Contrary to
the notion of the immunity of the English temperament- stereotypically
reserved, practical, moderate, understated -to such continental extravagances
as fascism, the British intelligentsia at the beginning of the 20th century was
awash with continental influences, above all by Nietzsche, who exercised an
enormous impact on the ideological and cultural climate. Such influences, whose
political and social effect was overwhelmingly to boost elitism and opposition
to democracy and perceived ‘massification,’[1] were documented by the literary
critic John Carey in his iconoclastic book on The Intellectuals and the Masses (1992). These belligerently
elitists currents of thought, so prevalent among the British upper and middle
classes, even led Carey, in the book’s final pages ,to stress the affinities
between such ideology and the worldview of none other than Hitler:
In the introduction to his edition of Hitler’s ‘Table Talk’, Hugh Trevor-Roper maintained that Hitler’s ideas on culture were ‘trivial, half-baked and disgusting. This seems questionable .At least, there are marked similarities between the cultural ideals promulgated in the Fuhrer’s writings and conversation and those intellectuals we have been looking at( 198).[2]
These ‘similarities’ are such to warrant, in Carey’s view, the following conclusion (208): ‘The tragedy of Mein Kampf is that it was not, in many respects, a deviant book but one firmly rooted in European intellectual orthodoxy.” More recently, Dan Stone has questioned the accepted notion that English culture and fascism were dichotomous. Challenging ‘the view . . . which dismisses British fascism as a pale imitation of its continental counterparts,’ Stone argues that
There was a well-developed indigenous tradition of ways of thinking which, while hey cannot be called ‘fascist’- not before 1918 at any rate – can certainly seen as ‘proto-fascist’ . . .I am proposing . . .that we reassess the intellectual provenance of proto-fascist ideas in Britain, suggesting ways that may be found to quite a large degree in Nietzsche and the eugenics movements, movements that represented the ‘extremes of Englishness.[3]
Fixing their gaze above all on cultural matters, Carey and Stone assume that British proto-fascism remained politically barren. Carey, for one, imagines that the elitist trends he discusses were simply manifestations of unsettled intellectualism, and shows little interest in pursuing their concrete social and political ramifications. Stone ,for his part, accepts the conventional notion that political fascism was a total failure in Britain. He correspondingly suggests that ‘British fascism failed not because it was an imitative movement, but because mainstream conservatism did not need to co-opt is ideas in order to remain in power.’ This is a valid point concerning the marginality of open fascism in Britain. But as we have seen(previous blog post),with the aid of political historians, British ‘mainstream conservatism’ was itself, to a degree, co-opted by fascism. This was possible because fascist currents were in reality not so unrelated to the British mainstream as one might imagine.
In the international – perhaps better said western- co-production that was fascism, Britain’s main contributions, apart from the imperialist model itself which so inspired fascists, were indeed Social Darwinism and eugenics. These ingredients were to prove of such importance to the fascist project in general and the National Socialists one in particular, so as to complicate any attempt at employing a reverse Verfremdungseffekt. Mann, however, is undeterred. Insisting on the non-fascist nature of the northwest, he re-circulates the wide-spread belief that British eugenics was fundamentally different than the German version, in that the former concerned predominantly class, not race: ‘Though Social Darwinism encouraged eugenicism everywhere, the northwest saw the reproduction of the lower classes rather than the ‘lower races’ as the main problem’ (Fascists, 82). Stone, however, in a study largely dedicated to a re-examination of British eugenics and racism ,challenges precisely such apodictic affirmations. He argues that ‘although class concerns were a major factor behind the ideas and inquiries of the British eugenicists, no less importance was a concern with race. British eugenics cannot be so simply be separated from the ostensibly ‘harder’ continental school, since re-thinking, so often over-looked by the historians, was integral to the worldview of the British eugenicists’ (95). Stone maintains that the origins of the distinction – in his view a mythical one- between British and German eugenics, are to be traced back to the attempt of the British eugenicists to establish retroactively a racial difference between themselves and the German counterparts. And yet he cannot find any evidence for such a self-serving distinction in the times preceding the war, when the reputation of eugenics was not yet shattered by the revelation of Nazi atrocities. He insists, on the contrary, that back then, ‘even among the most moderate figures among British eugenicists, racial and class considerations blurred into one another’ (99).
