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This is my first contribution to this forum. Please let me know if anything concerning the style and content of my post clashes with the etiquette here. This text became far longer than I had initially planned, and I simplified a lot for the sake of brevity, so tell me if this is unreadable or if any shortcut I made was inappropriate, misleading or reductive.
The historiography of Nazi Germany – and, by extension, the way we historically situate and contextualise Fascism and the Holocaust – appears to me at first glance as an extremely rare example of historical actors impressing a specific, directed and lasting reading unto an event successfully. By this I refer to the conscious decision of the Allied powers to organize the Nuremberg Trials not only as a necessary legal consequence of Germany’s defeat, but to equally structure the proceedings as an epochal “History Lesson” for present and future generations.
As such, the trials aimed at 2 outcomes, running paralel while remaining distinct in scope and function : on the one hand, dismantling any vestiges of Nazi power by punishing the leadership for its criminality and warmongering, on the other, establishing a clear narrative of how and why the Nazi movement gained power, and how and why it abused this power for atrocious wrongdoings. The second outcome was embedded with the pivotal function of establishing a lasting definition of what is “bad” within Western society after the chaotic political turmoil of the Interwar periods – a definition that became nigh-universally accepted (at least on the rhetorical level) across the entire Western political spectrum following the trials. This is what I mean by “extremely rare example of historical actors impressing a specific, directed and lasting reading unto an event successfully”: almost all attempts to craft a historical narrative when undertaken by actors contemporaneous to the events fail to take root in the desired manner.
Think of the monumental propaganda effort launched by the combined power of all European monarchies after Napoleon’s final defeat to posit his rise and power, and the French Revolution that preceeded it, as an abominable fluke upsetting the natural order of society as it had existed for the past millennia. The wanton violence of the Revolutionary Terror and the vast slaughter of Napoleon’s wars were presented as the logical consequence of abandoning the hierarchical order of divinely ordained monarchic societies, and were presented as a cautionary tale against political upheaval. The actors of the Congress of Vienna were able to suppress counter-readings of the French Revolution and Napoleon for the 3 ensuing decades, mainly by means of a burgeoning police state and an intense propaganda push towards domesticity and social harmony that heavily shamed and discouraged political discussions both in public and private. Despite this, the Pandora’s box opened by France in 1789 (which can be resumed as “the world, and the societies in it, are something we actively make, and can thus actively make differently if we so desire”) could not be closed again and the growing demand for new sociopolitical paradigms could only be slowed, not stopped entirely. That the “History Lesson” taught at the Congress of Vienna in 1815 had failed to take root became apparent by the middle of the 19th Century – liberalism, nationalism, socialism were on the road to full normalisation (with certain caveats depending on social class), and France had willingly resurrected Napoleon from the dead by electing his nephew as their leader, largely cheering him on when he quickly moved to resurrect the Empire itself. The kings present at the Congress of Vienna in 1815 believed they were consolidating their natural power after an irregular disturbance – today we see the event as the Beginning Of The End for the old order of monarchic, divinely ordained societies. Today, their “History Lesson” is absolutely obsolete : rather, the exact opposite narrative is now the dominant historical reading.
Back to Nuremberg :
Despite the trial itself not running as smoothly as planned and initially garnering a mixed, if not negative reception (the defence pointed out that many charges levied against Nazi Germany also applied to the Colonial powers present among the Allies, and Göring in particular noted the irony of being accused of illegaly seizing power and dismantling Weimar Germany by America, France, and the Soviet Union, all countries that came into being by violent upheaval against the legal order and whos entire national identity revolved around said upheaval), the ensuing Cold War and the economic miracle of post-war Europe rapidly erased these concerns and led to a progressive consolidation of the trials central takeaways : namely, that the ideological foundations of National Socialism – a term at this point used synonymously with Fascism – were irreonciliable with any meaningful definition of morality or freedom, and that the consequences of its rise to power – Totalitarianism, Oppression, War, and, most importantly, Genocide – were inevitable elements of the ideology itself. Here we arrive at the rhetorical post-war consensus that still dominates the way we view politics to this day, in which what is politically “bad” is essentially whatever seems closest to Fascism. In order to understand the total narrative victory of the Nuremberg Trials, consider that both Ukraine and Russia routinely accuse each other of being led by Nazis – somewhat strange when we consider that the Nazis considered Slavs as a subhuman race only fit for slavery, and that Ukraine’s President is literally jewish. In truth, if Zelenskyy or Putin were actual Nazis, sincerely believing in Hitler’s vision of the world, they would both either kill themselves out of self-loathing for being subhumans, or seek to become enslaved vassals of the superior Aryan nations who by virtue of biological superiority should be their natural leaders. Obviously, neither Zelenskyy nor Putin believe or want any of that, because they are not Nazis by any serious definition of the term. What they are actually doing by accusing each other is saying “History has taught us that bad politics lead to the worst crimes and barbarism, and my opponent is a bad politician, thus any means taken against him are fair game since they seek to avoid the most calamitous of all outcomes”. What’s interesting is that this reveals a shared consensus on both sides of the conflict – there is a line dividing what is acceptable politics from what is unacceptable politics, and both agree on Fascism defining the latter.
