Weimar America?

[Jefferson23]

Forget Trump. It's the people who paved the way for him who seem uncomfortably familiar to an expert on pre-Nazi Germany.

Bio:Eric D. Weitz is Dean of Humanities and Arts and Distinguished Professor of History at The City College of New York. His most recent book, Weimar Germany: Promise and Tragedy (2007; second expanded edition 2013), was named an "Editor's Choice" by The New York Times Book Review.

By Eric Weitz | March 19, 2016

All around the Web, in print, and on radio comes the claim that America has entered its “Weimar” phase. Economic collapse, political paralysis, rampant homosexuality, a desperate, disoriented populace open to the ravings of a demagogue – that is the portrait we get of Germany between the end of World War I in 1918 and the Nazi seizure of power in 1933. That is where America is supposedly situated in 2016.

Yes, Weimar Germany ended badly, horribly so. But the America of today bears little similarity to Germany in the 1920s and early 1930s. America is a society ripped through by gaping inequalities, but it is hardly in a state of economic collapse. It still boasts the world’s largest economy and it has recovered from the Great Recession far better than many others in the Western world. America is still a powerful country internationally, one that deploys its military at will, something that Germany, suffering under the strictures of the Versailles Peace Treaty, could never attempt. Yes, there’s political paralysis in Washington, yet it barely rises to the level of Weimar Germany, where over 20 parties were represented in the Reichstag and the country was governed by a presidential dictatorship for the three years prior to the Nazi takeover.

Moreover, commentators right and left, focused only on the negatives and the disasters that ensued – the Third Reich, World War II, and the Holocaust — leave out so much about the great democratic experiment that was the Weimar Republic. Germans had greater political freedoms than ever before. A vast program of public housing moved hundreds of thousands out of dank tenements into modern, light-filled apartments. Public health clinics sprang up all around the country, and many of them offered sexual counseling to a population that physicians claimed lacked fundamental knowledge about reproduction and the pleasures of the body and lived in sexual misery. Literature, philosophy, music theater and film all flourished, much of it new, edgy and experimental. Brecht and Weill’s Threepenny Opera, Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain, Martin Heidegger’s Being and Time – these and much more are great markers of 20th century Western culture that we still read, view and hear with pleasure and profit.

The lessons to be learned from Weimar Germany are not the ones we hear and read about today. Weimar Germany did not collapse under the weight of its various crises. It was actively destroyed by a conservative elite – noble landowners, high-level state officials, businessmen, army officers – that chose to ally with the Nazi Party. As we watch the Republican establishment’s ineffectual flailings to stop Donald Trump, it’s worth remembering that Weimar Germany’s old-style conservatives never really liked Hitler and the Nazis either. To them, the Nazis were too loud, uncouth, low class. But they admired Hitler’s nationalism, his promise to revive Germany’s great power status, his opposition to democracy, and his anti-communism. And they were either indifferent to or actively supported the Nazis’ anti-Semitism.

The conservative elite got much more than they had bargained for with their willingness to turn political power over to the Nazis. Some would live to regret their choice, many not until American and British bombs rained down on Hamburg, Berlin and other cities and the Red Army approached the gates.

But the conservatives had made Hitler and the Nazis salonfähig, as one says in German. Colloquially in English, that means “acceptable in polite society.” That is the real lesson from Weimar Germany and the real danger – when traditional or moderate conservatives throw in their lot with radical conservatives. The moderates may not like the radicals, may not embrace them, but when other alternatives have failed, they bring the radicals into the fold, claim that power will inevitably moderate their more wild side, reassure the population that the radicals are really not that bad after all.



That is where we are today with Donald Trump. Trump is not a fascist or a neo-Nazi, as some have claimed, though he has certainly made countless racist and misogynist comments. He has also proclaimed a blatant disregard for laws, treaties and constitutional provisions in an America that is supposed to be governed by the rule of law. While some Republicans are back pedaling and trying to block a Trump nomination, we are still being treated to the spectacle of many Republican candidates and office holders asserting that they will support him if he is chosen by the party. These are the people who are making Trump salonfähig.

The real issue is not whether Trump is a modern-day Hitler or Mussolini. The problem lies deeper: with the social and political mores that have made possible his crude nativism and contempt for social progress. Democrats and Republicans alike have been marveling at his success as if it were a bolt out of the blue. Yet for years now Republicans have been bowing before the idol of radical conservatism. They have cowered before the tea party and have stashed the party coffers with immense contributions from the Koch brothers’ operation. The people who are now struggling to stop Trump are the same ones who made his views salonfähig.

