“Weimar did not collapse like a house of cards. It was systematically and relentlessly attacked by the Right, both old-style conservatives and the dynamic Nazi Party, which represented something entirely new on the political scene. Ultimately, the Nazis proved capable of gathering in all those people and forces that despised democracy and socialism, blamed Jews for Germany’s defeat in World War I and everything else that had gone wrong in their lives, and thought that Germany needed to be, once again, a great power on the European stage. The attacks sapped the republic of energy; even its own supporters, by the end, were weary, beaten down by the intense, unstoppable hostility of Weimar’s enemies and their own inability to master yet another set of economic and political crises. Weimar is ever-present, but its meaning is not to be found in the crazy ideas one easily encounters on various websites. Weimar, instead, is the prime example of the fragility of democracy. It is a warning sign for today, one hundred years after the revolution and the founding of the republic, of what can happen when the institutions and personnel of a democracy are subject to unrelenting and often vicious attack; when politics becomes a war for total domination by one side; when certain groups are vociferously condemned and marginalized; when traditional conservatives traffic with the radical and racist Right, granting it a legitimacy it would never be able to achieve on its own. The grand achievements of Weimar, its democracy, cultural creativity, openness to a variety of sexualities, and social reforms, were precisely the elements hated by the Right. Those accomplishments need to be recognized and celebrated one hundred years later. Otherwise, we let the enemies of democracy and progress define the past, and we accord them a posthumous victory.”
romaincrisis
prguitarman
kianamaiart
germansingergirl
baratheonpilled
izzy806
