When Conservative Christians Invoke Nietzsche

“Given this, we can recognize that Nietzsche would have seen layers of irony in these contemporary conservative figures appealing to his ideas to critique contemporary socialists…while simultaneously expressing concern about declining Christian values.”

Introduction

“Nietzsche had a name for Sven [read: Nordic Socialists]: the ‘last man.’ Nietzsche had nothing but contempt for this insufferable type, who never disturbs himself with a noble thought, who never risks his life for something greater than himself; whose life is defined by a high self-regard and comfortable self-preservations. Even so, Sven fancies himself a pretty nice guy—‘I’ve never killed anybody you know, and I really hate neo-Nazis’—and Bernie Sanders, himself a member of the breed, agrees.”

—Dinesh D’Souza, United States of Socialism

One of the more curious developments in recent times has been the propensity of Christian or religiously-minded conservatives to cite Nietzsche as a major influence. I do not mean, of course, as a foil or a worthy opponent but, rather, as someone who offered constructive diagnoses of the present. The most idiosyncratic and superficial is, of course, the alt-right’s propensity to both defend an amorphous “Christendom,” while appealing to the German critic of Christianity. But there are considerably more interesting examples. Probably the most famous is Jordan Peterson, who often appeals to Nietzsche’s account of ressentiment to criticize social justice activists past and present. In Maps of Meaning (and elsewhere), Peterson characterizes Nietzsche as a brilliant critic of “dogmatic” Christianity, who, nevertheless, served a kind of purifying function by stripping Christian doctrine and practice of its more decadent elements. Another noteworthy figure is Jonah Goldberg, author of Suicide of the West and a well-known defender of the functional role religion plays in stabilizing society, who also appealed to the anti-Christ to criticize social justice activists on American university campuses. As he put it at National Review in 2015:

“In 2015, our society is shot through with Nietzschean ressentiment. Today it is a great sin on college campuses—and elsewhere!—to make anyone other than the ‘privileged’ feel uncomfortable, challenged, or otherwise psychologically threatened by the use of the wrong words or concepts. The University of California recently issued a set of guidelines about the terrible danger of ‘microaggressions’—small, usually unintended slights that allegedly hurt the feelings of the newly anointed classes of victims. One must no longer say that America is a ‘melting pot,’ for to do so is to suggest that minorities should ‘assimilate to the dominant culture,’ according to the new moralists at the University of California.”