Twilight of the Idols with The Antichrist and Ecce Homo

If you are a fan of Nietzsche and his work then this is highly reccomended! Very passionate and stirring writing, encouraging the reader to always ask questions and challenge life, never to just accept it. His final book, it is as vivid and exceptional as you could ask for, but i would reccomend starting with an earlier book, perhaps Human, all to human to get a taste before jumping in at the deep end!

A classic!

The print & paper quality is extremely good. I’d definitely recommend reading his other works before jumping into the antichrist. Though his autobiography (Ecce homo), and twilight of the idols are great places to start reading his works.

The translator was a nationalist, traditionalist, and supporter of eugenics--every thing that Nietzsche was against--why would a publisher use such a translator especially for Nietzsche?

Of all the English language translations available, I trust that of Anthony Mario Ludovici the most. Anthony Mario Ludovici spent several years in Germany studying FWN in the original German. Furthermore, Ludovici was a student of Dr Oscar Levy with whom he prepared the first Complete Works of Friedrich Nietzsche in English, himself contributing several full volumes. Nietzsche scholar William Salter called AML's work, 'Nietzsche: His Life & Works' a “well-nigh perfect short manual on Nietzsche”. I am not aware of other translators of Nietzsche's work possessing such qualifications. It may also be significant to take into account the fact that The AntiChrist was written long after the relationship with his close Jewish friend Paul Ree had broken down. This has always been a controversial work. In my opinion, this work marked FWN's assault against the corruption and decay of 1500 years, i.e. his literary crusade against the legacy of the original Church Fathers, and in particular against the 'Chandala' (outcast/parasite) St. Paul, who devised his own 'Christianity' that appeared to have become the most totemic edition of what was originally intended by it's legendary/mythical (you choose) founder to be a very different creed. Nietzsche clearly did not believe the historical character Jesus the Christ was of the Jewish race – he was an ethnic Nazarene, preaching first in his homeland of Galilee, before making the fatal mistake of taking his Word to the Jews in their own quarters. Nietzsche also fundamentally understood that the original teaching of Jesus Christ was altered and corrupted by the Jewish Church Fathers, shaping it into their own vision, in much the same way as our modern Capitalist 'overlords' have shaped societies the world over into their own image. Clearly, Nietzsche contended that Christianity has essentially been a Jewish creed because it's original teaching was subverted early on indeed, and that this subverted creed has caused enormous decay to European civilization, a contention that is in perfect conjunction with much of the ideological trappings of the SS. Here are a couple of examples from the work: 17“The God of the 'greatest number', the democrat among Gods, did not become a proud heathen god notwithstanding: he remained a Jew – he remained the god of the back streets, of all dark corners and hovels, of all the unwholesome quarters of the world!” 24”Christianity can be understood only in relation to the soil out of which it grew – it is not a counter-movement against the Jewish instinct; it is the rational outcome of the latter, one step further in it's APPALLING logic. In the formula of the Saviour: 'for the salvation is of the Jews'. - The second principle is: the psychological type of the Galilean is still recognisable, but it was only in a state of utter degeneration (which is at once a distortion and overloading with foreign features) that he …” “The Jews … twisted first religion, then the cult, then morality, history and psychology, in a manner so perfectly hopeless that they were made to contradict their natural value.” A ruthless indictment of Jewish legacy by Nietzsche. “The Jews are the most fatal people in the history of the world: their ultimate influence has falsified mankind, to such an extent that even to this day the Christian can be anti-semitic in spirit, without comprehending that he himself is the final consequence of Judaism.” ['lambs to the slaughter'] The above is an allusion to the Christian anti-Semites who don't understand that their 'own' religion, with which they try to beat Jews over the head, is based on the Judaic worldview. 26 “The concept of God falsified – the concept of morality falsified: but the Jewish priesthood did not stop at this”. 27” I fail to see against whom was directed the insurrection of which rightly or wrongly Jesus is understood to have been the promoter, if it were not directed against the Jewish church.” In Nietzsche's view, Jesus fought against the Jewish church – led by it's priestly Pharisaic class - and was mortally destroyed by them. Hitler launched himself and his Nationalsocialist movement into the same crusade, and in Mein Kampf stated, “in battling the Jew I am doing the work of the Lord”. This correlates with Nietzsche's position. 42”And once more, the sacerdotal instinct of the Jew perpetrated the same great crime against history – he simply cancelled the yesterday, and the day before that, out of Christianity; he contrived of his own accord a history of the birth of Christianity.” In the point above, Nietzsche alludes to the Jew's delusions of grandeur (laughably exemplified by their styling themselves as a 'chosen' people) and their consequent habit of falsifying the historical record in order to create a firm and fruitful soil from which (in this case) to grow their Christianity. Such a vile creed could only grow in such manure. 