Richard Spencer, leading light of America’s alt-right, said in an interview last year that he was “red-pilled” by reading the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. The reference is to “The Matrix”; in the film, popping the red pill allows you to perceive reality. Spencer’s recalibration threw up white nationalism, anti-feminism, racial and cultural purity.

But Nietzsche repeatedly wrote against all of the above. He insisted he’d rather be a good European than a good German, calling “Germany, Germany above all” the death of German philosophy. His numerous close friendships with early feminists included Meta von Salis, the first woman in Switzerland to gain a PhD. One of his last letters proposes all anti-Semites should be shot.

So how did Nietzsche come to be commonly perceived as a racist, misogynistic nationalist?

Two reasons. One: His proto-Nazi sister took charge of the legacy after his death. Two: He had a terrific talent for coining catchy phrases like the Übermensch and the blond beast. Read his blond beast passages, however, and you’ll discover there’s nothing racial in the phrase at all. It’s just his shorthand for our common ancestor, the lion-maned hunter who roamed the jungles of prehistory. The Übermensch, likewise, is not a biological concept. He is the person capable of overcoming the existential crisis induced by Darwinian science. He finds affirmation in life itself: “Whatever doesn’t kill him makes him stronger.”

Spencer, who leads a white nationalist/separatist group, is the latest in a long line misappropriating Nietzsche for his own ends. It began in the 1890s, when Elisabeth Fordter-Nietzsche got her hand’s on her brother’s literary estate. Elisabeth went home in 1893 to find her brother famous Europe-wide, but insane. He lived seven more years, helpless in her care as she collected his unpublished papers, formed the Nietzsche Archive in Weimar and set about perverting his philosophy. She censored; she forged; she suppressed; she even published an entire book in his name, “The Will to Power.”

The archive became a hub for the nascent National Socialist (Nazi) Party as Elisabeth appointed its ideologues to editorial and administrative posts. Alfred Baeumler — who would later oversee the Berlin book burning — prepared Nietzsche’s texts for new editions.

The philosopher Oswald Spengler used Nietzsche to support his own belief in social Darwinism: the corruption of the theory of evolution into German racial supremacy, justifying eugenics and, eventually, the Final Solution.

Even among the Nazis in the archive, some realized the absurdity of their work. One propagandist, Ernst Krieck, remarked that apart from the fact that Nietzsche was not a socialist, not a nationalist and opposed to racism, he could have been a leading National Socialist thinker.

The irony of Nietzsche’s appropriation by the extreme right is that his central interest never lay in political theory. He was chiefly interested in mankind’s spiritual evolution.

Nietzsche was at school when Darwin published his theory of evolution, dynamiting the foundations of 2,000 years of Christian belief and culture and setting off a tsunami of nihilism and pessimism. This is what Nietzsche is referring to when he states that God is dead. In that context, has life lost its meaning? What does it mean to be unchained from a central metaphysical purpose?

The tug of war between Darwin and divine purpose continued throughout Nietzsche’s lifetime. The wonder of scientific truth seemed to offer a new certainty. Nietzsche spoiled the party by pointing out that scientific truth has the uncomfortable habit of shifting with every new discovery. It can offer no substitute for religious certainty, or tell us how we should behave. In an uncertain world, said Nietzsche, we must think through the principles we want to live by.

Part of Nietzsche’s enduring appeal lies in his unwillingness to provide a ready-made answer to existential questions. We are meant to find answers for ourselves. This is the true accomplishment of the Übermensch. We might reject science as faith. We might reject religious faith but still create moral values. God may be dead but life has not lost its meaning.

It is tragic for Nietzsche that in the 1930s the need he identified — to overcome our existential despair in the wake of the death of God — became blatantly distorted into the need to overcome others. And it’s tragic that it is happening again today.

Sue Prideaux is the author of “I Am Dynamite! A Life of Nietzsche.” She wrote this for the Los Angeles Times.