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Weimar comparisons are in the air again. Violent street clashes between Antifa and Trump supporters in Portland inspired a new round of historical allusions to interwar Germany. Long a theme within the Dissident Right, “Weimar America” is now making its way into mainstream discourse. Major commentators can’t ignore the fracture of America and its lurch down a dark path. Pundits will blame various sources for this tumult, from Donald Trump to coronavirus to a lack of civility. But all agree the chances of a return to normalcy are unlikely.
Weimerica is here for good.
Journalist Andrew Sullivan claims in his latest column that this era feels “very Weimar.” “The center has collapsed. Armed street gangs of the far-Right and far-Left are at war on the streets. Tribalism is intensifying in every nook and cranny of the culture. The establishment Right and mainstream Left tolerate their respective extremes because they hate each other so much,” Sullivan writes.
Sullivan, a Never Trump centrist, declares he will vote for whoever restores order to America:
If one party supports everything I believe in but doesn’t believe in maintaining law and order all the time and everywhere, I’ll back a party that does. In that sense, I’m a one-issue voter, because without order, there is no room for any other issue. Disorder always and everywhere begets more disorder; the minute the authorities appear to permit such violence, it is destined to grow.
He adds menacingly: “And if liberals do not defend order, fascists will.”
He hopes Joe Biden will restore law and order in America, but Sullivan is wise enough to know Biden is too beholden to the far Left to effectively crack down on the violence. He refuses to see Trump as the great restorer of order; rather, Sullivan sees Trump as the herald of the end of liberal democracy. His hope remains that Biden can restore the center and safeguard liberal democracy for another generation. Sullivan doesn’t offer any ways Biden can do this besides rhetorical condemnations and some outreach to hostile Republicans. The writer doesn’t imagine Biden resolving any of the underlying tensions that lead to disorder. How is the 77-year-old Biden supposed to reduce polarization, social alienation, and distrust in institutions? It’s comical to think he’s the great mediator-in-waiting.
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Sullivan’s Weimar comparisons and desire to restore order led liberals and Leftists to brand him a fascist. However, many conservatives agreed with Sullivan’s point about our new Weimar era. “The term ‘Weimar America’ has been bandied about on the Right for a few years, but now, it is less a pejorative description than a neutral one,” The American Conservative’s Rod Dreher writes.
Dreher offered signs we’re living in Weimar based on his reading of midwit favorite Hannah Arendt. These signs are: loneliness and social atomization, loss of faith in hierarchies and institutions, embracing transgressiveness, susceptibility to propaganda and ideology, and valuing loyalty over competence. The first two are certainly true, the third is true for the Left, the fourth has always been true, and the last one sounds like a Never Trumper attack ad. The important point is America is experiencing serious social unrest that now results in riots and general disorder. People feel isolated and don’t trust their leaders. Polarization is at an all-time high and political violence is now a fact of life.
Dreher’s overall conclusion is that America is in a “pre-totalitarian condition.” That may be the case, but it’s not coming from Trump’s direction. The president can’t even get his own staff to follow orders, much less the rest of the country. The totalitarian threat comes from the Left, which Dreher acknowledges. Unlike Sullivan, Dreher sees Trump more as the figure to save us from this nightmare. But he insists that Trump (quite rightly) is an unreliable protector.
Dreher and Sullivan wish for the status quo to return. Many liberal and conservative commentators share their desire and see this time period as especially dire. Hundreds of books have been published on how Trump signals the coming of a dictatorship. Mainstream media outlets regularly warn that our democracy is hanging on a thin thread. Everybody worries over a contested election and many fear Trump will not step down if he loses. Gun sales are at an all-time high while wealthy residents flee the major cities. Millions of Americans remain unemployed due to coronavirus and a quarter of young Americans contemplated suicide during the lockdown.
One election will not put the pieces back together — it will only inflame these divisions and tensions. Riots are all but guaranteed whatever the result of the November election.
The mainstream fretting over Weimerica shows how decrepit our system is. It no longer inspires confidence in those who communicate to the public. Everyone wants a more authoritarian government while each side fears their opponent taking over said government.
Trump is the immediate cause for this. The man destroyed the facade of political civility and inculcated hysterical hatred in his enemies. The intense loyalty he draws from his own supporters is unprecedented and advances polarization. But there are deeper causes that have festered for years. Most readers are familiar with them — elimination of a common national identity, multiculturalism, demographic change, anti-whiteness as state dogma, etc. — but the commentariat doesn’t acknowledge them. It’s much easier to imagine America as a wondrous paradise before Trump poisoned it with his uncivil words.
It’s a bit inaccurate to say we live in an exact replica of Weimar Germany. Despite the toll of coronavirus, the American economy still offers plenty of opportunities and white Americans still feel they can reach the Good Life. Interwar Germans lacked those opportunities. The forces fighting in the streets aren’t the equivalents of the Communist Party or the National Socialists. There really isn’t a communist threat nor the chance of a fascist party taking power. The street violence is mostly inner-city trash and Leftists throwing a liberal-approved temper tantrum. The system isn’t threatened by the violence, but it does diminish the system’s standing with middle Americans.
The trends noticed by Sullivan and Dreher are not good for the American Empire in the long term. A nation that no longer believes in itself or shares a common identity with all of its countrymen is not one destined to thrive. For the historic American nation to survive, the facade of the contemporary American system must be stripped off. The system’s delegitimization is good for waking up ordinary Americans to its injustices and contradictions. The downside is that this may lead to a more authoritarian version of the liberal order that strips us of our rights and identity. A Right-wing dictator is not on the horizon of this Weimar Republic.
The system is failing and the commentariat knows it. The only question is what will come next.
