Counter-Currents
  • Private Events
  • T&C
  • Contact
  • Webzine
  • About
  • Books
  • Podcasts
  • Videos
  • Donate
  • Paywall
  • Crypto
  • RSS
    • Main feed
    • Podcast feed
    • Videos feed
    • Comments feed
  • Advertise

LEVEL2

Donate Now Mailing list
  • Webzine
  • About
  • Books
  • Podcasts
  • Videos
  • Donate
  • Paywall
  • Crypto
  • RSS
    • Main feed
    • Podcast feed
    • Videos feed
    • Comments feed
  • Advertise
  • Recent posts

    • Three Episodes from the History of Racial Politics

      Richard Knight

      1

    • Alice’s Police Escort in Wonderland

      Gunnar Alfredsson

      7

    • Prioritizing Prestige Over Accomplishment: Britain from 1950 to 1956

      Morris van de Camp

      3

    • Nueva Derecha vs. Vieja Derecha Capítulo 2: Hegemonía

      Greg Johnson

    • The Great Debate

      Cyan Quinn

      8

    • Will Woke Capital Soon Go the Way of the Dinosaur?

      Beau Albrecht

      30

    • June is the Gayest Month

      Jim Goad

      21

    • Counter-Currents Radio Podcast No. 535 Ask Me Anything

      Counter-Currents Radio

      1

    • Úryvky z Finis Germania Rolfa Petera Sieferleho, část 3: Nové státní náboženství

      Rolf Peter Sieferle

    • Football’s Race War

      Pox Populi

      7

    • VDARE Facing Mortal Threat

      Peter Brimelow

      5

    • Collin Cleary Interviewed on Richard Wagner

      Collin Cleary

      1

    • Counter-Currents Radio Podcast No. 534 Interview with Alexander Adams

      Counter-Currents Radio

      1

    • The Union Jackal, May 2023

      Mark Gullick

      17

    • Biden and Bibi

      James J. O'Meara

      12

    • Forward with a Vengeance

      Tom Zaja

      3

    • Notes on Strauss & Husserl

      Greg Johnson

      1

    • The Worst Week Yet: May 21-27, 2023

      Jim Goad

      26

    • The Honorable Cause: A Review

      Spencer J. Quinn

      8

    • George Friedman’s The Next 100 Years

      Thomas Steuben

      4

    • Remembering Oswald Spengler (May 29, 1880-May 8, 1936)

      Greg Johnson

      2

    • Euthanizing the Homeless? It’s a Start

      Jim Goad

      8

    • Remembering Louis-Ferdinand Céline (May 27, 1894–July 1, 1961)

      Greg Johnson

      12

    • Blood, Soil, Paint

      Greg Johnson

      1

    • Céline’s Guerre

      Margot Metroland

      7

    • The Trial of Socrates

      Greg Johnson

    • Fields of Asphodel

      Tito Perdue

    • George Floyd and the “Color” of Revolution

      Stephen Paul Foster

      11

    • The Dakota Territory’s Indian Wars During the Civil War, Part 2

      Morris van de Camp

      1

    • No, Really, Everything’s Fine!

      Gunnar Alfredsson

      18

    • Euthanizing the Homeless? It’s a Start

      Jim Goad

      25

    • The Dakota Territory’s Indian Wars During the Civil War, Part 1

      Morris van de Camp

      1

    • How Much Would Slavery Reparations Actually Cost?

      Beau Albrecht

      35

    • No Brexit This Way

      Mark Gullick

      8

    • Martinez Contra Fascism

      Thomas Steuben

      25

    • Úryvky z Finis Germania Rolfa Petera Sieferleho, část 2: „Věčný nacista“

      Rolf Peter Sieferle

    • A 5D Plan in 3D: Hitchcock’s Dial M For Murder

      James J. O'Meara

      16

    • After Waco

      Morris van de Camp

      18

    • Munchhausen: The Third Reich’s Wizard of Oz

      Steven Clark

      13

    • Nueva Derecha vs. Vieja Derecha Capítulo 1: Política y Metapolítica

      Greg Johnson

    • The Worst Week Yet: May 14-20, 2023

      Jim Goad

      15

    • The (So-Called) New York “Thought Criminals” & the “Intellectual Dark Web”

      Alex Graham

      9

    • Documenting the Decline

      Spencer J. Quinn

      7

    • Remembering Richard Wagner (May 22, 1813-February 13, 1883)

      Greg Johnson

      3

    • Remembering Dominique Venner (April 16, 1935–May 21, 2013)

      Greg Johnson

      3

    • Clash of the Billionaire Comic-Book Supervillains

      Jim Goad

      2

    • The Psychology of the Politically Correct

      Richard Knight

      65

    • Springtime in Tallinn

      Veiko Hessler

      13

    • Liberal Anti-Democracy, Chapter 6, Part 2: Conclusion

      Kenneth Vinther

      11

    • Remembering Julius Evola (May 19, 1898–June 11, 1974)

      Greg Johnson

      5

  • Classics Corner

    • Cù Chulainn in the GPO:
      The Mythic Imagination of Patrick Pearse

      Michael O'Meara

      5

    • Remembering Dominique Venner
      (April 16, 1935 – May 21, 2013)

      Greg Johnson

      11

    • A Robertson Roundup: 
      Remembering Wilmot Robertson
      (April 16, 1915 – July 8, 2005)

      Margot Metroland

      13

    • Metapolitics and Occult Warfare

      Greg Johnson

      2

    • Remembering Maurice Bardèche:
      October 1, 1907–July 30, 1998

      Greg Johnson

      2

    • The Power of Myth:
      Remembering Joseph Campbell
      (March 26, 1904–October 30, 1987)

      John Morgan

      11

    • The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance

      Trevor Lynch

      24

    • The Searchers

      Trevor Lynch

      29

    • Gabriele D’Annunzio

      Jonathan Bowden

      2

    • Remembering A. R. D. “Rex” Fairburn (February 2, 1904–March 25, 1957)

      Greg Johnson

      1

    • Denis Kearney & the Struggle for a White America

      Theodore J. O'Keefe

      1

    • Posthuman Prospects:
      Artificial Intelligence, Fifth Generation Warfare, & Archeofuturism

      Christopher Pankhurst

      5

    • Earnest Sevier Cox:
      Advocate for the White Ethnostate

      Morris van de Camp

      15

    • Remembering Jack London
      (January 12, 1876–November 22, 1916)

      Greg Johnson

      2

    • Remembering Robinson Jeffers:
      January 10, 1887–January 20, 1962

      John Morgan

      3

    • Remembering Pierre Drieu La Rochelle:
      January 3, 1893–March 15, 1945

      Greg Johnson

    • Remembering Rudyard Kipling (December 30, 1865-January 18, 1936)

      Greg Johnson

      10

    • Restoring White Homelands

      Greg Johnson

      34

    • Remembering Hinton Rowan Helper

      Spencer J. Quinn

      11

    • What’s Wrong with Diversity?

