-Caveat Lector-
The following article appeared in the 26 April 1999 issue of Time
Magazine. It provides some food for thought in light of the current
election campaign.
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E S S A Y
Brian Walden
The Hole in Democracy's Heart
He is the model of villainy, but Hitler came to power through the ballot
box
Today in the Western world, little is sacred. Law, authority,
religion, honor are daily mocked. Yet one idea has attained a sanctity
which Christianity might envy. That idea is democracy. Whatever ever
else may be challenged, no one from any quarter of the political spectrum
ever questions the idea of majority rule through the ballot box. All
sides accord it magical powers.
Democracy, we are told, brings not merely political responsibility
and maturity but happiness and prosperity. See it bring joy to those who
once labored under communism. Pity the victims of African dictatorships,
whose societies would resemble our own could they enjoy its benefits.
Bewail the absence of democracy in both Yugoslavia and Iraq. If these
countries could cast off the dictator's yoke they would become as fair and
decent, as just and reasonable, as NATO's members.
To shatter this dewy-eyed view of the benefits democracy must
bring, we need look no farther than the greatest disaster which humanity
has managed to contrive, Germany's Third Reich. Adolf Hitler is usually
presented as a great dictator, a monster as separate from the German
people as we like to believe Saddam is from the Iraqis and Milosevic is
from the Serbs. Unfortunately, Hitler was a product not of the absence of
democracy but of the democratic process itself.
Hitler polled more votes in a free election than any German before him.
People who are aware of his popularity often assume that he managed to
sell his program of aggression and genocide because of unique
circumstances. Germany's national humiliation after the loss of World War
I and the economic depression of the 1930s get most of the blame. Yet the
truth is more alarming, and far more damaging to the idea that democracy
is the solution to all of humanity's problems.
For Hitler, like many of today's leaders, democratic politics was simply a
means of securing power. He had tried a putsch in 1923, but it had been a
complete failure. Unlike most of today's leaders, however, he had a very
clear idea of what he wanted to do with power when he got it, and he made
no secret of his grim ambitions. Mein Kampf was first published in 1925.
Hitler found, however, that in spite of the supposedly vulnerable
condition of the national psyche, the promise of a final solution to the
Jewish problem and more Lebensraum for the German people was not the
vote-winner he might have expected.
So what was a would-be monster to do? Hitler believed he understood "the
secret heart" of the German people, and used this understanding to turn a
people otherwise unsympathetic to his objectives into ardent supporters.
What were the hidden yearnings to which he was able to appeal? Not the
desire for a world war which would bring them untold suffering or a
campaign of genocide which would blacken their name forever. Instead,
Hitler appealed to an apparently harmless longing which is as strong today
in many quarters as it was then.
Then as now, many people felt unsettled by the uncertainty of a world in
which ancient structures of authority had collapsed and no one any longer
had a settled place. What Hitler offered them was an inclusive folk
community which would find a position for every one of them. This was the
message that combined with economic anxiety to pile up the votes the Nazis
needed. Hitler told Germans they did not need to listen to the endless
arguments of the democratic parties, which he knew they found baffling and
irritating. Instead they could look forward to consensus based on the
decisions made by a leader they could trust.
It was a flimsy message, potentially raising many awkward questions. But
Hitler had grasped a truth about democratic politics which is even more
enthusiastically embraced now than it was then. He believed that style
mattered more than substance and made sure that his message was superbly
marketed. Before the age of television politics was an outdoor affair, so
Hitler enveloped his message in spectacle-red, white and black flags,
eagle banners, bands blaring martial music, heart-warming speeches and the
chanting of simple slogans. The excitement of it all was enough to quell
doubts. The Germans who fell for it were not vicious or rapacious. They
were simply unwilling or unable to exercise the scrutiny required by the
democratic process. Today, as discussion of public affairs grows ever
more cursory and infantile, the absence of such scrutiny is even more
striking than it was in the 1930s. It may not have given us another
Hitler yet, but it could. It is not a passing aberration in the working
of democracy: it is the hole in its heart. And it is a hole we must find
out how to plug, if democracy is ever to fulfil the hopes we so eagerly
pin on it.
Brian Walden is a journalist and former British M.P. who is
currently presenting Walden on Villains on BBC television
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