Tag Archives: Hitler

Is it fair to compare today’s Brexiteers with yesterday’s Nazis?

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This is my reply to a friend who said I was wrong to see similarities between the rise of the Brexiteers in Britain to the rise of the Nazis in Germany

Almost every day there is an event or a happening that reminds me that I am living in very strange times.  Its almost a feeling of déjà vu, except this sense of déjà vu comes from my knowledge of history. I can understand the feelings of the German citizen of the Weimar Republic who watched in horror as his country was taken over by the party of the ‘crazies’ and ’no-nothings’. Until the late 1920s the Nazi’s existed as a ridiculous but violent fringe group that had little impact on the politics of the country. When the Great Depression left the government looking helpless in face of this crisis, the Nazis were able to capitalise on this and campaign as the party with an answer and the one who understood the pain of the losers. The Leavers or Brexit campaigners were also a small fringe group once called ‘fruit cakes and nut cases’ by a Prime Minister.  Just as with the Nazis they were able to exploit the discontent among the people caused by de-industrialisation in the old manufacturing towns and years of austerity following the financial crash of 2008. Just like the Nazis their support came from those seeing themselves as the ‘left behind’. Now these ‘fruitcakes and nut cases’ have their representatives in the government. The ruling conservative  grouping in parliament has co-opted them into government, hoping to use their popularity to offset their own unpopularity. Now we have our own Von Papen hoping to use these extremists for her own ends, although history suggests she is more likely to be used by them to achieve their extremist agenda.

While most leading political figures of the leave movement would reject any similarities with the Nazi party of the 1930s, there are in fact many similarities. When I write of the ‘crazies’ I mean the right wing zealots and Europhobes who want to take Britain back to a past of their own imagining. Some extremists have even spoken of a British Empire 2.0. The heroic imagined past of the leavers is Britain of the 1950s, an island of heroes that had defeated the Nazis. The heroic past that the Nazis wanted to take Germany back was the age of Siegfried and the Nibelungenlied. This they would achieve by taking the people out of the cities and moving them back to the land. The hard physical life on the land would develop in the Germans the heroic virtues of that characterised the German warrior people of the sagas. Opting out the industrial age was no more a realistic policy, than is opting out of the international trading system. Neither can be achieved, yet that does not deter the zealots.

What the Brexiteers and the Nazis also have in common is the hatred of modernity. The Nazis believed that the cities and cosmopolitan spirit within them sapped the strength of the German culture. Germans were no longer the ‘blond beasts’ of Nietzsche’s writings. Cosmopolitanism was an alien introduction to the German culture, one brought in by an alien race, the Jews. Brexiteers also hate the cosmopolitan spirit which they believe has corrupted the purity of the British national character. Obviously the alien force that is responsible for this is the EU and the associated influx of European immigrants. What both want is the expulsion of these alien forces from their country. The Nazis confiscated Jewish property and created such a hostile climate in for the jews, that many felt that they should leave.  It is no coincidence that there are echoes of this policy in that of the British Home Office, which has been charged with creating a hostile climate for undesirable EU immigrants, so forcing them to leave. (At present it appears to be a policy focused on Eastern Europeans and those EU immigrants that are homeless. Although given the nature of the current political leadership that hostility could be extended to other groups of EU citizens.)

Hitler was very much the social conservative. One of his first actions was to discourage women from working. Women for him were primarily homemakers and bearers of the next generation of German children. Our Brexiteers are also social conservatives, most of whom would wish to return  to women to their traditional role as homemakers. They have been a strong influence on the government, this is a government which is making abortion more and more difficult to achieve. If abortion becomes increasingly difficult it means women will be increasingly forced into child caring roles and will have to leave the workforce. It is no coincidence that this government has announced that it will give a very generous grant to the anti-abortion charity Life.

Initially the Nazis were dismissed as not being a serious political party not just for there fantastical beliefs, but because so many of their leadership were relatively uneducated men. Leading politicians dismissed them as an irrelevance because they could never see such ill educated men ever being serious actors within the political process. The coarseness of their manner and speech made it easy to dismiss them as an irrelevance. Not so long ago the then Prime Minister dismissed the UKIP voters as a group of as fruit cakes. He as an Oxbridge first could not take these relatively uneducated people seriously. Now these people, as did the Nazis when they first entered into a coalition with Von Papen hold the whip hand in government. They despite there seeming ignorance of European affairs are dictating the terms on which Britain negotiates to leave the EU. The Prime Minister who to retain the support of them keeps talking about a no-deal being better than a bad deal. This is in spite all the advice from economists that such a rupture from Europe will have a disastrous impact on the economy. Just like the German conservatives who were willing to accept the nonsensical beliefs about the malign Jewish influence, the Prime Minister has readily adopted the Brexiteers belief that the EU is a malign influence on the UK. She has adopted the worrying practice of the Weimar politicians who willing swamped a realistic world view of for fantastical one, as a means of staying in power.