      Greg Johnson

      10

    • Redefining the Mainstream

      Greg Johnson

      3

    • Edward Alsworth Ross:
      American Metapolitical Hero

      Morris van de Camp

      8

    • The Talented Mr. Ripley & Purple Noon

      Trevor Lynch

      19

    • Christmas & the Yuletide:
      Light in the Darkness

      William de Vere

      3

    • Thanksgiving Special 
      White Men Meet Indians:
      Jamestown & the Clash of Civilizations

      Thomas Jackson

    • Colin Wilson’s The Outsider

      Sir Oswald Mosley

      4

    • Dostoyevsky on the Jews

      William Pierce

      4

    • Jefferson &/or Mussolini, Part 1

      Ezra Pound

      5

    • I Listened to Chapo Trap House So You Don’t Have To

      Doug Huntington

      98

    • The Homeric Gods

      Mark Dyal

      13

  • Paroled from the Paywall

    • An Actor Prepares: Politics as Theater

      Mark Gullick

    • Counter-Currents Radio Podcast No. 533 Ask Me Anything

      Counter-Currents Radio

      2

    • Politicizing Luz Long, Part II

      Clarissa Schnabel

      2

    • Politicizing Luz Long, Part I

      Clarissa Schnabel

      3

    • Breaking Beat: Reflections on The Rebel Set, a Masterpiece That Never Was

      James J. O'Meara

      1

    • If Hillary Had Won

      Stephen Paul Foster

      1

    • Nice Racism, Part 3

      Beau Albrecht

      1

    • Nice Racism, Part 2

      Beau Albrecht

      7

    • Nice Racism, Part 1

      Beau Albrecht

      6

    • Aristophanes’ Clouds, Part II

      Greg Johnson

      1

    • Aristophanes’ Clouds, Part I

      Greg Johnson

      1

    • Counter-Currents Radio Podcast No. 530 The Genealogy of Wokeism

      Counter-Currents Radio

      5

    • Patrick Bateman: “Literally Me” or a Warning?

      Anthony Bavaria

      9

    • British Sculpture, Part II

      Jonathan Bowden

      1

    • British Sculpture, Part I

      Jonathan Bowden

      2

    • The New Story

      Jocelynn Cordes

      21

    • Why Does Cthulhu Always Swim Left? Part 2

      Beau Albrecht

      1

    • Why Does Cthulhu Always Swim Left? Part 1

      Beau Albrecht

      11

    • Robert Rutherford McCormick, Midwestern Man of the Right: Part 2

      Morris van de Camp

      1

    • Pierre Teilhard de Chardin: Prophet of Eugenics and Race-Realism

      Margot Metroland

      11

    • In Defense of the White Union

      Asier Abadroa

    • Everything Everywhere All at Once: The Oscar Winner the System Loves

      Steven Clark

      32

    • Incels on Wheels: Jim Goad’s Trucker Fags in Denial

      Beau Albrecht

      17

    • The White Pill

      Margot Metroland

      10

    • Counter-Currents Radio Podcast No. 528 Karl Thorburn on the Bank Crashes

      Counter-Currents Radio

    • Women Philosophers

      Richard Knight

      23

    • Stranger Things and Surviving in the Modern World

      Howe Abbott-Hiss

      2

    • The Fabulous Pleven Boys

      P. J. Collins

      2

    • Nuclear Families: Threads

      Mark Gullick

      4

    • Reviewing the Unreviewable

      Margot Metroland

      3

  • Recent comments

    • Beau Albrecht

      Three Episodes from the History of Racial Politics

      I hardly can wait for the Sleeping Giant to awaken, so we can get them off our back, and all the...

    • Alexandra O.

      Alice’s Police Escort in Wonderland

      It's sad now that White parents can't take their younger children and teens to Disneyland, et al.,...

    • Beau Albrecht

      Will Woke Capital Soon Go the Way of the Dinosaur?

      Interesting, that.  Which biography did you find?  I'm tempted to write him up one of these days. ...

    • Antipodean

      Prioritizing Prestige Over Accomplishment: Britain from 1950 to 1956

      The Israelis and their myriad proxies are working hard on Japan. I’ve met one, a tribe member and a...

    • ncleapyear

      Will Woke Capital Soon Go the Way of the Dinosaur?

      I looked at long-time CFR director Stephen Duggan’s biographical information.  He was known as...

    • Fire Walk With Lee

      Will Woke Capital Soon Go the Way of the Dinosaur?

      It was a one off can they made specifically for him celebrating his supposed  “365 days of girlhood...

    • Jeffrey A Freeman

      Alice’s Police Escort in Wonderland

      All this is why I live in Maine. The whitest state in mongrel America.

    • Kök Böri

      June is the Gayest Month

      Herr Nietzsche would not have written something titled DIE SCHWULE WISSENSCHAFT. :))

    • Wollzo

      June is the Gayest Month

      Fröhlich (Die fröhliche Wissenschaft) doesn't have the same faggy connotations auf deutsch as "gay"...

    • Wollzo

      June is the Gayest Month

      From Romans 1: "Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own...

    • Beau Albrecht

      Will Woke Capital Soon Go the Way of the Dinosaur?

      Indeed, there's a long story about all that, with the Committee in Aid of Displaced Foreign Scholars...

    • Mushroom Head

      Will Woke Capital Soon Go the Way of the Dinosaur?

      It's a good question: were these cans with the Raymond Pettibon-style raving shrieking face printed...

    • Sick Boy

      The Worst Week Yet: May 21-27, 2023

      Think about this: Renton (the character you refer to) in Trainspotting was also a big literature fan...

