I have been reading the superb British travel writer Patrick Leigh Fermor’s account of his 1930s walk from London to Istanbul. In 1933, about nine months after Hitler came to power, he passed on foot through countless German towns and villages, meeting and observing local people in pubs, inns, and chance encounters on the road. It was early enough that most spoke freely about what was happening in German politics.
Fermor reported that Nazi party activities seemed to be “swallowing up” the whole lives of its followers. He reports an all-consuming religious-type fervor, directed at a single man, which seemed to allow no time or energy for the rest of life. I read this on the same day that I saw the heart-breaking testimony of a January 6 insurrectionist, relating how he had been consumed by cultish devotion to Trump and his life had shrunk to near-constant immersion in the on-line hell of the far right.
Fermor also observed, “It was a time when friendships and families were breaking up all over Germany.” All I could think of were all the many sad reports from friends about family members lost to Q-Anon and other conspiracies, which left them unable to tolerate the lack of belief by their loved ones and former friends.
Even the nature of the fervor seems similar. Over and over, in his meetings with self-proclaimed followers of Hitler, Fermor found that they had little understanding of Hitler’s actual policies or ideology. Instead, their enthusiasm was grounded in the deeply human longing for a savior, vulnerability to the false promises of the demagogue, and a sense of belonging with a group of co-enthusiasts. It seemed to Fermor like some sort of emotional contagion, which once caught was impossible to dislodge. Remember that the Republican Party redefined itself as a cult on August 23, 2020, when the GOP national convention resolved that the party’s agenda is whatever Donald Trump says it is from time to time.
And finally, Fermor was astonished by the number of Nazi supporters who told him they came to the Nazi movement from other parts of the political spectrum, not from prior affiliations with the right. He gives a detailed account of a young Nazi who stated that he had been a committed Marxist and was unable to see any conflict between his current and previous positions. It is hard not to think of the millions of voters here who switched to MAGA from a lifetime of voting D.
Of course, there are vital differences between now and 1933. The erosion of America’s hegemony from its peak immediately following the end of the Cold War cannot be compared to the humiliations suffered by Germany following the end of World War I. The economic pain of the American middle-class pales beside the damage caused to Germans by the hyperinflation and economic collapse of Weimar Germany. And MAGA’s appeal to white male supremacy cannot compare to the deeply rooted and pervasive antisemitism already present in Germany when Hitler came on to the scene.
By the time of the 1934 mid-term elections in America, a surging fascist movement, enamored (like their contemporary brethren) with Hitler, Mussolini and other foreign strongmen, energized the GOP campaign to re-take control of Congress. Labor Secretary Frances Perkins is reported to have said the following: “They deserved to lose the election even more than we deserved to win it.”
I commend this thought to your attention if you are doubtful or unenthusiastic about Democrat candidates up or down the ballot. Let’s say you’ve even concluded that they don’t deserve to win. It doesn’t matter. Secretary Perkins’s point is the key one and the great lesson of the 20th century – the other side deserves to lose even more.