Historians: Please compare the present dystopia to historic examples

[Swammerdami]

IIDB has several Members who are very competent historians. I ask them to help me to understand how present-day politics compares to past crises.

In a recent thread I compared the present Trumpist political dystopia in the U.S. to the American Civil War and the rise of Hitlerism in 1930's Germany. Are these comparisons valid?

The Civil War is easy to understand. The lion's share of rich people's wealth in the South in the 1850's was their possession of enslaved humans. If they felt this wealth was threatened, revolt was logical. Similarly one could understand Trumpism if these people thought the deeds to their homes would all be confiscated by liberals. I don't think that's a real fear, but are Trumpists worried that their way of life will be "confiscated"? U.S. sales of guns and ammunition are about $20 billion annually; a large portion of that is sold to Trump sympathizers. For many of them this is a significant portion of disposable income. Although they have (or pretend to have) a fear of confiscation, surely that's at best a minor cause of their extremism?

And Germany's economy was improving, IIUC, at the time Hitler came to power.

Trump has been diagnosed with Malignant Narcissism. I assume Adolf Hitler suffered from the same spectrum of diseases. Is the rise of a charismatic but malignant narcissist the cause of the mounting dystopia? Or is it an effect?

I'm probably not even asking the right questions. I hope the Board's historians can put the mounting dystopia -- which unfortunately is likely to spread to other countries -- in historical perspective.

 

[Politesse]

You know how cancer is often thought of by patients as an invading entity from outside the body, but physicians are keen to assert that its more like latent fault of the body, a maladaptive state that might be triggered by any number of internal and external factors? Political violence does not politely wait for a magical era or epoch to trundle along, a society can fall into disfunction at any time, and surprisingly quickly. We are never either safe nor inevitably doomed to collapse, but rather should always be on the lookout for the particular threats that our generation is facing. Because of this, historical comparisons may be useful in identifying trends in how people interact and how to better avoid crises, but I do not think it is meaningful to try and compare cultural crises as though they could be placed on some innate, essential scale. The difference between a stable, happy democracy and a wartorn, anarchic scrap heap is often as small as an assassination, a popular dictator, a terrorist attack, an invading neighbor, or a new religious group. The terrain can change very, very quickly.

 

[rousseau]

From a broader scale I think you're better comparing Modern U.S. to Ancient Rome. We're staring Trump in the face right now, but in 2900 he's going to look like a blip along a larger trajectory. The decline, but likely not collapse of the U.S. The analogy with Rome only gets you so far because we now live in a more globalized world.

What's true now that was also true then is that people at large aren't rational actors, or at least long-termists. The best you can hope for is a prolonged period of stability, and a soft landing when things start going south.

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

Fascism. For an understanding of that, read Mussolini and Giovani Gentile's "The Doctrine Of Fascism". And "The Manifesto Of The Fascist Intellectuals". Plus the early parts of Mussolini's autobiography. I have yet to find a good online collection of Mussolini's speeches.

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

Huey long. Populists like Long were pretty common in the early 20th century. Most now forgotten. Other than Long and Eugene Debbs.

 

[bilby]

Fascism has never been far from the surface, even before it was codified in the early twentieth century.

People like to think of themselves as "decent" and to imagine that the law exists to defend "us" against "them", and so cannot be turned against "us".

And as a result, they like to see the law being harshly enforced against "them".

We, the decent and law abiding, must destroy "them", lest we be destroyed by "them".

That there's literally nothing to reliably distinguish between "them" and "us" is easily forgotten. After all, "We" are fully real and individual adults with rich and important lives; While "they" are essentially indistinguishable and interchangeable cartoonish sketches of humans, who need not be given the courtesy of being treated as separate individuals at all.

 

[rousseau]

Fascism has never been far from the surface, even before it was codified in the early twentieth century.

People like to think of themselves as "decent" and to imagine that the law exists to defend "us" against "them", and so cannot be turned against "us".

And as a result, they like to see the law being harshly enforced against "them".

We, the decent and law abiding, must destroy "them", lest we be destroyed by "them".

That there's literally nothing to reliably distinguish between "them" and "us" is easily forgotten. After all, "We" are fully real and individual adults with rich and important lives; While "they" are essentially indistinguishable and interchangeable cartoonish sketches of humans, who need not be given the courtesy of being treated as separate individuals at all.

