The Norwooding Nietzschean

When Ideology and Reality Collide

“Whoever despises himself still respects himself as one who despises.”
-Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, Aphorism 78.

On Australia Day, 2025, the National Socialist Network held a demonstration in Adelaide. The demonstration featured an intimidating SS presence. And by SS, I mean South Sudanese. A seven-foot man from the Horn of Africa loomed over the Natsocs. He stood shoulder to shoulder (or rather, chest to shoulder) with his comrades.

If this were satire, it wouldn't work. Satire requires plausibility, and the premise of an Australian Sudanese Nazi is implausible. But this wasn't meant to be funny (which made it all the more funny).

You have to wonder how he ended up there. What leads a Sudanese man to a Nazi rally? A leftist might say internalized racism. But I suspect it's better attributed to digital deracination.

"Deracinate" comes from the Latin word radix, meaning "root." To deracinate is to uproot. Digital deracination occurs when individuals are uprooted from physical reality. They enter into cyberspace, where communities cluster around memes, rather than genes. Digital identity is frictionless and fungible. The individual is liberated from corporeal constraints, and can become anything they like.

The Sudanese Stormtrooper represents the extreme end of a spectrum. The internet enabled him to cultivate an identity totally divorced from corporeality. We laugh at him, but we all inhabit some point on this spectrum. At one extreme is LARPing—with emphasis on the "Live Action" part of that acronym. LARPers role play their fantasies in real life. This often leads to funny situations, like the aforementioned Stormtrooper. But occasionally, it brings about world historic change: Napoleon LARPed as Julius Caesar.

The majority of extremely online extremists do not LARP. Instead, they maintain a bifurcated existence—outwardly conforming to social expectations while secretly nurturing a radical worldview. Colleagues, neighbors, even family members remain oblivious to the parallel ideological universe they inhabit. The Sudanese Nazi highlights what normally stays hidden: the deepening divide between our digital lives and actual lives.

I am a Nietzschean. I have a Norwood 2. I have a mortgage. I am a wagie. I am a girl Dad. I change diapers. A schism exists between what I believe and how I live. In this essay, I want to explore that schism.