    • Beau Albrecht

      Will Woke Capital Soon Go the Way of the Dinosaur?

      My original manuscript said, "...squidlings with facial piercings aligned to receive transmissions...

    • Sick Boy

      The Worst Week Yet: May 21-27, 2023

      That Irvine Welsh (who ceased to be relevant decades ago) article, more unfocused rant than...

    • Hyacinth Bouquet

      Nice Racism, Part 1

      Dear Alexandra O., my own perhaps childish response to anything annoying that is written by, spoken...

    • Martin S.

      Alice’s Police Escort in Wonderland

      It's always the same "teens" ruining it for everyone else. It doesn't matter if it's Canada, the UK...

    • Hyacinth Bouquet

      Biden and Bibi

      "...Steve Sailer made the cute suggestion that the Boys should contact major fashion labels and...

    • Antipodean

      Forward with a Vengeance

      Ocular barter – I puzzled over that.Infertile fig trees?  Are you referring to modest...

    • Antipodean

      Will Woke Capital Soon Go the Way of the Dinosaur?

      Blaming the victim? I am not speaking from the inside but my impression is that isolation, lack of...

  • Book Authors

    • Beau Albrecht
    • Alain de Benoist
    • Kerry Bolton
    • Jonathan Bowden
    • Collin Cleary
    • Jef Costello
    • Savitri Devi
    • F. Roger Devlin
    • Buttercup Dew
    • Julius Evola
    • Jim Goad
    • Gregory Hood
    • Juleigh Howard-Hobson
    • Greg Johnson
    • Charles Krafft
    • Anthony M. Ludovici
    • Trevor Lynch
    • H. L. Mencken
    • J. A. Nicholl
    • James J. O’Meara
    • Christopher Pankhurst
    • Tito Perdue
    • Michael Polignano
    • Spencer J. Quinn
    • Fenek Solère
    • Irmin Vinson
    • Leo Yankevich
    • Francis Parker Yockey
    • Multiple authors
  • Webzine Authors

    Editor-in-Chief

    • Greg Johnson, Ph.D.

    Featured Writers

    • Beau Albrecht
    • Morris V. de Camp
    • Stephen Paul Foster, Ph.D.
    • Jim Goad
    • Alex Graham
    • Mark Gullick, Ph.D.
    • Greg Johnson, Ph.D.
    • Spencer J. Quinn

    Frequent Writers

    • Aquilonius
    • Anthony Bavaria
    • Alain de Benoist
    • Kerry Bolton, Ph.D.
    • Collin Cleary, Ph.D.
    • Jef Costello
    • F. Roger Devlin, Ph.D.
    • Richard Houck
    • Ondrej Mann
    • Margot Metroland
    • John Morgan
    • Trevor Lynch
    • James J. O’Meara
    • Kathryn S.
    • Thomas Steuben
    • Michael Walker

    Classic Authors

    • Maurice Bardèche
    • Jonathan Bowden
    • Julius Evola
    • Guillaume Faye
    • Ernst Jünger
    • Kevin MacDonald, Ph.D.
    • D. H. Lawrence
    • Charles Lindbergh
    • Jack London
    • H. P. Lovecraft
    • Anthony M. Ludovici
    • Sir Oswald Mosley
    • National Vanguard
    • Friedrich Nietzsche
    • Revilo Oliver
    • William Pierce
    • Ezra Pound
    • Saint-Loup
    • Savitri Devi
    • Carl Schmitt
    • Miguel Serrano
    • Oswald Spengler
    • P. R. Stephensen
    • Jean Thiriart
    • John Tyndall
    • Dominique Venner
    • Leo Yankevich
    • Francis Parker Yockey

    Other Authors

    • Howe Abbott-Hiss
    • Michael Bell
    • Buttercup Dew
    • Giles Corey
    • Bain Dewitt
    • Jack Donovan
    • Richardo Duchesne, Ph.D.
    • Emile Durand
    • Guillaume Durocher
    • Mark Dyal
    • Fullmoon Ancestry
    • Tom Goodroch
    • Andrew Hamilton
    • Robert Hampton
    • Huntley Haverstock
    • Derek Hawthorne
    • Gregory Hood
    • Juleigh Howard-Hobson
    • Alexander Jacob
    • Nicholas Jeelvy
    • Ruuben Kaalep
    • Tobias Langdon
    • Julian Langness
    • Travis LeBlanc
    • Patrick Le Brun
    • G A Malvicini
    • John Michael McCloughlin
    • Millennial Woes
    • Michael O’Meara
    • Christopher Pankhurst
    • Michael Polignano
    • J. J. Przybylski
    • Quintilian
    • Edouard Rix
    • C. B. Robertson
    • C. F. Robinson
    • Herve Ryssen
    • Alan Smithee
    • Fenek Solere
    • Ann Sterzinger
    • Robert Steuckers
    • Tomislav Sunic
    • Donald Thoresen
    • Marian Van Court
    • Irmin Vinson
    • Aylmer Wedgwood
    • Scott Weisswald
  • Departments

    • Book Reviews
    • Movie Reviews
    • TV Reviews
    • Music Reviews
    • Art Criticism
    • Graphic Novels & Comics
    • Video Game Reviews
    • Fiction
    • Poems
    • Interviews
    • Videos
    • English Translations
    • Other Languages
      • Arabic
      • Bulgarian
      • Croatian
      • Czech
      • Danish
      • Dutch
      • Estonian
      • Finnish
      • French
      • German
      • Greek
      • Hungarian
      • Italian
      • Lithuanian
      • Norwegian
      • Polish
      • Portuguese
      • Romanian
      • Russian
      • Slovak
      • Spanish
      • Swedish
      • Ukrainian
    • Commemorations
    • Why We Write
  • Archives
  • Top 100 Commenters
  • Private Events
  • T&C
  • Contact
Sponsored Links
Above Time Coffee Antelope Hill Publishing Identaria Paul Waggener IHR-Store Asatru Folk Assembly No College Club American Renaissance The Patrick Ryan Show Jim Goad The Occidental Observer
Print July 22, 2010

Nietzsche & Spengler:
Preface to Thinkers of the Right

Kerry Bolton

1,900 words

Friedrich Nietzsche and Oswald Spengler loom large over the horizon of twentieth-century European thought. Nietzsche was influential in the thinking of Spengler, while either one or both had a major impact on the thinking of most of the writers we deal with herein.

