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Anthony Mario Ludovici was one of the translators of Oscar Levy's first English edition of Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche's works, and also wrote books that interpreted Nietzsche's ideas, particularly those related to art. In 1915, he published A Defence of Aristocracy: A Textbook for Tories, his first major work not devoted exclusively to Nietzsche. This chapter examines the writings and ideology of Ludovici as well as his views on anti-liberalism, anti-feminism, birth control, monarchism, antisemitism, and aristocratic conservatism. It discusses the relevance of Ludovici's ideas to the historiography of British fascism, along with his early work on aristocracy and degeneration. Finally, the chapter places Ludovici in the context of the complex interplay of ideas in the Edwardian and interwar periods, an interplay that links Nietzscheanism with race and eugenics.

In the early part of the twentieth century, interpretations of Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, in combination with the new science of eugenics, represented an influential attempt to formulate a new code of morals. In his book on Nietzsche, George Chatterton-Hill argued that Nietzsche's masters and slaves constituted two separate races: the masters representing an aristocracy; and the slaves representing degenerates. Chatterton-Hill typified early Nietzschean interpretations, which concurred with widespread theories of social degeneration that emerged in the Edwardian period in the face of the rise of organised labour, feminism, technologisation, urbanisation, and imperial decline. Aside from Chatterton-Hill, other Nietzscheans include Oscar Levy and Anthony Mario Ludovici. This chapter discusses the connections between interpretations of Nietzsche and the eugenics movement in Britain in the first decades of the twentieth century, examining in particular what the exponents of the two movements actually said.

This chapter examines how Oscar Levy was drawn to Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche and his work on race and eugenics in Britain. Levy edited the first complete English edition of Nietzsche's Collected Works (1909–1913) and drove forward the reception of Nietzsche in Britain. He also played a major role in the intellectual development of a whole ‘school’ of thinkers, centred mainly around A. R. Orage, the editor of New Age, an avant-garde weekly journal. Many of Levy's ideas led him into the arms of some of Britain's most eccentric extremists, including George Lane-Fox Pitt-Rivers. Levy was drawn to the theory of degeneration and exerted an influence on Anthony Mario Ludovici, with whom he shared a common interpretation of Nietzsche. But while Levy stressed the role of moral ideas, Ludovici placed more emphasis on breeding and race. The chapter also discusses Levy's ideas about Christianity and Judaism, slave morality, civilisation, fascism, and Nazism.

Proponents of eugenics in the period before World War I tackled the role of genetics in heredity. Caleb Williams Saleeby, one of the early founders of the Eugenics Education Society, wrote several books before 1914 in which he carefully steered a course between genetics and environment. Eugenicists also disagreed on the best eugenic methods to be employed in order to promote race regeneration. For example, Havelock Ellis proposed 'the extirpation of the feeble-minded classes'. This chapter, which discusses eugenics in Britain, and shows that the idea of the 'lethal chamber' was a British concern by focusing on postwar extreme-right literature such as the work of Anthony Mario Ludovici, also argues that the history of eugenics in Germany is not unique.

This book examines the reasons for the failure of fascism in Britain and suggests that British proto-fascist ideas may be found in large part in the Nietzsche and eugenics movements representing the ‘extremes of Englishness’. The phrase ‘extremes of Englishness’ implies that the ideas of the writers discussed in this book, particularly Oscar Levy and Anthony Mario Ludovici, indicate ways of thinking which, when combined, give rise to an indigenous proto-fascism. Levy's Nietzschean critique of an effete western ethic and Ludovici's call for a ‘masculine renaissance’ are just two examples of elements of a reactionary, sometimes revolutionary-reactionary, ideology which, in combination, come very close to satisfying the criteria that constitute fascism. The book also considers the reception of Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche in Britain and how the early Nietzscheans are linked to eugenics, a scientific attempt to manipulate human breeding patterns with the aim of producing a stronger race.