Summary: Weimerica is among the darkest visions for America, in which our social and political systems decay so that we take refuge in tyranny. Here Lind describes the trends taking us down that bleak path. But we can still change course.
Introduction
My forecasts for America grow increasingly bleak. I wrote Forecast: Death of the American Constitution in 2006 – and today have even darker visions. But I grow optimistic when reading Lind’s columns. Lind and I have radically different backgrounds, perspectives, and beliefs. Yet our analysis of trends in America are converging. This gives me confidence in the likelihood of America taking the only path I see to a better future: an alliance of progressives and populists, as Americans discover their common interests.
I was writing a post, and with astonishment read this column by Lind making similar points. My post will go up later this week.
Weimar America?
By William S. Lind.
From Traditional Right • 21 October 2018.
Posted with his generous permission. Graphics added.
The battle over the Kavanaugh nomination saw the Left take yet another giant step toward unreason. Apparently serious people argued that any woman’s accusation against any man must be believed. Suddenly, three thousand years of history and literature, in which perfidy of women, their lies and plots that brought disaster, loom large are to be tossed aside. In their place we are to believe that today’s women carry a “truth serum” gene that makes lies impossible. Even the (desirable) Victorian elevation of women did not go as far as this. Victorian women, presented with the idea that women cannot lie, would have responded with gales of laughter.
The left’s rejection of facts and reason in favor of romantic faith in “feelings” is yet another sign of our cultural decay. That decay has gone far enough to raise the question of whether we are following the path of Weimar Germany, Germany in the 1920s and early 1930s.
To summarize a complex historical period, the collapse of morals and culture in Germany in the 1920s alienated the German middle class from the Weimar Republic. When the Great Depression hit, that alienation was joined by deep anger at the government’s inability to set the economy right and provide jobs. Adolf Hitler and his National Socialists rode this mixture of alienation and anger to power (legally, by winning an election).
Editor’s note: in the 1932 election, the Nazi Party got 37% of the popular vote and 38% of the seats in the Reichstag, the largest share of both.
They then abolished the Weimar constitution, reaffirmed traditional middle-class morality, pulled Germany out of the Depression, and gave jobs to everyone who wanted one (for which the brilliant head of the Reichsbank, Hjalmar Schacht, deserves much of the credit).
I was in Berlin for ten days in August, where my search for Germany’s history was aided by an excellent guidebook The Companion Guide to Berlin
“I have a pretty thorough knowledge of history, but never, to my recollection, has it produced such madness in such gigantic proportions. All values were changed, and not only material ones; the laws of the State were flouted, no tradition, no moral code was respected, Berlin was transformed into the Babylon of the world. Bars, amusement parks, honky-tonks, sprang up like mushrooms. …the Germans introduced all their vehemence and methodological organization into the perversion. Along the entire Kurfurstendamm powdered and rouged young men sauntered and they were not all professionals; every high school boy wanted to earn some money and in the dimly lit bars one might see government officials and men of the world of finance tenderly courting drunken sailors without shame.
“Even the Rome of Suetonious has never seen such orgies as the pervert balls of Berlin, where hundreds of men costumed as women and hundreds of women as men danced under the benevolent eyes of the police.In the collapse of all values a kind of madness gained hold particularly in bourgeois circles which until then had been unshakable in their probity.Young girls bragged proudly of their perversion, to be sixteen and still under the suspicion of virginity would have been considered a disgrace in any school of Berlin at that time ….”
Editor’s note; for more about this history – and us – see Our futures seen in snippets of the past.
Does this sound all too familiar? America now witnesses such behavior not only in one city, but throughout the land. And the Establishment media promote it, bless it, and denounce anyone who rejects it as a “hater”. A large portion of America’s middle class finds it alienating.
So far, the alienation is tempered by the good economy. But the Big One is coming, a world-wide debt crisis that will bring not just a recession but a depression and a long-lasting one. Unlike the Great Depression, I expect this one to be inflationary because central banks will respond to it by creating massive liquidity. At this point, it is all they know how to do.