Both were primarily concerned with questions of decay and the possibilities of regeneration. Both held that Western Civilization had entered a cycle of decadence that was particularly evident in the cultural, moral and spiritual spheres. They were therefore of great relevance to many of the new generation of artists, writers and poets who emerged from the First World War, a war which made transparent the crisis of Western Civilization which had really entered its cycle of decay several centuries previously. The English and French Revolutions, in the name of “The People,” marked the overthrow of the old order by the new bourgeoisie, the victory of money over blood and family lineage.

Democracy for many of the cultural elite was not a political creed to be welcomed but rather a symptom, like Bolshevism, of the rise of the masses–and behind them of the rule of money: of quantity over quality, with the arts being the first to be degraded.

In a tide of intellectualism that degraded man and culture, Nietzsche and Spengler stand as the great thinkers who sought to ennoble. Against them stood Marx and his opposite numbers: the liberal economic theorists, who make of everything a matter of economics; Freud, who reduces man and culture to a mass of sexual complexes; and Darwin, who reduces man to being just another animal

To Nietzsche the meaning of man was that of “overcoming” his present state, to Will higher forms of existence, which are ultimately expressed in the arts. This was seen as being embodied in the great men of history. These great men, creators via their own individual will, are separated from the mass of humanity by a great gulf. Man is the tightrope between animal and Overman,

A rope over an abyss. What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not a goal.

Among the first sentences uttered by Nietzsche’s prophet Zarathustra are these words that define the purpose of man:

I teach you the Overman. Man is something that should overcome. What have you done to overcome him?

All creatures have hitherto created something beyond themselves and do you want to be the ebb of this great tide and return to the animals rather than overcome man?

The Overman is the meaning of the earth. Let your will say the Overman shall be the meaning of the earth.

Despite the Darwinian interpretations that have been placed on Nietzsche, it was a rejection of Darwinism that prompted Nietzsche to herald the Overman as an act of Will rather than as evolution through random genetic mutation. The human existence beyond any other organism is only justified by culture, which is the perfection of nature through human Will.

This basic idea of culture in so far as it assigns only one task to every single one of us: to promote inside and outside of ourselves the generation of the philosopher, the artist, and the saint, and thus to work at the perfection of nature (Untimely Meditations).

In the same essay Nietzsche states that the goal of humanity lies in its “highest specimens.” Nature wants to make the life of man “significant and meaningful by generating the philosopher and artist. . .” Thereby not only is man redeemed but nature herself.

With the central focus of history, of mankind, of nature herself being epitomized by the artist, it is no wonder that Nietzsche’s philosophy caught the imagination of so many of the creative elite.

Prefiguring Spengler with a rejection of history as linear and progressive, Nietzsche states that what comes later in a civilization is not necessarily what is best. What is best is reflected in the highest specimens, the artists and philosophers, where the gulf that separates these higher men from the average citizen is greater than that which separates the average man from the chimpanzee.

Hence Ezra Pound’s Nietzschean attitudes towards the artist and the mass was reflected by many other contemporaries. Some, such as Wyndham Lewis and Evola, were even suspicious of Fascism as being “too democratic,” too much of a mass movement. Pound states:

The artist has no longer any belief or suspicion that the mass, the half-educated simpering general . . . can in any way share his delights . . . The aristocracy of the arts is ready again for its service. Modern civilization has bred a race with brains like those of rabbits, and . . . we artists who have been so long despised are about to take over control.

D. H. Lawrence went so far as to see himself as a coming dictator who would relieve the masses of the “burden of democracy.” whilst D’Annunzio did actually become a ruler of his own State (Fiume) for a time, where the arts were the focus.

Nietzsche demanded new law tablets upon which would be inscribed the word ‘noble’ (Zarathustra). The creative elite make their own laws through their acts of creation, and are not constrained by the democratic mob with their laws, morals and values that are designed for the control of the average. Hence, Nietzsche’s prophet Zarathustra counsels higher man to stay aloof from the masses, and from the market place, as the masses will drag the higher man down to the dead level of “equality” with such doctrines as democracy.

The Overman would be willed into creation by Higher Men striving to “self-overcome,” to reach beyond themselves through placing hardships upon oneself. The Nietzschean brute is one of many distortions of Nietzsche, who states that the strong are compassionate towards the lesser.

While Nietzsche makes culture the criterion for defining the value of both societies and individuals, Oswald Spengler develops a morphology of culture as the basis of historical analysis. Both philosophers elevate the cultural beyond the contemporary fads of economic, sexual, and biological determinism, as the basis of their world-views. Spengler in the preface to The Decline of The West states that the two figures to whom he owes most are Goethe for “method” and Nietzsche for the “questioning faculty.”

Hence, Spengler was also of great interest to the new generation of artists, poets and authors. Spengler explains that by drawing on analogous cycles of history in each of the civilizations he could explain how and why Western Civilization was undergoing a cycle of decay. Like Nietzsche, Spengler sees democracy, parliamentarianism, egalitarianism, and the rise of money and the merchant on the ruins of the old aristocracy of birth (or blood) as symptoms of the decadence that are reducing the arts to the lowest denominator.

Many of the cultural elite were of a mystical nature, such as Yeats and Evola, and their knowledge of the cyclic myths of many ancient cultures of East and West and the Americas accorded with the cyclical conclusions drawn by Spengler.

In his influential magnum opus The Decline of the West Spengler rejects the Darwinian, linear, progressive approach to history, explaining:

I see in place of that empty figment of one linear history . . .  the drama of a number of mighty cultures, each having its own life; its own death . . . Each culture has its own new possibilities of self-expression, which arise, ripen, decay and never return . . . I see world history as a picture of endless formations and transformations, of the marvelous waxing and waning of organic forms. The professional historian, on the other hand, sees it as a sort of tapeworm industriously adding to itself one epoch after another.

