In Munich, in the fractured aftermath of the First World War, an impoverished writer published what would become one of the most famous works of cultural analysis of the 20th century. Oswald Spengler’s two-volume Decline of the West drew on the sensibility of two of the great German Romantics, Goethe and Nietzsche, to offer a sweeping trans-historical account of the cyclical pattern of rise and fall in civilisations.
Spengler argued that the dominant civilisation in the West was on the inexorable downward part of its cycle, and heading for dissolution. I doubt he would have thanked me for punning so egregiously on his magnum opus — and yet, this week, I found myself remembering that work in the context of the contemporary decline, of a different West: Kanye.
West, whose recent torrent of barely-coherent livestream and interview rants attests to an increasingly erratic public persona and possible mental health issues, prompted shock and disgust when he released a new song titled “Heil Hitler”. Launched to coincide with VE Day, it was promptly denounced across the political spectrum as “classic 1930s style antisemitism”, “fascist art”, and “a crude, adolescent chant of racial slurs and fascist glorification masquerading as music”.
So what would Spengler make of this musical work? Would he be Heil Hitlering with Kanye? Some historians draw a line from Romanticism, through Spengler, to the Nazis, notably via the idea that ethnocultural groups share the kind of mystical national consciousness George Mosse called “Völkish moods”. And it’s true that Spengler has since reappeared at intervals, as a touchstone for the Right.
But despite his Romantic literary roots, Spengler himself thought Hitler was “an idiot”, and called the Nazis an “organisation of the unemployed by the workshy”. So I doubt he would have seen much of moral or political worth in a hip-hop tune with the chorus line “Nigga, heil Hitler”. And yet his analysis is useful when considering Kanye — offering both short-term reassurance as to what it represents, and also, as you might expect, a longer-term prognosis that is far from happy.
Spengler died in 1936, but much of his contemporary success and subsequent influence rested on predicting the decline into “Caesarism” that, he thought, would accompany this end-stage “Winter” phase he believed Western civilisation to have entered. When the publication of Decline was followed, in short order, by the era of Hitler, Mussolini, and Franco, Spengler was hailed as a prophet — only to fall out of fashion again as the 20th century wore on and the forces of liberal democracy re-asserted themselves.
Interest in his work tends to revive in periods of turmoil and economic downturn, so it’s perhaps unsurprising that the end of the End of History has been accompanied by something of a Spengler revival. But if there’s a sense in which Spengler helps us understand Kanye’s musical development, it’s less in diagnosing his latest single as ominous harbinger of incipient fascism in America. He did predict that “Caesarism” would come in waves, and would doubtless have xpected the authoritarians of the early twentieth century to be only the first of these. But even so, Spengler helps us here mainly by revealing that “Heil Hitler” doesn’t have much directly to do with authoritarianism at all. Rather, it sets Kanye’s work in the context of two cultural currents, in both of which Spengler is implicated: first, a Romantic tradition of anti modernist, usually masculine-coded rebellion; and second the endemic path towards general brutalisation that Spengler saw as inherent in end-stage civilisation: a brutalisation he thought would, in time, give way to a “new primitivism”.
Modernity, in his view, was not the perfection of Western civilisation, but the beginning of its “Winter” and herald of its inexorable collapse. The Romantic tradition from which he wrote has been with us more or less since the beginning of this era, in reaction to its character. It’s less a coherent programme than a sensibility: a revolt against everything cold, clean, procedural, and rationalistic that comes with the secular, technological, disenchanting modern worldview.
At its core, though, Romanticism always seeks what is deeper, higher, and more soulful, emphasising the role of feeling. Goethe’s 1774 The Sorrows of Young Werther offers an early instance of such intense emotionality; on publication the book triggered copycat suicides. Half a century later, the same reckless and sometimes self-destructive intensity made Romantic poet Lord Byron “mad, bad, and dangerous to know”, and — another century on — prompted Julius Evola, a Romantic contemporary of Spengler’s and father of the modern esoteric far Right, to call for “revolt against the modern world”.
Today this kind of revolt has, itself, become commodified by the modern world against which it rebelled — and nowhere is this more apparent than in the music industry. Most forms of transgression are mere grist to its mill of transgression-as-product: audiences seem only mildly titillated by (for example) Satanic metal bands or drill artists who boast in music of murders, drug deals and other criminal activities.
