The useful idiots of the right
BarcelonaThe French historian Johann Chapoutot has delved into Weimar Germany to see who made Hitler's rise to power possible. He examines it in detail in The Irresponsible Ones (Angle Editorial, translated by Andreu Gomila). Now that we see, here and everywhere, how many people buy into the fatalistic and enraged narrative of the far-right ("our own people first"), this reading is very worthwhile. The parallels are so evident that they are frightening. It is a book that emotionally recalls, and puts all the historical context, to The White Ribbon, the chilling film by Michael Haneke.
The author says, describing what the Nazi party (the National Socialist German Workers' Party) was doing in 1932: "They are racist and anti-Semitic, they want to regenerate the German nation and they imitate a social justice discourse that is very convenient for winning votes." Where it says "anti-Semitic" put "anti-Muslim" and where it says "German nation" put "Catalan nation", and there we have it. If then, almost a century ago, there was the specter of Soviet communism (and of the Spanish Republic), now the bogeyman is "the invasion of immigrants," the fear of poverty and cultural difference, fears once again wrapped in a primary and visceral identity discourse.
Hitler did not rise to power by magic or by a sudden collective madness. The conservative and liberal right-wing parties, a large part of the business and banking sector (embracing the manna of rearmament), intellectual elites, high-ranking officials (judges, police, army), and the rentier and landowning aristocracy, along with impoverished peasants, opened the doors for him. Support for the Nazis also came from the sensationalist press magnate Alfred Hugenberg, a precursor to Rupert Murdoch or Silvio Berlusconi, but with a solid intellectual background. He came to own 26 newspapers and to disseminate articles of his ultranationalist, reactionary, and racist editorial line in 1,600 publications. Furthermore, he controlled German film production.
The Weimar Republic, born in 1919, had a liberal, democratic, parliamentary, and social constitution. It was a hope amidst extremisms and after the penalizing Treaty of Versailles. But that rule of law was gradually destroyed from within and from above, step by step, with abundant complicity, while the economic crisis fueled radicalism. Many chose to sacrifice democracy in exchange for a strong leader whom they believed they could control from the shadows.
Hitler did not come to power democratically
"The center-left brought the far-right to power," writes Chapoutot, who emphasizes refuting that Hitler came to power democratically. In reality, the Nazi party never even reached 38% of the vote before Hitler was appointed chancellor by decree in 1933. Power was gifted to him. Chapoutot describes that decisive historical moment as a "suicide of a republic," if not an "outright murder." Are we now in a similar process? What does Donald Trump represent today?
Weimar soon became a presidential regime, headed by Hindenburg, the embodiment of the Prussian gentleman, obsessed with blocking not only communists but also social democrats. To achieve this, he did not hesitate to abuse power and allow government by decree, bypassing the parliamentary route. Theorized by Carl Schmitt, a kind of presidential direct democracy emerged.
In the summer of 1930, the grumpy old man Hindenburg dissolved the Reichstag and called elections: the SPD emerged weakened but remained the leading party (24.5%), the center-right governing party fell to 14.8%, the communists rose to 13%, the conservative right fell to 7%, and other sister parties also collapsed. The Nazi party, the NSDAP, rose from 2.8% to 18.3%. At that time, Hitler was not even a German citizen yet: he acquired nationality on February 26, 1932.
The SPD continued to support a right-wing government as the lesser evil, even though the unyielding Chancellor Brüning pursued a very harsh austerity policy with bloody social cuts (Keynes would not publish his key work until 1936). Then, successively, came a rapid decline with the cabinets of Franz von Papen, Kurt von Schleicher, Hitler-Papen, and Hitler alone. It was the beginning of the end.
