All these had several things in common. All these we, if we know what is good for us, want to avoid happening in the future. Let us look at those things they shared so we know why they came about. It may be that, given the intelligence and the will, we could make the future a better one. But I doubt it. One thing we learn from History is that we do not learn from History. A verse by Steve Turner sums this up nicely, cynically but realistically.
“History repeats itself.
It has to,
Nobody listens.”
All these movements arose out of social and political breakdown or defeat in war, or both. They all held out a bright future and some sort of victory if only you supported their movements. When they did get into power they continued the violence that had characterised them during their time on the streets. They ruled by fear and by the intimidation of their enemies and perceived enemies. They had slogans which promised peace, prosperity and a glorious future to all classes of society except to those they saw as the enemies of their movement. Enemies, of course, as with all authoritarian systems were those who did not agree with them. These, in all the above horrible examples, were sniffed out and rooted out by secret policemen and women and executed or incarcerated. Judges passed their judgments not according to an absolute code of justice but on a relativistic one whereby justice became what was best for party and nation.
Their regimes are presented as omni competent and have a way of showing the masses an enemy in which they can believe. For the Nazis it was Bolshevism and threats to their racial purity both taken to be the ploy of Zionism and the Jews in general. The Bolsheviks, however believed that Marx's interpretation of History was a self-evident truth and it was capitalism which was the "class enemy". That the Bolshevik leaders took on Middle class lifestyles is not surprising since any such group can convince themselves that they are entitled to at least a few "little luxuries". Orwell in his Animal Farm, demonstrates this principle perfectly.
Without exception they were militaristic but controlled the military and made it an arm of their policy. They were also racist in some form or another. Their leaders managed to be seen both as "men of the people" and a political elite who had true political and social wisdom and who therefore were most fitted to be the spear head of nation, or class, or race. All these ideas had some sort of philosophical basis. This was usually a form of Platonic thought, where an elite ruled and guided the people and opened up careers in the service of nation, class or people for aspiring members of that elite. As with all authoritarian movements, the Leader was eulogised, admired and, most important, obeyed.
The elite always saw themselves, their founder, or their leader as absolutely right. Their ideology preyed upon people's longing for certainties and gave them pseudo-certainties which to doubt was heresy, as in the Roman church of the middle Ages, and which carried similar penalties. Voltaire and Rousseau for the French revolution served the same purpose as Marx for the Russian and Mein Kampf for Nazi Germany.
It can probably be argued that all successful revolutions share all or most of these features. Not to have them means that a would-be revolutionary must fail or only have short-lived and partial success.
In contrast to these, though most of the democracies had small Fascist and Communist parties, these were never taken very seriously. The democracies were relatively were law abiding but did not reverence their leaders, nor their legislators. Instead they revered the law itself and generally held it in awe and so obeyed it. There is a difference between being under law and being under the arbitrary rule of a party, a committee or a leader. In the one party state not only is dissent not allowed, but no opposition is tolerated. It is the feature of authoritarian systems that they believe themselves to be absolutely right and that gives them the right to indoctrinate others.
To see these systems in action, as they really are, one could not do better than to read George Orwell, Alexander Solzhenitsyn and Hans Peter Richter. These authors have had experience of the fascists of the left and also of the right and they write from out of their painful memories.
Someone has said that the price of freedom is to be forever watchful. It is not, however as simple as this. To resist the authoritarian one needs to be independent, rational, to have a certain amount of moral courage and to be imaginative with skills of empathy and interpersonal relations. The authoritarian as Adorno and his associates have shown, needs someone to prop him up. He needs a leader to tell him what to do. He needs easy solutions and he is suspicious of what is new, different, strange or in any way threatening. To the authoritarian most things are threatening. He is the sort of person who does not like questioning and who says to his children, “because I say so”, without wanting to or being able to give an explanation for his beliefs. He is the sort of person who will say “That was not the way I was brought up,” as if the way he was brought up was the ideal child rearing method. Most of us find that our children somehow grow up in spite of our mistakes, as my own are constantly reminding me.
