In 1883, Thomas Edison electrified the streets of New Jersey, launching a new era in which man turns night into day for his own convenience. In the same year, the Orient Express set off on its way from Paris to Istanbul, marking the beginning of the transport connectivity of humanity. And the then little-known German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche put a ticking bomb under all this progress in an almost incomprehensible text under the title "Thus Spoke Zarathustra", in which he propagated the future appearance of the "superman". He is a kind of self-sufficient and cruel god. Nietzsche explicitly compares him to the proverbially bloody Renaissance satrap Cesare Borgia and writes that this is the future. However, the philosopher emphasizes that the "superman" does not take pleasure in senseless cruelty.
What is happening today, more than a century later?
Over the past twenty years, it seems to me that some modern-day equivalents of this "superman", relying on the logic of the superiority of force, have been roaming the corridors of great power and the caves of big money. I notice this especially in the USA. A few days ago, for example, in a television confrontation with former British minister Jacob Rees-Mogg, the former Trump propagandist Tucker Carlson presented the main theme of these modern-day "supermen": that might is right. That, as Thucydides wrote, the strong do what they see fit, and the job of the weak is to suffer what is prescribed to them by the strong.
According to Carlson, it is not the job of the Ukrainians (the weak) to resist the strong (Russia). Moreover: it is not the job of the British (the weak) to help the Ukrainians and thus stand against the strong Russia, with its economy, which was larger than the British. Here Carlson reveals another important characteristic of today's "supermen": "There are no facts, there are only interpretations", as Nietzsche explicitly wrote. The fact is, as Rees-Mogg immediately pointed out in the conversation, that Russia is the smaller economic power compared to the United Kingdom ($2.5 versus $4.3 trillion). But for Tucker Carlson, this is clearly not important.
Following the same direction, Carlson digs into history and declares the British fools for fighting Hitler in World War II. Hitler had rightfully attacked Poland and the British had no business in this quarrel. And if they had obeyed Hitler, they would indeed be speaking German today, which was no problem. "Who cares? In Britain, English is not widely spoken anyway... at least they would have spoken a European language."
This is one of the favorite themes of today's "superhumans" - that Europe is sinking under the weight of migrants who don't even speak the local languages. This is said by an American, in whose country 45 million people (13 percent of the entire population) speak Spanish at home, not American English. But today's "superhumans" are clearly beyond such trifles. For them, facts do not exist; there is only power.
It seems that for today's "supermen" there are no causes for the common good and for which sacrifices are sometimes appropriate. "These statements are a colossal insult to the millions of victims of Nazism, including the hundreds of thousands of American soldiers who were killed and wounded in the liberation of Europe…", wrote the Polish ambassador in Washington, after watching Carlson's tirades.
But these "supermen" do not care (to use their language) about such sacrifices, since in their world, sacrificing oneself instead of making money is clearly stupid. As Donald Trump said in 2018, when he refused to go on a pilgrimage to a mass grave of American soldiers in France: I will not go to honor "losers" and "lapnisharani" who allowed themselves to be killed "without any benefit to themselves". And he refused to be photographed with American veterans with amputated limbs because he would look "bad" in the photo.
The benefits and today's likenesses of "superman"
The question of benefits seems to be a main theme of today's likenesses of "supermen", but it only concerns the benefit to themselves – such as the billions that Donald Trump is amassing during his current presidential term. Or the billions that Kushner and Witkoff are probably trying to negotiate with Putin at the expense of the Ukrainians and the Europeans. One might get the impression that there are no common benefits for these "supermen"; they are the ruling class. And perhaps that is why they fail to grasp the very idea of friends and allies. That is why Donald Trump may despise those European countries that activated Article 5 of the NATO Charter in favor of the United States after 9/11 – and went to war with the Americans.
"We never needed them... They say they sent a few troops to Afghanistan or something... but they were a little bit further back, a little bit further from the front lines." And this - in the eyes of allies, most of whom have suffered a higher percentage of casualties in American wars relative to their populations than Americans themselves.
And more: just a week ago, President Trump, mired in his ill-conceived war on Iran, told his countrymen: "There is a small price to pay to keep the world safe, to keep our country safe," he said at a campaign event in Nevada. "Let them (the Iranians) destroy a city, let them destroy Los Angeles, let them destroy San Diego. That would be a very small price to pay."
Putin is the same. Do you remember how he once called the wives and mothers of the sailors who died in the submarine "Kursk" "ten-dollar drags"? The Russian president probably watches with indifference as thousands of his soldiers die on the Ukrainian front every month. And yet he bombs the maximum number of Ukrainians every day in order to wipe out everything Ukrainian from the face of the earth.
Such dangerous likenesses of "supermen", who have staked on the right of the strong, roam everywhere in the world and probably consider other people as fodder for their ambitions.
*** This text expresses the opinion of the author and may not coincide with the positions of the Bulgarian editorial office and DW as a whole.
Source: www.dw.com