Wasn't Syria in a Crisis during the Second World War? It was a combat zone between the Vichy -associated colonial rulers on the one side, and the British and the Free French on the other. The Nazis tried to establish a corridor of pro-Axis regimes in Syria and Lebanon (the French mandate sheared off Ottoman Turkey), Iraq under the fascistic regime of al-Gailani, and the absolute monarchy of Reza Shah I (not to be confused with his son Reza Shah II, Shah of Iran until the Islamic Revolution of 1979). The British and Free French overthrew the Vichy rulers of Syria; the British overthrew the pro-Nazi fascistic regime in Iraq; the Soviet Union occupied northern Iran and the British occupied southern Iran.
The changes in all three countries (four if you count Lebanon, which seceded from Syria) were revolutionary in effect and may have prevented some Crisis-era genocides (the Vichy regime collaborated with relish with the Nazis in the Holocaust, and it is easy to imagine al-Gailani doing much the same).
It is possible that the experiences fostered the ultimate rise of Ba'ath fascism in Syria and Iraq. The rise of the theocratic regime in Iran may be of more subtle causes...
I recognize the rise of any totalitarian order as a Crisis in itself, whether the initiation (examples; the rise of Lenin in Russia or Hitler in Germany; the full consolidation of totalitarian power under Mussolini in Italy; the establishment of military rule with the cover of the Imperial Rule Assistance Association in Japan; the conquest of Cambodia by the Khmer Rouge; the consolidation of the Marxist Derg in Ethiopia; the consolidation of power under Satan Hussein in Iraq) or the consolidation of the new order at its end (the establishment of the fossilized social order in Spain under Franco; the Communist takeover of China and much of eastern Europe in the late 1940s; the establishment of Apartheid in South Africa [which was certainly totalitarian to anyone not white]; Communist takeovers of Laos and southern Vietnam in 1975). The former begins chaos; the latter freezes society in some revolutionary, but totalitarian 'new order' that persists for decades.
Obviously not all Crises culminate in the establishment of totalitarian rule. Eastern Germany and northern Korea went from one form of totalitarianism to another, and totalitarian regimes were destroyed in favor of democracy in western Germany, Austria, Italy, and Japan in the wake of World War II. See also the end of colonial rule in Indonesia, the Philippines, and British India.
If you wonder how relevant this is to America -- this Crisis will either establish Donald Trump as the founder of a new political order -- at least authoritarian in its service of rentier-based capitalism or the repudiation of the plutocratic principles that Donald Trump expounds. It may have been hard to believe that democracy could die in America, but it can -- and it will not die of some predictable form of political senescence.
The changes in all three countries (four if you count Lebanon, which seceded from Syria) were revolutionary in effect and may have prevented some Crisis-era genocides (the Vichy regime collaborated with relish with the Nazis in the Holocaust, and it is easy to imagine al-Gailani doing much the same).
It is possible that the experiences fostered the ultimate rise of Ba'ath fascism in Syria and Iraq. The rise of the theocratic regime in Iran may be of more subtle causes...
I recognize the rise of any totalitarian order as a Crisis in itself, whether the initiation (examples; the rise of Lenin in Russia or Hitler in Germany; the full consolidation of totalitarian power under Mussolini in Italy; the establishment of military rule with the cover of the Imperial Rule Assistance Association in Japan; the conquest of Cambodia by the Khmer Rouge; the consolidation of the Marxist Derg in Ethiopia; the consolidation of power under Satan Hussein in Iraq) or the consolidation of the new order at its end (the establishment of the fossilized social order in Spain under Franco; the Communist takeover of China and much of eastern Europe in the late 1940s; the establishment of Apartheid in South Africa [which was certainly totalitarian to anyone not white]; Communist takeovers of Laos and southern Vietnam in 1975). The former begins chaos; the latter freezes society in some revolutionary, but totalitarian 'new order' that persists for decades.
Obviously not all Crises culminate in the establishment of totalitarian rule. Eastern Germany and northern Korea went from one form of totalitarianism to another, and totalitarian regimes were destroyed in favor of democracy in western Germany, Austria, Italy, and Japan in the wake of World War II. See also the end of colonial rule in Indonesia, the Philippines, and British India.
If you wonder how relevant this is to America -- this Crisis will either establish Donald Trump as the founder of a new political order -- at least authoritarian in its service of rentier-based capitalism or the repudiation of the plutocratic principles that Donald Trump expounds. It may have been hard to believe that democracy could die in America, but it can -- and it will not die of some predictable form of political senescence.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.
