Joshua Mitchell
Nietzsche is the key to understanding identity politics; and the sooner we understand that, the sooner we can diagnose—and fight—it. Conservative rambling about multiculturalism’s being the root of identity politics is hopelessly misguided. Power and Purity is the first book to get to the root of the disease of identity politics.
Rod Dreher
Those seeking to understand the contemporary Social Justice Warrior phenomenon blighting the public square often turn to Karl Marx. But Mark T. Mitchell points us to another epochal nineteenth-century thinker: Friedrich Nietzsche, whose teachings are far more influential than many grasp. Power and Purity is a vital key unlocking the mysterious forces behind today’s revolutionary challenges to a decaying democratic order. This book’s brevity and its razor-sharp clarity make it accessible to both students and ordinary readers, who desperately need to grapple with the ideas that increasingly dominate our post-Christian peoples.
Patrick Deneen
Nearly everyone has a theory on the rise of identity politics and illiberalism on the Left, but no one has seen further and more deeply than Mark Mitchell. Recognizing its root causes in the caustic wedding of Nietzsche’s ‘will to power’ and a Puritanism without Christian grace, Mitchell weaves a compelling and frightening story of a new philosophy informing the intolerant tactics of the ‘woke.’ More frightening still, these currents arise from within currents of Western civilization itself, meaning that any remedy to this pathology requires a self-cure. Reading Mitchell’s book is an indispensable first step.
Gene Edward Veith
Why is it that postmodernists who believe there are no moral absolutes are so moralistic? Why have universities replaced rational discourse with silencing and punishing those who hold dissident ideas? Why is identity politics so vicious? Having read Mark Mitchell’s Power and Purity, now I know. This book, which combines scholarly depth and a lively, readable style, will help readers navigate the strange paradoxes of contemporary politics, academia, and culture.
—Joshua Mitchell
Nietzsche is the key to understanding identity politics; and the sooner we understand that, the sooner we can diagnose—and fight—it. Conservative rambling about multiculturalism’s being the root of identity politics is hopelessly misguided. Power and Purity is the first book to get to the root of the disease of identity politics.
—Rod Dreher
Those seeking to understand the contemporary Social Justice Warrior phenomenon blighting the public square often turn to Karl Marx. But Mark T. Mitchell points us to another epochal nineteenth-century thinker: Friedrich Nietzsche, whose teachings are far more influential than many grasp. Power and Purity is a vital key unlocking the mysterious forces behind today’s revolutionary challenges to a decaying democratic order. This book’s brevity and its razor-sharp clarity make it accessible to both students and ordinary readers, who desperately need to grapple with the ideas that increasingly dominate our post-Christian peoples.
—Gene Edward Veith
Why is it that postmodernists who believe there are no moral absolutes are so moralistic? Why have universities replaced rational discourse with silencing and punishing those who hold dissident ideas? Why is identity politics so vicious? Having read Mark Mitchell’s Power and Purity, now I know. This book, which combines scholarly depth and a lively, readable style, will help readers navigate the strange paradoxes of contemporary politics, academia, and culture.
—Patrick Deneen
Nearly everyone has a theory on the rise of identity politics and illiberalism on the Left, but no one has seen further and more deeply than Mark Mitchell. Recognizing its root causes in the caustic wedding of Nietzsche’s ‘will to power’ and a Puritanism without Christian grace, Mitchell weaves a compelling and frightening story of a new philosophy informing the intolerant tactics of the ‘woke.’ More frightening still, these currents arise from within currents of Western civilization itself, meaning that any remedy to this pathology requires a self-cure. Reading Mitchell’s book is an indispensable first step.
