Fascism: Lost golden age.
This is a paper in my what is fascism series. You can go to the starter page if you wish to read here:
In the bible, it was said that Adam and eve were tricked by a snake, and both ate from the tree of knowledge, gaining the difference between good and evil. God was angry at both and gave them curses. Eve was cursed to have painful childbirth while Adam had to do hard labor. God also kicked them out of the garden into cursed lands (meaning the earth). Adam and Eve would go on to secure their bonds forever.
The garden of Eden is kind of a metaphor for a more glorious past. We often will remember certain parts of the past such as times of economic prosperity or even when things seemed a lot simpler. Nostalgia is a very powerful element, in politics, history, sociology, every facet and study of society that you can think of. This isn’t a bad thing. We all get nostalgic for things. In some ways, I am nostalgic for my childhood as many people are. It is not uncommon for people to want to go back to the past. I genuinely believe that it is a good thing to want to, historians will love drooling over that. It’s how we become better as people.
But what happens when it makes us worse people?
Think back for a minute here, was every aspect of your childhood good? Do you remember maybe your parents arguing in front of you when it was clearly inappropriate? Women, do you remember when you had to take home ec classes and were almost forcefully taught that you had to be nice to your husband? Men, do you remember when as children, you were called a pussy if you didn’t do something incredibly dangerous like jumping off a bridge into a river?
Many of us will look back and think, wow, those weren’t good times. All you must do is remind people of certain aspects of said past and then, maybe they will reconsider it. Of course, there are those who look back and think that those aspects are why things were better. If we just restore those aspects, then maybe the so called “glorious past” will come back and everything will get greater again! This is sometimes called the “good old days”.
Golden age fallacy
Very often when we remember the past, it is common to think of those certain parts. We don’t want to think that maybe our childhoods were flawed, and our families and friends were all the best of people. In some sense, sure, they were sometimes the best people. The best that they knew to be. For example, it was common for men to be macho, strong, stoic people that would lead their families through life and be good role models. We associate such things with certain eras. Here in America, we often associate said men with the 1950s back when the family was very prosperous (I will talk about this very aspect later). In Russia, it is common to remember Joesph Stalin’s Soviet Union fondly due to his glorious victory over Nazi Germany and all the benefits that came with it [2].
If you look closely though, and challenge them, they will forget that Stalin was a dictator and that America was not only good for certain people, but it was also a very special, anomalous period for American capitalism. This is sometimes called “selective memory”, other times it is internalized racism or sexism. On most normal occasions, they will remember those aspects and say, “yeah its not good to repeat it”. Those said people are under great duress and during said hard times, it is easier to remember the good aspects of the past, and not the bad. When we do so and say, “the good old days”, it often results in the golden age fallacy.
The golden age fallacy is defined by A Wealth of Common Sense, who is quoting Michael Sheen who played Paul in Midnight in Paris, “the erroneous notion that a different time period is better than the one one’s living in- it’s a flaw in the romantic imagination of those who find it difficult to cope with the present.” [3] This is a big part of all of this.
Lost Golden Age Syndrome
When we think of a glorious past, we remember those days. The 1950s is a very common period for America to do so. The vintage above me is a sort of common nostalgia advertisement for such a period. The man is pointing to his house and saying, “I’ve got a house” with him having one foot on a shovel. The wife is lowly, while the son is clinging to his dad as his protector. Things were splendid at that time! The American dream is a common advertisement going all the way back to the 19th century. In the 1950s and 60s, it genuinely felt for many Americans, that they had achieved it.
But then suddenly, something happened.
What happened to that American Dream that we not only had but were promised as children?! I worked hard! I played by the rules! Something isn’t right!
At work I have heard a few conversations talking about this very subject and many of them, particularly those of rural America (I live in rural Minnesota), who have lost a lot. Their neighborhood grocery stores are gone. The farms have all been gobbled up. All the jobs have left for Mexico and China. Now, we are left with derelict buildings, children all leaving, opioids! I really don’t know who to blame!