In the introduction to his edition of Hitler’s ‘Table Talk’, Hugh Trevor-Roper maintained that Hitler’s ideas on culture were ‘trivial, half-baked and disgusting. This seems questionable .At least, there are marked similarities between the cultural ideals promulgated in the Fuhrer’s writings and conversation and those intellectuals we have been looking at( 198).[2]
These ‘similarities’ are such to warrant, in Carey’s view, the following conclusion (208): ‘The tragedy of Mein Kampf is that it was not, in many respects, a deviant book but one firmly rooted in European intellectual orthodoxy.” More recently, Dan Stone has questioned the accepted notion that English culture and fascism were dichotomous. Challenging ‘the view . . . which dismisses British fascism as a pale imitation of its continental counterparts,’ Stone argues that
There was a well-developed indigenous tradition of ways of thinking which, while hey cannot be called ‘fascist’- not before 1918 at any rate – can certainly seen as ‘proto-fascist’ . . .I am proposing . . .that we reassess the intellectual provenance of proto-fascist ideas in Britain, suggesting ways that may be found to quite a large degree in Nietzsche and the eugenics movements, movements that represented the ‘extremes of Englishness.[3]
Fixing their gaze above all on cultural matters, Carey and Stone assume that British proto-fascism remained politically barren. Carey, for one, imagines that the elitist trends he discusses were simply manifestations of unsettled intellectualism, and shows little interest in pursuing their concrete social and political ramifications. Stone ,for his part, accepts the conventional notion that political fascism was a total failure in Britain. He correspondingly suggests that ‘British fascism failed not because it was an imitative movement, but because mainstream conservatism did not need to co-opt is ideas in order to remain in power.’ This is a valid point concerning the marginality of open fascism in Britain. But as we have seen(previous blog post),with the aid of political historians, British ‘mainstream conservatism’ was itself, to a degree, co-opted by fascism. This was possible because fascist currents were in reality not so unrelated to the British mainstream as one might imagine.
In the international – perhaps better said western- co-production that was fascism, Britain’s main contributions, apart from the imperialist model itself which so inspired fascists, were indeed Social Darwinism and eugenics. These ingredients were to prove of such importance to the fascist project in general and the National Socialists one in particular, so as to complicate any attempt at employing a reverse Verfremdungseffekt. Mann, however, is undeterred. Insisting on the non-fascist nature of the northwest, he re-circulates the wide-spread belief that British eugenics was fundamentally different than the German version, in that the former concerned predominantly class, not race: ‘Though Social Darwinism encouraged eugenicism everywhere, the northwest saw the reproduction of the lower classes rather than the ‘lower races’ as the main problem’ (Fascists, 82). Stone, however, in a study largely dedicated to a re-examination of British eugenics and racism ,challenges precisely such apodictic affirmations. He argues that ‘although class concerns were a major factor behind the ideas and inquiries of the British eugenicists, no less importance was a concern with race. British eugenics cannot be so simply be separated from the ostensibly ‘harder’ continental school, since re-thinking, so often over-looked by the historians, was integral to the worldview of the British eugenicists’ (95). Stone maintains that the origins of the distinction – in his view a mythical one- between British and German eugenics, are to be traced back to the attempt of the British eugenicists to establish retroactively a racial difference between themselves and the German counterparts. And yet he cannot find any evidence for such a self-serving distinction in the times preceding the war, when the reputation of eugenics was not yet shattered by the revelation of Nazi atrocities. He insists, on the contrary, that back then, ‘even among the most moderate figures among British eugenicists, racial and class considerations blurred into one another’ (99).
Such
questioning of the relative uprightness of ‘northwestern’ eugenics (assuming,
that is, that class eugenics is somehow less pernicious than racial ones, is
complemented, for example, by Stephan Kuhl’s
excellent book [4], which amply documented the many ideological
affinities and manifold concrete collaboration which existed between Nazi
eugenicists and American ones. And he too, had to show this expressly in
defiance of post-War notions that American eugenics was somehow ‘different’ and
less insidious than the Nazi variety.
