Weimar Germany and the Fatal Flaw

Today's left is making a familiar mistake in the fight against fascism

I don’t know how familiar Billie Eilish is with the history of Weimar Germany. Perhaps she has given long consideration to the republic created following Germany’s defeat in the First World War. Or perhaps not.

I’ll assume not.

In any event, Billie Eilish’s anti-ICE message at the Grammies — “no one is illegal on stolen land” — reminded me of Weimar Germany. For a complex reason.

I’ve never been a fan of this-is-like-Germany-before-the-Nazis references because they are almost universally overwrought or misinformed. But Weimar Germany had a fascism problem. We have a fascism problem. Most people in Weimar Germany were not fascists. Most people today are not fascists. Yet Weimar Germany succumbed to fascism when the Nazis took power in 1933.

It seems reasonable now that we include Weimar Germany among our analytical tools.

So I’m going to review some basic history of Weimar Germany. Then I’m going to show how Billie Eilish’s comment is typical of a stupid mistake many people on the left are making. They aren’t the first to make this mistake. Many on the left in Weimar Germany made the same mistake, and in doing so, they did something they absolutely did not intend.

They helped create the Nazi dictatorship.

Friedrich Ebert, SPD leader and first president of Weimar Germany.

By September, 1918, General Erich Ludendorff, effectively the supreme commander of the German military, had become convinced the Great War was lost. But rather than simply call on the Kaiser and his government to accept the defeat, he got the Kaiser to bring the main political parties in the Reichstag into the executive. The biggest of the parties was the Social Democratic Party (SPD). Many socialists were reluctant but the SPD leader, Friedrich Ebert, convinced them, and a new government included SPD ministers for the first time, along with ministers from liberal parties.

Ludendorff had not suddenly become convinced of the virtues of democracy. In part, he hoped a democratic government would get better peace terms. But principally he wanted to bring socialists and liberals into the government in order to have them sign the documents of surrender and take the blame for the defeat. His stratagem worked brilliantly. The new ministers signed the armistice documents and the political right immediately started promoting the “stab in the back” myth — Dolchstoßlegende— that the German military had not been defeated on the battlefield but instead had been stabbed in the back by liberals and socialists. (And Jews, of course. Whenever there’s blame to go around, the Jews always get a full bowl.)

A typically subtle cartoon illustrating the Dolchstoßlegende.

Chaos ensued as would-be revolutionaries — mostly far-left socialists who saw the SPD as traitors to socialism — tried to seize power. The SPD-led government was forced to make common cause with “Free Corps,” independent bands of mostly hardcore nationalist soldiers, to hold the line. As Berlin was wracked with street battles, politicians went to the German town of Weimar — famous as the home of Goethe and thus an expression of the best in German civilization — to negotiate the constitution. (This is the origin of the term “Weimar Germany,” although it wouldn’t be widely used until long after Weimar Germany was history.) SPD leader Friedrich Ebert was subsequently elected the first President of the republic thanks less to widespread popular support than a perception that these moderate socialists would best be able to stop a Soviet-style revolution.

What followed was years of turmoil, coup attempts, and inflation. It culminated in the horrific year of 1923, when the Ruhr was occupied by French soldiers as punishment for Germany’s failure to pay war reparations on schedule, hyperinflation exploded, and Hitler’s Nazis attempted a coup in Munich.

Miraculously, the government held off all the threats and put a halt to inflation with a new currency. Weimar Germany lived on. The next six years are often described as Weimar’s golden age, when relative economic stability and growth returned and culture flourished. Then came 1930, the Great Depression, a plunging economy, soaring unemployment, the return of the Nazis from the political fringes, and a rapid series of crises culminating in the appointment of Adolf Hitler as chancellor in 1933. Which was swiftly followed by Nazi dictatorship.

You need to know this background to understand the Weimar political scene.

On the far left were the radical socialists who became known as Communists. They were Marxists who believed a proletarian takeover was inevitable and they should hasten the creation of a Soviet-style government with violent revolution. The Communists rejected nationalism. And they rejected Weimar, seeing the new liberal democracy as a sham in which capitalists held the real power. This illegitimate state, they believed, must be swept aside.

On the far right were several ultra-nationalist political parties, all of which also saw the new republic as illegitimate. The more moderate among them wanted the return of the Kaiser and the Kaiser’s Germany. Others had more radical visions, including Hitler’s National Socialists. But they all agreed, like the Communists, that this new liberal democracy was illegitimate and must be swept aside.