This cyclic approach to history is organic. It sees cultures as living entities with a birth, a flourishing, a decay and death. Each civilization, although self-contained, has the same cyclic phases, which Spengler identifies with the four seasons. The winter phase is the advanced civilization where the city replaces the country, profit replaces heroism, and the merchant replaces the aristocrat. As for the social castes, these cease to have a cultural value and are mere economic reflections. The rootless city dwelling proletariat replacing the rural yeoman and craftsman, the merchant replacing the warrior, and the banker replacing the noble. Hence, what is often regarded as “new,” “progressive,” “modern,”and “western.” the rise of abortion, family planning, of banking practices, of parliaments and voting majorities, of feminism, socialism, revolutions . . .  have already been played out in the “winter” phase of prior civilizations. Spengler describes it thus:

You, the West, are dying. I see in you all the characteristic stigma of decay. I can prove that your great wealth and your great poverty, your capitalism and your socialism, your wars and your revolutions, your atheism and your pessimism and your cynicism, your immorality, your birth control that is bleeding you from below and killing you off at the top in your brains. I can prove to you that these were characteristic marks of the dying ages of ancient states . . .  Alexandria and Greece and neurotic Rome . . .

Many of the new generation of writers were thus drawn to Spengler’s analysis of the way the rule of money, of money values and of the money baron’s control of politics, had become determinative of the tastes of a civilization in its final cycle. They were concerned with overthrowing the rule of money and returning civilization to its “springtime” where the arts flourished under the patronage of born nobles. Yeats and Evola look to certain epochs of the Medieval period of the West. Ezra Pound sought the overthrow of the banks through the economic theory of Social Credit; Hamsun and Williamson wished for a return to rural values in place of those of the City; many were attracted to Fascism.

Spengler states that in the final phase of the winter cycle there arises a reaction against the rule of money. Money marches on reaching its peak then exhausts its possibilities:

It thrust into the life of the yeoman’s countryside and set the earth moving; its thought transformed every son of handicraft: today it presses victoriously upon industry, to make the productive work of entrepreneur and engineer and labourer alike, its spoil. The machine with its human retinue. The real queen of this century is in danger of succumbing to a stronger power. Money, also. Is beginning to lose its authority, and the last conflict is at hand in which civilization receives its conclusive form–the conflict between money and blood.

The rule of money will be overcome by new “Caesars,” strong leaders not harnessed to the plutocrats and their parliaments and media. In Spengler’s last book, The Hour of Decision, he sees the Fascist legions in Italy as heralds of the “new Caesarism.” Mussolini was much impressed with both Nietzsche and Spengler.

Spengler resumes:

The sword is victorious over money, the master-will subdues again the plunderer-will . . .  Money is overthrown and abolished by blood. Life is alpha and omega, the cosmic stream in microcosmic form . . . And so the drama of a high culture–that wondrous world of deities, arts, thoughts, battles, cities–closes with the return of the pristine facts of blood eternal that is one and the same as the ever-circling cosmic flow.

Preface to K. R. Bolton, Thinkers of the Right: Challenging Materialism (Luton, England: Luton Publications, 2003).

 

Related

  • Remembering Oswald Spengler (May 29, 1880-May 8, 1936)

  • Úryvky z Finis Germania Rolfa Petera Sieferleho, část 2: „Věčný nacista“

  • Úryvky z Finis Germania Rolfa Petera Sieferleho, část 1

  • Vliv Howarda Phillipse Lovecrafta na okultismus, část 2

  • Conquering Our Cryptids

  • Counter-Currents Radio Podcast No. 531 Ask Me Anything with Greg Johnson and Pox Populi

  • Vliv Howarda Phillipse Lovecrafta na okultismus, část 1

  • Metapolitics and Occult Warfare

Tags

book excerptscommercial societycultural renewaldecadenceFriedrich NietzscheKerry Boltonon Nietzscheon SpenglerOswald Spenglerphilosophy of historyThinkers of the Right

Previous

« Filippo Marinetti

Next

» Yukio Mishima

  • Recent posts

    • Three Episodes from the History of Racial Politics

      Richard Knight

      1

    • Alice’s Police Escort in Wonderland

      Gunnar Alfredsson

      7

    • Prioritizing Prestige Over Accomplishment: Britain from 1950 to 1956

      Morris van de Camp

      3

    • Nueva Derecha vs. Vieja Derecha Capítulo 2: Hegemonía

      Greg Johnson

    • The Great Debate

      Cyan Quinn

      8

    • Will Woke Capital Soon Go the Way of the Dinosaur?

      Beau Albrecht

      30

    • June is the Gayest Month

      Jim Goad

      21

    • Counter-Currents Radio Podcast No. 535 Ask Me Anything

      Counter-Currents Radio

      1

    • Úryvky z Finis Germania Rolfa Petera Sieferleho, část 3: Nové státní náboženství

      Rolf Peter Sieferle

    • Football’s Race War

      Pox Populi

      7

    • VDARE Facing Mortal Threat

      Peter Brimelow

      5

    • Collin Cleary Interviewed on Richard Wagner

      Collin Cleary

      1

    • Counter-Currents Radio Podcast No. 534 Interview with Alexander Adams

      Counter-Currents Radio

      1

    • The Union Jackal, May 2023

      Mark Gullick

      17

    • Biden and Bibi

      James J. O'Meara

      12

    • Forward with a Vengeance

      Tom Zaja

      3

    • Notes on Strauss & Husserl

      Greg Johnson

      1

    • The Worst Week Yet: May 21-27, 2023

      Jim Goad

      26

    • The Honorable Cause: A Review

      Spencer J. Quinn

      8

    • George Friedman’s The Next 100 Years

      Thomas Steuben

      4

    • Remembering Oswald Spengler (May 29, 1880-May 8, 1936)

      Greg Johnson

      2

    • Euthanizing the Homeless? It’s a Start

      Jim Goad

      8

    • Remembering Louis-Ferdinand Céline (May 27, 1894–July 1, 1961)

      Greg Johnson

      12

    • Blood, Soil, Paint

      Greg Johnson

      1

    • Céline’s Guerre

      Margot Metroland

      7

    • The Trial of Socrates

      Greg Johnson

    • Fields of Asphodel

      Tito Perdue

    • George Floyd and the “Color” of Revolution

      Stephen Paul Foster

      11

    • The Dakota Territory’s Indian Wars During the Civil War, Part 2

      Morris van de Camp

      1

    • No, Really, Everything’s Fine!