In America today, the major threats do not come from abroad. They lie within, from those who claim to believe in democracy yet undermine its substance by deploying great wealth in the political process and devaluing the diversity of American society. And the danger comes especially from those who perhaps should know better, but make anti-democratic, radical conservatives salonfähig. That is the real lesson to be taken from Weimar Germany.

http://billmoyers.com/story/weimar-america/

[fasttense]

1. Rampant homosexuality.??????????

What has that got to do with anything? How does one's sexual orientation have anything to do with the Nazis, aside from making them victims of the Nazis?

[Jefferson23]

2. What? You misunderstand, the author is giving historical context, groups that were targeted.

[DetlefK]

5. I guess, "rampant homosexuality" is a badly-chosen metaphor for "sexual freedom".

The 1920s were a decade of art, music, theater, dance... and above all partying and decadence. I think, the author used "rampant homosexuality" as a metaphor for this lifestyle of sexual freedom.
(Germany was economically hard-hit during the 1920s, but recent psychological studies have shown that crises increase the urge to celebrate/procreate in humans.)

The UK had a special attitude to the question of sexuality: "Anything goes."
The rules were simple: You can dive into any pleasures of your desires, just keep it in private and don't let anybody in on it. (For example, the Victorians were uptight in public and kinky in private.)

The 1920s broke with this theme by bringing the partying and the drugs and the sex out into the open.

[DetlefK]

3. Weimar fell because of partisan political sabotage.

1. The Communists and the Nazis, both minor opposition parties in the 1920s, hated democracy and both tried to bring democracy in Germany down to install themselves as rulers.

2. The Germans had little to no experience with democracy and parliamentarianism. Many procedures and regulations to keep the system working that are known nowadays were simply unknown back then. (For example: constructive votes of no confidence instead of destructive votes of no confidence; or a rule that only parties above a certain size get to enter parliament) The Nazis actively sabotaged the political process and the work of the german government by exploiting loopholes in the rules how business is done in parliament.

The german government desperately tried to get the economic crisis under control.

The Nazis said "Government can't get anything done" and then they sabotaged the government to prove their point.

Making Hitler chancellor was a desperate last ploy to establish something close to a working government, one the Nazis wouldn't dare to sabotage. The party-establishments were confident, they would be able to keep Hitler in check.

[Jefferson23]

4. I believe the authors analysis is spot on, looking at the precursors are essential and

I don't want to see these openings for a Trump or worse continue to expand.

[malthaussen]

6. Underwhelmed.

It seems to me that the fact that the GOP are now frantically scrambling to support Mr Cruz -- who is if anything, worse than Mr Trump -- indicates that the forces of conservatism which seek to undermine democratic progress are leading us down the same path as Weimar. One might think is is a sign of sanity that it is becoming fashionable to disavow Mr Trump, but then those who disavow him line up behind Mr Cruz, or Mr Kasich, who is really no better than any of them, if less uncouth.

The fact that the U.S. is now relatively stable economically when evaluated by traditional measures does not change the fact that it is a fragile state, and can easily be reversed as badly or worse than a decade ago. I reckon things looked really rosy on 28 October 1929, too. The question which Mr Weitz does not address is whether there are sufficient brakes on the U.S. economy (and the world's, if it comes to that) to avoid the hyper-inflation and other subsequent disasters of the Weimar economic collapse.

As for the ability to project military power wherever we choose, that is largely irrelevant now, since warfare is largely that of insurgencies and terrorists, rather than conventional. While the post-Vietnam atmosphere was ripe for a "stab in the back" theory to create a military alliance with the right wing leading to the kind of electoral coup staged by the Nazis, the strictures of the Cold War had already established a cozy relationship between industry and the military, thus negating the primary need for such a coup; OTOH, one might consider the election of Mr Reagan and the massive push towards "winning" the Cold War and enhancing America's military power with expensive boondoggles (SDI, anyone?) in this light. Two critical features missing from the U.S., when contrasted with Germany, however, are the desire for lebensraum and the fact that Germany was surrounded by competitors of equal or greater power. This would tend to a more apocalyptic view of things, OTOH we have our Dominionists who hope to immanentize the Eschaton.

All-in-all, I'm underwhelmed by Mr Weitz's offering here. The thrust would appear to be that, no, we're not like Weimar at all, except those darned Conservative politicians are trying to undermine democracy. Which I suppose is fine, as far as it goes. But a nation can be headed in a Fascist direction even if the conditions of Weimar Germany do not apply. It would appear from the context that the media have been doing their usual over-simplifying hack job on complex issues, and Mr Weitz is perturbed because they are infringing on his territory. But as to substance, the article offers little at all.

-- Mal

[Jefferson23]

7. I see his analysis as spot on, first line..FORGET Trump..look at the precursors. That is where

the danger within lives and breathes, the opening for a Trump.