In the middle were three factions which acted as the pillars of the Weimar Republic.

One was the Centre Party. As the name suggests, it was moderate. But the Centre Party represented Catholics, and Catholicism, not liberal democracy, was its primary concern. When the Catholic Church negotiated terms with Mussolini’s fascists in Italy, the Centre Party drifted to the right. Even before the Great Depression, many in the party had concluded that what was best for Catholics was the strong hand of an authoritarian, nationalist government.

The second faction were centrist liberals in the form of the left-centre German Democratic Party (DDP) and the right-centre German People’s Party (DVP). These were the closest thing Weimar had to true liberal democrats. Both saw their support steadily decline as the years passed. In 1928, the DDP defected to the right and, in effect, dissolved. The DVP was founded and led by the brilliant Gustav Stresemann. It, too, suffered declining support. And dangerously for a one-man party, Stresemann’s health was terrible. In 1929, he suffered strokes and died at the age of 51.

The third and most important pillar of Weimar was the SPD. The Social Democrats often described themselves as the republic’s founders. And yet they were ambivalent, because, at the heart of the party, was a contradiction: While these moderate socialists were evolving into what we would now recognize as modern European social democrats — who support free markets but also want an active, redistributionist government to equalize society and ensure social justice — they were not there yet. In that era, they still espoused the whole Marxist doctrine of inevitable proletarian rule and the abolition of private capital. In doctrinal terms, they agreed with the Communists; they only disagreed about the wisdom of armed revolution as a way to speed the proletarian paradise into existence.

This left the SPD in an impossible position. The party was the backbone of Weimar Germany, but Weimar Germany was a capitalist society with free markets, so it was anathema to Marxism, or at best a way-station on the path to socialism. How could the SPD lead a nation that its own doctrine expressly opposed? One solution may have been to abandon Marxist doctrine and become social democrats as we now know them. But they couldn’t do that because that would mean jettisoning much of the party’s working-class support. So the SPD struggled along, burdened by the weight of this great contradiction.

As complex as Weimar’s politics were, they came down to something simple and devastating: On the extremes of both the left and right, political parties constantly schemed to destroy and replace a new republic they considered wholly illegitimate. In the middle were parties that supported the new state but whose support was compromised in different ways.

In Weimar Germany, no political party was a strong, passionate, consistent defender of the new republic. There was no proud, patriotic political party making the full-throated case for liberal democracy.

The extremes to the left and right were full of passionate intensity. The centre was weak and compromised.

The centre could not hold.

People sometimes make the mistake of thinking that because Weimar had good years between 1924 and 1930, democracy was strengthening in Germany until the Great Depression struck. Not so. Even in the election of 1928, which coincided with the happiest time in the Weimar era, the pro-Weimar parties failed to win a majority of seats.

Even if the economy had not been devastated by the Great Depression, Weimar would likely not have survived. It had far too many enemies. And far too few defenders.

I really wish there were no connection between this ancient history and today. But I’m afraid there is. And it’s not just the whiff of fascism in the air.

Billie Eilish is far from alone in referring to the United States as “stolen land.” That sort of language is now routine in left-wing circles that have embraced fashionable “decolonization” ideology. And that’s true beyond the United States, too.

In both Canada and the United States, it is increasingly common for left-wingers to replace the name of the country with “Turtle Island,” a term that comes from the mythologies of some indigenous peoples of north-eastern North America. Depending on who is using it, this is not merely an interesting cultural reference. It is a political act, the replacement of a “colonial” name as part of a “decolonization” that intends to erase “colonial” institutions. (The fact that “Canada” comes originally from “kanata,” an Iroquoian word for “village” doesn’t save it from the taint of colonialism, apparently.) Underscoring the point, some left-wing activists will even say something like “so-called Canada” if circumstances compel them to name the appalling legacy of colonialism that is my country.

Much the same process is well advanced in Australia and New Zealand. Cancel national holidays, they say. Cancel national celebrations. “No pride in genocide,” goes the slogan.

For many — not all — of those pushing such slogans and changes, the point is precisely to delegitimize “colonial” states. That’s what “no one is illegal on stolen land” does. It says these states were illegitimate from the beginning and they still are, so they have no authority to decide who can and cannot be admitted to this “stolen land.”

