Two of the continent's oldest parties, the UK Conservatives and Germany's Social Democrats, have suffered heavy recent defeats; how old are our parties?
Separate to my below point and this one actually related to your column
You focus purely on Europe, but this part made me think of Australia
'There was a flowering of explicitly social democratic parties in the decades of the 19th century, from the Danish Social Democrats in 1871 to the Social Democratic Party in Finland in 1899'
The Australian Labor Party was formed in 1901, so basically at Federation and formed the first Labor Minority Govt in 1904 and the first Labor Majority Govt in 1910, does this make us one of the oldest Social Democratic Partys to win power in the world?
Eliot, I have had what I think is most likely a crazy thought, but you are an open minded guy with an interest in history so wanted to run it past you.
For the best part of a century we have just accepted that WW1 was the incubator of the Fascist Partys that grew in Europe in the 1920s. However, as we see now many of the same demographics (young men, the lower-middle classes/petit bourgeois) move the hard right in the wake of COVID, is it possible that historians have historically under-played the role the Spanish Flu played in the growth of European Fascism? I know there are real differences, for one they I don't believe had lockdowns for the Spanish Flu and certainly didn't have Furlough schemes, but still the fact remains that after both the Spanish Flu and now COVID we have seen a political move in the same direction across broadly similar groups.
So totally crazy stupid theory, or possibly something to it worth investigating further?
Funny you should mention that: I’m reading Jonn Elledge’s book on conspiracy theories, and several ideas familiar from Covid-19 sprang up around the influenza epidemic of 1919. Jordan Peterson said in a lecture once (I wish I could find it again) that there’s a strong correlation between widespread public health emergencies and authoritarian movements (racial hygiene, purity, decay, renewal, looking for outsiders to blame). So I don’t think it’s an outlandish connection at all. There are all sorts of elements: the disappearance of inherently conservative-inclined monarchical systems in Germany, Austria-Hungary and Russia and the growth of Bolshevism left many on the right feeling embattled and as if they had to react forcefully to “save” society. You have “red scares” on Clydeside, and the General Strike of 1926, and it’s noticeable how hard the first Labour government of 1924 is pounded over links with the Soviet Union (culminating in the infamous Zinoviev Letter). But certainly I could see the disruption and fear engendered by the influenza epidemic playing a part.
Bizarre that Petersen of all people drew that conclusion, kind of like Matt Goodwin writing Revolt on the Right and then becoming what he spoke of!
I really do wish someone smarter than me would look into this because the global nature of the parallels are kind of scary, would make for a hell of PhD Thesis anyway "How the Flu not WW1 was the incubator of European Fascism' and like you say, all that talk of purity and hygiene does seem to be more flu than WW1 related (Though the Trenches I guess would bring about the same thoughts)
Thankyou for the reply, as always you added something to what I was thinking, even when I disagree with you (not that I do here) I always find you interesting, and God knows we need a world where more people engage with more writing from people not in their bubble
What I’d say about Peterson is, firstly, I think it was relatively early YouTube video of a lecture in Toronto when he was still pretty much in his psychology bailiwick; secondly, I can’t quite make him out but I think (often by his own doing) he’s seen in simpler terms than are really accurate. I know a few people who know him and I think (any errors here are mine and mine alone) he’s seen juggles internally with some beliefs that can be hard to reconcile, he is someone who is easily absorbed by self-anguish and has experienced genuine trauma which must have left his mark. My overwhelming impression (and I caveat this by saying I *don’t* know him) is that he seems very far from happy. But, then again, windows into men’s souls etc.
I really must try to find that YouTube video, I’ve cited it a couple of times.
Yeah always risky diagnosing folk from afar, but for someone who had reached a level of real esteem in his field he sure doesn’t act like a fulfilled person, I think the lesson as always is that social media is a mind poison we’ve just unleashed in the population with no thought as to what its impacts might be, it’s just not natural to be able to find vertical groups of people, often in the hundreds who just agree with you about everything and allows you to avoid dealing with people different to you in the way you’re forced to do in geographic groups, it can’t be good for us. So much of the focus on social media impacts is the negative feedback, trolling and pile ons and such, I’m much more convinced that the positive feedback loops we get from homogeneous ideological groups we form is much more poisonous and a deadly threat to broad based democracy that requires compromise
Thankyou for taking the time to find it Eliot, however despite my professed desire for myself and others to break out of their ideological bubbles, that does not in my case extend to people who are just straight up grifters and I am afraid that is what Petersen is, these people who have dropped any right to be called intellectuals in their desperate search for ever more attention and/or the money that comes on the right wing anti-woke griftathon circuit are people who have, in my mind at least, given up the right to be taken seriously and I am certainly not about to click on a video of his that is no doubt monetized thus giving him both the attention and money that are the only 2 things he cares about, after ditching intellectual honesty, integrity and decency in the ditch a long time ago. So apologies if I have made you waste your time and I am usually open to hearing alternate viewpoints to my boring old style moderate centre-leftism, but my open-mindedness doesn't stretch out to encompass the grifting class of the wingnut welfare circuit I am afraid
Separate to my below point and this one actually related to your column
You focus purely on Europe, but this part made me think of Australia
'There was a flowering of explicitly social democratic parties in the decades of the 19th century, from the Danish Social Democrats in 1871 to the Social Democratic Party in Finland in 1899'
The Australian Labor Party was formed in 1901, so basically at Federation and formed the first Labor Minority Govt in 1904 and the first Labor Majority Govt in 1910, does this make us one of the oldest Social Democratic Partys to win power in the world?