One must indeed question the very attempt to chart a genealogy for racial prejudice as distinct from that of class.
Was not Gobineau himself, the originator of modern racism, adamant that racial difference allegedly existed between the French classes, the working masses being descendants of the Gallic Celts, bourgeoisie and particularly the aristocracy being the heirs of the Franks?[5] Similarly, in his incomparable denunciation of eugenics, indeed of the British variant with which he was familiar, Chesterton pointed out ‘the strange new disposition to regard the poor as a race.[6] While not identical, racial and class prejudice were thus from the beginning woven together, and subsequently fed upon each other in diverse and complex ways, which can hardly be sorted out with recourse to the supposed geo-ideological line separating north and west from center, east and south. And surely it is vacuous to assume that the western heritage, once Germany is excluded, was relatively free from racial bias?
Clearly racism deeply informed the ideology and the practice of western imperialism, to the point of occasionally justifying, even, genocide? I have already cited Karl Pearson, a leading British eugenicist and Galton’s disciple, to that effect; let us now listen to a voice that as certainly not shrill within the British political landscape of the time nor, it may be assumed, especially prone to echo continental, fascist notions, namely that of Churchill:
I do not agree that a dog in a manger has a final right to the manger, even though he may have lain there for a very long time. I do not admit that right. I do not admit, for instance, that a very great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America, or the black people of Australia. I do not admit that a wrong has been done to these people by the fact that a stronger race, a higher grade race, a more worldly-wise race, to put it that way, has come in and taken their place. [7]
One must indeed question the very attempt to chart a genealogy for racial prejudice as distinct from that of class.
Was not Gobineau himself, the originator of modern racism, adamant that racial difference allegedly existed between the French classes, the working masses being descendants of the Gallic Celts, bourgeoisie and particularly the aristocracy being the heirs of the Franks?[5] Similarly, in his incomparable denunciation of eugenics, indeed of the British variant with which he was familiar, Chesterton pointed out ‘the strange new disposition to regard the poor as a race.[6] While not identical, racial and class prejudice were thus from the beginning woven together, and subsequently fed upon each other in diverse and complex ways, which can hardly be sorted out with recourse to the supposed geo-ideological line separating north and west from center, east and south. And surely it is vacuous to assume that the western heritage, once Germany is excluded, was relatively free from racial bias?
Clearly racism deeply informed the ideology and the practice of western imperialism, to the point of occasionally justifying, even, genocide? I have already cited Karl Pearson, a leading British eugenicist and Galton’s disciple, to that effect; let us now listen to a voice that as certainly not shrill within the British political landscape of the time nor, it may be assumed, especially prone to echo continental, fascist notions, namely that of Churchill:
I do not agree that a dog in a manger has a final right to the manger, even though he may have lain there for a very long time. I do not admit that right. I do not admit, for instance, that a very great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America, or the black people of Australia. I do not admit that a wrong has been done to these people by the fact that a stronger race, a higher grade race, a more worldly-wise race, to put it that way, has come in and taken their place. [7]
. .
