Tuesday, December 20, 2005
A necessary book review.
As I was reading a NY Times review of "The Third Reich in Power: 1933-1939" by Richard J. Evans I was struck by a passage that, while adressing that arc of the books storyline, seemed totally appropriate for today.
Before the war, Evans explains, Germany underwent a brutal and chilling transformation. Behind a facade of legality, the Nazis dismantled the established protections of law. Not satisfied merely to crush a lively if troubled democracy, they used their police state and the mass media to dissolve traditional allegiances. Replacing most forms of organized social life with new, Nazi-themed activities, they left citizens with no place to share heretical thoughts. The result was a nightmare version of a normal modern society, with popular entertainment manipulating public enthusiasms and hatreds, and the government intruding into intimate matters of the mind and body while demanding an end to the coddling of the weak.To me, it seems that you can replace Nazi with neocon without losing any level of meaning. Or maybe my tinfoil hat is too tight. I wish it were the hat.
It is surprisingly hard to say just what Nazism was, other than a vague if radical ideology. Hitler, a leader bored by administrative detail, left the way open for endless squabbles among his fanatical and often corrupt subordinates.
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