Vol. 4 No. 8 (December 2005)

Uncommon Denominator

The Newsletter of the Commonweal Institute
www.commonwealinstitute.org

"The further the spiritual evolution of mankind advances, the more certain it seems to me that the path to genuine religiosity does not lie through the fear of life, and the fear of death, and blind faith, but through striving after rational knowledge."
-- Albert Einstein

Talking Points: From Berlin to Baghdad
Wit and Wisdom: China cracks down on the flu
Quoted! George W. Bush on his closest adviser
Featured Article: "On the Hunt for a Conspiracy Theory"
Happenings: CI convening preparations
Endorsements: Robert Reich
Get Involved: Spread the word; become a contributor

TALKING POINTS

With the election this month of the first-ever democratically elected Iraqi government, under the new constitution ratified in October, Iraqi society has turned a corner, and the world looks on with mingled hope and trepidation. The optimists cheer; the sober demur. For it is not clear yet what, exactly, lies around this corner.

Historical parallels are never perfect, no more than metaphors are literally true, and we should also keep a clear view of the distinctions between different historical moments, actors, and forces. But historical parallels can vividly illuminate the present, and serve as vital indicators of where the present could be heading, just as metaphors can make known to us the qualities or properties of a literal thing.

The historically-minded might see in today's Iraq troubling similarities to the Weimar Republic in Germany during the 1920s and early 1930s. Out of the chaos and political intrigue of that fateful period emerged the National Socialist German Workers' party, whose fuehrer eventually managed to secure the Chancellorship in 1933 - through democratic, if violent and grossly dishonorable, means. The destruction and misery that this outcome visited upon the world and Germany itself need no rehearsing, but the lessons of Nazi Germany, its origins and energies, must always remain fresh.

First, the caveats. Germany in the post-World War I era was not the Iraq of 2005. Iraqis have much greater access to information; a wide-ranging reconstruction effort, however incompetent in its administration, is underway; and the Iraqi "national character," to the degree that such a thing exists, is not the German national character.

Nonetheless, in the interest of perspective, the parallels between Weimar Germany and modern Iraq deserve an airing. In both cases, we find a society wrecked and humiliated by war, a society in which the struggle for government power is fluid, uncertain, and often ruthless. Fought not only in the corridors of officialdom, but in the streets, that struggle gives rise to local militias attached to political factions. In post-war Germany, Ernst Roehm's Sturmabteilung (the brown-shirted S.A.) grew directly from the so-called Freikorps that sprang up to provide some semblance of order and to grab authority where they could; in today's Iraq, the Shia Badr Brigades and Moktada al-Sadr's militia serve essentially the same purposes. The price, of course, is that intimidation and violence, apart from their intrinsic objectionability, badly warp the political process.

In both cases, we find a society in which foreign interference and occupation breed resentment; for the Germans the French occupation of the Ruhr in 1923, the loss of territory around the Rhine, and the separation of Prussia from Germany by the Polish corridor served as constant affronts to German pride. For Iraqis, the sense of resentment goes all the way back, in fact, to the same post-war period, with the occupation by the British and the artificial drawing of the modern map of the Middle East. And today, of course, quite apart from where individual Iraqis might stand on domestic political questions, the presence of American troops is pervasively rankling. Needless to say, few things are more potent than foreign interference as a spur to demagoguery.

In both cases, we find a climate of severe economic hardship, and even though the Versailles treaty, which fatally hamstrung Germany's efforts at financial recovery, and the U.N. sanctions imposed on the regime of Saddam Hussein were very different in character, the experience of regular people living under them were not so far apart. In Germany the central problems were hyper-inflation and currency devaluation, which reduced citizens' purchasing power to practically zero, and unemployment, which produced the dangerous phenomenon of lots of angry young men with not much to do. Iraq might not face quite the same financial crisis, but its unemployment rate remains unacceptably high and, perhaps more importantly, many Iraqis believe that under the new constitution, the country's oil wealth, concentrated in the Shiite South, will not be distributed fairly or put to use for the common good. The only thing more dangerous than universal economic hardship might be unequally shared hardship.

In both cases, above all, we find a structural instability caused by religious, cultural, economic, and/or ethnic fractiousness giving rise to a dizzying array of interest groups and rivalries. In both post-war Germany and modern Iraq the loyalties of tribe, caste, sect, and region frequently prove stronger than the sense of common national identity and purpose that in successful countries serves as adhesive to hold the whole place together. Germany had its Prussians and Bavarians; its Catholics and Protestants; its Bolsheviks and industrialists. Iraq has its Kurds and Sunnis and Shiites; its jihadists and secularists; its professionals and its farmers, all of whom perceive their own interests differently. Paradoxically, such fractiousness, by provoking violence, can lead to the desire for a strong leader or party that can transcend the divisions and unify the country.

All of these factors make a country ripe for the development of totalitarianism. Naziism responded to its historical moment by promising the German people, and in a real sense delivering to them, the order and sense of pride that they missed. The horrific toll would only become apparent later, though the portents were there from the beginning.

But won't democratic procedures prevent the same thing from happening Iraq? Hopefully, but not necessarily. Several sobering considerations should make us wary.