I think the scale you're looking at is how fast does human nature change. Behaviorally we've changed a lot in the past few centuries due to civilizing forces, but in terms of our genetics we likely haven't changed much in quite a while. In political science terms the U.S. or nation is what you'd call the 'political arena'. Over time the arena has changed, but the people are pretty much the same.

So you'd expect similar patterns to re-occur across time, from both politicians and populations. But the caveat is that there are a number of forces that supersede politics, and any country that's gained as much power as the U.S. has is bound to contract eventually. The question is how much / how far.

 

[Swammerdami]

I am NOT singling out bilby. I think many of the comments are ill-founded.

Fascism has never been far from the surface, even before it was codified in the early twentieth century.

Fascism is a far-right, authoritarian, ultranationalist political ideology and movement, characterized by a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social hierarchy, subordination of individual interests for the perceived good of the nation or race, and strong regimentation of society and the economy.

I'm sure there are different definitions of fascism, but is it fair to describe the rule of William the Conqueror as "fascism"? Wasn't it just replacing, through military victory, one feudal overlord with another? With the possible exception of the Cromwell aberration, did England ever succumb to "fascism"? Sure, there were would-be fascists (e.g. Oswald Mosley) but did any come close to success in the 20th century or earlier?

Whether you label it "fascism" or whatever, I don't think America has witnessed anything close to Trumpism in strength and viciousness outside the Great Civil War. Did Germany ever experience anything like Hitlerism before the 1930's?

 

[Elixir]

I agree that 1930s Germany is the closest recent example to 2020s America but don’t infer from that, that a nuclear WWIII is on our doorstep. It’s either already happening or has morphed into a new form, where tech-enhance culture warfare is replacing conventional warfare as means of gaining/maintaining autocratic power.

IMHO the oscillation rate has to do simply with generational memory. Few people know more than a few stories about their great great grandparents. Today’s 20 or 30 something’s great great grandparents may have fought in WWII … the sheer evil of Hitler’s regime never touched them.

 

[bilby]

I am NOT singling out bilby. I think many of the comments are ill-founded.

Fascism has never been far from the surface, even before it was codified in the early twentieth century.

Fascism is a far-right, authoritarian, ultranationalist political ideology and movement, characterized by a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social hierarchy, subordination of individual interests for the perceived good of the nation or race, and strong regimentation of society and the economy.

I'm sure there are different definitions of fascism, but is it fair to describe the rule of William the Conqueror as "fascism"? Wasn't it just replacing, through military victory, one feudal overlord with another? With the possible exception of the Cromwell aberration, did England ever succumb to "fascism"? Sure, there were would-be fascists (e.g. Oswald Mosley) but did any come close to success in the 20th century or earlier?

Whether you label it "fascism" or whatever, I don't think America has witnessed anything close to Trumpism in strength and viciousness outside the Great Civil War. Did Germany ever experience anything like Hitlerism before the 1930's?

The ideas and ideals were always embraced by a large minority of people; It wasn't until the rather strange idea of government by public opinion (universal, or at least widespread, suffrage) took hold that that minority felt empowered to take charge.

In an absolute monarchy, the only political option for the majority of people, regardless of their opinions, is loyalty to the crown. A few might instead plot revolution and treason, but proto-fascist thinkers are unlikely to do so, as absolute monarchy is typically fairly well aligned with their ideology. Such revolutionaries are more likely to be supporters of a rival claimant to the throne, or of secession from the larger body to form a smaller kingdom. Variations in the form of government weren't really considered until the early experiment of the English Commonwealth in the Seventeenth century, and even then, it was an absolute monarchy in all but name. It took the French and US revolutions to establish the idea that people could choose not just their leaders, but also the forms and objectives of their governments.

Nevertheless, human nature remains the same, and while fascism couldn't flourish in its modern form, the fundamental principles were always popular.

 

[rousseau]

I am NOT singling out bilby. I think many of the comments are ill-founded.

Fascism has never been far from the surface, even before it was codified in the early twentieth century.

Fascism is a far-right, authoritarian, ultranationalist political ideology and movement, characterized by a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social hierarchy, subordination of individual interests for the perceived good of the nation or race, and strong regimentation of society and the economy.