What makes the comparison between the German conservatives of the 1930s and British conservatives of today, is this last point. There willingness to abandon their realistic world view for the fantastical one of their former enemies. Just recently one of the leading Remain conservatives demonstrated this trend. She said that although Brexit might cause some problems, the British people would rise to the occasion and make a success of Brexit. With no evidence for this, there cannot be a greatest example of foolish wishful thinking. Conservatives of the Weimar Republic and contemporary Britain would rather go along the madness of their own extremists, as they saw that madness as being less damaging to the country that ceding power to the opposition. As further evidence of this adoption of the fantastical world view of the extreme right, they insist of referring to the parliamentary opposition as dangerous radicals. Yet the policy proposals of this party are very mild in comparison with that of the Labour Party of 1945.

While I would not suggest that the Brexiteers are Nazis, there are so many points of similarly that such comparisons are valid. One clinching argument for me is that both are enemies of democracy. This government of leavers has done everything possible to avoid an open debate or real scrutiny of their Brexit policies in Parliament. Their argument is that of authoritarian governments everywhere, which is that secrecy is necessary if they are to make a success of their negotiations; any open discussion of policy options would weaken their hand. Only yesterday the Brexit secretary in reply to questioning from a House of Lords Committee, said in effect trust me. He was not prepared to submit to any democratic scrutiny. of his negotiations with the EU.

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Weimar Britain 2010 – ?

economic history, Economics, Neo-Liberal economics, Politics, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

There seems to be a gathering darkness in our society, unreason seems to increasingly be the language of our times. The darkness of unreason is said to have come from outside the political process, from  the extremists of the right who have been increasingly successful in infiltrating the political mainstream. Although there success is not entirely down to their own efforts, as they have been aided by collaborators from within the political mainstream.

Perhaps the most obvious example of this darkness is the increasing harassment of immigrants. All to often there are stories such as that of the grandmother of Singaporean origin who was sent back to her homeland, despite having a family in the UK. She was sent back penniless to a homeland where she had no family. Indifference often bordering on cruelty so often governs the actions of our politicians.

When I see the flourishing of unreason in society, I look to the past for explanation. One obvious parallel is the German Weimar Republic that was destroyed by the forces of unreason. One writer that tried to explain the rise of the forces of unreason was Ernst Junger. I find his book ‘On the Marbles’ particularly apposite. There exists within his narrative a wild uncivilised  family of huntsmen who live deep in the dark forest. This family breeds an exceptionally vicious and violent breed of dog, who are breed for nothing but fighting. In the climax of the book this pack of barbarous dogs takes on the hunting dogs of the foresters and destroys them. Now this barbarous family has control of the forest. There is one futile attempt later by the politicians to come to terms with the barbarians of the forest, but it ends badly in their death.

There is a darkness in the souls of us all, but a darkness that is suppressed by civilisation. Norbert Elias wrote of the significance of etiquette in making organised society and social  progress possible. When people started treating each other with courtesy and respect organised society becomes possible. These etiquette codes of behaviour or rituals are passed from generation to generations giving society its shape but once they are disregard or disrespected society begins to resemble a shapeless mass and loses its civilising aspect.* Football without rules is a meaningless undignified scramble and even the most aggressive and competitive of footballers who will resort to cheating to win a match, still accepts the need for rules. They know that if there were no rules to break there would be no game of football. Politicians increasingly resemble the cheating footballer but unlike them they don’t just want to break the rules to their own advantage, but they want to destroy the rules and reshape the game in their own image.

Ernst Junger’s allegorical tale was very prescient, there are dark groups in society who while they remain isolated and excluded from the mainstream, pose little threat to the larger society. If they are isolated in the depths of the forest they are little threat to the civilised whole. However once this dark group is welcomed into the mainstream of the body politic, their very ruthlessness enables them to rise to the top. Just like Junger barbarous dogs they destroy the opposition, an opposition that has not been breed for fighting.

