Trump and the Chauvinism of Fichte’s Germany

(And Seven Examples Establishing the Falsity of Fichte’s belief that Diversity is the prime progenitor of decadence.)

By

David Gottfried

Scott Joplin’s “Maple Leaf Rag” is, perhaps, the most decisive refutation of Fichte’s dictum that diversity – in language, art or politics – promotes decadence and cultural disintegration.

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Donald Trump’s racism is readily apparent to any observer of American politics. Some people might reflexively say that his racism makes him as American as apple pie and Mom. I disagree. Rather, I would say his racism makes him as German as phallic, filthy sausages and fat men playing the accordion as Modern European and American racism were borne in the German Reformation.

Martin Luther and Fichte: The progenitors of Modern Western Racism and Chauvinism

Although Martin Luther was correct to condemn Roman Catholicism for the sale of indulgences,¹ when Luther tried to get popular support for his new religion, he gave the German people red meat in the form of racism and anti-Semitism, contending that the Pope erred when he said the so-called Indians of the new world were also children of G-d; Luther said that native Americans were an INFERIOR RACE. Also, Luther assailed the Pope for being insufficiently hostile to the Jews.

But Trump is more than racist. He does not want America or Americanism to “mix” too much with other nationalities or ethnic groups. In this regard, Donald Trump and his slavish herds are following the precepts of Fichte’s “Redden a Deutschevolk,” or “Address to the German people.” Fiche wrote this at the end of the Napoleonic Wars when German, conservative antipathy toward the French Revolution and its liberating impulses were riding high: The Emperors of Prussia, Austria and Russia agreed to suppress revolution anywhere in the world where it might arise (This agreement was termed the “Drei Kaiser Bund”), and Austrian arch duke Metternich spat on the common people, snidely saying that ordinary people were “Inert” protoplasm destined to bow to monarchial whim. (Incidentally, Richard Nixon’s guru on foreign policy, Henry Kissinger, did his doctoral thesis on Metternich)

Among other things, Fichte made ethnic chauvinism a salient element of his Germanic creed: He said that any phenomenon --- whether it be an ethnic group, or a genre of music, or a cuisine – will become devalued, corrupted and irredeemably marred when it mixes with other groups or things. The whites will be defaced if they mix with blacks, German cooking will become food fit for pigs if it is tainted with Jewish cooking, and the most elegant European salon will look like an outhouse if it borrows the aesthetic ideas of Asia.

For example, Fichte said that the German language was a superior language because it was not in any degree derived from any other languages. For Fichte, English was a patently inferior language because it is, in large measure, a hybrid of Latin and German. To Fichte, the Latin in English was marred or enfeebled when it merged with German; likewise, the German in English was emasculated or neutered by the presence of Latin.

Actually, this Germanic racism soon enough became American racism and ultimately the racism of Black Muslims who contended that blacks lost some special spark or magical measure of blackness when they adopted “white traits.” This point of view became outrageously asinine and stupid at the very end of the Sixties, and in much of the political wasteland that was the 70’s, when blacks condemned blacks who aspired to academic achievement as such blacks were considered weak-willed Oreos struggling to become white.

Actually, a wealth of information refutes Fichte’s proposition: This data demonstrates that when two different phenomena meet one another, they do not necessarily infect or weaken or mar each other. Rather, two different phenomena, after confronting each other, may incite and ignite a synergistic response in which some new and novel third idea or thing is borne.

The cognitive lightening unleashed when one reads a Latin language from Left to Right and then Reads Hebrew, Farsi or some other tongue from Right to Left

Some scientists tell us that increased right brain activity will result in more creativity while increased left brain activity will result in increased analytic prowess.

I wonder if the way in which one reads has any influence on cognition. In any event, Hebrew is read from right to left; all languages using the Latin alphabet are read from Left to right. Arguably, reading Hebrew from right to left might inculcate certain cognitive traits and properties. Likewise, reading English from left to right might promote other cognitive qualities. What pray tell might result when one reads from both right to left and left to right (Because one is reading more than one language)? Are two antithetical cognitive traits enhanced at the same time ? Do we become more analytic and more creative at the same time ? Does this spark a synergistic explosion of ideation ?