. . Addressing eugenics in the USA, too, it would
be a vain effort to try to separate the bias of race from that of class. In a
best selling polemic against the ‘democratic theory’, the American eugenicist
Madison Grant retorted:
Those engaged in social uplift and in revolutionary movements are therefore usually very intolerant of the limitations imposed by heredity. Discussion of these limitations is also offensive to the advocates of the obliteration, under the guise of internationalism, of all existing distinctions based on nationality, language, race, religion and class. Those individuals who have neither country, nor flag, nor language, nor class . . . very naturally decry and sneer at the value of these attributes of the higher types.[8]
Elevated race and class are as a matter of course ‘the attributes’ of ‘higher types’. Far from posing to incommensurable problems, this is a discourse in which race and class are interchangeable, which allows one to switch seamlessly from one to the other, as the following sample of Grant’s rhetoric nicely illustrates:
Those engaged in social uplift and in revolutionary movements are therefore usually very intolerant of the limitations imposed by heredity. Discussion of these limitations is also offensive to the advocates of the obliteration, under the guise of internationalism, of all existing distinctions based on nationality, language, race, religion and class. Those individuals who have neither country, nor flag, nor language, nor class . . . very naturally decry and sneer at the value of these attributes of the higher types.[8]
Elevated race and class are as a matter of course ‘the attributes’ of ‘higher types’. Far from posing to incommensurable problems, this is a discourse in which race and class are interchangeable, which allows one to switch seamlessly from one to the other, as the following sample of Grant’s rhetoric nicely illustrates:
To admit the unchangeable
differentiation of race in its modern scientific meaning is to admit inevitably
the existence of superiority in one race and the inferiority in another. Such
an admission we can hardly expect from those
of inferior races. These inferior races and classes are prompt to recognize in
such an admission the very real danger to themselves of being relegated again
to their former obscurity and subordinate position in society. Their favorite
defense of these inferior classes is the unqualified denial of the existence of
fixed inherited qualities, either physical or spiritual, which cannot be
obliterated or greatly modified by a change of environment. [xxvii-xxix]
For Grant, as for his implied readers, the social question is clearly a racial question, and the racial struggle is a social struggle:
The insurgence of inferior races and classes throughout not merely Europe but the world, is evident in every dispatch from Egypt, Ireland, Poland, Rumania, India and Mexico. It is called nationalism, patriotism, freedom and other high-sounding names, but it is everywhere the phenomena of the long suppressed servile classes rising against the master race. [xxxi]
Another American eugenicist, S. K. Humphrey, regarded as ‘inevitable that class lines shall harden as a protection against the growing numbers of the underbred, just as in all previous cultures However remote a cataclysm may be, our present racial trend is towards social chaos or a dictatorship.’ Grant’s protégé, Lothrop Stoddard, who considered ‘the negroes’ one of the ‘existing savage and barbaric races of a demonstratively low average level of intelligence’, was equally convinced that ‘as civilization progresses, social status tends to coincide more and more closely with racial value . . . the upper social classes containing an even larger proportion of persons of superior natural endowments while the lower social classes contain a growing proportion of inferiors.’
For Grant, as for his implied readers, the social question is clearly a racial question, and the racial struggle is a social struggle:
The insurgence of inferior races and classes throughout not merely Europe but the world, is evident in every dispatch from Egypt, Ireland, Poland, Rumania, India and Mexico. It is called nationalism, patriotism, freedom and other high-sounding names, but it is everywhere the phenomena of the long suppressed servile classes rising against the master race. [xxxi]
Another American eugenicist, S. K. Humphrey, regarded as ‘inevitable that class lines shall harden as a protection against the growing numbers of the underbred, just as in all previous cultures However remote a cataclysm may be, our present racial trend is towards social chaos or a dictatorship.’ Grant’s protégé, Lothrop Stoddard, who considered ‘the negroes’ one of the ‘existing savage and barbaric races of a demonstratively low average level of intelligence’, was equally convinced that ‘as civilization progresses, social status tends to coincide more and more closely with racial value . . . the upper social classes containing an even larger proportion of persons of superior natural endowments while the lower social classes contain a growing proportion of inferiors.’