I'm sure there are different definitions of fascism, but is it fair to describe the rule of William the Conqueror as "fascism"? Wasn't it just replacing, through military victory, one feudal overlord with another? With the possible exception of the Cromwell aberration, did England ever succumb to "fascism"? Sure, there were would-be fascists (e.g. Oswald Mosley) but did any come close to success in the 20th century or earlier?

Whether you label it "fascism" or whatever, I don't think America has witnessed anything close to Trumpism in strength and viciousness outside the Great Civil War. Did Germany ever experience anything like Hitlerism before the 1930's?

What's happening in the U.S. right now can be both unprecedented and a re-occurring trend at the same time. The U.S. has never seen a historical moment quite like this one, but also politicians like Trump and Desantis can be common.

I don't know American history well enough to compare with previous periods but I don't think you're going to get an exact analogy.

 

[BH]

In my opinion lots of the populace are simple. They see problems simply and follow a politician who promises what seems to be simple answers.

 

[lpetrich]

Biologist and historian Peter Turchin, and several others, have proposed a "structural-demographic" theory of history, where the population is roughly divided into commoners and elites, and where history goes in a cycle of integrative and disintegrative phases.

• Integrative - centralized, unified elites, strong state, order, stability -- wars of conquest against neighbors
  • Expansion (Growth) - population increases
  • Stagflation (Compression) - population levels off, elites increase
• Disintegrative - decentralized, divided elites, weak state, disorder, instability -- civil wars
  • Crisis (State Breakdown) - population declines, elites continue, lots of strife
  • Depression - population stays low, civil wars, elites get pruned
• Intercycle - if it takes time to form a strong state

I'd gone into detail in previous threads, noting its application to ancient Rome, medieval to early modern Britain, France, and Russia, and Imperial China. I've extended the theory to the Byzantine Empire.

During disintegrative phases, violence is usually not continuous but in bursts, in two-generation "father and son" cycles of roughly 50 - 60 years. One generation fights and its successor generation is not willing to fight, whether it is from problems being resolved or from not willing to go though what fighting involves. That generation's successor generation then fights, from problems re-emerging or from having less memory of the previous fighting.

Though this theory involves social classes, it nevertheless departs from Marxist theorizing, that it's all elites vs. commoners. In disintegrative phases, the elite splits into rival factions that fight each other, and some of these factions may recruit commoners to get support. This fighting continues until elites are sufficiently pruned, from their killing each other, going into exile, or becoming demoted to commoner status.

 

[pood]

Biologist and historian Peter Turchin, and several others, have proposed a "structural-demographic" theory of history, where the population is roughly divided into commoners and elites, and where history goes in a cycle of integrative and disintegrative phases.

• Integrative - centralized, unified elites, strong state, order, stability -- wars of conquest against neighbors
  • Expansion (Growth) - population increases
  • Stagflation (Compression) - population levels off, elites increase
• Disintegrative - decentralized, divided elites, weak state, disorder, instability -- civil wars
  • Crisis (State Breakdown) - population declines, elites continue, lots of strife
  • Depression - population stays low, civil wars, elites get pruned
• Intercycle - if it takes time to form a strong state

I'd gone into detail in previous threads, noting its application to ancient Rome, medieval to early modern Britain, France, and Russia, and Imperial China. I've extended the theory to the Byzantine Empire.

During disintegrative phases, violence is usually not continuous but in bursts, in two-generation "father and son" cycles of roughly 50 - 60 years. One generation fights and its successor generation is not willing to fight, whether it is from problems being resolved or from not willing to go though what fighting involves. That generation's successor generation then fights, from problems re-emerging or from having less memory of the previous fighting.

Though this theory involves social classes, it nevertheless departs from Marxist theorizing, that it's all elites vs. commoners. In disintegrative phases, the elite splits into rival factions that fight each other, and some of these factions may recruit commoners to get support. This fighting continues until elites are sufficiently pruned, from their killing each other, going into exile, or becoming demoted to commoner status.

I think the above ignores climate change. It turns out that sudden climate swings were responsible for the breakup of a lot of civilizations. Even the Roman Empire, on this thesis, was at least in part negatively affected by climate change. All those climate changes were local, however. Today it’s worldwide and that betokens a worldwide civilizational collapse.

