stands as an equivocal figure. — PolitiTweet.org

Richard Spencer @RichardBSpencer

Platonism and Christianity seek to find a world outside the world, and with Christians, an "afterlife"—which is, in fact, *death*. This is, ultimately, nihilism: the conscious choice (yes, "free will" reenters here...) to devalue the world, and ultimately end it. — PolitiTweet.org

Richard Spencer @RichardBSpencer

What Nietzsche found "problematic" in Plato and the Jews of the late Roman period—whose spirit reached its culmination in Christianity—is the rejection of this "logos" (will to power). — PolitiTweet.org

Richard Spencer @RichardBSpencer

When we use words like "greatness," "power," "valor," or "virtue" we are glimpsing, through the imperfections of language, the spirit of the world itself—the "logos" (in Heraclitus's sense of the term). — PolitiTweet.org

Richard Spencer @RichardBSpencer

The world—and every entity in it—according to Nietzsche, is will to power. Every thing doesn't seek to "survive"; every thing is compelled to expand, dominate, grow—expend itself. Will to power is, in this way, the the opposite of mere survival. — PolitiTweet.org

Richard Spencer @RichardBSpencer

But mostly, Nietzsche wrote in this way because this "tragic inspiration" was his means of glimpsing, however imperfectly, the world outside our heads, that is, the world, beyond our subjectivity, beyond "time," "space," and "cause-and-effect." — PolitiTweet.org

Richard Spencer @RichardBSpencer

This brings me back to the "inspirational" (or even "self-help") nature of Nietzsche's writings. On one level, he adopted this posture because...well...times are tough, life sucks, and we all need a little "chicken soup"—especially him! — PolitiTweet.org

Richard Spencer @RichardBSpencer

Still, we are left with a paradox: How do we "will" the enteral recurrence? Isn't "free will" just as much a mental illusion as "time" and "cause-and-effect"? Isn't it in our heads, not in the world? How would *willing* eternal return be effective anyway? — PolitiTweet.org

Richard Spencer @RichardBSpencer

The Gypsies cry when the sun is shining, knowing it must soon rain. You, too, should know that joy can only be experienced by willing the pain, again and again. — PolitiTweet.org

Richard Spencer @RichardBSpencer

Here again, we see a little bit of Marianne in Friedrich. The truth is terrible—and to deny it is to live inauthentically— thus, we must embrace the tragedy! Will the eternal return! Right-ho! — PolitiTweet.org

Richard Spencer @RichardBSpencer

Nietzsche's injunction is that we not just accept eternal recurrence—but *will* that it be so. We must not only embrace the Overman, but, on some level, will everything that brought us to this impasse: The Last Man and our descent into nihilism included. Rinse and repeat. — PolitiTweet.org

Richard Spencer @RichardBSpencer

Moreover, "time" as it was conceived through Christianity... Before => Beginning => Sin and Fall => Redemption => End ...has lost credibility. There are no "utopias" or historical "ends" of the universe, either of the Christian or Hegelian-Marxist variety. — PolitiTweet.org

Richard Spencer @RichardBSpencer

If the universe is "atemporal" and there are a finite amount of things in it, then everything—every sorry, pain, joy, triumph, and catastrophe—will recur endlessly. A loop in forward and reverse, where the beginning is the end, and death is life, and we are and are not. — PolitiTweet.org

Richard Spencer @RichardBSpencer

Ultimately, the findings of quantum physics—that electrons are and are not at the same time—shouldn't surprise us. Time, space, and cause-and-effect are *our* devices—*our* all-too-human limitations—and we should not expect the world to comply with them. — PolitiTweet.org

Richard Spencer @RichardBSpencer

The universe is "enteral" in the sense that it is outside the delineation of time. "Time" is in your head, not in the world. It is part of the subject; an *a priori* category through which perception is possible. — PolitiTweet.org

Richard Spencer @RichardBSpencer

According to Karl Löwith (if I remember correctly), Nietzsche sought to enroll at the University of Vienna to definitely prove this teaching mathematically. — PolitiTweet.org

Richard Spencer @RichardBSpencer

There is, however, a "flip side" to Nietzsche's teaching in his mature period (GS, BGE, TSZ). For Zarathustra comes down from the mountaintop to teach yet another terrible truth—more terrible, in fact, than the "death of God": The Eternal Recurrence of the Same. — PolitiTweet.org

Richard Spencer @RichardBSpencer

Yes, it's Nietzsche, so it's all rather shocking to middle-class ears. But again, it's not wrong, exactly, to see a bit of Marianne Williamson in such pronouncements. It is "self-help," "beautiful lies," the overcoming of doubt, indecision, and despair. — PolitiTweet.org