American Nietzsche: A History of an Icon and His Ideas

by Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen

Though initially more aesthetic than political, Thompson’s jaundiced assessment of American democratic pluralism increasingly colored the magazine’s commentaries. Unlike Reitzel and Tucker, who employed Nietzsche for their anarchism of the Left, Thompson utilized Nietzsche for his aristocratism of the Right. He argued that America must be “ruled by … the strong man” lest it become “eaten alive by parasites.” He thus used his canon of cosmopolitan thinkers to criticize cosmopolitan realities in America.58 Nietzsche confirmed his belief that America was a “doomed republic,” for it operated under the “monstrous fallacy that all men are born free and equal.” The problem with modern democracy is that it mistakes “plutocracy” for leadership and “ballotocracy” for public order. Critical of the leveling tendencies in modern life, and of its assault on the natural “intellectual aristocracy,” Thompson made his debt to Nietzsche explicit:59 And M’lle New York sees the democratic hatred of the individual that is the chief mark of this drab, commercial civilization.