The violence that traumatized the West between 1914 and 1945 evoked a powerful, American-led response that was anti-fascist, anti-totalitarian, anti-colonialist, anti-imperialist, and anti-racist. These anti imperatives define the postwar era. Their aim is to dissolve the strong beliefs and powerful loyalties thought to have fueled the conflicts that convulsed the twentieth century.
By “strong gods,” I do not mean Thor and the other residents of the Old Norse Valhalla. The strong gods are the objects of men’s love and devotion, the sources of the passions and loyalties that unite societies. They can be timeless. Truth is a strong god that beckons us to the matrimony of assent. They can be traditional. King and country, insofar as they still arouse men’s patriotic ardor, are strong gods. The strong gods can take the forms of modern ideologies and charismatic leaders. The strong gods can be beneficent. Our constitutional piety treats the American Founding as a strong god worthy of our devotion. And they can be destructive. In the twentieth century, militarism, fascism, communism, racism, and anti-Semitism brought ruin.
More than a few commentators treat our crisis as an illusion, a consequence of momentary derangements or foreign conspiracies. Duped by charlatans, British voters failed to see the obvious benefits of EU membership. But for Putin’s machinations, Trump would not have won. But others see the crisis as real, the result of the economic changes that have broken the social contract established after World War II between labor and capital, or a response to unrestrained immigration. Some dig more deeply, identifying one or another spiritual malaise rooted in secularization and manifest in the low birthrates in Europe (and now in the United States as well), which bespeak a mentality that desires no future beyond the worldly self.
The spirit of the Long Twentieth could not be more different from that which preceded it. In the wake of the horrors inflicted by WWII, the leadership classes of America and Europe understandably made “never again” the core of their ideational universe. They collectively resolved that fascism, war, and genocide must never again be allowed to threaten humanity. But this resolution, as reasonable and well-meaning as it seemed at the time, soon became an all-consuming obsession with negation.
Hugely influential liberal thinkers like Karl Popper and Theodor Adorno helped convince an ideologically amenable post-war establishment that the fundamental source of authoritarianism and conflict in the world was the “closed society.” Such a society is marked by what Reno dubs “strong gods”: strong beliefs and strong truth claims, strong moral codes, strong relational bonds, strong communal identities and connections to place and past – ultimately, all those “objects of men’s love and devotion, the sources of the passions and loyalties that unite societies.”
Meaningful bonds of faith, family, and above all the nation were now seen as suspect, as alarmingly retrograde temptations to fascism.
The great project of post-war establishment liberalism became to tear down the walls of the closed society and banish its gods forever. To be erected on its salted ground was an idyllic but exceptionally vague vision of an “open society” animated by peaceable weak gods of tolerance, doubt, dialogue, equality, and consumer comfort.
The anti-fascism of the twentieth century morphed into a great crusade – characterized, ironically, by a fiery zeal and fierce intolerance.
By making “never again” its ultimate priority, the ideology of the open society put a summum malum (greatest evil) at its core rather than any *summum bonum *(highest good). The singular figure of Hitler didn’t just lurk in the back of the 20th century mind; he dominated its subconscious, becoming a sort of secular Satan, forever threatening to tempt mankind into new wickedness
If it’s assumed that the only options are “the open society or Auschwitz” then maintaining zero tolerance for the perceived values of the closed society is functionally a moral commandment
If you’ve been wondering why USAID was spending $1.5 million to advance DEI in Serbian workplaces, $500,000 to “expand atheism” in Nepal, or $7.9 million to catechize Sri Lankan journalists in avoiding “binary-gendered language,”
As Carl Schmitt noted early in the twentieth century, an “elemental impulse” of liberalism is “neutralization” and “depoliticization” of the political – that is, the attempt to remove all fundamental contention from politics out of fear of conflict, shrinking “politics” to mere managerial administration.
Today’s populism is more than just a reaction against decades of elite betrayal and terrible governance (though it is that too); it is a deep, suppressed thumotic desire for long-delayed action, to break free from the smothering lethargy imposed by proceduralist managerialism
Trump’s behavior here actually appears to be quite straightforward: he is willing to use American might however may benefit the nation, rather than caring very much about protecting the status quo liberal international order for its own sake or adhering to polite fictions like international law.
Note, for example, the appearance of increasingly panicked admonitions (in between or in haphazard fusion with accusations of fascism) about the imminent danger of “Christian Nationalism.” This is a term that welds together two strong gods – nationalism and religion – and so is a particularly triggering phantom
Now the strong gods are nonetheless being haphazardly called back into the world as the vitalistic neo-romanticism of our revolutionary moment of reformation tears down the decaying walls and guard towers of the open society. Their return brings real risks, or course – although the return of risk is kind of the point
One could say that Hitler had good intentions--no matter how evil and destructive--since he and his fellow Nazis were advocating for their own people--Germans, Nordics, etc
The corporate machine views employees merely as interchangeable human resources, to whom it owes no loyalty. Indeed, if it is to effectively devote itself to profit maximization the company can afford no permanent relational bonds with any of those who work for it, as it must be able to fire or replace them based on cold utilitarian calculus
Unlike a corporation, a nation really is much like a family. And, like a family, it is characterized by strong relational bonds that are covenantal, not contractual. It establishes moral obligations of solidarity and subsidiarity that cannot be simply abandoned.
Much as we naturally would, and should, put our own children’s lives and wellbeing ahead of others’, a nation is obligated to distinguish its own from others and to put the wellbeing of its own first.
Yet, at least among our ruling classes, this natural reciprocal love between citizen and nation, which sustains our countries and our societies, seems to have long since frayed.
The philosopher Karl Popper, in his sweepingly influential 1945 book The Open Society and Its Enemies, denounced the idea of national community writ large, labeling it disastrous “anti-humanitarian propaganda” and smearing anyone who cherished his particular homeland and history as a “racialist.”
With Hitler having firmly established himself as the summum malum of the post-war order, the liberal establishment embarked