Can History "Repeat Itself"?
The Link Between Weakened Democratic Rights of the People
and Increased Danger of War
Four years before the Second World War began, caused by
Nazi Germany's attack on Poland (in all likelihood in preparation of a
war against the Soviet Union, but as it were, France and Britain stood
by their treaty obligations and sought to aid their Polish ally), an American
writer, Ernest Hemingway, wrote in his Notes on the Next War (1935),
"Every move that is made now to deprive the people of their decision on
all matters through their elected representatives and to delegate those
powers to the executive brings us that much nearer war."(*)
It is as true today, as it was in 1935. At the time, fascist
or clerical fascist parties (in Italy, Germany, Austria, Hungary, Slovakia,
Spain, and Portugal) and authoritarian movements (in Greece, Bulgaria,
Romania, and Yugoslavia) had established dictatorial regimes. Today, President
Obama relies, more often than he should, on "executive privilege" - just
as his immediate predecessors did. It tends to disempower Congress, just
like parliaments in most countries of the European Union have lost real
influence to the executive. As for the EU itself, it is run primarily
by the European Commission, and the heads of state that back it. The European
Parliament, though not completely without influence, is not even entitled
to introduce laws on its own, debate them, vote on them, adopt them independently
and have them enacted. The essential right that every parliament worth
that name was endowed with in the last 100 or 150 years is a right
the European Parliament has never attained until now.
The overwhelming power of the executive branch, whether
in the U.S. or the EU or its member states, sets the stage for every authoritarian
movement and every openly anti-democratic political "elite" that may rise
to power in the years to come. How fast this can happen, was demonstrated
by the German case.
In the past, fascism ascended largely due to internal
divisions between the two main blocs of society, and this social antagonism
had been sharpened by the grave global economic crisis and the Great Depression
it caused since 1928. It makes some people today rather concerned because
of the extended financial and economic crisis we are coping with since
2008 (regardless of intermittent stock exchange booms and refinanced banks
that engage in speculation again). The present crisis has hurt, and in
some countries even empoverished, those referred to by the media as the
middle
class, that is to say, the industrial work force, office workers and
other clerks, the majority of public sector employees (including teachers,
firefighters, police officers), small businessmen, owners of family farms,
and so on. The downturn and the accompanying belt-tightening as well as
the feeling of insecurity connected with it has lead to increased xenophobia,
to hysteric concern about crime and public safety, to louder calls for
enforcement of law and order. And it has given a boost to right-wing and
neo-fascist tendencies in Europe - and to the Tea Party in the U.S..
These tendencies worry critical contemporaries because
they remember how the ascent of the extreme right began in Europe in the
1920s and 30s and how quickly the German Nazi party, for instance, turned
from the small, politically insignificant, marginal group (with links to
army officers and industrialists) that it was in the 1920s, into the strongest
political party of the Weimar Republic. People wonder what is in store
in the U.S., or in the EU, if the present trend towards the right (a trend
that is so general that it has also affected the British Labour Party and
America's Centrist Democrats) would follow the pattern observed in Germany
between 1928 and 1933.
The notion that "history doesn't repeat itself" is an
old, almost proverbial saying, and overly or inappropriately quoting it
can turn it into a cliché. And the same may be true of that other
dictum,
that history, should it repeat itself, may occur to us in the first instance
as a tragedy, while the repetition will turn out to be a mere farce. Today,
the rise of extreme right-wing, xenophobic and neo-fascist groups in some
European countries (where they now get 15 or, in one country, even 30 percent
of the popular vote in national elections) may well amount to no more than
a farce. The much wider popular support of a very, very nationalist government
in Hungary may indicate, however, in what direction general sentiment in
Europe is moving under the influence of the economic situation. It need
not be a neo-fascist government - it might also be a "respectable" government
in league with the corporations that would further shrink what is left
of democracy. In the US, researchers are coming to the conclusion that
we must face the fact that the people have been deprived already of their
decision on all matters through their elected representatives, because
these representatives do no longer listen to the voice of the people (if
they ever did, in our lifetime).
Of course, we cling to the hope that we still can change
the course of history, by relying on the ballot box, the right to vote,
the right to run for office.
And of course, Hemingway was right, in 1935, when he
pointed out that openly authoritarian regimes, regimes run by one man at
the top, are more likely to steer a belligerent course.(**)
But
aren't elections focused on two competing candidates today? Focused on
a man or a woman who appears like a star, rather than on issues? Isn't
presidential democracy in the US highly "personalized"? Isn't the power
of the executive vaster than ever, and are not parliaments - especially
in Europe - reduced to rubber stamps when the majority party almost blindly
okays whatever bill the executive wants to have this party to support and
push through? How democratic is this game when members of parliament, or
in the US members of Congress, dance to the tune of party whips, and when
party whips, the administration, and lobbyists form a "united front" against
those elected representatives of the people who attempt to listen to their
conscience, and to the worries and hopes and demands of the common people?
Anticipating the coming war, Hemingway wrote in 1935,
"Every move that is made now to deprive the people of their decision on
all matters through their elected representatives and to delegate those
powers to the executive brings us that much nearer war.
It removes the only possible check."
As it turned out, that check was removed in most European
countries and most fatefully, in Germany. But let us assume that the people,
uninfluenced by propaganda, had compelled their governments in Washington
and London to come to the aid of the Spanish Republic; let's assume that
British warships had not intercepted military hardware for the republic
and that the U.S. and Britain had drawn a red line, barring German and
Italian intervention on the side of Franco: Would this have intimidated
the dictators, perhaps? Would the abortion of Nazi intervention in the
Spanish civil war have made Hitler shrink back, rather than daring to annex
Czech lands and Austria to boot?
The question is a hypthetical one, and in its practical
consequences, irrelevant, as far as trhe past is concerned. You don't step
twice into the same river.
What happened, happened, and you can't turn back that
ominous clock.
But is the question without relevance, regarding
our own situation? What can we do, as a largely disempowered populace,
to assert our will?
What can we do to safeguard peace and put a stop to
war after war that has been unleashed in the last quarter of a century?
There may be more "in the pipeline" - as the planners
and analysts and the "experts" would say.
I am sure that the peoples of the world want peace.
And yet, today, with the checks on executive power largely
removed in Western democracy, it is hard to hope at present for any countervailing
democratic impulse that would let us, the people, reign in the dangers
of war.
- Dan Horton
Notes
* Ernest Hemingway, "Notes
on the Next War" (1935)
(**) "A man has ambitions, a man rules until he gets into economic trouble;
he tries to get out of this trouble by war. A country never wants war until
a man through the power of propaganda convinces it." (Ernest Hemingway,
"Notes on the Next War" )
Go back to Art
in Society # 14, Contents
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