 

[pood]

I think today’s MAGAts are refighting the Civil War. Today has a very 1850s feel to it. Just yesterday another loudmouth airhead on Faux Noise actually called for a second civil, announcing flatly that “elections don’t work“ — by which he must mean that his guys don’t win very often anymore. The Rethuglican Party has lost the national popular vore in 7 of the past 8 elections, and won the presidency twice despite that only because of the idiotic Electoral College.

 

[lpetrich]

Peter Turchin has turned his attentions to US history, where he finds a somewhat faster cycle than in these preindustrial societies. I've mentioned him in several previous threads, so search for his name on this site.

Peter Turchin Ages of Discord - Peter Turchin and History tells us where the wealth gap leads | Aeon Essays and Welcome To The ‘Turbulent Twenties’ - NOEMA

He uses a variety of statistics:

• Ordinary-people well-being (PWB): how tall people grew (good), how late they married at (bad), how much their income was of the GDP per capita (good), and fraction of the population that is foreign-born (bad).
• Elite overproduction (EOP): the ratio of the highest fortune to the GDP per capita, elite-university tuition to the GDP per capita, and the amount of strife among elites, measured as political polarization.
• The amount of social and political violence: terrorism, lynching, and riots.

He finds a cycle that is faster than the preindustrial cycles, which were typically 3 to 4 centuries. But the US has experienced only 1 1/2 of those cycles.

• The Founding
• Integrative
• 1820's - Era of Good Feelings - PWB high, EOP low, violence low
• Disintegrative
• 1890's - Gilded Age - PWB low, EOP high, violence high
• Integrative
• 1950's - Fifties Era - PWB high, EOP low, violence high
• Disintegrative

We are now an era of low PWB, high EOP, and high violence, it seems.

The US cycle has a fathers-and-sons cycle of spikes of sociopolitical violence, with spikes around 1870, 1920, and 1970, though not around 1820. That means that we are due for another spike.

PT used "fathers and sons" and I've continued to use it, because politics has been a mostly male game for a long time, though in recent decades, that term is becoming an anachronism from plenty of women entering politics, not only in the left, center-left, and center, but also the center-right (Margaret Thatcher, Angela Merkel), and right (Marjorie Taylor Greene, Marine Le Pen).

 

[lpetrich]

Peter Turchin's book "Ages of Discord" I find very interesting. It has lots of interesting observations, including something that seems totally absurd at first sight: quantifying patriotism. The book contains two measures of patriotism:

People that counties are named after. Pre-independence states often have counties named after colonial-era heroes, counties like Anne Arundel County in Maryland, named after an English noblewoman. In the early 19th cy., counties were often named after national heroes like George Washington and Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin, while in the late 19th cy., that was rarer.

Visits to nationalistically significant sites, like George Washington's Mount Vernon estate and the Statue of Liberty.

The book also notes that many late 19th cy. industrialists *loved* the hordes of immigrants that came in from Europe, because they were very good for breaking strikes. But they started getting restless, and in the mid-1920's, the politicians decided to heavily restrict immigration.

The book also notes some early 20th cy. ways of avoiding elite overproduction, like the American Medical Association's restricting how many people can become doctors, and elite universities keeping out Jews.

 

[lpetrich]

I will now combine Peter Turchin's work with the cycles in  Cyclical theory (United States history)

Arthurs Schlesinger I and II proposed that the US alternates between two kinds of eras:

Liberal	Conservative
Wrongs of the Many	Rights of the Few
Increase Democracy	Contain Democracy
Public Purpose	Private Interest
Human Rights	Property Rights

Samuel Huntington proposed that the US has bursts of "creedal passion" for getting the US closer to the "American Creed" of government: "In terms of American beliefs, government is supposed to be egalitarian, participatory, open, noncoercive, and responsive to the demands of individuals and groups. Yet no government can be all these things and still remain a government."

I've also included periods of race-relation upheaval, and which party system, a set of characteristic platforms and constituencies for the two parties -- always two parties.