It’s important to note there is a wide spectrum of views at work among people who support “decolonization,” with many using the term to describe a process of reconciliation intended to lead to a healthier relationship between indigenous peoples and the wider society and state. That’s a much more moderate and constructive version. But some are far more radical. They see decolonization literally, as a process of handing over land and sovereignty, like the British leaving India. To them, the modern nations and governments of the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand are flatly illegitimate and cannot be redeemed. “Decolonization is not a metaphor,” as the saying goes. It’s also important to note that this language and thinking is not some obscure oddity on the academic fringe. My son goes to a suburban Ottawa high school where the class was recently instructed by the teacher — in a mandatory English class that replaced Shakespeare and the usual literature with a full year of exclusively indigenous material — that the Canadian population is composed of indigenous people and “settlers,” and those students who are not indigenous should refer to themselves as “settlers.” What Billie Eilish said was quite radical. But it reflects something fairly widespread in popular culture.

As the reader will have gathered, I’m not a fan of this thinking. But personally, I’m not terribly fussed about it. Democratic discourse can and should contain a wide range of views, including some extreme views, but the rough edges of extremism tend to get worn off in the great democratic rock tumbler. Let a hundred flowers bloom, to use an inapt metaphor.

But let me put an asterisk on that: I would not be terribly fussed about this in normal times. But these are — do I have to say this? — not normal times.

Across the Western world, we see growing extremist movements on the right. To varying degrees they embrace closed borders and xenophobia. To varying degrees, they reject pluralism. To varying degrees, they embrace not only nationalism but ethnic nationalism, meaning they embrace not only pride in one’s country but pride in a country whose membership is only open to those of acceptable ethnic origin.

The worst manifestation so far is in the United States. Consider Donald Trump’s immigration and refugee policies alongside his references to immigrants “poisoning” the blood of the nation. Consider J. D. Vance effectively endorsing “blood and soil” nationalism, then refusing to criticize Tucker Carlson for promoting a Nazi apologist, then pointedly refusing to disavow naked anti-Semites and Holocaust deniers at a time when outright white supremacism and neo-Naziism is on the rise in the Republican Party.

Add the morphing of ICE into modern brownshirts. The relentless trampling of the rule of law. The serial murders in the name of policing. The flamboyant militarism. The explicit embrace of a might-makes-right worldview paired with naked imperialism.

This is fascism. It is on the march and it must be stopped. Nothing is more important now.

I’m sure Billie Eilish and I agree about that. I’m sure radical “decolonization” scholars and activists would also agree. As would garden-variety social democrats. And progressives. And ordinary liberals. And neo-liberals. And old-fashioned conservatives who will have no truck or trade with fascists because they understand fascism is alien and hostile to the conservatism of an Edmund Burke or a Roger Scruton or anyone worth calling conservative.

In fact, I’m confident that most people across most of the political spectrum can agree that this modern fascism is odious and we must band together to stop it. We may not agree about much else. Or anything else, perhaps. But surely we can agree on that.

So how do we do it?

Who has two index fingers and fascist beliefs?

The first rule of fighting fascists is “don’t do anything to help the fascists.” Simple, right? One would think so.

To be blunt, Billie Eilish should send an invoice to Donald Trump for services rendered. So should every other leftist radical who denies the legitimacy of the United States, Canada, and other Western liberal democracies.

The fascists say to their audiences that everyone who isn’t on their side hates the nation and hates the patriots who love the nation. “Those people” hate our history. “Those people” hate our traditions. “Those people” want to destroy the country. “Those people” want to destroy us.

Of course they do this while running down the country at every opportunity, but intellectual consistency isn’t the point. What matters is how they frame the choice faced by the average person. In the fascist telling, an average person has only two options: You can side with us — the people who love the nation you call home, the people who say you and the nation are good, the people who say you should be proud of who you are. Or you can side with them — the people who hate this nation, who call you and your country wicked, who say you should be ashamed.

If people accept that framing, the fascists win. Hands down.

And the fascists know it. That’s why one of the few consistent elements of Donald Trump’s rhetoric and policy, in both his first administration and second, is exactly this.

Trump’s attacks on those who dare to highlight dark or shameful aspects of American history are too numerous to mention. So are his efforts to censor such references in the Smithsonian museums or anywhere else within federal purview. In place of that history, he promotes whitewashed drivel such as his “1776 Commission” and his ludicrous plan for a “National Garden of American Heroes.”

The regime has been relentless on this theme because they know it’s a winner.

The Stephen Millers are thrilled when the Billie Eilishes speak — for exactly the same reason the Nazis and other ultra-nationalists in Weimar Germany were delighted when the Communists denounced the republic and called for sweeping revolution and the erasure of nations and nationalism. To most ordinary Germans, the Communists sounded nutty or threatening or both. To the great masses of ordinary Americans today, “no one is illegal on stolen land” also sounds nutty, threatening, or both.

