University College London has banned a Nietzsche club from
holding meetings at the school on the grounds that the philosopher’s work
encourages right-wing and fascist ideas. UCL’s student union barred the club as
it believes “fascism is directly threatening the safety of the UCL student
body.” According to This article, the action banning the club from campus was
part of a wider initiative at the school called “Fight Fascism”, wherein “a
united front of students, workers, trade unions, and a wider labour movement…
[fight] the root cause of fascism—capitalism.”
It must be a daily barrel of laughs attending a school run by
such Marxist stooges as those at UCL. Contrary to what they are saying, banning
the Nietzsche club really has nothing at all to do with “fighting fascism” and
everything to do with publicity. It’s about covering their asses. When a university
such as UCL is publically funded and takes in tax money, it has to maintain a semblance
of political correctness, otherwise squeaky wheels like Timur Dautov or Suey
Park will bitch and complain and the school will lose its funding. Universities such as these will not tolerate
any clubs or associations that do not tote the party line or could be possibly perceived
as offensive by someone, somewhere. Don’t let their rhetoric fool you. They don’t
give a fuck about fascism. It’s all about money.
Those columns weren't built out of free speech, you know.
All of that aside, I bet you that the people who spearheaded
these idiotic initiatives can’t even tell you what fascism is all about, or even
why it is still relevant in the year 2014. If the stooges at UCL had a genuine
concern about its students being corrupted by fascist ideology, then they
should encourage an open discussion about the tenets of fascism so the
students can learn for themselves why fascism is immoral and why it should be
avoided. Just as banning books makes people want to read them more and
censoring music only makes it more popular, decreeing that a Nietzsche Club
cannot have meetings will only make people more interested in Nietzsche’s
philosophy. Banning information is thought control; it is unethical and will
not eliminate the thoughts in question. If Nietzsche’s or anyone else’s ideas
really were poisonous, then hiding them only gives them an allure. It will
attract people to them if only for the fact that they are hidden. I’m sure the
students who attend UCL are intelligent enough to think for themselves and they
don’t need some douchebag Marxist administrator determining what is appropriate
for them to read.
As the article on Thedailybeast already points out, Friedrich
Nietzsche was not a fascist. His connection to Hitler and Mussolini stems
from an erroneous interpretation of his ideas which was promoted by his sister,who had a poor grasp on his philosophy to begin with. An in-depth examination
of Nietzsche’s writing goes beyond the point I am trying to make in this post, I do not believe his ideas are particularly dangerous that they should be
discouraged. However, just because someone’s beliefs are immoral, does not mean
they are not worth examining. If UCL really had a substantial argument against
the philosophy of Nietzsche, then they would present it and allow it to be
judged on its own merits. Only weaklings censor works they disagree with. The
banning of the Nietzsche club by UCL really goes to show the moral cowardice inherent
in the standards of political-correctness today. If merely being exposed to
ideas that are deemed unattractive is enough to corrupt a student body, then
perhaps it is what is attractive that is truly corrupt to begin with.
In other news, UCL's Book Burning Club just got a new endowment fund.