European
Nazis, for their part, highly valued such theories. Hitler himself, in a
private correspondence with Grant, thanked him for writing The Passing of the Great Race and said that ‘this book was his
Bible’ [Kuhl: 85]. The highly representative figure of Hans F. K. Gunther, for example,
admired Grant and Stoddard, saw them as state-of-the-art racial thinkers and
often referred to them in his own works. And he was thoroughly of one mind with
them with regard to class as a racial attribute. Stoddard complained against the
‘crushing burden of taxation throughout Europe, which hits especially the
increase of the upper and middle classes,’ and demanded that ‘the habitual
paupers should be prevented from having children, ’otherwise become a ‘harmful
and unfair’ yoke on the the ‘thrifty and capable members of society who pay the
taxes.’ And his German counterpart articulated the same middle-class
social-cum-racial sensibility:
The deeply penetrating de-nordization of the World War was followed in all Western peoples, even those who had not taken part in the War, by de-nordization through the ever-increasing burden of taxation, which imposes a further restriction on the number of children precisely on those classes richest in Nordic blood. Nordic blood- as Grant put it- is now being effectively taxed away throughout the West. The economic tearing apart of the middle class hits precisely the Nordic stream of the population which rises through this class, keeping down its birth-rate.’ [1929]
Against this literally blood-sucking taxation on the Nordic bourgeoisie , this ever escalating assault by welfare institutions, there is only one adequate response, and this was attempted in only one country, the United States of America: ‘The strong increase in inferior hereditary qualities caused by the 19th century ought to have been met by a correspondingly active interest among the nations in the problem of eugenics, an interest which in turn should have led to the legal measures which have today been adopted by the United States’. For a prominent German eugenicist as Gunther, soon to play an important part in the Third Reich, it is America- how strange!- that leads the way in matters pertaining to race and to class, and Germany, if she knows what is good for her, ought to follow suit . . .
Fascism, an open one at any rate, did not take hold of the reigns of power in Britain and America, but without the major contribution – ideological, economic, political- of industrialists, scientists, thinkers and artists, it may have been unthinkable elsewhere. Let us therefore beware of over-‘alienating fascism, or over-localizing it. The real Sonderweg (‘special path’), it appears, is not a German, or an Italian, or a Spanish, or an Austrian way, but the way of the west.
The deeply penetrating de-nordization of the World War was followed in all Western peoples, even those who had not taken part in the War, by de-nordization through the ever-increasing burden of taxation, which imposes a further restriction on the number of children precisely on those classes richest in Nordic blood. Nordic blood- as Grant put it- is now being effectively taxed away throughout the West. The economic tearing apart of the middle class hits precisely the Nordic stream of the population which rises through this class, keeping down its birth-rate.’ [1929]
Against this literally blood-sucking taxation on the Nordic bourgeoisie , this ever escalating assault by welfare institutions, there is only one adequate response, and this was attempted in only one country, the United States of America: ‘The strong increase in inferior hereditary qualities caused by the 19th century ought to have been met by a correspondingly active interest among the nations in the problem of eugenics, an interest which in turn should have led to the legal measures which have today been adopted by the United States’. For a prominent German eugenicist as Gunther, soon to play an important part in the Third Reich, it is America- how strange!- that leads the way in matters pertaining to race and to class, and Germany, if she knows what is good for her, ought to follow suit . . .
Fascism, an open one at any rate, did not take hold of the reigns of power in Britain and America, but without the major contribution – ideological, economic, political- of industrialists, scientists, thinkers and artists, it may have been unthinkable elsewhere. Let us therefore beware of over-‘alienating fascism, or over-localizing it. The real Sonderweg (‘special path’), it appears, is not a German, or an Italian, or a Spanish, or an Austrian way, but the way of the west.
[1] Giving this a materialistic twist, and reversing cause and effect, we could say that structural elitism and opposition to democracy allowed such theories as Nietzsche’s to become so popular.
[2] Among
the many intellectuals here alluded to are George Gissing, W. B. Yeats, D H.
Lawrence, H. G. Wells, Wyndam Lewis, and Rayner Heppenstall
[3]Stone,
Lawrence. 2002 [1972] Breeding Superman,
Nietzsche, Race and Eugenics in Edwardian and Interwar Britain. Liverpool
University.
[4] Kuhl,
Stefan. 1994 The Nazi Connection.
Eugenics, American Racism, and German National-Socialism. Oxford University
Press.
[5] George
Lukac’s account (Die Zerstorung der Vernunft. 1962. Luchterhand. 579-91) of the
distinctly class origins of modern racism and of Gobineau’s foundational role
remains highly instructive.
[6] G. K.
Chesterton 1922, Eugenics and Other Evils;
Cassell and Company. 142
[7]quoted by
Anderson, Perry. 2001. “Scurrying Towards Bethlehem.” New Left Review 10, page 9
[8] Grant,
Madison. 1936 The Passing of the Great
Race. Or the Racial Basis of European History. Scribner’s Sons. xx
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