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13 comments
Comparisons to Weimar Germany are inane in every instance. Weimar Germany was a defeated nation that had democracy bestowed upon it like Bush bestowed democracy on Afghanistan. Germans couldn’t wait to rid themselves of it and return to their normalcy, which had been the Kaiser for most of their existence. America has no such nostalgic feelings for monarchy, and authoritarianism doesn’t run in its blood. If parallels to a historic failed state must be drawn, the Roman Republic, which America is modeled after, should serve as the only apt comparison.
If that is true, then we can only hope a Roman Empire will follow.
One point not often brought about pre-WW1 Imperial Germany is that political were often more than just voting, they were a way of life, and, in very real ways, the entire social life of the average German. Parties were more like clubs, that put on social gatherings, supported people in need, and offered an identity to the individual within the state. Germany was much more politically engaged as a whole than America has been in 60 years, if ever. This largely carried over into the Weimar era. This political agnosticism in modern America poses a problem for any political party seeking to establish a potential authoritarian grip on the country, left or right.
In order to do any of that, an individual would have to be someone who is respected by both sides—he would have to be an honorable who, even if he belongs to one side, is fair to the other side. Biden is precisely the opposite of that. He is a mendacious, corrupt, highly partisan scumbag, who has now gotten senile. His nomination marks the definitive end of the Democrat Party as anything other than a coalition of nihilists, criminals, and leeches. His election would mark the end of the United States as entity worthy of even a vestige of respect.
Weimar is not the best comparison if only because the successor government to the Kaiser literally did not have the physical power to suppress violent confrontations between Left and Right. For the moment (I believe) the US government absolutely possesses the power to stop this ongoing street violence. At all levels, it simply refuses to exercise it. It is especially significant that most of the troubles are occurring in Democrat-run cities and states, and not just because all of the agitators are leftists of one type or faction or another – black thugs, black supremacists, anarchists, antifa, revolutionary communists – who in turn obviously vote leftist. It is because the larger non-violent liberal communities don’t really mind it, and likely won’t punish current Democrat office holders for it.
This is simple anarcho-tyranny in action (at least the “anarchist” part; the tyranny gets applied to patriots like Kyle Rittenhouse who try to intervene to do what the institutional powers refuse to). The political Democrats are more afraid of the leftist voters supporting (or at least sympathizing with) the street thugs than they are of any law and order backlash. Their sleazy calculations may be correct (we will know in November: if Trump wins, say, Oregon, which I doubt, then we will know the Democrat politicos miscalculated; but if there is no punishment at the polls, then they made the right call to do nothing).
I believe (hope …) that Trump is doing nothing because he has calculated that these obvious Democrat-constituency riots will only help his reelection. I hope at one of the debates he patiently explains to the idiot masses that 1) urban unrest is supposed to be handled first, by the cities themselves, and then second, by state forces, like highway patrols and National Guards; 2) that all of the Democrat run cities and states experiencing this 100% leftist violence have utterly and intentionally failed to perform their most basic tasks of keeping order, and suppressing violent insurrection; and then 3) states that if he is reelected, he will use the full Constitutional and statutory power vested in him as President to restore public order, by whatever means necessary, and for however long it takes. This stance – basically a voter bribe (which is what almost every Democrat platform proposal amounts to) – would win him Minnesota and Wisconsin; give him a real shot at Virginia; and even possibly give him a shot at Washington and Oregon. It would also help Republicans in Congress.
Weimerica is in much worse shape than than the original for economic reasons.
Outsourcing made us dependent on foreign money, but more important, foreign goods. German war facilities might have been dismantled, but Krupp steel works never shut their mills down. Nor did they stupidly outsource work and then dynamite a new facility for a tax write-off as happened in the Youngstown Works in 1977. Americans were on borrowed time from the moment WWII ended and New York bankers began selling off our merchant fleet to rich overseas plutocrats for a quick buck.
Wiki says as much about Weimer’s foreign-dependency:
“Germany was among the countries most severely affected by the great depression because its recovery and rationalization of major industries was financed by unsustainable foreign lending. … perhaps most importantly, the government implemented a rigid austerity policy that resulted in deflation.
Wiki then goes on to the usual blather about what Adolf did wrong, but repudiating German war debt and issuing non-interest currency made the Third Reich an economic powerhouse in less than five years. By 1937 critical industries essentially had to freeze certain occupations (boilermakers, electricians) the economy was growing so fast that letting them leave for better opportunities would have left entire facilities stranded. Frustrating for some, but in an exhilarating sort of way. It can happen here.
The way out is to re-industrialize locally. The irony is that we’ll be better off if the lockdowns continue because people will see that their own neighbors are their first best resource. A sea change of thinking locally will do infinitely more good than going back to the stagnant status quo.
A better comparison might be Third Republic France in the 1930s.Ostensibly still a great military power and one of The Great War victors it was bitterly divided between Right and Left with Weimar style street disorder.There was a dearth of political leadership and the socialist government of Leon Blum was despised by Conservatives who said rather Hitler than Blum.We all know how that story ended.Of course comparisons can never be exact and the USA is still a super power which looks impressive on paper.Rather like the British Empire did once.Speaking as an Englishman who has only visited your country onc I wish it well but fear for its future.
“The Left has shown the Right the way forward: Nullification. “
Hamburger Today:
Excellent formula. And it would probably jump start re-localization quicker than any technical issues. Suburban lotus eaters will hate it but they’ve been pampered into delusion for decades. Everyone else seems almost in a hurry to change the game board. Good.
I think America is becoming more like Zimbabwe than Weimar Germany. An incoherent incompetent president, a collapsing national currency and naked racial animosity and violence in the streets.
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