If you take widespread cultural alienation, economic collapse, massive unemployment, and inflation and wrap them all up together, you get Weimar America. Someone will take political advantage of the situation. I expect that as in Germany under the Weimar constitution, you will have a faceoff between a populist, extreme Left – we’ve certainly seen enough Leftist extremism in the Kavanaugh confirmation battle – and a populist Right. At present, only a small slice of the populist Right is extreme. Most of it is well represented by President Trump, who is a very long way indeed from Adolf Hitler. President Trump is anti-establishment, but his agenda lies well within the historical mainstream of American politics. After all, for most of its history the Republican party was the party of high tariffs.
As in Weimar Germany, the initial push to the extremes has come from the Left, which seems to imagine it can go as far as it wants without eliciting a reaction from the Right. In Germany, the SA arose largely to counter violence from the Communists. Here, the Left thought it could raise racial consciousness among blacks and Hispanics without creating a similar rise in racial consciousness on the part of the whites. It was wrong. Now, it is openly advocating violence against Republican Party leaders and other prominent conservatives, harassing them in public places, vandalizing their property, and threatening their families. This too will bring an equal reaction from the Right, and the Left will find to its sorrow that the Right fights rather better than the Left.
Conservatives do not want to see our public life move in these directions. The first conservative principle is order: safety of persons and property. But as in Weimar Germany, the combination of cultural decadence and economic collapse will drive politics to its extremes. Conservatives should work with moderates and such liberals as dare defy the extreme Left to preserve order. But if that fails, then only one thing will matter: winning.
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Editor’s comment
I disagree with Lind’s belief in the Right-wing obsession with a debt cataclysm. These kind of “everybody knows it” threats seldom occur, because they are obvious and so people prepare (to avoid or mitigate). Complex and large systems tend to fail from unexpected causes – or multiple unexpected causes (a dozen mistakes killed 1,503 passengers and crew on the HMS Titanic). (Also, Lind’s economic analysis is inaccurate.)
But that’s trivia. I agree with Lind about the important and larger point: eventually something will produce massive stress on US society. The growth of political extremes on Left and Right are eroding away the Republic’s legitimacy, as is our collapse of all values (predicted by Nietzsche). At some point our society will be unable to withstand the stress of major crisis. The rising incidence of political violence is a clear indicator of this process, and deserves close attention.
About the author
William S. Lind’s director of the American Conservative Center for Public Transportation. He has a Master’s Degree in History from Princeton University in 1971. He worked as a legislative aide for armed services for Senator Robert Taft, Jr., of Ohio from 1973 to 1976 and held a similar position with Senator Gary Hart of Colorado from 1977 to 1986. See his bio at Wikipedia
Mr. Lind is author of the Maneuver Warfare Handbook
He’s perhaps best known for his articles about the long war, now published as On War: The Collected Columns of William S. Lind 2003-2009
- His posts at TraditionalRight.
- His articles about geopolitics at The American Conservative.
- His articles about transportation at The American Conservative.
For More Information
Ideas! For shopping ideas see my recommended books and films at Amazon.
If you liked this post, like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter. See all posts about the Kavanaugh hearings, about Reforming America: steps to new politics, and especially these about our adventures in Weimerica …
- Fear the rise of political violence in America. We can still stop it.
- The Left helps bring us Weimerica, a prelude to big changes.
- Alert! Our institutions are hollow because we don’t love them.
- Misadventures of a young woman in modern America.
- Red Robin recruits for the alt-Right (unintentionally).
A great book about Weimar Germany’s fall into fascism
Before the Deluge: A Portrait of Berlin in the 1920s
By Otto Friedrich, journalist and historian (1972).
“A fascinating portrait of the turbulent political, social, and cultural life of Berlin in the 1920s.”
— By the publisher.
“Before the Deluge recaptures in an eerie but only too authentic manner the tawdry, dangerous, and undeniably exciting story of the sickness which overcame Germany in the ’20s. ….No place in the world was so creative and decadent, so despairing and exhilarating…. What “Cabaret” did in musical form Friedrich has captured here.”
— Harrison Salisbury.
“A fascinating portrait of a city where art and riot flourished side by side and incredibility was the normal state of things.”
— Atlantic Monthly.
“Friedrich’s study of Berlin in the pre-Hitler years is so full of lessons…that one has to put it down from time to time to take a breath.”
— Esquire.
