Weimar Germany vs Weimerica (bad vs worse)
Introducing "Esoteric 1933-ism"
"Weimerica" is a term often used to describe the state of moral and spiritual degradation that has overwhelmed much of the West in recent years, with the United States being the undisputed leader of the Western world and the originator of its most nefarious and degenerate trends.
The referent to which it alludes is of course the Weimar Republic, a period in Germany which began after the catastrophic defeat of World War I in 1918, and remained in effect for 15 years, until it was brought to an end by the appointment of Adolf Hitler to the position of Chancellor in 1933.
The Weimar era was notorious for many things in Germany: economic upheaval, political instability, and a general collective psychic disruption due to living in the shadow of the catastrophe of the Great War. But the quality most often connotatively associated with Weimar is the onslaught of decadence.
Prior to the war, Germany was a staunchly conservative constitutional monarchy, which strictly held any public displays of impropriety in check. But after the chaos of late 1918 following the Kaiser’s abdication, the nation’s leadership was forced to sign the November armistice. That opened the floodgates: in the months and years to come, Germany was racked by chaos, turmoil, hyperinflation, and the sporadic sputter of attempted leftist revolutions. As a result, social mores were rapidly relaxed, and the results were often shocking, even horrifying.
Berlin proved to be the epicenter of much disreputable activity, which included but was not limited to the public flaunting of homosexuality, transgenderism, child prostitution, orgies, abortion, and other behaviors which had been forbidden just a few years prior. The nightclub culture of the period-- depicted so memorably in the 1966 Broadway musical "Cabaret" (later made into a movie in 1972)-- specialized in risque and ribald songs and dance numbers, which often openly celebrated aberrant sexuality.
Though some found the new openness “liberating,” it is fair to say that most Germans were not happy with this cultural shift. Yet, as with “wokeness” today, the bitter fruits of this largely unpopular societal transformation proved difficult to root out.
But what could one do? Times had changed. The war had been lost, Wilhelm II had slunk away into exile, his monarchy in ruins, the Versailles treaty had imposed humiliating restrictions on the German population, and a parliamentary democracy-- which nobody had really asked for-- had been installed. Tradition had been flung to the winds, but by whom, exactly, and to what end?
Germans largely felt, during this period, that their nation had been forced into a new phase by forces beyond their control. Changes had been imposed from above, not due to any settled consensus, and certainly not by "the consent of the governed."
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Today in the West, we are faced with a similar situation. There is a sense of things spinning out of control, of our being ruled by unseen and largely unacknowledged forces who seem bound and determined to architect the degeneration of our societies. We are solemnly instructed to count ourselves fortunate not to live under despotic regimes like those that rule China or Russia, where human rights are not safeguarded as they are under Western "democracy," but this line, however superficially persuasive, quickly loses its flavor like chewed up bubblegum when one considers the disingenuousness of the sentiment.
It is true that the West has long enjoyed a higher standard of living than other parts of the world, and for the most part the rule of law obtains— insofar as late-night knocks on the door from the Stasi and coerced visits to the torture chambers of the Lubyanka, after you were overheard speaking ill of Party Comrade X whilst taking a cigarette break at the factory— don't generally happen here.
But an insidious "soft" totalitarianism (sometimes called "polite totalitarianism," though I resist this designation since I since nothing "polite" about it whatsoever) increasingly obtains in the West, whereby not conspicuously toeing the party line of the mandatory ruling ideology leads to the ruination of one's life, through the machinations of "soft" Stasi-like agents such as Human Resources commissars sniffing out objectionable internet content while antifa-affiliated "doxx" the addresses and job positions of intellectual deviants (and their family members). Before one knows it, one's use of Constitutionally-mandated freedom of speech to advance causes deemed “wrong” makes one effectively unhirable, and in some cases, deprived of a bank account.