      Gunnar Alfredsson

      18

    • Euthanizing the Homeless? It’s a Start

      Jim Goad

      25

    • The Dakota Territory’s Indian Wars During the Civil War, Part 1

      Morris van de Camp

      1

    • How Much Would Slavery Reparations Actually Cost?

      Beau Albrecht

      35

    • No Brexit This Way

      Mark Gullick

      8

    • Martinez Contra Fascism

      Thomas Steuben

      25

    • Úryvky z Finis Germania Rolfa Petera Sieferleho, část 2: „Věčný nacista“

      Rolf Peter Sieferle

    • A 5D Plan in 3D: Hitchcock’s Dial M For Murder

      James J. O'Meara

      16

    • After Waco

      Morris van de Camp

      18

    • Munchhausen: The Third Reich’s Wizard of Oz

      Steven Clark

      13

    • Nueva Derecha vs. Vieja Derecha Capítulo 1: Política y Metapolítica

      Greg Johnson

    • The Worst Week Yet: May 14-20, 2023

      Jim Goad

      15

    • The (So-Called) New York “Thought Criminals” & the “Intellectual Dark Web”

      Alex Graham

      9

    • Documenting the Decline

      Spencer J. Quinn

      7

    • Remembering Richard Wagner (May 22, 1813-February 13, 1883)

      Greg Johnson

      3

    • Remembering Dominique Venner (April 16, 1935–May 21, 2013)

      Greg Johnson

      3

    • Clash of the Billionaire Comic-Book Supervillains

      Jim Goad

      2

    • The Psychology of the Politically Correct

      Richard Knight

      65

    • Springtime in Tallinn

      Veiko Hessler

      13

    • Liberal Anti-Democracy, Chapter 6, Part 2: Conclusion

      Kenneth Vinther

      11

    • Remembering Julius Evola (May 19, 1898–June 11, 1974)

      Greg Johnson

      5

  • Classics Corner

    • Cù Chulainn in the GPO:
      The Mythic Imagination of Patrick Pearse

      Michael O'Meara

      5

    • Remembering Dominique Venner
      (April 16, 1935 – May 21, 2013)

      Greg Johnson

      11

    • A Robertson Roundup: 
      Remembering Wilmot Robertson
      (April 16, 1915 – July 8, 2005)

      Margot Metroland

      13

    • Metapolitics and Occult Warfare

      Greg Johnson

      2

    • Remembering Maurice Bardèche:
      October 1, 1907–July 30, 1998

      Greg Johnson

      2

    • The Power of Myth:
      Remembering Joseph Campbell
      (March 26, 1904–October 30, 1987)

      John Morgan

      11

    • The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance

      Trevor Lynch

      24

    • The Searchers

      Trevor Lynch

      29

    • Gabriele D’Annunzio

      Jonathan Bowden

      2

    • Remembering A. R. D. “Rex” Fairburn (February 2, 1904–March 25, 1957)

      Greg Johnson

      1

    • Denis Kearney & the Struggle for a White America

      Theodore J. O'Keefe

      1

    • Posthuman Prospects:
      Artificial Intelligence, Fifth Generation Warfare, & Archeofuturism

      Christopher Pankhurst

      5

    • Earnest Sevier Cox:
      Advocate for the White Ethnostate

      Morris van de Camp

      15

    • Remembering Jack London
      (January 12, 1876–November 22, 1916)

      Greg Johnson

      2

    • Remembering Robinson Jeffers:
      January 10, 1887–January 20, 1962

      John Morgan

      3

    • Remembering Pierre Drieu La Rochelle:
      January 3, 1893–March 15, 1945

      Greg Johnson

    • Remembering Rudyard Kipling (December 30, 1865-January 18, 1936)

      Greg Johnson

      10

    • Restoring White Homelands

      Greg Johnson

      34

    • Remembering Hinton Rowan Helper

      Spencer J. Quinn

      11

    • What’s Wrong with Diversity?

      Greg Johnson

      10

    • Redefining the Mainstream

      Greg Johnson

      3

    • Edward Alsworth Ross:
      American Metapolitical Hero

      Morris van de Camp

      8

    • The Talented Mr. Ripley & Purple Noon

      Trevor Lynch

      19

    • Christmas & the Yuletide:
      Light in the Darkness

      William de Vere

      3

    • Thanksgiving Special 
      White Men Meet Indians:
      Jamestown & the Clash of Civilizations

      Thomas Jackson

    • Colin Wilson’s The Outsider

      Sir Oswald Mosley

      4

    • Dostoyevsky on the Jews

      William Pierce

      4

    • Jefferson &/or Mussolini, Part 1

      Ezra Pound

      5

    • I Listened to Chapo Trap House So You Don’t Have To

      Doug Huntington

      98

    • The Homeric Gods

      Mark Dyal

      13

  • Paroled from the Paywall

    • An Actor Prepares: Politics as Theater

      Mark Gullick

    • Counter-Currents Radio Podcast No. 533 Ask Me Anything

      Counter-Currents Radio

      2

    • Politicizing Luz Long, Part II

      Clarissa Schnabel

      2

    • Politicizing Luz Long, Part I

      Clarissa Schnabel

      3

    • Breaking Beat: Reflections on The Rebel Set, a Masterpiece That Never Was

      James J. O'Meara

      1

    • If Hillary Had Won

      Stephen Paul Foster

      1

    • Nice Racism, Part 3

      Beau Albrecht

      1

    • Nice Racism, Part 2

      Beau Albrecht

      7

    • Nice Racism, Part 1

      Beau Albrecht

      6

    • Aristophanes’ Clouds, Part II

      Greg Johnson

      1

    • Aristophanes’ Clouds, Part I

      Greg Johnson

      1

    • Counter-Currents Radio Podcast No. 530 The Genealogy of Wokeism

      Counter-Currents Radio

      5

    • Patrick Bateman: “Literally Me” or a Warning?