Cue Lee Greenwood singing “I’m proud to be an American” — and pass out the MAGA hats.

And who plays the role of the SPD in this historical analogy? Centrists and the centre-left. In the United States, that’s Democrats. In Canada, it’s Liberals and New Democrats.

Listen to them when radical decolonizers say the nation is on “stolen land,” that the nation is not legitimate, that citizens are “settlers” who should be ashamed of their country. Do they stand up and argue back? Do they insist that the legitimacy of the nation is not up for debate? Do they say that the nation, for all its faults and failings, is a remarkable achievement that has done a lot of good in the world and that citizens, whatever their background, should be proud of their country? Hardly. They may grumble about radical slogans being unhelpful “messaging.” But mostly, they go quiet.

That’s exactly what happened after Billie Eilish made her comment. Republicans were gleeful and played it up for all it was worth. Democrats mumbled.

The problem is that — like the SPD and the Communists — at least some Democrats share an awkward ideological overlap with the decolonization radicals. Others don’t. In private, they hate this stuff. But to publicly denounce it? That is politically fraught. They will be attacked from the left. And so, whether from ideological agreement or political calculation, the centre-left and centre holds its tongue.

And please note, again, this is not only an American thing. The exemplar of this phenomenon is Justin Trudeau, the former Canadian prime minister. In 2017, Trudeau managed to preside over Canada’s 150th anniversary without ever mentioning Canadian history in general or the events of 150 years earlier in particular — because to mention history risked expressing pride in the colonial creation known as Canada and invite the wrath of the radicals. In fact, silence about history was a consistent theme of Trudeau’s almost ten years in power. His only real mentions of Canadian history came when he issued yet another apology for some past wrong.

As a result of this dynamic, what’s missing today is exactly what was missing in Weimar Germany: A political party that is a strong, passionate, consistent defender of the state and nation. A party that answers ethnic nationalism with civic nationalism. A patriotic party prepared to stand up and make the case for diversity and liberal democracy — and to do it full-throated, with heart, passion, and pride.

That lack doomed Weimar. It could doom us.

Given the urgency of the situation, the pragmatic solution is for those on the far left who want to indict society and call for revolution to zip it. Denounce ICE, sure, but drop the “stolen land” stuff. One fight at a time — and the fight that must come first is the fight against fascism.

The problem is the word “pragmatic.” As in Weimar, the far left consists of zealots and idealists who see pragmatism as treason. There’s a better chance Donald Trump will apologize for calling Elizabeth Warren “Pocahontas” than radical decolonizers will become politically pragmatic.

That leaves only one alternative. Liberals and others at any point on the political spectrum where the words “moderate” or “centre” apply must break with the left-extremists.

When the extremists declare the country illegitimate, say loudly that the legitimacy of the country is not up for debate. When they say the nation’s history is nothing but a litany of crime, say loudly that they’re wrong, that there’s much that is good and brave and just in the history that built the present liberal democracy. Embrace the language of patriotism. Wave the flag. Stand up and be proud.

Note that this absolutely does not mean whitewashing history. Leave that to the fascists. The history of every modern liberal democracy is a complex mix of human experience spanning from the worst crimes to the highest achievements. The products of that history are imperfect countries that are, nonetheless, some of the most admirable human societies ever built, places where free people flourish to an extent unimaginable even a few generations ago. They are also countries that know their failings and are determined to learn from them and do better. They are countries whose citizens should be proud.

I’ve leaned heavily on my historical analogy but there is one way the present is very different from the past: The SPD couldn’t renounce Marxist dogma without losing substantial popular support, but I don’t think that’s the case for centrists. In fact, I think the opposite is true.

Consider what a 2022 survey of Americans’ attitudes toward the teaching of history found: “A clear majority of Americans wants American history to be taught in ways that include both the inspiring and the shameful; that highlights the histories of minority groups alongside history that elevates a shared American identity; and that allows students to learn from the past without feeling guilt or disempowered by the actions of prior generations.” That view of history, please note, is a lot more accurate than the fairy tales of the fascists or the hair shirts of the radical decolonizers.

Imagine a centre-left, centrist, or centre-right party that adopted such a view of history and embraced patriotic language and called on its citizens to reject the extremists on the left and right and unite in defence of a liberal democracy that is imperfect but so much better than the alternatives. I think such a party could soar.

And far more importantly: It could clobber the fascists. And ensure this Weimar era ends differently than the last one.