Eliot, I have had what I think is most likely a crazy thought, but you are an open minded guy with an interest in history so wanted to run it past you.
For the best part of a century we have just accepted that WW1 was the incubator of the Fascist Partys that grew in Europe in the 1920s. However, as we see now many of the same demographics (young men, the lower-middle classes/petit bourgeois) move the hard right in the wake of COVID, is it possible that historians have historically under-played the role the Spanish Flu played in the growth of European Fascism? I know there are real differences, for one they I don't believe had lockdowns for the Spanish Flu and certainly didn't have Furlough schemes, but still the fact remains that after both the Spanish Flu and now COVID we have seen a political move in the same direction across broadly similar groups.
So totally crazy stupid theory, or possibly something to it worth investigating further?
Funny you should mention that: I’m reading Jonn Elledge’s book on conspiracy theories, and several ideas familiar from Covid-19 sprang up around the influenza epidemic of 1919. Jordan Peterson said in a lecture once (I wish I could find it again) that there’s a strong correlation between widespread public health emergencies and authoritarian movements (racial hygiene, purity, decay, renewal, looking for outsiders to blame). So I don’t think it’s an outlandish connection at all. There are all sorts of elements: the disappearance of inherently conservative-inclined monarchical systems in Germany, Austria-Hungary and Russia and the growth of Bolshevism left many on the right feeling embattled and as if they had to react forcefully to “save” society. You have “red scares” on Clydeside, and the General Strike of 1926, and it’s noticeable how hard the first Labour government of 1924 is pounded over links with the Soviet Union (culminating in the infamous Zinoviev Letter). But certainly I could see the disruption and fear engendered by the influenza epidemic playing a part.
Bizarre that Petersen of all people drew that conclusion, kind of like Matt Goodwin writing Revolt on the Right and then becoming what he spoke of!
I really do wish someone smarter than me would look into this because the global nature of the parallels are kind of scary, would make for a hell of PhD Thesis anyway "How the Flu not WW1 was the incubator of European Fascism' and like you say, all that talk of purity and hygiene does seem to be more flu than WW1 related (Though the Trenches I guess would bring about the same thoughts)
Thankyou for the reply, as always you added something to what I was thinking, even when I disagree with you (not that I do here) I always find you interesting, and God knows we need a world where more people engage with more writing from people not in their bubble
What I’d say about Peterson is, firstly, I think it was relatively early YouTube video of a lecture in Toronto when he was still pretty much in his psychology bailiwick; secondly, I can’t quite make him out but I think (often by his own doing) he’s seen in simpler terms than are really accurate. I know a few people who know him and I think (any errors here are mine and mine alone) he’s seen juggles internally with some beliefs that can be hard to reconcile, he is someone who is easily absorbed by self-anguish and has experienced genuine trauma which must have left his mark. My overwhelming impression (and I caveat this by saying I *don’t* know him) is that he seems very far from happy. But, then again, windows into men’s souls etc.
I really must try to find that YouTube video, I’ve cited it a couple of times.
Yeah always risky diagnosing folk from afar, but for someone who had reached a level of real esteem in his field he sure doesn’t act like a fulfilled person, I think the lesson as always is that social media is a mind poison we’ve just unleashed in the population with no thought as to what its impacts might be, it’s just not natural to be able to find vertical groups of people, often in the hundreds who just agree with you about everything and allows you to avoid dealing with people different to you in the way you’re forced to do in geographic groups, it can’t be good for us. So much of the focus on social media impacts is the negative feedback, trolling and pile ons and such, I’m much more convinced that the positive feedback loops we get from homogeneous ideological groups we form is much more poisonous and a deadly threat to broad based democracy that requires compromise
Found it!
https://youtu.be/yO6VfFqvRkM?si=syn0bRxV2dN3ah6z
Thankyou for taking the time to find it Eliot, however despite my professed desire for myself and others to break out of their ideological bubbles, that does not in my case extend to people who are just straight up grifters and I am afraid that is what Petersen is, these people who have dropped any right to be called intellectuals in their desperate search for ever more attention and/or the money that comes on the right wing anti-woke griftathon circuit are people who have, in my mind at least, given up the right to be taken seriously and I am certainly not about to click on a video of his that is no doubt monetized thus giving him both the attention and money that are the only 2 things he cares about, after ditching intellectual honesty, integrity and decency in the ditch a long time ago. So apologies if I have made you waste your time and I am usually open to hearing alternate viewpoints to my boring old style moderate centre-leftism, but my open-mindedness doesn't stretch out to encompass the grifting class of the wingnut welfare circuit I am afraid