Musical Damage

"The musical Dionysian revolution [which the author contributes to pioneer composer Richard Wagner] captured the hearts and minds of several billion people in subsequent years. Without a cultural revolution in music, Nietzsche would not have nearly the same impact on the world. As the dust clears after the social and cultural atom bombs fell on Western civilization, we can assess the causes of the devastation. Perhaps it was more Wagner than Nietzsche that did the damage--music can carry ideas into the heart of a man, better than prose. Historians chronicling the decline of Western civilization would do well to study the connections between Friedrich Nietzsche, Richard Wagner, and the popular music revolution of the 1950s and 1960s [Footnote appended: E Michael Jones, Dionysos Rising: The Birth of Cultural Revolution out of the Spirit of Music (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1994)]" (Kevin Swanson, Apostate, 148-149).