Wagner blatantly inspired the Nazis. But I'll allow it.

[sir pball]

He was truly "One of the most hateful and unpleasant people who ever walked the earth. Wagner despised Jews, and blamed all the problems of the world on them."

"But you can’t hold any of that against him when you hear his music. It transcends all the idiocy of the man himself."

I think his talents rise above his flaws.

[regnaD kciN]

1. He was a complete asshole on just about every level...

...but I'm not sure it's appropriate to call him a "Nazi," since he died several decades before the founding of that party.

[cemaphonic]

3. He wasn't just a garden variety antisemite though.

He wrote some fairly influential tracts about how the Jews were ruining Germany. It's a bit anachronistic to call him a Nazi, but he did help lay the foundation for their ideology, not just because Hitler liked his music.

[unblock]

2. "nazi" isn't exactly the right term, but it gets the idea across.

he died well before the formation of the nazi party, and even before hitler was born.

he certainly had some very negative views of jews.

[MFM008]

8. You can be a "nazi"

Without the membership card.....

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

4. Technically Wagner wasn't a Nazi; he predated Naziism by many decades.

But it's quite true that he was intensely anti-Semitic, and wrote a number of essays that reflected that attitude (which was not at all unusual in 19th-century Germany). His music was eventually appropriated by the Nazis because, although there doesn't seem to be anything overtly anti-Semitic in his operas, they were based on the Teutonic myths and legends Hitler used to support his theory that Germans ("Aryans&quot were the superior "master race." I do like Wagner's music in small doses (it gets a bit overwhelming after a couple of hours), especially Parsifal.

[sarge43]

5. I agree with Mark Twain

"Wagner's music is better than it sounds."

[sir pball]

6. I updated the thread title.

But I still agree that "you can’t hold any of that against him when you hear his music. It transcends all the idiocy of the man himself."

He wrote some amazing operas, period.

[BeyondGeography]

7. Thoughtful article on all that here by Alex Ross

http://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/the-case-for-wagner-in-israel

Sample passage:

Despite various self-serving alliances, Wagner was an anarchist at heart, hostile to most modern manifestations of the state; in his last years, he preached against militarism and fearfully predicted future wars of mass annihilation. Any ideological appropriation of Wagner, whether on the right, left, or center, requires selective quotation; the contradictions of the man are innumerable. This is not to say that Wagner’s operas, with their apocalyptic resonances, did not feed the darkest energies in Hitler’s psyche. In my book “The Rest Is Noise,” I speculate that Hitler alluded to “Parsifal” in his horrific 1939 speech prophesying the extermination of the Jews. But to hold Wagner in some way responsible for Hitler trivializes a hugely complicated historical situation; in a sense, it takes the rest of Western civilization off the hook.