From	To	Length	Type	PtSys	CrdPas	Race	PT	Name
1776	1788	12	Lib		CrdPas			Revolution, Constitution
1788	1800	12	Con	1				Hamilton
1800	1812	12	Lib	1			>	Jefferson
1812	1829	17	Con	1 (2)			>	Good Feelings
1829	1841	12	Lib	2	CrdPas		>, +++	Jackson
1841	1861	20	Con	2 (3)			+++, <	Slaveowner Dominance
1861	1869	8	Lib	3		Race	<	Civil War, Reconstruction
1869	1901	32	Con	3 (4)			<, ---	Gilded Age
1901	1919	18	Lib	4	CrdPas		---, >	Progressive
1919	1931	12	Con	4			>	Roaring Twenties
1931	1947	16	Lib	5			>	New Deal
1947	1962	15	Con	5			>, +++	Fifties (Good Feelings II)
1962	1978	16	Lib	5 (6)	CrdPas	Race	+++, <	Sixties
1978			Con	(5) 6			<	Gilded Age II

 

[lpetrich]

I'm perplexed at why AS I & II called the Jefferson era a liberal one. That's rather obvious for all the others, however.

President Andrew Jackson combined the populism of Bernie Sanders and the ethnonationalism of Donald Trump. In fact, he seems to me to have taken populism a bit too far. He shut down a major bank, the Second Bank of the United States, because he considered banks dangerously economic elitist. He liked to appoint his friends to government positions, on the populist principle that anyone should be capable of doing those jobs. He even let a lot of people into the White House for an inaugural party, people who made a big mess of the place.


Liberal phases end in society-scale activism burnout. It takes a *lot* of effort to do activism in the amount necessary to make major changes, and one might get exhausted after awhile, especially if the activism seems to have had some big successes. Being a victim of one's success is what happened to the black civil-rights movement and to the first wave of feminism after it got women the right to vote. Feminism went so thoroughly kaput that when it revived in the 1960's, feminists had to rediscover their predecessors of half a century ago.

Several liberal periods have ended with unfinished business:

• Civil War Era
  • Reconstruction was destroyed by a violent counterrevolution called Redemption.
• Progressive Era
  • Feminist activism collapsed after getting women the right to vote.
  • Black civil-rights activism collapsed, though despite the founding of the NAACP back then, it barely got started.
• New Deal Era
  • FDR's economic Second Bill of Rights
  • Harry Truman failed to establish national health insurance
  • Black civil rights did not progress beyond HT's desegregation of the armed forces
• Sixties Era
  • Despite their successes, civil-rights activists were less than successful about broader societal features.
  • The Equal Rights Amendment was almost, but not quite, ratified.
  • Abortion was legalized nationwide by Roe vs. Wade, but it became the subject of a major culture war.
  • Renewable-energy development slowed down.
  • Conversion to the metric system of units became stalled.

 

[lpetrich]

Conservative phases end because of accumulation of unsolved social problems. Society's elites do not do much to try to solve them, and they may claim that there is not much they can do to solve them, and even that those problems are not really problems. Slaveowners did not consider slavery a social problem, for instance.

We seem to be in such a late stage of a conservative phase, with the numerous problems that we suffer from. Gilded Age II has already lasted 45 years, longer than the original Gilded Age, about 32 years.

Over my life, I've experienced several events that seemed like the beginning of the end for Gilded Age II, only to be badly disappointed.

The first of them was the election of Bill Clinton. But after being elected, he quickly wimped out and cringed in fear of the Republican Party. He came up with a gruesomely complicated healthcare plan that he didn't adequately explain, let alone hype like crazy, and it failed.

Then the election of Barack Obama. He had great rhetoric about hope and change, but he turned out to be Bill Clinton II. He was more successful with a healthcare plan, however. It was originally a Republican one, a close imitation of Heritagecare, Chafeecare, and Romneycare, and if one looks back far enough, Bismarckcare. Mitt Romney himself recommended imitating Romneycare in an op-ed that he once wrote. But the Republicans soon developed a nasty hate-on for it, claiming that it features "death panels".

In the aftermath of the economic crisis of 2008, he failed to bail out ordinary people, preferring to bail out bankers instead rather than investigate them for fraud.

In early 2011 was a revolt against Scott Walker in Wisconsin, but it failed.

Later that year, the Occupy movement started in a park near Wall Street in New York City. It soon got numerous imitators, but city authorities shut down most of the camps after a few months, and the organizers of these camps failed to start new ones.