      Anthony Bavaria

      9

    • British Sculpture, Part II

      Jonathan Bowden

      1

    • British Sculpture, Part I

      Jonathan Bowden

      2

    • The New Story

      Jocelynn Cordes

      21

    • Why Does Cthulhu Always Swim Left? Part 2

      Beau Albrecht

      1

    • Why Does Cthulhu Always Swim Left? Part 1

      Beau Albrecht

      11

    • Robert Rutherford McCormick, Midwestern Man of the Right: Part 2

      Morris van de Camp

      1

    • Pierre Teilhard de Chardin: Prophet of Eugenics and Race-Realism

      Margot Metroland

      11

    • In Defense of the White Union

      Asier Abadroa

    • Everything Everywhere All at Once: The Oscar Winner the System Loves

      Steven Clark

      32

    • Incels on Wheels: Jim Goad’s Trucker Fags in Denial

      Beau Albrecht

      17

    • The White Pill

      Margot Metroland

      10

    • Counter-Currents Radio Podcast No. 528 Karl Thorburn on the Bank Crashes

      Counter-Currents Radio

    • Women Philosophers

      Richard Knight

      23

    • Stranger Things and Surviving in the Modern World

      Howe Abbott-Hiss

      2

    • The Fabulous Pleven Boys

      P. J. Collins

      2

    • Nuclear Families: Threads

      Mark Gullick

      4

    • Reviewing the Unreviewable

      Margot Metroland

      3

  • Recent comments

    • Beau Albrecht

      Three Episodes from the History of Racial Politics

      I hardly can wait for the Sleeping Giant to awaken, so we can get them off our back, and all the...

    • Alexandra O.

      Alice’s Police Escort in Wonderland

      It's sad now that White parents can't take their younger children and teens to Disneyland, et al.,...

    • Beau Albrecht

      Will Woke Capital Soon Go the Way of the Dinosaur?

      Interesting, that.  Which biography did you find?  I'm tempted to write him up one of these days. ...

    • Antipodean

      Prioritizing Prestige Over Accomplishment: Britain from 1950 to 1956

      The Israelis and their myriad proxies are working hard on Japan. I’ve met one, a tribe member and a...

    • ncleapyear

      Will Woke Capital Soon Go the Way of the Dinosaur?

      I looked at long-time CFR director Stephen Duggan’s biographical information.  He was known as...

    • Fire Walk With Lee

      Will Woke Capital Soon Go the Way of the Dinosaur?

      It was a one off can they made specifically for him celebrating his supposed  “365 days of girlhood...

    • Jeffrey A Freeman

      Alice’s Police Escort in Wonderland

      All this is why I live in Maine. The whitest state in mongrel America.

    • Kök Böri

      June is the Gayest Month

      Herr Nietzsche would not have written something titled DIE SCHWULE WISSENSCHAFT. :))

    • Wollzo

      June is the Gayest Month

      Fröhlich (Die fröhliche Wissenschaft) doesn't have the same faggy connotations auf deutsch as "gay"...

    • Wollzo

      June is the Gayest Month

      From Romans 1: "Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own...

    • Beau Albrecht

      Will Woke Capital Soon Go the Way of the Dinosaur?

      Indeed, there's a long story about all that, with the Committee in Aid of Displaced Foreign Scholars...

    • Mushroom Head

      Will Woke Capital Soon Go the Way of the Dinosaur?

      It's a good question: were these cans with the Raymond Pettibon-style raving shrieking face printed...

    • Sick Boy

      The Worst Week Yet: May 21-27, 2023

      Think about this: Renton (the character you refer to) in Trainspotting was also a big literature fan...

    • Beau Albrecht

      Will Woke Capital Soon Go the Way of the Dinosaur?

      My original manuscript said, "...squidlings with facial piercings aligned to receive transmissions...

    • Sick Boy

      The Worst Week Yet: May 21-27, 2023

      That Irvine Welsh (who ceased to be relevant decades ago) article, more unfocused rant than...

    • Hyacinth Bouquet

      Nice Racism, Part 1

      Dear Alexandra O., my own perhaps childish response to anything annoying that is written by, spoken...

    • Martin S.

      Alice’s Police Escort in Wonderland

      It's always the same "teens" ruining it for everyone else. It doesn't matter if it's Canada, the UK...

    • Hyacinth Bouquet

      Biden and Bibi

      "...Steve Sailer made the cute suggestion that the Boys should contact major fashion labels and...

    • Antipodean

      Forward with a Vengeance

      Ocular barter – I puzzled over that.Infertile fig trees?  Are you referring to modest...

    • Antipodean

      Will Woke Capital Soon Go the Way of the Dinosaur?

      Blaming the victim? I am not speaking from the inside but my impression is that isolation, lack of...

  • Book Authors

    • Beau Albrecht
    • Alain de Benoist
    • Kerry Bolton
    • Jonathan Bowden
    • Collin Cleary
    • Jef Costello
    • Savitri Devi
    • F. Roger Devlin
    • Buttercup Dew
    • Julius Evola
    • Jim Goad
    • Gregory Hood
    • Juleigh Howard-Hobson
    • Greg Johnson
    • Charles Krafft
    • Anthony M. Ludovici
    • Trevor Lynch
    • H. L. Mencken
    • J. A. Nicholl
    • James J. O’Meara
    • Christopher Pankhurst
    • Tito Perdue
    • Michael Polignano
    • Spencer J. Quinn
    • Fenek Solère
    • Irmin Vinson
    • Leo Yankevich
    • Francis Parker Yockey
    • Multiple authors
  • Webzine Authors

    Editor-in-Chief

    • Greg Johnson, Ph.D.

    Featured Writers

    • Beau Albrecht
    • Morris V. de Camp
    • Stephen Paul Foster, Ph.D.
    • Jim Goad
    • Alex Graham
    • Mark Gullick, Ph.D.
    • Greg Johnson, Ph.D.
    • Spencer J. Quinn

    Frequent Writers

    • Aquilonius
    • Anthony Bavaria
    • Alain de Benoist
    • Kerry Bolton, Ph.D.
    • Collin Cleary, Ph.D.
    • Jef Costello
    • F. Roger Devlin, Ph.D.
    • Richard Houck
    • Ondrej Mann
    • Margot Metroland
    • John Morgan
    • Trevor Lynch
    • James J. O’Meara
    • Kathryn S.
    • Thomas Steuben
    • Michael Walker