We can see the same dynamic in pretty much every political polarisation in the West – woke activism is Fascist, covid-induced lockdowns are Fascist, deporting illegal immigrants is Fascist, hate speech laws are Fascist, free speech absolutism is Fascist, etc. Funny to think that in times of such extreme polarisation we actually rhetorically agree more than ever on what is politically bad!
The problem with this development, of course, is that we have completely diluted the meaning of the term and with it any real understanding of what Nazi Germany actually was and what “Fascism” actually means. Starting with the most glaring issue : the Nazis never once called themselves Fascist, nor did they see National Socialism as a Fascist project. As far as Fascism can be defined in a sincere and historically rigorous manner, it was a specific post-WWI project led by Italian ex-Socialists and Bourgeois reactionaries to unite an economically and culturally disparate country roiled by poverty, sectionalism, and class conflict (remember that Italy as a country had barely existed for 60 years at the end of World War I and was composed of subgroups that often had next to nothing in common aside from a shared Roman Catholic faith – not even speaking the same language or belonging to the same ethnicity) by establishing a narrative of “national rebirth” in which individual markers of identity were to be sublimated into a collective force that, by nature of its united will acting as one cohesive unit, would lead to a prosperous and ordered society unmarred by ingroup/outgroup conflict. The symbol and namesake of Fascism, the ancient Roman “Fasces”, is a group of sticks bundled into one : individually, any twig can be snapped, but bound together as one, they are unbreakable. This symbol itself is of course also the official coat of arms of France today and is carved into the Halls of Congress in Washington.
Now, let me be clear that I’m not attempting an Apology of Italian Fascism, nor are my personal political opinions relevant to what I’m trying to get at. What I do want to state clearly is that in the one, single, actual example of a self-declared Fascist state in History (I’m not counting Franco’s clerical authoritarianism, nor Hirohito’s ultra-monarchism, nor Dollfuß’ half-baked pseudo-medievalist corporatism, nor any ultranationalist ethnic movement in the Balkans, nor Hitler’s ethnic Darwinism as examples of Fascism, since their political models developed largely independantly of Mussolini’s and only share certain principles that can also arguably be found in the Stalinist Soviet Union, Revolutionary France, or the British Empire), we have very few elements of what the average consensus definition of Fascism holds – as a matter of fact, most of the “consensus-fascist” policies of Fascist Italy were reluctantly adopted by Mussolini in order to strengthen his tactical alliance with Hitler after having been alienated and ostracised from other Western powers following his colonialist conquests (Italy was late to the party; had it invaded Ethiopia half a century earlier, no European power would have cared much as they were all doing the same) – by all intents and purposes, Mussolini saw antisemitism and racial supremacy as a German oddity completely foreign to Italian (and by extension ancient Roman) history, allowed Fascist Jews to occupy high political positions, and suggested “Italianisation” of conquered territories’ population by cultural and ideological means. Suffice to say, racial classification, extermination camps, antisemitic progroms and ethnic genocides are completely absent from Mussolini’s vision of Fascism and from Fascist Italy before the country backed itself into a geopolitical corner and reluctanctly agreed to emulate certain policies in order to appease Hitler, most likely expecting this to be a passing necessity until the Allied powers would sue for peace. By 1942, however, the tables were starting to turn on the Axis powers, and Mussolini was removed from office a year later so that the remaining Fascist leaders could broker a peace agreement with the Allies, not realizing that it was far too late for the Fascist State to survive after any eventual capitulation.
