05-01-2019, 10:19 AM
The crisis of Spain in the 1930s could have some relevance. Note that Spain was divided between modernists on the leading edge of cultural creativity and people whose minds were in the middle ages except for technology. Fascists like Franco might have a medieval idea of how to structure society and to establish some eternal truth, but they love the technology of war and repression. Spain had a clear divide between Left and Right, with the Left clearly international in outlook and the Right ultra-nationalist. The Left was for reason; the Right saw Faith as the solution for all things except for technology.
The language of the divide got vicious -- to the extent that the Right decided that any modernity contrary to a medieval idea was itself evil and -- when it got the chance -- to be extirpated. The Right believed that it had the keys to Heaven and Hell -- a Heaven based upon unqualified allegiance to a feudal way of life and a rejection of intellectual modernity, and Hell in the form of torture chambers and political prisons followed by eternal judgment of an unforgiving God. In essence under a modern form of Inquisition,
"Believe it or burn."
Spain had huge cultural divides by region. I'm not saying that the Spanish Communists would have been nice people upon taking power, but Franco's goons have shown what a 20th-century Inquisition can be like. Those who would impose a nearly-medieval set of values in America have fundamentalist Protestantism, and not Catholicism, as their basis. But I can imagine some very resentful people doing horrible things to the defeated.
The language of the divide got vicious -- to the extent that the Right decided that any modernity contrary to a medieval idea was itself evil and -- when it got the chance -- to be extirpated. The Right believed that it had the keys to Heaven and Hell -- a Heaven based upon unqualified allegiance to a feudal way of life and a rejection of intellectual modernity, and Hell in the form of torture chambers and political prisons followed by eternal judgment of an unforgiving God. In essence under a modern form of Inquisition,
"Believe it or burn."
Spain had huge cultural divides by region. I'm not saying that the Spanish Communists would have been nice people upon taking power, but Franco's goons have shown what a 20th-century Inquisition can be like. Those who would impose a nearly-medieval set of values in America have fundamentalist Protestantism, and not Catholicism, as their basis. But I can imagine some very resentful people doing horrible things to the defeated.
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.