A long time ago I used to speak about “Weimar syndrome”, the tendency to relate every political event back to the Weimar Republic—as if there was never any other historical model to which we could refer. So, for example, the 2008 financial crisis was “the next Great Depression” and there was a dutiful expectation that there would follow a rise in radical political movements. This never really materialised, at least not until the worst of the financial crisis was over. The above speech by the Communist Angela Davis, sometime in the 1970s, shows that the rhetoric has been the same forever—Nixon was Weimar, Reagan was Weimar, Bush was Weimar.
However, there is good reason why this should be so and it is not stupid to compare every situation to Weimar—the right could do it as much as the left. The reason for this to be so is that the liberal democratic regime—of which Weimar was a variant—suppresses everything that is normal and natural; and consequently it is always at risk—always secretly fears and desires—an irruption of normality. Hence Weimar is an accurate paradigm for the regime—it is their French Revolution; just as nervous Victorian middle-class gents feared, thanks to Carlyle’s broody rhetoric, that the sans-culottes might make another appearance (tumbril and all), so too our liberal-democratic managers keep themselves awake at night, delicately torture themselves, with the idea that the jackboots are a-marchin’ again.
When I was a teenager, sometime in the early 2000s, I said to a leftist activist on the way to an anti-war march, with reference to an activist who had just “come out”, “What’s the big deal with being gay, surely everyone accepts that now?”. “Err, actually lots of people have a problem with it,” replied the older guy. He was right—and the liberal-democratic cadre knows that too. All the rhetoric about “it’s more accepted now” and “nobody cares, society’s moved on” amounts to utter lies—whether as regards homosexuality or mixed-race relationships or whatever progressive idea is popular today.
All that has happened is that it has been made illegal or quasi-illegal to oppose homosexuality and other liberal shibboleths—and there is also a constant non-stop propaganda campaign to enforce liberal norms, to make these ideas the polite social norm and to put a policeman inside every mind that bonks your natural feelings on the head (“Can’t say that, mate.”). Man is intensely sociable, hence he fears social ostracism above all—and the propaganda achieves such an effect through the suppression of the natural norm.
For sure, opinion polls show most people support liberal values, but in truth most people are so browbeaten—so terrified someone might find out what they really think or that they would lose their job—that they lie on the surveys (it says it’s confidential but who knows who stores this information?). They also lie to themselves, and that is because we do not live in a free society; we live in a quasi-communist implicit dictatorship with a nice pretend parliament, just like they had in East Germany. So you better get out that LGBT flag and wave it, and if you fail to wave it too enthusiastically you just might be homophobic…
I can assure you that when this regime collapses—and it will, no regime lasts forever (especially one against nature)—many people will come up to you, if you oppose, for example, transgenderism, and shake your hand and say, “I was with you all along. Bravo! You were so brave, you said what we all thought—we couldn’t say, of course!”. This is because most people are hopeless cowards—unlike the USSR they don’t even shoot you or torture you in the West, just take away your toys (and that is too much for most people to bear).
The people who rule us are well aware that this is true. They can look at their confected surveys that say 88.3% of Americans were fine with a black president, 91.9% approve of interracial relationships, and 95.7% admire same-sex relationships, yet just like those East German politburo leaders, deep down they know that they can make people say these things through intimidation and non-stop propaganda but in their hearts and in their guts nobody believes these things—they believe the opposite. They believe in reality, they believe in nature, they believe in justice; and you can bully them to say this or that, but it will never be enough—you never feel safe.
Hence they are always on guard for “the Weimar moment”, the liberal shock troops are on the alert—they are on the ramparts watching for the stompin’ jackboots. This is because they rule by lies: as with a bamboo stalk that has been bent into a deformed shape, they know that a society can spring back to its natural form with immense force and great ease—a kind of gentle strength, rather like the strength of God. All it takes is a crack in the dam, just as Gorbachev relaxed the USSR a tad too much and…whoosh, everything runs away. The water pours through. Water is natural, it always finds the right level.
Weimar syndrome is an injunction for everyone to make sure the little policeman in their head “you can’t say that, you can’t say that” is at maximum operation—just like those whack-a-mole fairground games, if you have a natural thought or feeling you better whack it down or it will be “literally Auschwitz”. The propaganda has to be pervasive and 24/7—for LGBT, for interracial relationships, for feminism—because it is unnatural and counterintuitive: you have to work hard to fight nature, to press it right down. Why not go with the flow and let it all hang out, just like those old hippies said? Because the flow, to just be natural, would wash away everything the post-war order has built. Nature abhors a vacuum—and evil is empty space to be filled.