European Jews have attained extremely high scores on intelligence tests, SATS, etc. Likewise, the percentage of Nobel prize winners who are Jewish is a number which is many multiples of the percent of the general population which is Jewish. (I should swiftly interject that many other factors might explain Jewish intellectual leads. There is no time to delve into those factors.)

Likewise, consider speakers of Farsi. (The language of Iran, until recently called Persia.) Farsi is read from right to left. The overwhelming majority of Americans of Iranian extraction rank in the highest percentiles on intelligence testing and the Medical Boards. (Some sources have reported that more than half of adult Iranian-Americans have MD degrees.)

Did the meeting of the visual arts and music give us the majesty of the Beatles ?

I am no student of music. I don’t know chords, and counterpoint sounds like the name of a Sunday morning news program. But I will say with the utmost confidence: When we heard, “She said she loves you,” we heard an entirely new sound.

What made the Beatles such fantastic composers ? Of course, they were brilliant, sensitive and had childhoods steeped in music. But hundreds of thousands of American and British kids were born to parents who taught or regularly played instruments or sang, but most American and British kids never wrote a memorable tune.

Perhaps, John Lennon’s and Paul Mc Cartney’s matriculation in an art school, as opposed to an ordinary high school, was the catalyst which sparked their extraordinary creativity. (And you can’t characterize their creative output as anything but extraordinary. As I said, “She said she loves you,” which was released in 1963, was entirely new. But in less than 2 years, their music was extremely new all over again, with releases such as “Help.” Then, the music took a quantum leap with the sweet aural zephyrs of 'In my life.” And by the time they gave us “I am the walrus,” nothing was ever boring again.

The visual stimulation of art school, and the aural stimulation of the blues, may have come together in the dark and fertile recesses of their promethean brains and given us some of the finest music since Beethoven.

How the African Jungle met the Finest Symphonic Music of Europe and Gave Us America’s Greatest Art.

Scott Joplin’s Mother was a slave. He was born, in the late 1860’s, in dire poverty. He wrote dozens of rag time pieces, one or two operas and a ballet. For the most part, white America treated him with racist scorn and wrath. In any event, he befriended a Jewish man, Julius Weiss, who was an immigrant from Germany. Julius Weiss introduced him to “serious European music."

In any event, many musical theorists contend that Scott Joplin is responsible for fusing the beauty of European symphonic music with the immediacy of highly rhythmic African music.

For Fichte, this merger of two different traditions would have been deemed unclean. To Fiche, things should stay with their own kind and never mix. However, the acceptance of cultural diversity which was inherent in what Scott Joplin did – he was able to admit different cultures into his musical laboratory – created a brand-new music, invigorating and bracing. His music had the complexity and melody of European music along with the insistent rhythm of African music.

The Hegelian Dialectic holds that the confrontation between two antithetical concepts provides the fuel and friction for new achievements

Although Fichte seemed phobic of a world in which different phenomena interacted, another German, Hegel, held that new ideas came about because of the energy generated by the conflict generated by opposing ideas.

Indeed, he said that all intellectual growth was prompted by the conflict between opposing ideas. He “mapped out” the way in which ideas developed: He said that first there was a thesis, then that thesis was opposed by its antithesis, and that finally, the thesis and antithesis would argue their differences and resolve them in a new idea, namely the synthesis.

How Fichte’s premature limitation of the Universe of Discourse has made some political scholarship an erroneous waste of time

Just as Fichte called for the exclusion of material that was not germane or was in any way discordant (If one is writing about German pottery, one should close one’s eyes to any other kind of pottery), scholars sometimes stultify their scholarship by all too readily excluding from consideration data that might be as illuminating as phosphorus flares on a battle field.

