German fascism, unlike fascism elsewhere, as in Italy, was not an elite product (Niall Ferguson, The War of the World: Twentieth Century Conflict and The Descent of the West, (New York: Penguin, 2006), p 240). However, a section of the elite warmed to Hitler, where others he left cold. "The key to the strength and dynamism of the Third Reich was Hitler's appeal to the much more numerous intellectual elite; the men with university degrees who are so vital for the smooth running of a modern state and civil society." Germany had the best universities in the world. More than a quarter of the Nobel Prizes in the sciences between 1901 and 1940 were awarded to Germans; only 11 percent went to Americans (p 235).
Heine anticipated Nazism a hundred years earlier. "There will be," he said in Religion and Philosophy in Germany (1834), "Kantians forthcoming who in the new world to come will know nothing of reverence for aught, and who will ravage without mercy, and riot with sword and axe through the soil of all European life to dig out the last root of the past; there will be well-weaponed Fichteans on the ground, who in the fanaticism of the Will, are not to be restrained by fear or self-advantage, for they live in the Spirit (quoted, Elie Kedourie, Nationalism (London: Hutchinson & Co Ltd, 1969), p 89)." The German intellectual of the 1930s had a long pedigree.
The European elite as a whole has learnt the lessons of history. When Jorg Haider's Austrian Freedom Party was elected with 27% of votes in 2000, it formed a coalition with the centre-right People's Party. Louis Michel, Belgium's foreign minister, called Haider a Nazi. "A man who exults in Nazi theses is a Nazi," said the minister. He observed that voters can be "naive" and "simple", that to be a democratic party "you must work by democratic rules, you must accept not to play on the worst feelings each human being has inside himself". Hitler's party also rose by democratic means. The Freedom Party resembled the anti-immigrant and xenophobic Vlaams [Flemish] Block. "I have forced all the democratic parties in Belgium to declare that they will not do deals with Vlaams Blok," he said.
This is a dispositionist view: human beings have terrible feelings bottled up inside them, and leaders can prey on these feelings. However, for Zimbardo, the situationist, the 'barrel-makers' constitute the system, which produces the bad barrel/situation, occasioning the 'bad apples'. In his book, he says "The power of charismatic tyrannical leaders, like Jim Jones or Adolf Hitler, endures even after they do terrible things to their followers, and even after their demise (p 295)". In other words, the evil that men do lives after them.
Before the American presidential primary of 2016, the Economist agonized over the impending choice of Donald Trump as the Republican candidate. It fondly recalled that in 2002, France's left and right joined together to elect the unprincipled machine politician Jacques Chiraq against his rival, Jean-Marie Le Pen, "a brutish demagogue". Chirac owed his victory not to his traditional supporters, but to his traditional left-wing opponents. Posters urging the French to "Vote for the crook, not the fascist" popped up across the country.
Since then, the centre-left and centre-right have cooperated against the populist parties' rising vote share in Finland, Italy, the Netherlands and Sweden (as of 2015, according to the Economist).
This is elitism, pure and simple, or even paternalism. That the electorate of South Asia is not educated cannot be a sufficient explanation for their choice of toxic rulers. The American electorate is very well-educated, and the German intellectuals were some of the most educated people in the world. The role of the elite, an intermediate crust between the leader and the people, requires investigation, for we have seen the European elite bandying together against wicked forces. However, the role of education cannot totally be discounted, for it is 'learning and wisdom', to use Plato's phrase, that transform the masses into an elite.
Again, France furnishes a clear example. Voting intentions in 2015 reveal that those with less than high school education (36%) aimed to vote for the far-right, xenophobic, nationalist, anti-European Union National Front; this share dropped to 23% for those with a two-year degree and to 14% for those with a three-year degree or more; the last group planned to vote much more for left-wing parties (44%) and the centre-right (39%). This shows the triumph of education over ignorance.
Next Page 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 | 36 | 37 | 38 | 39 | 40 | 41 | 42 | 43 | 44 | 45 | 46 | 47 | 48 | 49 | 50 | 51 | 52 | 53 | 54 | 55 | 56 | 57 | 58 | 59 | 60 | 61 | 62 | 63 | 64 | 65 | 66 | 67 | 68 | 69 | 70 | 71 | 72 | 73 | 74 | 75 | 76 | 77 | 78 | 79 | 80 | 81 | 82 | 83 | 84 | 85 | 86 | 87 | 88 | 89 | 90 | 91 | 92 | 93
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
1
1