Then comes Donald Trump. He is here to remind us that hey, things were better in the past!
Humiliation
Donald Trump started his campaign with “Muslims are terrorists and Mexicans are rapists and thugs!” It was an appalling start to his campaign, but a very effective one. See, for years there has been an effective smear campaign against Arabs and Hispanics respectively. During 9/11, a jihadist organization called “Al-Qaeda” attacked the twin towers in New York and humiliated America! Made us fearful of what we couldn’t control. People from Latin America are coming in, bringing drugs into our communities, and “stealing” our jobs. This is known as “The Great Replacement” theory. Remember back when there wasn’t so many Mexicans? We will make America great again by stopping immigration. This term was shortened to “MAGA” as a catchy slogan.
If you go further into the MAGA community, you will find anti-black sentiment such as Donald Trump using Southern Strategy rhetoric, playing to the “Lost Cause of the South” myth and even Jim Crow. Which was the beginning of the decline which is a big part of all this.
Fascists are always obsessed with the decline of communities in response to horrid events. Germany suffered defeat from WWI and was forced to pay outrageous reparations and had to disarm as part of the Treaty of Versailles. They believed that it was the Jews who cheated them out of victory (also known as the “Stab-in-the-back” legend) Spain had a huge rupture between conservative monarchists in rural areas and the urban working-class that was developing for years. America even had a strong fascist movement during the 1930s as a response to the Great Depression. When these events happen, people want to make a certain group of people pay. They took something that is “rightfully” ours and we must restore the nation, and ourselves, to its glory. I say “ourselves” because it is an important part here.
Internalization and rejection of modernism
When we grow up, we tend to be ingrained with the idea that a certain way of doing things is the correct way. This can happen in any sort of organization of ways of life be it our institutions, relationships, technologies, etc. If times are prosperous and orderly, we tend to have an idea that because we follow a certain way, therefore they were because of said ways of doing things. In the case of fascism, it’s an institution-based view of society. This can mean a whole number of things such as Jim Crow laws, feudalism, patriarchy, theocracy, anything that we associate with the past. We internalize the second nature behind those institutions and there isn’t much rational thinking as to why things were better.
We are taught as children that something is guaranteed to us if we simply work hard, be nice, you will get what you want. This is called entitlement, and it is something that is taught to us, especially those at the upper crust of society, our whole lives. We have internalized misogyny, racism, classism, and the idea that we must be strong. It just what you do. When you have the benefits taken away, as white men did (they had undeserved power anyhow), you always get an angry reaction.
Something happened and it is because we have abandoned those traditional values and embraced things like liberalism, feminism, democracy, equality, and in some cases even capitalism (I will talk about fascist economics in a later paper). The decay of society happened against our will, and we must take ourselves back to those times socially. Punish those who trespass against us!
When you are under pressure that isn’t your fault, you tend to believe things that are easiest to believe. For white people (particularly men) and the west in general, it is easier to believe that it is because of these external, easily identifiable forces like brown people or maybe even LGBTs. For those of minority status, not so much, though white women are a particular breed in this case. From an economic point of view, class analysis is often boring and sometimes dry. Fascism offers an easy way out that is often horrible.
In his essay “14 common features of fascism”, Umberto Eco named two points called “cult of tradition” and “rejection of modernism”.
“One has only to look at the syllabus of every fascist movement to find the major traditionalist thinkers. The Nazi gnosis was nourished by traditionalist, syncretistic, occult elements.”
“The Enlightenment, the Age of Reason, is seen as the beginning of modern depravity. In this sense Ur-Fascism can be defined as irrationalism.”
