One of the greatest thinkers to grapple with these issues was Erich Fromm, who explained in Escape from Freedom that totalitarian mass movements helped modern man escape from the burdens of freedom, and then later argued that such mass movements fulfilled a collective death wish, what he called a sort of epidemic of political necrophilia. In that view, revolutions are signs of progress, another step along the road to modernity.īut, especially in the 20th century, many important revolutions were reactionary outbursts against modernity, a desperate attempt to restore an earlier (and often imaginary) style of politics in which the state, or the leader, made most of the fundamental decisions, thereby sparing the citizens the many agonizing choices that afflict modern man. It’s not easy for modern intellectuals to accept the true nature of the Islamofascists, because of the long-discredited but still popular theory that revolutions are a good thing, and are invariably a righteous eruption against social and economic misery inflicted by greedy oppressive governments. It has a lot of popular support, as we have seen in elections in Egypt and Palestine (although the Palestinians were offered a Hobson’s Choice between two tyrannical organizations), as we saw in the past in Algeria and of course in the Iranian revolution of 1979. Today’s Islamofascism is very much in that tradition. It’s not just that people accept it, or endure it they embrace it and celebrate it. The horror of fascism–in many ways the real model for today’s terror masters–is precisely its popular success. It’s silly to believe that a society without democratic traditions can’t create a democracy if that were true there would never have been any democracies at all. And I don’t think that Periclean Athens boasted a large and flourishing middle class. When people say, as they often do, with a glint of ethnic or cultural superiority in their angry eyes, that Arabs or Africans or Persians or Turks just aren’t “ready” for democracy, that such people prefer tyrants, or that they have no history of democracy and are hence incapable of it, or they have no middle class, without which no stable democracy can exist, or they believe in Islam, which brooks no democracy, I try to remind them that some of the worst tyrannies came from highly cultured Christian countries with glorious democratic and humanistic traditions. Hitler and Mussolini gained political power in popular elections (please don’t quibble, I know they weren’t directly elected), were reelected with enormous mandates, and governed without much in the way of opposition until they were finally done in by Allied armies, the greatest instruments of freedom in the 20th century. And for most of the fascist era there was no real sign that the German or Italian people had serious second thoughts about living under tyranny, no real resistance worthy of the name…until the dictators began to lose the war, which changed everything. But all that culture proved useless against the onslaught of the totalitarian mass movements. Among the many terrible questions I attempted to understand, I was perhaps most perplexed at the enormous enthusiasm with which it was embraced by its followers, especially because Italy and Germany were among the most cultured, civilized, and humane countries on the face of the earth. Let’s call it 20 years in intimate contact with evil in its most active and charismatic form. Mosse, one of the great historians of Nazi Germany. TYRANNY GOVERNMENT EXAMPLES PROFESSIONALI spent the first 15 years of my professional life buried in the archives of the Italian fascist state, after several years as a research assistant to George L. But it doesn’t lead me to be more tolerant of tyranny, it reinforces my passion for democratic revolution. Given half a chance, these self-proclaimed ‘realists’ say, much of the world will choose tyranny. Those of us who advocate democratic revolution are often criticized for an excess of naïveté, for failing to recognize that the passion for freedom is not universal, and that there are many people–perhaps even many peoples–who despise democracy. The danger of the future is that men may become robots.”–Erich Fromm “The danger of the past was that men became slaves.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |