I have recently been re-reading Alex Ross’s brilliant historical evocation of twentieth century music, The Rest is Noise, originally published in 2007, and (as ever, it seems!) appear to have come back to this book at precisely the right time. I’m not the only one to have been struck by the parallels between our present age and the nineteen thirties, but Ross’s account (in Chapter 6, The City of Nets) of the rise and fall of the German Weimar Republic, reminds us that Weimar’s fall, as surely as night follows day, led to the Nazi coup d’etat in 1933 and set inter-war Europe irrevocably on the path to renewed confict. 

I actually wrote this blog two weeks ago, but held off on posting it (mainly because I wanted write something less political and more positive), little realising that the Russian demagogue, Vladimir Putin, was about to launch an unprovoked attack on neighbouring Ukraine, presumably with the aim of somehow recreating the Soviet Union. That a ruthless dictator should now be on the march in Eastern Europe makes the Weimar analogy scarily real, so now I’m glad I delayed, even though this meant not blogging at all in February, as my original post has now rather been overtaken by events.  

Most of the articles I read in the run up to writing the original draft a fortnight ago, evoked thirties parallels, with Emmanuel Macron being cast as some kind of latter-day Neville Chamberlain, while Boris Johnson auditions (unsuccessfully, it must be said!) for the role of Winston Churchill. However I’d prefer to focus on the cultural parallels, which appear eerily-precise. 

Alex Ross points out that Weimar was the first modern media-saturated urban culture, as exemplified by 1920’s Berlin, a milieu brilliantly evoked in the Kander and Ebbs musical, Cabaret. Ross asks the question, was Weimar doomed to fail? Was it inevitable that the unique synthesis of the avant-garde and popular taste, seen in the success of Brecht and Weill’s The Threepenny Opera, would be crushed between the twin millstones of commercial imperatives and state-sanctioned high culture prejudices? The two more modern examples, of West Berlin during the Cold War and (briefly) New York during the seventies and eighties, seem to demonstrate that such a synthesis of high and low culture is still possible, but only in very specific circumstances.

Alex Ross also highlights the political weaknesses that made Weimar vulnerable to the far-right, once the Wall Street Crash ended the late-twenties boom which had underpinned its all too brief cultural renaissance. He contends that the moderate elements lacked a firm power base in Weimar, under constant fire from the Communist left and National Socialist right. 

Moderate elements still hold power in most of what we still refer to as the West. Different governments swing slightly toward the right or left of the political spectrum in their particular country, but all cleave to a consensus. This consensus embraces support for Western political and military alliances, differing brands of free-market economics, limited action on climate change, and a liberal attitude on most social issues.

The opposition (on both sides) is more diffuse; the right, while divided into a multitude of factions, is generally against internationalism in all its forms (including military alliances), denies climate change and rejects any measures to ameliorate it, and while professing to love the notion of individual freedom, is dismissive of democracy and human rights, and manifests an alarming admiration for foreign dictators.  

What I’m calling ‘the left’ is even more amorphous, including everything from revolutionary socialists and radical greens, through various groupings defined by modern identity politics. I explored this in a previous blog, coining the term Pluralistic Absolutism to describe the exclusive and hard line approach of many of these groups. The point is that the far right would be prepared to sink their differences if a suitably charismatic leader came along (another Trump or someone even worse), while the left would never unite, as it failed to do in the 1930’s.

In one sense this is a good thing, as the moderate centre doesn’t really have to worry about its left flank and can concentrate its fire on the radical right. How successful they are at this will largely depend on how bad things get over the next few years

At the moment the jury’s still out…

The Author   March 2022