For example, when Norman Podhoretz, in “Breaking Ranks,” (1979) humiliated political scientists for their inability to gauge the strength of the New Left, he said they underestimated the strength of the Left (The triumphs or Gene Mc Carthy, Robert Kennedy and George Mc Govern in the presidential primaries in 1968 and 1972) because they only studied polities and were oblivious to the tidal waves of emotion in rock music which were generating an intense attraction toward politics that smacked of revolution. In other words, they forgot that sometimes extra political phenomena can alter the results of elections. Because material outside of a specialty can often change the results of something that resides within a specialty, excessive specialization is often the bane of scholarship and academia.

The basic lessons of Inorganic Chemistry sing the Praises of diversity

The 19^th century physicalists said that the more one could base one’s ideas in concrete physical phenomena, the greater the chance that one’s ideas were valid. Whether one were talking about aesthetics or religion or politics, one should always take a stab at grounding one’s ideas in something solid and in the corporeal world.

Fichte said different things don’t mix. He said the German language was wonderful; hence it was ignoble and inane to undermine it by mixing it in with Latin words to make English.

However, if we look at chemicals which are the building blocks of our life on this planet, we find that the conjoining or meeting of very different chemicals, which happen to be corrosive and often deadly, will create something pacific or even sometimes salubrious.

For example, Sodium Hydroxide, NaOH, is a caustic, stinging, searing highly alkaline substance with a very, very high PH. By contrast, Hydrochloric Acid, HCl, is liquid fire, it is a very powerful acid with a low PH. Drizzle it on a body and the ferocious fluid will drill a hole, half a foot deep in your carcass, in a couple of minutes.

However, put them together and one will have passed from a hurricane into the idyllic eye of the storm where all is calm. More specifically, if one adds hydrochloric acid to sodium hydroxide, the resultant compounds with be Table Salt (NaCl) and Water (H20), serene and sometimes salubrious.

Incidentally, although inorganic chemistry is the chemistry of compounds which do not generally make up living things, the exchange of electrons between metals and non-metals reminded me so much of fucking (I studied this in 7^th grade and at that time every school subject was fascinating as every subject seemed to be so sexual.) Hence, I wrote a poem entitled, “The Organic Essence of Inorganic Chemistry.”²

The limits of Fichte’s philosophy are underscored every time a baby is born.

If we were to adhere to Fichte’s admonitions to the letter and resolve that one should only keep the company of only those who mirror one in all respects, we would all be living in an essentially homoerotic society as the young men of the Hitler Jugend and other gangs of literate apes would only keep the company of other brawny lederhosen clad lunatics. (The SA wing of the Nazi movement, which Hitler destroyed in the night of Long knives, June 30, 1934, was widely reputed to be a heavily male homosexual outfit.)

Very simply, the birth of a baby is a stark refutation of Fichte. A baby is borne of a mother and a father, and with all due respect to feminism, there are blatant, patent differences between men and woman and only those clinicians and theorists who are so advanced, intellectually and into the realm of madness, would fail to discern the differences between penises and vaginas and entertain the notion that men can menstruate. (In one of the Andy Warhol movies, one of Warhol’s “girlettes” claims that because he/she is “such a woman,” he/she menstruates every day.)

And, contrary to Fichte, who said that when different things mingle they lose their value and luster, the union of a man and a woman does not result in some bastardized evolutionary wreckage that should be thrown into an incinerator. It is a baby. The baby may be great; the baby might be terrible. But to paraphrase the late pope, who are we to judge how that baby will develop.

1. For x amount of gold and silver given to the Catholic Church, the church uttered prayers to enable one to get to purgatory instead of hell or all the way to heaven. For a little more money, one could get one’s wife, one’s mother-in-law and one’s mistress into heaven. The Church was extraordinarily wealthy and stupendously corrupt. See, Generally, Barbara Tuchman’s “The March of Folly”

2. Acid and base

Yields water and salt

With divine grace

The moles somersault

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Antinomic Ions

Spark Electric embrace

Bit part peons

Their selves they efface

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Sodium glares

Spies chlorine, bleached queen

They forswear their spears

Become a condiment serene

Copyright, David Gottfried, 1971, 1999