[Here is a history of fascism in Europe that may be helpful as we
consider this troubled, and troubling, moment.]
[[link removed]]

PORTSIDE CULTURE

THE RISE OF FASCISM   [[link removed]]


 

Geoffrey Jacques
January 6, 2021
Portside

*
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
* [[link removed]]

_ Here is a history of fascism in Europe that may be helpful as we
consider this troubled, and troubling, moment. _

,

 

_The Rise of Fascism_
F.L. Carsten
University of California Press
ISBN: 9780520046436

During the entirety of the administration of President Donald Trump,
books on fascism have been popular. It is probably unprecedented in
the history of the United States that the election of a president
would spark interest in the history and emergence of fascism. Many of
these books, like _On Tyranny _(2017) by Timothy Snyder, are
prospective, and offer warnings about the dangers our society has
faced these last four years. At the same time, there has been renewed
interest in the classic, _The Origins of Totalitarianism _(1951), by
Hannah Arendt, a massive work that traces the history of both society
and of ideology in Central and Eastern Europe from the mid-19th
century through the second and third decades of the 20th century.

These books, and many others of their type, contain a host of useful
insights. Snyder's treatise has the air of just-before-panic about it,
but its set of warnings, billed in the book's subtitle as "twenty
lessons from the twentieth century," also courts the response of being
too simplistic. On the other hand, Arendt's book is full of detail,
but its depth can have an overwhelming impact on a reader. Completing
this work can be a daunting task. Like many other studies of its
subject, fully understanding Arendt's work seems to require that
readers possess far more specialized background knowledge of central
European interwar history, politics, and culture than most will be
able to muster.

_The Rise of Fascism_ was first published in 1967 and is now in its
second edition. At 280 pages, it has the virtue of brevity to
recommend it, but it is also worthwhile because it offers a specific
narrative of how fascist movements and parties came to power in Italy,
Germany, and elsewhere in Europe in the years between the end of WW I
and the 1930s.

This treatise is especially illuminating on Germany and Nazism. Its
picture of the inner machinations of political elites during the late
years of the Weimar Republic is invaluable. Especially illuminating is
Carsten's demonstration of just how those elites chose Adolph Hitler's
party over democracy, and how quickly Hitler turned the complicity of
those elites against them, snuffing out both democracy and independent
civil society with breathtaking ruthlessness.

Carsten (1911-1998) was a German-born refugee from Nazism who became
an eminent British historian. Here he offers a portrait, not just of
Hitler and the Nazi Party, but of the whole background of the
anti-Semitic movement in Germany in the years just before and after
World War I. Where Arendt, for instance, takes us all the way back to
the relationship between the origins of anti-Semitism and the rise of
both the bourgeoisie and the nation state, Carsten is more focused on
specific movements and personalities during the immediate pre-and-post
WW I years.

Readers can also find here a remarkably detailed narrative on the
crisis of the Weimar Republic and democracy in Germany during the
early years of the Great Depression, a tale that is illuminatingly
told despite its brevity. We see just how weak, institutionally,
democracy was in that country. Many comments on the crisis of the
Weimar Republic focus on the conflict within the left, between the
Socialist and Communist parties, which, it is said, opened the path to
Hitler and tyranny. Carsten comments on this as well, but he also
shows us that the Republic was a weak proposition from its beginnings.
Its institutional structure reflected Germany's absence of strong
democratic traditions. The alienation of much of the population from
democracy as such was a big factor in facilitating the growth of the
fascist mass movement. The left parties, though they, too, were mass
movements, seemed to command strong minorities, but could not, by
themselves, command a powerful enough majority to thwart the fascist
threat. For that, a working class-middle class alliance was necessary,
and large segments of the middle classes were, as the Depression
gathered steam, increasingly falling under Hitler's spell.

One other factor that was critical to the Nazi Party's rise to power
was its ability to command a several thousand-man strong private army,
whose purpose was to intimidate civil society. By the time he
consolidated power, Hitler already had a terrorist state in waiting,
ready to immediately take the reins. It is true that Hitler would
never have been able to ascend to leadership had he not had strong
support from the traditional ruling circles, including the armed
forces, the big capitalists, and the old nobility. But this private
army, which was the early iteration of the SS, was behind a host of
riots and civil disturbances that stoked the chaos and crisis that led
to a virtual breakdown of civil authority. In the subsequent power
vacuum, Hitler appeared, to the country's old ruling class and to its
military elites, as the obvious solution.

It is likely that the current and immediate crisis in the United
States will pass. Trump's claims that the 2020 election was stolen
from him will fade into its rightful place, as fodder for bad jokes
from bad standup comics. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris will be
inaugurated as President and Vice President on January 20. As of this
moment, it appears unlikely that today's crisis is really this
country's Munich Beer Hall Putsch, the name commonly given to Hitler's
failed 1923 coup d'état, the history of which Carsten elegantly
narrates. Yet, as unlikely as historical repetition may now seem, it
remains the case that broad, deep and assertive public vigilance
against the fascist currents that have been aggressively kindled for
the last half decade by Donald Trump, his party, and his milieu, is
now more warranted than ever.

_Geoffrey Jacques is a writer, poet, and critic. He is a Portside Book
Review moderator._

*
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
* [[link removed]]

 

 

 

INTERPRET THE WORLD AND CHANGE IT

 

 

Submit via web [[link removed]]
Submit via email
Frequently asked questions [[link removed]]
Manage subscription [[link removed]]
Visit portside.org [[link removed]]

Twitter [[link removed]]

Facebook [[link removed]]

 



########################################################################

[link removed]

To unsubscribe from the xxxxxx list, click the following link:
[link removed]