This dark group existed within German society, they were the German nationalists. The most extreme of which were the Nazis. Mainstream politicians thought there ideas insane, such as wanting to return the bulk of the population to the land. Farm work and rural life they believed led to the cultivation the manliness virtues that the Nazi’s admired. Too many German men lived soft easy lives in the town and had lost the Aryan virtues that the Nazis admired. Having such crazy ideas led to the political elite believing that such simpletons could be easily managed.

When the economic crisis of 1929 lead to widespread unemployment, which many blamed on the government. The discredited ruling coalition thought that by incorporating the increasingly popular Nazi’s into government they come benefit from their popularity. They would be a useful counterweight to the powerful communist party. The conservative intellectuals such as Franz Von Papen thought that they could easily manage the ‘unsophisticates’ of the Nazi Party. Instead these conservative politicians lacked the ruthlessness of the Nazis and were out manoeuvred by them. The well behaved dogs of the conservative right proved no match for the wild dogs of the Nazis.

Once the Nazis gained control they removed those civilised constraints that kept those dark instincts of the German personality suppressed. Soon civilised Germans were treating there Jewish neighbours in the most cruel of manners. Once those civilised rules of social interaction were removed the darkest of behaviours become common. Millions of Germans knew of the existence of the death camps, yet only a small number of German opposed their use. Ordinary German citizen if they knew of Jews hiding form the authorities would not hesitate to betray them.

What I believe is that once the barbarous dark forces in society are admitted into the mainstream of the body politic they corrupt the political process and take it over. There barbarous belief systems cannot tolerate any diversity opinion or difference, so must they destroy it. That destruction as in Weimar Germany will be the destruction of the democratic system.

While the dark forces in Britain remained isolated and excluded from the mainstream, they could be tolerated as the harmless indulgence of a tiny minority. However in Britain as in Weimar Germany changes occurred within the governing elites that made possible the introduction of the barbarous views of the extremists. Within the conservative political spectrum there had always been a significant minority that hated the post war settlement. High personal taxation and the tax revenue used to fund of social welfare programmes and the health service they saw the illegitimate action of government. They saw the economic crisis of the 1970s as an opportunity to destroy the social democratic state. Whether it was the free market economics of Milton Friedman or the Neo-Liberalism of Hayek and Rand, they had a brutal philosophy. What they wanted was the re-create the society that pre-dated Hobbes ‘Leviathan’. They wanted a society of in which ‘nasty brutish’ men, were not restrained in their actions by the state. It was human competitiveness not social organisation they believed was the motor for economic and social progress.

As this philosophy increasingly took hold on the Conservative party, its policies became more and more brutal as it sough to recreate the society of ‘nasty and brutish’ men. Although policies were couched in morally virtuous terms such as taking people out of the dependency culture and making them self sufficient, all but the most deluded of Conservative must have realised they were practising a policy of cruelty. This policy was corrupting of the people making the policy, as implementing cruel social policies is not a morally neutral activity, it corrupts the mind. The poor become defined as a subhuman species unworthy of the decencies of human society.

With this degradation of moral sensibilities conservative politicians have not hesitated to exploit the those dark atavistic sentiments on race and ethnicity to win support. However what they fail to realise is that they these sentiments are not something that can used when needed for electioneering and then forgotten. Once they have been imported into the political dialogue they remain there. These politicians so resemble so many Franz Von Papen’s  who thought that they could use the extremists for their own ends.  Similarly these conservative politicians are offering extremists access to power, an access that they will exploit.

Again Ernst Junger’s allegoric tale offers a useful explanation of the current situation. Bad as the current conservative politician are, there are the much more dangerous extremists who are beginning to enter the political mainstream. The conservative politicians are like the hunting dogs in his tale, they are trained to hunt herbivores and not to fight other dogs. I liken them to they hunting dogs because they are trained to hunt weak herbivores of society, the poor and less well off majority. Neo-liberalism of the Ayn Rand type has schooled them in how to attack the less well off majority to benefit of the billionaires class, but it has not schooled them in how fight off the extremists. I fear that our conservative Neo-liberal politicians, will be as with Weimar’s conservative politicians little more than a conduit to power for the extremists. 

  • I must confess that my summary of Norbert Ellias thinking does not do justice to him. His ideas are far my complex that my summary would suggest.