    Classic Authors

    • Maurice Bardèche
    • Jonathan Bowden
    • Julius Evola
    • Guillaume Faye
    • Ernst Jünger
    • Kevin MacDonald, Ph.D.
    • D. H. Lawrence
    • Charles Lindbergh
    • Jack London
    • H. P. Lovecraft
    • Anthony M. Ludovici
    • Sir Oswald Mosley
    • National Vanguard
    • Friedrich Nietzsche
    • Revilo Oliver
    • William Pierce
    • Ezra Pound
    • Saint-Loup
    • Savitri Devi
    • Carl Schmitt
    • Miguel Serrano
    • Oswald Spengler
    • P. R. Stephensen
    • Jean Thiriart
    • John Tyndall
    • Dominique Venner
    • Leo Yankevich
    • Francis Parker Yockey

    Other Authors

    • Howe Abbott-Hiss
    • Michael Bell
    • Buttercup Dew
    • Giles Corey
    • Bain Dewitt
    • Jack Donovan
    • Richardo Duchesne, Ph.D.
    • Emile Durand
    • Guillaume Durocher
    • Mark Dyal
    • Fullmoon Ancestry
    • Tom Goodroch
    • Andrew Hamilton
    • Robert Hampton
    • Huntley Haverstock
    • Derek Hawthorne
    • Gregory Hood
    • Juleigh Howard-Hobson
    • Alexander Jacob
    • Nicholas Jeelvy
    • Ruuben Kaalep
    • Tobias Langdon
    • Julian Langness
    • Travis LeBlanc
    • Patrick Le Brun
    • G A Malvicini
    • John Michael McCloughlin
    • Millennial Woes
    • Michael O’Meara
    • Christopher Pankhurst
    • Michael Polignano
    • J. J. Przybylski
    • Quintilian
    • Edouard Rix
    • C. B. Robertson
    • C. F. Robinson
    • Herve Ryssen
    • Alan Smithee
    • Fenek Solere
    • Ann Sterzinger
    • Robert Steuckers
    • Tomislav Sunic
    • Donald Thoresen
    • Marian Van Court
    • Irmin Vinson
    • Aylmer Wedgwood
    • Scott Weisswald
  • Departments

    • Book Reviews
    • Movie Reviews
    • TV Reviews
    • Music Reviews
    • Art Criticism
    • Graphic Novels & Comics
    • Video Game Reviews
    • Fiction
    • Poems
    • Interviews
    • Videos
    • English Translations
    • Other Languages
      • Arabic
      • Bulgarian
      • Croatian
      • Czech
      • Danish
      • Dutch
      • Estonian
      • Finnish
      • French
      • German
      • Greek
      • Hungarian
      • Italian
      • Lithuanian
      • Norwegian
      • Polish
      • Portuguese
      • Romanian
      • Russian
      • Slovak
      • Spanish
      • Swedish
      • Ukrainian
    • Commemorations
    • Why We Write
  • Archives
  • Top 100 Commenters
Sponsored Links
Above Time Coffee Antelope Hill Publishing Identaria Paul Waggener IHR-Store Asatru Folk Assembly No College Club American Renaissance The Patrick Ryan Show Jim Goad The Occidental Observer
Donate Now Mailing list
Books for sale
  • The Trial of Socrates
  • Fields of Asphodel
  • El Manifiesto Nacionalista Blanco
  • An Artist of the Right
  • Ernst Jünger
  • Reuben
  • The Partisan
  • Trevor Lynch’s Classics of Right-Wing Cinema
  • The Enemy of Europe
  • Imperium
  • Reactionary Modernism
  • Manifesto del Nazionalismo Bianco
  • O Manifesto Nacionalista Branco
  • Vade Mecum
  • Whiteness: The Original Sin
  • Space Vixen Trek Episode 17: Tomorrow the Stars
  • The Year America Died
  • Passing the Buck
  • Mysticism After Modernism
  • Gold in the Furnace
  • Defiance
  • Forever & Ever
  • Wagner’s Ring & the Germanic Tradition
  • Resistance
  • Materials for All Future Historians
  • Love Song of the Australopiths
  • White Identity Politics
  • Here’s the Thing
  • Trevor Lynch: Part Four of the Trilogy
  • Graduate School with Heidegger
  • It’s Okay to Be White
  • The World in Flames
  • The White Nationalist Manifesto
  • From Plato to Postmodernism
  • The Gizmo
  • Return of the Son of Trevor Lynch’s CENSORED Guide to the Movies
  • Toward a New Nationalism
  • The Smut Book
  • The Alternative Right
  • My Nationalist Pony
  • Dark Right: Batman Viewed From the Right
  • The Philatelist
  • Confessions of an Anti-Feminist
  • East and West
  • Though We Be Dead, Yet Our Day Will Come
  • White Like You
  • Numinous Machines
  • Venus and Her Thugs
  • Cynosura
  • North American New Right, vol. 2
  • You Asked For It
  • More Artists of the Right
  • Extremists: Studies in Metapolitics
  • The Homo & the Negro
  • Rising
  • The Importance of James Bond
  • In Defense of Prejudice
  • Confessions of a Reluctant Hater (2nd ed.)
  • The Hypocrisies of Heaven
  • Waking Up from the American Dream
  • Green Nazis in Space!
  • Truth, Justice, and a Nice White Country
  • Heidegger in Chicago
  • End of an Era: Mad Men & the Ordeal of Civility
  • Sexual Utopia in Power
  • What is a Rune? & Other Essays
  • Son of Trevor Lynch’s White Nationalist Guide to the Movies
  • The Lightning & the Sun
  • The Eldritch Evola
  • Western Civilization Bites Back
  • New Right vs. Old Right
  • Journey Late at Night: Poems and Translations
  • The Non-Hindu Indians & Indian Unity
  • I do not belong to the Baader-Meinhof Group
  • Pulp Fascism
  • The Lost Philosopher
  • Trevor Lynch’s A White Nationalist Guide to the Movies
  • And Time Rolls On
  • Artists of the Right: Resisting Decadence
  • North American New Right, Vol. 1
  • Some Thoughts on Hitler
  • Tikkun Olam and Other Poems
  • Summoning the Gods
  • Taking Our Own Side
  • Reuben
  • The Node
  • The New Austerities
  • Morning Crafts
  • The Passing of a Profit & Other Forgotten Stories
Copyright © 2023 Counter-Currents Publishing, Ltd.

Paywall Access





Please enter your email address. You will receive mail with link to set new password.

Edit your comment