In this jaded environment, it’s remarkable in a narrow sense that West has managed to find a way to be genuinely shocking. Jewish groups and allies are rightly furious and distressed. And yet the song itself is more driven by inchoate fury than Nazism as such. West says so in the song: “I got so much anger in me, got no way to take it out”. This is, he says, the fault of a vague “they”, who have taken his kids off him and closed his bank account: “With all of the money and fame I still don’t get to see my children”.
“In this jaded environment, it’s remarkable in a narrow sense that West has managed to find a way to be genuinely shocking.”
So now he wants people to understand his depth of emotion: “Niggas see my Twitter but they don’t see how I be feeling.” And the only way to express his fury is through the only remaining taboo with real shock power. “I became a Nazi, yeah, bitch, I’m the villain.” In context, then, “Heil Hitler” is less coherent ideology than ultimate swear-word: the adult equivalent of a pre-schooler saying “pee pee poo poo”, to get a reaction from his mum.
In other words, the song is pure, distilled essence of male rebellion, in direct continuity with a centuries-old Romantic tradition but today most palpably felt in the noisome underbelly of the internet. Here, especially since GamerGate, a “dissident Right” subculture (aided by a side order of Nietzsche, Evola, and Spengler among others) helped propel Donald Trump into power. “Heil Hitler” is this subculture in musical form, voicing a masculinist backlash whose ripples spread well beyond West’s individual circumstances.
And there’s also a second sense in which the song invites a Spenglerian reading. Writing a century ago, Spengler forecast a future of drab, universal uniformity, in which national differences are largely abolished and life concentrated into “megalopolis” world-cities. In this brutalising environment, competing peoples would spend their days in repetitive tasks, assuaged by vulgar diversions — until a new primitivism emerged that would eventually drive the collapse of this dying civilisation. In Spengler’s vivid formulation: “Money is overthrown and abolished by blood.”
Spengler envisaged an end-point where, “The sword is victorious over the money, the master-will subdues again the plunderer-will”. It’s reasonable to surmise that those cheering on the Trumpian backlash from the depths of the “dissident” internet would understand themselves as aligned with the re-assertion of a martial over a managerial spirit. But what if the internet Nazism as an expression of rage does not, in fact, signal the return of martial spirit? What if it’s just another spasm of brutalisation and dissolution, en route to the bottom of the cycle?
If this were so, it would be reasonable to expect any political victory applauded by a dissident caucus not to be followed by much in the way of substantial policy change. And indeed, since Trump’s victory, the so-called “dissident Right” has grown increasingly marginal within the emerging government coalition. The anti-DEI activist Chris Rufo explained why, distinguishing between those effective as critics and gadflies, and those with the temperament for building and cooperation in an institutional environment. “In my opinion”, Rufo said, “we are lacking some of this capacity.” When he made this point on X, one of the first responses promptly illustrated it for him, replying: “I’m kind of like fuck your institutional environment”. It’s a sentiment very much in keeping with “Nigga, heil Hitler”: one of pure opposition.
The clear inference is that what we’re looking at is not some notional revival of institutional Right-wing martial spirit, fascist or otherwise. On the contrary, it’s another iteration of Young Wertheresque emotionality, largely devoid of any clear object or organisational capacity. Kanye West has ironically reversed Hitler’s cultural achievement: not appropriating Romantic tropes for Nazism, so much as appropriating Nazi ones for Romanticism.
The result isn’t a philosophical ideology. It’s undirected rage. The good news, then, is that “Nigga, heil Hitler” probably isn’t an omen of approaching military authoritarianism. The bad news is that the longer-term prognosis this suggests is not much better: just one lurch after another, down the path of moral ugliness and brutalisation that Spengler saw as characteristic of civilisational “Winter”.
Spengler might also point out that none of this is to rule out another spate of Caesarism. It’s just to say those singing along to Kanye’s tune are unlikely to be the first to enlist in his army. Put simply: they’re too ornery. “I felt crushed by the system, so I became an online Nazi” has been one of the internet’s drumbeats at least since GamerGate. It took the decline of Ye West to set it to music.
