Read Vuillard
Not just because it is a great read (it is), but because it has important lessons for our present situation.
Eric Vuillard’s “novel” (really history written with a novelist’s pen) just won the Goncourt, France’s most prestigious literary award. It centers on Hitler’s take-over of Austria but goes both back and forward in time from 1933 to the Nuremberg trials.
Titled, L’Ordre du Jour (The Order of the Day) it is available in English translation. It is very short, 150 minipages (it would be 75 normal pages). You could read it in an afternoon, though, like me, you might need to put it down every few pages to breathe.
The first thing any reader would notice is its, entirely merited, attack on German big business. But for me the most stunning lesson was how the fascists and their ilk (I leave it open as to whether Trumpites are fascists or just ilk), systematically manipulated the rules of politeness, the codes of civility, to outmaneuver their opponents. The fascists understood these codes perfectly, did not have any respect for them, but knew that their opponents did respect them and that this could be a weakness.
This has been repeated precisely in the radical right takeover of the American government. One example: McConnell outmaneuvered Obama because he, McConnell, was happy to break the rules but he knew that Obama, wanting to preserve civility and consensus, would not. (I say this with sadness, as I admire Obama enormously as a person and a politician, and with humility, since I could never come close to equaling his achievements.)
But here we are, faced with a rising tide of fascism or something very close to it. Such movements thrive on dividing and polarizing. The sweet old days of consensus politics are gone (sorry Axelrod). We are in an age of mass mobilization and confrontation. With luck, here in the US, we can avoid major violence. But we must be firm, and not fearful of confrontation. Confrontation, not reason or compromise, is how the last wave of fascism was brought down.
Read Vuillard, and buckle your seat-belts. It’s going to be a bumpy ride.