Abstract

In this article we examine the way in which the American Alt-Right movement has made Friedrich Nietzsche its most influential philosopher. The authors ascribed to the Alt-Right evidence a strong liking for the German philosopher's ideas, which resonate forcefully in many their principal policies: specifically, the characterisation of our contemporaneity as “decadent”, the comparison between “superior men” and the project to construct a “white ethnostate”, and the advocacy of Christianity, as opposed to Christianism, as an identity structure for defining white civilisation. Having trawled the main Alt-Right forums of ideological expression and analysed the key writings of their theorists, references and spokespersons, we aim to present a systematic explanation of how this advocacy has been built on certain Nietzschean themes. We also argue that this is a partial, superficial and contradictory reading of Nietzsche, as well as a narrow and distorted interpretation.