His commentary does not presume the other GOP candidates are nor should
be considered redeemable...not in the sense you seem to be suggesting.

[malthaussen]

8. But he ignores them.

What I see here is somebody piling on to the current media bandwagon, saying "You GOPpers created Trump by your actions." Fine, as far as it goes, but the same GOP created all the candidates, who are really interchangeable with Mr Trump except for rhetoric. That Mr Trump is the inevitable result of GOP conduct since Mr Reagan is not emphasized, as I see it. In fact, the bulk of the article would seem to be demonstrating that the only thing we do have in common with Weimar Germany is the undermining of the democratic process by radical conservatives.

I get the sense that he is suggesting that the only way the U.S. is on the road to fascism is that there is a demagogue among us (who is not even a fascist, according to Mr Weitz). I think I need to see more emphasis that Mr Trump is a symptom, not the disease itself, and what the links are among the conservatives, the capitalists, and the government that have created an environment conducive to radical right politicians. We have a systemic problem, here, but Mr Weitz does not appear to explain the system. Okay, perhaps that was not his intent, but without a little analysis, we're left essentially with a bare assertion that Mr Trump is the result of the GOP's actions over the past decade or so, but no real support for that assertion. That we may agree with it (or even think it doesn't go far enough) is not the point: where's the proof?

-- Mal

[Jefferson23]

9. The evidence is defined and perhaps with not enough emphasis/detail and presumes the reader

is politically aware of GOP policies. Might be he fails there, but for me, the joke
was hearing Romney and the rest pretending they were offended by Trump's
proposals of anti-Muslim rhetoric...his wall etc. Romney did not give a shit about
Trump being a birther, he still excuses it..how much more racist did Trump need
to be for Romney to disavow him them?

The GOP has won elections primarily b/c their base has a mix of fundies/racists/ anti-government
prone individuals and they fed them promises, some honored/accomplished to keep women in their
place, abortion restrictions, God in public schools..the list goes on and on. Yet all the while the
establishment continued their trade deals, their ever increasing corporate welfare, and the WS
collapse years back all began to turn the base against the establishment GOP. They are completely
in the tank for the investment class and lets remember, they don't trust Trump on what he might
do with trade deals..they fear he might fuck over their masters. He could have been their guy
they just don't own/control him, and CU helped with that power structure as well.

[bemildred]

10. I don't think you two disagree all that much.

Mal wants to emphasize that the other guys are, if anything, more nuts than Trump, which is correct, and not inconsistent with the general point being made. He is concerned about the immediate problem.

The OP speaks mostly about Trump, trying to make the general argument about the poisonous political atmosphere and it's consequences, so not wanting to get lost in an analysis of all the candidates.

So a difference in emphasis is what I see.

None of my business though, so yell at me if you must.

[Jefferson23]

11. lol Not necessary to yell at you, nor Mal. I don't think we are in that much disagreement either.

I appreciate the authors intent and would like to see more discussion that points
rightly so, imo..the GOP establishment has enabled via a hot bed of precursors
over the last 40 years aka St Ronnie, Moral Majority and the like, dividing people
all the while bleeding the treasury.

I could also add neo-liberalism to the mix but then I would probably
start yelling...our sides role pisses me off too.

[bemildred]

12. Well it is a messy subject, but I think the Weimar analogy has its merits.

Historical analogies are always problematical, and in modern times things are changing so fast that the problem becomes ubiquitous, nothing is really quite like it was in 1930, and many things are vastly different.

But on the other hand:

a.) What else do we have to guide us?

and

b.) In the high-level view, it seems that it is often the social dynamics that govern, the monkey politics, so all those details only affect the details of the outcome. I think often of Tacitus and Thucydides these days.

I reached the conclusion that we were likely in a state of imperial over-reach and decline during Vietnam, our decadent phase, as he puts it. Seems obvious to me. Seemed obvious then. So the thrashing around of the mighty beast since then is no surprise.

But the USA today is wildly different from Weimar Germany, and the world is wildly different too, so you never know.

[Jefferson23]

13. +1..well said. n/t

[Cartoonist]

14. He left out one important group

It was actively destroyed by a conservative elite – noble landowners, high-level state officials, businessmen, army officers – that chose to ally with the Nazi Party.

The Catholic church played a very important role in support of Hitler. They were so frightened of Godless Communism that they threw their support to Nazism, seeing it as the only opposition to the Bolsheviks. Being anti-semitic didn't hurt either.

There's no denying that Christianity is once again pulling the strings in this power struggle. They would prefer Cruz over Trump, but would settle for Mr. Shortfingers over those Godless Democrats.

[Jefferson23]

15. Lots of crazy in this election..Cruz being offered as a sane alternative..I hear ya. n/t