It is true that dissidents in despotically-inclined non-Western countries generally have a harder time when it comes to facing imprisonment, torture, and other hardships from the state, but it is a sheer farce today to claim that Western countries' rulership work to protect their citizens' ostensible "human rights." As recent events have shown, it now not unusual for UK citizens to face jail time for posting "improper" tweets, and such brazen violations of free speech are the rule, NOT the exception, in Western countries today (the United States still remaining more "classically liberal" in at least this respect).
What is more, citizens of Western countries, which are, ostensibly "democracies," find themselves nevertheless constrained from being able to see their societal preferences met, if those preferences are trumped by the demands of oligarchic bodies, which wield inordinate power and seemingly cannot be vetoed, no matter how thoroughly disliked their edicts are.
The most glaring instance of this is the insistence of mass immigration, which, in tandem with an altogether apathetic disregard for the importance of border security, shows the contempt with which corporate and bureaucratic “elites” regard the well-being of the legitimate citizens of Western nations. It is considered “in bad taste” to draw attention to violence committed by illegal immigrants, and frowned on as “xenophobic” to emphasize the importance of protecting the border. But despite the best efforts of “nudge units” attempting to make people feel like reprobates for having common-sense perspectives regarding immigration (legal and illegal alike), a large number of the population still remain favorable to radical steps being taken to remove the “undocumented” population from the nation.
Even the Weimar authorities did not impose large numbers of cultural alien populations upon the Germans in the 1920s or early 30s. But those same authorities seemed unwilling to put a stop to the dismaying rise of cultural degeneracy spoken of above, a trend which tracks with Weimar going into effect in the first place and can be identified as one of its many disagreeable traits.
The conspicuous degeneracy of late-stage “Weimerica” is, of course, several times worse than that of Weimar Germany. There was nothing happening in Berlin that resembled “drag queen story hour,” nor did the Weimar period feature an actual campaign by establishment-affiliated medical professionals to convince parents to inject their children with hormones and mutilate their genitals, nor was it ever insisted that men pretending to be men should have access to women’s sports/spaces. Such contemporary outrages are, moreover, propped up by the corporate and bureaucratic establishment, who give billions of dollars to further these moral atrocities.
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Still, the parallels between Weimar and Weimarica are compelling enough to cause a person of traditional or simply “normal” beliefs and perspectives to earnestly wish for a “1933” moment, wherein an end is brought to all of this prevalent filth, and decency is finally restored. Whatever one thinks of Hitler or the National Socialist movement, they are at least to be credited for the decisive steps they took in 1933 to put a stop to Weimar forever.
May our own “1933” come soon!
Andy Nowicki is the author of several books, most recently The Insurrectionist, Muze, and Love and Hidden Agendas, as well as the just-published The Rule of Wrath. Visit his YouTube channel.
Interesting, thank you for this. It does seem like things have gotten worse now than in Weimar Germany, for the reasons you said, and also because such a large proportion of the population is now convinced that up is down and down is up. I doubt that a similar proportion of Germans back in the 1920's and 30's had gone so far off the deep end like this. The German churches and many other institutions back then hadn't become Woke, like they are now. Even a lot of the Communists of the time didn't approve of sexual deviance and mass immigration. But the seeds had been planted, like the Frankfurt School, and Hirschfeld.
Paul Gottfried wrote a good book called Antifascism: The Course of a Crusade. It relates to this because it tells how western governments and institutions after WWII eventually saw antifascism as their main purpose, instead of following their very limited responsibilities. Before WWII, fascism had a pretty definite meaning, but after the war, as we know, it became a term used against anyone with a different opinion. The traditional family was blamed for fascism and Nazism, with an influential book called The Authoritarian Personality. Patriotism, Christianity and wanting to stay with one's own people were condemned also. And so LGBTQ, globalism, mass immigration and other madnesses are supposed to protect us from ourselves.
Some think that Trump is the guy. This is ridiculous. Trump is the "Solution" in this Hegelian Dialectic. It won't be good.