Enough with Italy. Back to the topic at hand : the “History Lesson” of Nuremberg and its continued narrative domination of Western discourse. I have noticed something interesting in the past decade of rising discontent with the way our Western societies are organised and run culturally, politically and economically: after roughly 80 years of brute-forcing Fascism and Nazis as “the one thing we all agree to be the opposite of” by institutions, parties and cultural tastemakers, these words have acquired an almost cosmic power – Nazism/Fascism is no longer the precise result of a certain historical context and situation (disenchantment with modernity, the trauma of WW1, the humiliation and economic misery wrought upon Germany by the Treaty of Versailles and the stock market collapse of 1929, enlightened scientific theories of racial classification, rapid technological advance, a poorly and hastily written Weimar constitution that most Germans never identified with from the get-go, etc.), but a sort of Original Sin or ambiant Samsara, a dormant evil that can awaken at any moment and cause the exact same barbarity as it did almost a century ago. This quasi-metaphysical perspective is of course mystification to the highest degree and precludes any real understanding of how historical trends take shape. Equally frustrating is the recurrent use of quotes by German intellectuals and politicians of the Weimar era saying “if only we had done X or Y, none of this would have happened”, as if Weimar Germany would have suddendly turned into a functioning society if only someone had killed Hitler as a baby or kept him locked up after the Beer Hall Putsch. Both this perspective and the vision of Fascism as Samsara engage in the same mystifcation. In truth, Weimar Germany was never functional, nor was it accepted by a critical mass of German society, and one can easily imagine alternative scenarios in which the country falls to a Monarchist coup, Communist insurrection, or some non-Nazi variant of Völkisch German supremacist ideology.
As such, we have become societies that neurotically conceive of Fascism as a kind of Sword of Damocles or Ragnarok-level event, ready to return at any moment, if not even destined to return by some kind of teleology of democratic crisis. And here is the craziest aspect of all of this : this actually might be true, albeit not at all for the reasons one might think. By defining itself as “everything except Fascist”, ruling institutions, parties and ideologies have actually strengthened the cosmic power of Fascism considerably – if crisis after crisis remains unsolved, if civil society no longer feels heard by its elites, if there is widespread distrust and contempt for institutions, if the standards of living and public safety keep declining, all while everyone in a position of power and influence keeps reminding you they are the opposite of Fascism – well, that makes Fascism pretty attractive, doesn’t it? In a way, it almost makes it the only alternative, since everyone in power – no matter if Social Democrat, classical liberal, conservative nationalist or libertarian tech CEO - and thus ostensibly responsible for the pauperisation, uncertainity and cynicism resounding across Western society today, will all be quick to remind you that the one thing they are not is Fascist. In France’s parliamentary elections this past summer, far-left Insoumis and neoliberal Macronists entered into tactical alliances in some areas in order to block a far-right victory in their First-Past-The-Post voting system – after years of calling each other the worst insults and claiming the other was responsible for much of France’s severe problems, be it rising poverty, crime, mass immigration, etc. Apparently, all these presumed existential differences became irrelevant the moment a presumed Fascist (I don’t think the RN is Fascist, but mainstream French institutions largely do) was the alternative. If I were a struggling Frenchman experiencing progressive impoverishment and fear, I would probably take such alliances as proof that there are only 2 meaningful political options – the Status Quo, and the Fascists.
In conclusion : perhaps the “History Lesson” of the Nuremberg Trials is closer to that of the Congress of Vienna than it seems at first glance – perhaps, by spending 3 decades saying “we are the opposite of Napoleon and of Republicanism”, the Monarchies of Europe made these spectres of the past far more powerful than they would have been otherwise. Perhaps they underestimated how much resenmtent had festered against them, much the same way resentment against our elite is festering within our societies today, making whatever is the opposite of them far more attractive than it would be in a vacuum. Already, we see figures like Musk toying with the Nazi salute – not because Musk believes in Aryan Lebensraum, but because Nazism has become counterculture, an expression of rebellion against the system and its increasingly hard to believe, self-serving and contradictory claims of morality and virtue. If Fascism returns, it won’t be like the original Fascism because it can’t be – we will never be in 1918 again, we don’t have a meaningful shared understanding of what Fascism even is, and our historical situation is our own. But it might well harness the rhetorical power we have given Fascism as the only believable way of saying “we are the opposite of them. They say so themselves. And you hate them.”
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