
Britain’s Reichstag Fire Moment - DanBC
https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/magazine/britain-proroguing-boris-johnson-parliament-suspension-richard-evans-weimar
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promotor
My full response to this article is too long to embed, so here's a link:

[http://txti.es/weimar-america](http://txti.es/weimar-america)

I think Richard Evans is showing his age as far as cultural disconnect from
the youth is concerned (which has extreme importance in his analysis, as the
Nazi Party was comprised of mostly of disaffected young adults).

 _" The level of political violence in the last years of the Weimar Republic
was astonishing: in the first half of 1932, 84 Nazis were killed in street
clashes with other armed groups, as were 75 communists. In the Prussian
election campaign that summer, there were 105 violent deaths, and police
counted 461 political riots with 82 deaths. This has no parallel in today’s
democracies, for which we should be thankful."_

The Internet is the new beer hall. We're only seeing the tip of the iceberg of
the transition from digital spaces flame wars to meatspace brawls.

In short, Trump isn't Hitler and Bojo isn't Mosley. But they are certainly
canaries in the coal mine for what these societies are trending towards. Or to
put it another way, it took the Nazi Party six years to grow the war machine
that took over Europe. But before it took power, earnest adherents of the
Weimar Republic spent _13 years_ inadvertently sabotaging their own systemic
predicates to try and stop Hitler and/or the KPD from spreading and seizing
power.

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rudiv
I read your response. I'm curious, would you consider yourself to be a member
of the class of young people that you mention? Because a lot of your insights
presuppose a relatively close understanding of what it means to be a 'young
person' and yet are written in a manner seemingly incompatible with being a
'young person'. Of course, this depends on what age range one would classify
as young; personally, when I refer to young people without literally meaning
children it is usually in reference to people younger than 30.

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rayiner
> A similar punitive conservatism can be seen in our own time.

Puritans, Calvinists, etc., were also punitively conservative, yet founded
many of today's extant democracies.

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gshdg
What’s your point?

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andrewl
_But if Hitler’s rise teaches us anything, it’s that the establishment
trivialises demagogues at its peril. One disturbing aspect of the present
crisis is the extent to which mainstream parties, including US Republicans and
British Conservatives, tolerate leaders with tawdry rhetoric and simplistic
ideas, just as Papen, Hindenburg, Schleicher and the rest of the later Weimar
establishment tolerated first Hitler and then his dismantling of the German
constitution. He could not have done it in the way he did without their
acquiescence. Republicans know Trump is a charlatan, just as Conservatives
know Johnson is lazy, chaotic and superficial, but if these men can get them
votes, they’ll lend them support._

