How We Got Here

I've been enjoying the January/February issue of Foreign Affairs magazine. This special anniversary issue includes excerpts from FA's own archives, which track the development of major ideologies from the 1920s to the present. I was struck by part of a 1932 segment by journalist Paul Scheffer in which he describes the types of people who attended Hitler's early speeches. Now then, I realize it is at once passé, cliched, and borderline inappropriate to compare anything American to the Nazis. But if it may be stipulated that my comparison is limited to political circumstances and tactics and does not extend to ideology, I'd venture to draw at least some analogy between the atmosphere Scheffer describes and that of today's tumultuous American economic and political climate. Mind you Scheffer was writing nearly ten years before the worst of the Holocaust and American entry into the war.

After being forced to submit to the Versailles Treaty and its humiliating terms of reparations, Germany experienced the havoc of its 1923 hyperinflation and the onset of the Great Depression. Hitler's crowds included many educated Germans who were accustomed to not only a higher standard of living, but also a status and respect commensurate with their once-high station. As Scheffer writes, "They are all people who have had conceptions of life, and conceptions of their personal roles in life, with which their present situation stands in violent contrast."

Scheffer continues, "Even if the observer had never heard of Hitler's program he might guess what this depressing assemblage of people is waiting for. It is waiting for a gospel, a message, a Word that will release it from the pinch of want, something that will compensate for the unbearable limitations of its present mode of existence. . . . It wants to hear an assurance that it is entitled to a place in this new world."

And finally, writing about the development of the Nazis' narrative, "By dint of careful nursing, the notion of reparations has been transmuted into the notion of 'payments of tribute;' and economic distress has found in reparations an explanation that is clear and convincing to everybody. The same is true of social unrest. The people who sit before Hitler have in their minds a very clear picture of the forces that are determining their present situation, and it is not difficult to carry them on to the corollaries. . . . No party in Germany has a formula so simple."

It occurred to me I've never studied in depth the backgrounds of the Nazis' early supporters. What is interesting to me is the set of circumstances that gave the Nazis the political capital to destroy their old order. Had it always been their plan to do so? Or were they making it up as they went along?

If political capital can be understood as a manufactured good, its most salient raw material must be a gap between expectation and reality. Economic crises are the gold mines for that material, (gap mines?) and I think the tumult of our present national conversation can be understood in part as a battle to own the Great Recession. What struck me about Scheffer's piece is that the characters and tactics he described seemed familiar. From the #OWS protester with a Ph.D and no job prospects to the twisted economic narrative and familiar litany of bogeymen recited on right-wing talk radio, the desperate hunt for an outlet of disappointment is familiar. Equally familiar is the appearance of simple unified narratives to explain it all. Blame your suffering on Wall Street and corporate greed. Blame your suffering on job-killing regulation. Taxes are too high, too low. Beware of socialists, ACORN, food stamp Presidents, illegals, George Soros, Sharia Law.

I'm not really driving toward some broader point with this rambling post, but I'll end with a thought. Elections during periods of economic uncertainty are when we must be most vigilant. Every election in America is touted as, "the most important election of our generation," (I suspect because the two-party system only rewards and never punishes hyperbole). But I think that some elections actually are more important than others, even in a two-party system, and that a meaningful gauge of that importance is the question, "just how much of a mandate would the winner have?" After all, it's not like they need to spend it fulfilling campaign promises. -∆