44 “The first thing to be remembered … is that we are among Jews. The dissembling of holiness, which here, literally amounts of genius, and which has never been even approximately achieved elsewhere either by books or by men, this FRAUD IN WORD AND POSE, which in this book (the Bible) is elevated to an Art, is not the accident of any individual gift, or any exceptional nature. These qualities are a matter of RACE [i.e. racial instinct, peculiar to the Jews]. With Christianity, the art of telling holy lies, which CONSTITUTES THE WHOLE OF JUDAISM, reaches it's final mastership, thanks to many centuries of Jewish and most thoroughly serious training and practice. The Christian, this ultima ration of falsehood, IS THE JEW OVER AGAIN – he is even three times a Jew. … little ultra-Jews, ripe for every kind of madhouse, twisted values round in order to suit themselves*.” *This is Nietzsche's reference to the 'transvalution of all values', which he CLEARLY blamed on the Jewish race. Clearly, here Nietzsche expounds on his firm understanding that Christianity was essentially a fraudulent hoax created by Jews, and as a result Europeans (or Aryans, to use the pre-war term that Nietzsche preferred) saturated in the Christian abomination are essentially 'honourary Jews'. One may say that the international profiteering of the modern age is the – one hopes – apex of this long-term Judaization of 'Aryan' society, since 'commerce' and financial trickery have always been innate to the Jewish character that lives amongst a productive and creative foreign host. However, Nietzsche points out that due to their biological identity (race), these Jews could not help it, just as a dog cannot help barking, or a rat cannot help hiding: their actions were the products of their deepest instincts – hence Nietzsche emphatically pointing out that in his understanding the Christian hoax was not brought about by conspiracy or collusion (“not the accident of any individual gift, or any exceptional nature”), but instead is the expression of a parasitical intrusion into the very lifeforce of what was once a healthy host. It may be important to remember that the word 'race' was italicized in the original text. Accordingly, Nietzsche delivers his belief that Judaism is built and carried by lies, as this is the Jewish nature. “The whole fatality was rendered possible only because a kind of megalomania, akin to this one and allied to it in race – the Jewish kind - was already to hand in the world.”: To Nietzsche, Jews are megalomaniacs. And, according to Nietzsche, without this previously existing megalomaniacal and insubordinately sacerdotalistic Jewish race, Christianity would not have been born. 46”Do I require to add that in the whole of the New Testament only one figure appears which we cannot help respecting? - Pilate, the Roman Governor. To take a Jewish quarrel seriously was a thing he could not get himself to do. On Jew more or less, what did it matter?” The above point illustrates that in Nietzsche's opinion, none of the characters (Jewish) were worthy of respect. 58”Epicurus had triumphed – every respectable figure in the Roman Empire was an Epicurean: then St Paul appeared … St Paul, the Chandala hatred against Rome, against the World, the Jew, the eternal Jew.” Nietzsche with a sneer says, “der ewige Jude” ('The Eternal Jew') - the Jew, the born Chandala, this creature never changes. Nietzsche understood Jesus Christ – if 'Christ' as we understand him truly was a historical figure, though no contemporary proof whatsoever exists – to be a Galilean, entirely separate from the Jewish ethniciity. It is clear that Nietzsche's opinion was that Christianity was a complete corruption of Christ's original message, and this Nietzsche blames on the Jews who composed the Bible, and thus set the tone of the next 1500 years. Clearly, Nietzsche considered the Jews to be born-liars, on account of their racial identity i.e. due to genotype rather than phenotype. As Nietzsche left us without doubt in Twilight of The Idols, “Christianity is the transvaluation of all Aryan values” (“The Improvers of Mankind” #4). Any antithetical thought and feeling Nietzsche had for the Jews was a result of his learning of their influence and role in connection with his own race. Nietzsche disparaged 'anti-semites' because he viewed them as hating Jews from a crude emotional basis because they are 'the other' – undoubtedly a bigoted line of thinking that Nietzsche probably found absurd because it was devoid of logic and understanding. Nietzsche chose to REVEAL the Jews for what they had done HISTORICALLY. A revelation of unpalatable facts is not a symptom of crude bigotry! Even Ray Furness, in his introduction to the text in the mass-market Wordsworth edition, doesn't hide Nietzsche's hostility to what he – Nietzsche – viewed as the Jewish subversion of healthy Aryan civilization through it's crude proto-Bolshevist Christian trickery. All of the above being said, I find Nietzsche highly approachable. He is one of perhaps only two or three philosophers I can understand to the roots without requiring to go through the process of prior research to prime my reading. That being said, like the King James English New Testament, Nietzsche was packed with irreconcilable contradictions; perhaps his prime example of this was proclaiming a visceral dislike of the anti-semites of the age in some places, but in other places – most enthusiastically in The Anti-Christ, clearly participating in it himself. On the one hand, his brilliance attempted to exceed the limitations of his own humanity, but on the other hand his collisions with that barrier oftentimes appeared to scramble his interpretations. Nietzsche said, “It is my ambition to say in ten sentences what everyone else says in a whole book.” In other words, don't try to read between the lines – there are no spaces between Nietzsche's lines, since his policy was to go straight for the jugular. Nietzsche belongs to the very few: do not be disheartened if you are one of the majority who cannot comprehend him, or – like the pompous and indoctrinated, refuse to attempt to comprehend him. In his own terms, Nietzsche is only for those who are brave enough to step outside the herd. This takes courage today as it did over 100 years ago. The 'mainstream' is the mainstream because it is easy to chew on since it has been sugar-coated and spoon-fed to the recipient. This satisfies weak minds who abhor the bitterness of 'heretic' opinion, which is the only true opinion – since it isn't the product of deliberate standardization. Anyone who thinks they may be a step or two away from being able to shear the same field as Nietzsche ought to read (for starters) Dr Revilo P. Oliver's book The Origins of Christianity, Anthony M. Ludovici's Religion For Infidels, and Ragnar Redbeard's (pseudonym!) Might Is Right.