Until recently, I have thought that the common comparison of what is happening in Great Britain to Germany in the early 1930s over-melodramatic and somewhat far fetched. But having now watched the BBC’s three-part series on The Rise of the Nazis, I am less sure. There are so many points of comparison, all of them troubling: a sense of political and parliamentary turmoil, which allowed a minority party to seize power; an angry and discontented population looking for what they considered to be strong leadership and national prestige, seduced by promises of increased national wealth; hostility to parliament and a manufactured hostility to the rule of law; a lazy, but articulate leader effective at sloganeering. It all happened so fast by the appeal to the violence of the streets against the institutions of state. Rampant demagoguery, surrounded by arrogant and complicit cheerleaders who mindlessly repeat the leader’s message. The programmes were presumably intended to be disturbing. They most certainly are.
Gosh, you had a cheery Sunday afternoon! How terrifying
I recommend it: a brilliant piece of documentary film-making. Charles
Brecht’s ‘Der aufhaltsame Aufstieg des Arturo Ui’ leaves much the same sense of discomfort. Let us hope that the available resistance proves sufficient.
O really Carlo… i think you should check out your comparative history with my old chum Alan Sked, the former Liberal and Professor Emeritus of International History at the LSE xpert on Germay (pet pupil of AJP Taylor) who in response to Mr Major’s Maastricht treaty, founded UKIP in 1993… If the likes of Boris and Nige really were ever to be replaced by an Adolf (and frustrated fury is indeed mounting) it’ll have bin down to those who continued by every anti-democratic means at their disposal (including the blocking a general election) to resist the request via a referendum that we should leave the EU. Likewise if we end up leaving without a deal it’ll have been thanx to those who prevented Boris threatening the German car manufacturers et al with said no deal in order to get a good deal…
Dear Edward, But didn’t Mrs. May devote her entire time in office to getting a deal, which was then voted down by the ERG ? We would be out by now, but for their contumacy. Charles