From Post-modern Barbarism to the Pulpit & the Throne

"When men and women are reduced to nothing but their lowest appetites, we live in a state of barbarism. Weimar Period artists painted people in this state, for this, in their view, was what society had become. Their honesty would cost them. When the Nazis made barbarism official, these artists were among the first to go -- into exile, concentration camps, or inner emigration.
"The war had destroyed the old order, but there was a new one. The tragedy of the Weimar Period was that too few people were prepared to defend it. The new order was in any event, too fragile to withstand its brutal enemies."
- Glitter and Doom, German Portraits from the 1920s, by Sabine Rewald, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, page 17.

Are men and women in a society dedicated to consumption and "personal experience" reduced to a "post-modern" level of barbarism today? Isn't this how today's Christian Right views America? Will the reaction push us forward to a new "official barbarism" or pull us back to the old order of "Pulpit and Throne," the order destroyed by World War I and being reborn today through a corporate aristocracy, which has taken control of the federal government.

The Weimar Period lasted just 15 years but it was a crucial turning point for European civilization. Did a similar period -- a crucial turning point -- begin for us in 2001? The events in Germany during those years will certainly not repeat themselves here and now, but their causes and consequences hold a great deal for us to ponder.

Leadership Today and Yesterday

"His rhetoric was religious; he dissolved politics in a religious aura ... He promised deliverance and redemption, rebirth and salvation, even as he reviled the nation's enemies as godless and satanic; he did all that in the name of Providence, for he believed that Providence had selected him to deliver the people. In the beginning of his leadership, when he was still seeking to beguile his conservative allies, he appeared at his most devout. [At a mass meeting before his election] he was greeted with an incomparable storm of applause. Then he gave a far-ranging speech which roused all to a momentous pitch. At the end he began to pray, as it were, and concluded with the word 'amen.' Exactly the right mixture for his audience: Brutality, threats, great bragging about power and then again humility before the oft cited 'Almighty.' He declared after his election: 'the Almighty withdrew His blessings from our people' because they had forgotten 'the highest treasures of [the nation's] past, its honor and its freedom.'"
-- I've taken liberties with this quotation from Fritz Stern's Dreams and Delusions (page 145), by deleting the name of the man he was referring to and by including part of the text of a footnote on the same page in order to emphasize the parallels with today's crisis in global leadership. The "leader" referred to was of course Adolf Hitler.

Illegals in the US and the Jews of Germany

Are today's illegal immigrants playing the same role -- scapegoats -- that Jews were forced to play in pre-Nazi Germany? Certainly, in most respects there is no comarison: Jews were among the most educated and accomplished citizens of Germany: scholars, scientists and business leaders. Walter Rathenau, a successful Jewish businessman, was named foreign minister in 1921. Criticized by the Nazi party, he was assassinated by two right-wing army officers in June, 1922. The illegals, on the other hand, are poor and uneducated. They're here to do our dirty work; we squeeze them for some additional profit.

But the public's view, it seems to me, is growing increasingly strident. On an internet news site yesterday I noticed 82% of those answering the poll called for a wall between the US and Mexico. Today's newspaper is filled with Republican outrage at the cost of providing health care to the children of illegal aliens. All this fear and hatred -- encouraged by our politicians -- is a terrible mistake. If the illegals are here so we can take economic advantage of them, why do we behave as if they are taking something from us? It is this widespread belief that strikes me as similar to what happened in Weimar. Jews put Germany on the map -- Albert Einstein, for example -- but were reviled and discriminated against. The Nazi's linked them to Communists in much the same way as our right-wing politicians link illegal Mexican immigrants to terrorists.