mrgahNov 29, 2017
enh, I loved being out in the country with no internet access for much of the past week, but it is nice to be back around you all 💚
Show threadmrgahNov 30, 2017

while I was out in the hollers, I read me a chunk of Hobsbawm's Age of Extremes, which is pretty fascinating stuff

he seems to have a genuine respect for the long 19th c, which I found a bit surprising for a Marxist historian

and his reckoning with communism in the 20th c is interesting

Show threadmrgahNov 30, 2017

though I doubt it's the last word on the subject, the parts of Hobsbawm's Age of Extremes on the rise of fascism make for terrifying reading if you're a US citizen

there have been a number of quasi-academic thinkpieces on how Trump isn't _really_ an ideologically consistent fascist

but it's hard to avoid the feeling that it's the sociological, political, and epistemic similarities to proto-fascism that are what's really worrisome 😟

#books

Show threadmrgah

to follow with a historiographical point:

I found Hobsbawm's emphasis on Nazism as a middle-class phenomenon particularly chilling (given middle-class Trump support in the primary), but it appears that this line of argument (influentially argued by Michael Kater) has undergone revision in the last decades: the revisionist position appears to be that Nazis drew support across classes

(but then, DT was heavily supported across classes in the general, too 🙁 )

Nov 30, 2017 at 3:54pmWeb
Show threadNelson MinarNov 30, 2017
@mrgah you are right to be concerned about Trump and his flirtation with fascism! But America has one huge advantage over pre-Nazi Germany; we have a reasonably stable economy and government. A big part of how the Nazis took over is they occupied a void in German political life.
I'm not saying we should be complacent, but it's useful to be precise about which parts of the analogy hold.
Show threadmrgahNov 30, 2017

@nelson

to be sure, the analogy is imprecise at best-- and I'm coming to this from an instinctive distrust of sloppy historical analogies

(in this case, the German Mittelstand consisted of social groups that barely exist now, and Nazis had extensive support among the young)

but I am a bit spooked by the parallels all the same

Show threadNelson MinarNov 30, 2017
@mrgah I hear you. I spent 5 weeks in Berlin last month and spent a lot of time thinking about these questions.
One key takeaway for me is how important the rule of law is in the US. So I'm most worried about the ways Trump undermines the courts. Also the media, although so far it's just been him being rude about the media and not actually doing much to impede them.
Show threadmrgahNov 30, 2017

@nelson

I've been thinking about that great apocryphal Twain quote about history rhyming

there are ways in which the elements of our political and civil system have held up better than one might have expected after the election, but I'm a bit more concerned now that the echoes with the past are also real

that is to say, I guess, that it can be hard for a society to hang together if a substantial chunk of the middle of society decides they want to burn it down

Show threadGus RivaNov 30, 2017
@mrgah That has always been a very disturbing idea for me too (here in Argentina the middle classes were traditional supporters of dictatorships), but I was never fully convinced by it. I guess I should read more contemporary history on the rise of fascism, thanks for the tip!
Show threadmrgahNov 30, 2017

@gusriva

actually, one of the nice things about Hobsbawm is that his perspective on various developments is pretty global

his book is not, I'm sure, the last word any subject (nor does he pretend as much), but his comparative arguments are interesting