What he is saying is that when we departed from faith-based reasoning for rational reasoning, it was the beginning of depravity. Fascism rejects enlightenment values in favor of whatever the nation feels is true for them. Ultranationalism is what it is called, and we will explore this a little more in other topics. People tend to identify quite heavily with the communities they live in and if the community is in decline, so do they depend on ingrained their second nature is. When said community declines, you look at “it’s what you do” rather than rationally explaining things. It was very common for slaves to enslave their masters or even just install new feudal lords. These things were much simpler than democracy and reason.
Feudalism might not make as much sense for an American perspective, but religiosity was a major defining force for America. It still has been. Christian fascism was the original fascism for America. When feudalism faded away, a lot of the deeply religious people in Europe went to America so they could practice their totalitarian version of Christianity and it even gained new form. The “second coming of Jesus” as was the selling point to get butts into churches. It is a very good seller, but it also taught a sense of entitlement to American protestants. American Christianity is the fusion of marketing and the cross. American Christians are trying to bring about rapture and they think the Jews returning the Israel and occupying the Church of Nativity will bring back Jesus and punish the unbelievers.
In the German sense, they would the Holy Roman Empire for the people who were nostalgic for feudalism. The German Empire for the recent imperialism and being cheated out of their colonies. Also, they would use the Roman Empire because they would conquer everyone who they deemed inferior and great warriors (this part is not true of Romans being special as warriors. Not even the Spartans either).
If I had to sum all of this up, it was always made up on what the people deem the best era. The golden age is very subjective. There are people who today still say that feudalism was a great era. Just like there are those in Eastern Europe who are nostalgic for communism.
How to recognize this
If you look at the past, one thing you will recognize is that they were very flawed people, especially in our time. During WWII, men saw horrifying action and when they got home, they were expected to just act like it never happened. They never got the therapy that they desperately needed, and such didn’t really exist either. Spousal and child abuse were rampant in this era. My Great Grandfather was a WWII veteran and a stinking drunk who would yell in front of my grandma. My other one was just a mean man who drank his problems away and grandpa had to do all the work on the farm. My great grandmother, who was apparently a saint, died from a broken heart due to all the abuse she suffered during the 50s and 60s. My family on my mother’s side kind of hated one another. My grandpa broke the cycle of abuse, but he also was a drinker who died ten years ago of agent orange when he was in Vietnam.
There is a good chance that people were hiding things from you back then. It was common for those living in that era to sulk, repress, resent. People felt things back then too and didn’t always know how to express them. Women for example, often suffered horrible abuse from their husbands and didn’t always know how to deal with it or even know it was. It was because of feminism that women have learned that they are much more than just birthing machines or caretakers. They don’t have to let themselves be abused anymore. Men have also benefitted from feminism as well. They don’t have to be the strong, stoic men who were suffering inside. I will talk a little more about men in another essay because there is an idea of a fascist man.
Would you want to be the inferior one? It is tough to think but there’s a reason times were better. The biggest reason why things were better was because Europe was destroyed in WWII and had its infrastructure blown to smithereens while America stood unscathed (except Pearl Harbor) and had free reign to profit off its destroyed markets. There was also the fact that during the Great Depression, the socialist movement was strong in America and FDR knew he had to cooperate and compromise for a revolution not to happen. He was a very wise president. Germany thought they could crush the socialist movement and look what happened. They ended up destroying themselves. I have done a paper series on why things got better, and how they got worse if you wish to read.
https://medium.com/@derekhudley/why-things-got-better-ab76828a7108
https://medium.com/@derekhudley/why-did-things-get-worse-in-america-8b22671bffc0
We shouldn’t look to the past for why things were better, but how we can improve as people.
Thanks for reading! If you enjoy what I write don’t forget to clap, follow, and share so everyone can read my message. My email is derekhudley@gmail.com if you wish to contact me. Hope you read my other papers!
Sources:
[1] https://onlysky.media/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/myth_of_the_lost_golden_age-2.jpg
[2] Good old days — RationalWiki
[3] Golden Age Thinking — A Wealth of Common Sense
[5] Umberto Eco Makes a List of the 14 Common Features of Fascism | Open Culture
