The electrifyingly open culture of Weimar Germany in the ’20s-its breakthroughs in movies, music, fashion, gender roles and architecture-still astound us, but as historian Peter Gay suggests, this was “a precarious glory. Weimar’s lifting of restrictions on groups like Jews, and tolerance for other groups like gays and gypsies, were widely seen as dissipating “German” culture. Germany’s descent into Nazism was propelled by theories that defined nationhood entirely as a function of race. Calls by leading Democrats for establishing “ states of emergency,” particularly to address climate issues, eerily reprise similar practices towards the end of Weimar, which helped set up the logic for the Hitler dictatorship. Even the foreign policy establishment has been weaponized against the current administration to wage “war by other means” against a sitting President.ĭespite claiming to be the protectors of “American values,” many progressive politicians now display their contempt for constitutional norms by calling for “ packing” the Supreme Court, eliminating the electoral college and even overhauling the Senate to favor more populous urban states.
From the moment of his election, a large part of the entrenched establishment-in the military, the court systems, the FBI and CIA as well as large parts of the old GOP establishment-have sought to violate their oaths so they can undermine his rule. President Trump, with his all-too-evident lack of knowledge of how the system works, is a classic authoritarian personality who identifies those who oppose him, like the media, as “enemies of the people.” Some fear that Trump is weaponizing the courts to go after opponents in the bureaucracy and the military, just as Hitler and other dictators once did.īut if Trump is nauseating and dangerous, so too are his critics. Under these circumstances, it’s not surprising that respect for the basic folk ways of our republic has disappeared, even at the highest levels of society. Recent revelations about the Afghan conflict, and the military’s systematic lying about it, are not likely to boost confidence. These feelings are strongest, significantly, among the younger generation. Only 10 percent of Americans feel that the federal government is suited to meeting the challenges before it 40 percent feel it is totally incapable, a percentage roughly twice that in 1970. In America, too, respect for the main institutions of our society-corporations, banks, Congress, the presidency, religion, the media, academia-has declined over decades.
#Weimar moment definition free#
The parallels with the assault on free speech and discussion on our campuses are disturbing. Many creatives were thrilled by Hitler’s dream that “blood and race will once more be the source of artistic intuition” as an inflation-devastated generation lost faith in the values of compromise, responsibility and justice. In Germany, as here, anti-republican sentiments were not confined to the “deplorables” but were also widely shared, as historian Frederic Spotts has detailed, by many painters, poets, filmmakers and sculptors-at least those not Jewish or openly communist. Nazism was particularly strong at the universities, which became a powerful base for the party, and supplier of its specialists, commanders and scientists.
When Bavarian judges gave Hitler a light sentence for his 1923 Beer Hall Putsch, they treated treason against the republic as a minor offense. Yet there are still disturbing parallels, for example in the often lenient treatment for violent protesters whether on the streets or on the campuses.
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