First, the Weimar Constitution was about as enlightened a constitution as the world has ever witnessed; it stipulated, for instance, that "All Germans are equal before the law & Personal liberty is inviolable & Every German has a right & to express his opinion freely & All Germans have the right to form associations or societies & All inhabitants of the Reich enjoy complete liberty of belief and conscience." Nonetheless, the mere existence of such a document did not guarantee a lasting republic. It failed to win the loyalty of the country's disparate factions; it found little support from the "institutions of democracy" such as a free press and robust middle class; it proved vulnerable to extreme anti-democratic forces on both Right and Left and incapable of securing the interests of the center; and in the end it was subverted by the machinations of self-serving politicians like Kurt von Schleicher, Franz von Papen, and of course Hitler himself, not to mention the countless people who acquiesced in the Republic's destruction. We have no reason to believe, unfortunately, that the Iraqi constitution is any better a blueprint for that society, or to think that the same anti-democratic weaknesses as existed in Germany do not exist in Iraq today. In fact, by enshrining an extreme form of federalism which creates a very weak central government and virtually autonomous provinces, the Iraqi constitution could very well represent the "programming," so to speak, for the disintegration of the country. Even when the Constitution and the political process seem to be functioning, that is no guarantee of long-term stability.

Second, as the example of Nazi Germany amply illustrates, malignant political forces in the last century have proven themselves remarkably effective at using democratic means to achieve anti-democratic ends. After the unsuccessful Beer Hall Putsch in 1923, Hitler recognized that in order to get to the top of the political heap, he would have to secure the support of the existing powerful institutions, namely the army and the industrialists. He managed to do so through a combination of unscrupulous horse-trading and aggressive political campaigning, backed up by pressure tactics, violence, and terror. This represents a mix of strategic elements that is not, perhaps, wholly alien to every Iraqi politician or warlord today. More fundamentally, however, democratic process does not always reflect or ensure democratic culture or a democratic sensibility. Americans should be given pause, for instance, by the fact that the most powerful political party in Iraq at the moment is called the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq.

Third, just because one dictator falls does not mean that another will not follow. Kaiser Wilhelm II abdicated at the end of World War I, but that merely set the stage for the rise of a worse despot. It is heartening to see Saddam Hussein in the dock, and heartening to know that the grip of outright tyranny has lost its hold on the Iraqi people, but we would be foolish to conclude immediately that fascism has had its day in Iraq.

This is not to assert positively that another Hitler is going to emerge out of the chaos of Iraq, or anywhere else in the Middle East. But the parallels between Weimar Germany and modern Iraq should serve as a warning about the conditions that produce fascism. Fascism does not depend on a cult of personality, the presence of gas chambers, or dreams of global conquest; what it depends on is the routine use of government terror and propaganda. It also thrives on the failure of other countries to nurture democracy, and on their insufficient commitment, for reasons of cowardice, impatience, or short-sightedness, to invest in the new republic that their military victory has made, for the time being, possible.

WIT AND WISDOM

China Slaughters Population to Control Flu Outbreak

"Beijing -- Chinese health officials entered a new phase of their bird-flu-containment campaign Monday by slaughtering all non-essential personnel, the Xinhua News Agency reported. "This weekend, we placed into bleach-filled plastic bags, asphyxiated, and then incinerated all 15 million residents of Beijing who may have come into contact with birds or the air through which birds have flown," Vice Minister of Agriculture Zhang Baowen said. "We are also asking the World Health Organization for additional help in eliminating the human-borne vector of this virus." Plans to connect the remaining 1.3 billion potentially infected citizens to high-voltage power lines extending from the Three Gorges hydroelectric dam will commence within the week."

-- from The Onion

QUOTED!

"President Bush said to all of us: 'I'm driven with a mission from God. God would tell me, "George, go and fight those terrorists in Afghanistan." And I did, and then God would tell me, "George, go and end the tyranny in Iraq &" And I did. And now, again, I feel God's words coming to me, "Go get the Palestinians their state and get the Israelis their security, and get peace in the Middle East." And by God I'm gonna do it.'" -- Nabil Shaath, Palestinian Foreign Minister, on his meeting with President George W. Bush in June 2003, in an interview with the BBC

FEATURED ARTICLE

The following is an excerpt from Frank Furedi's "On the Hunt for a Conspiracy Theory," which appeared in the November 16, 2005, issue of the Christian Science Monitor.

"Conspiracy theories are now so influential that the US State Department's website desperately tries to contain the damage these theories cause to the reputation of the United States. It recognizes that conspiracy theories have "a great appeal and are often widely believed." Indeed, the theory that American foreign policy is the outcome of a carefully elaborated secret plot concocted by a cabal of neoconservatives is widely believed both inside and outside the US. Preoccupation with conspiracies is no longer confined to the margins. Virtually every unexpected event provokes a climate of suspicion that breeds rumors and conspiracies. . . .

"We seem to be living in a shadowy world akin to "The Matrix" trilogy, where the issue at stake is the reality that we inhabit and who is being manipulated by whom. In previous times such attitudes mainly informed the thinking of right-wing populist movements who saw the hand of a Jewish or a Masonic or a Communist conspiracy behind major world events. Today, conspiracy theory has become mainstream and many of its most vociferous supporters are to be found in radical protest movements and among the cultural left. When Hillary Clinton warned of a "vast right-wing conspiracy," it became evident that the politics of the hidden agenda have been internalized in everyday public life. Today, the anticapitalist and antiglobalization movement is no less wedded to the politics of conspiracy than its opponents on the far right. From their perspective a vast global neoconservative conspiracy has turned into an all-purpose explanation for the many ills that afflict our times."

Click here to read the whole article.

HAPPENINGS

Progressive Marketing and Communications Convening -- Work has begun on the Commonweal Institute project Progressive Marketing and Communications: Convening a Working Group to Build Progressive Infrastructure. For this Progressive Roundtable^SM convening, which will take place in the San Francisco Bay area from March 2-5, 2006, CI is bringing together approximately 50 leaders in communications, marketing, framing, media, and strategy from around the country to make decisions about how to market progressive ideas more effectively and how to coordinate progressive communications. We are currently building a website where participants will be able to exchange ideas, collaborate on strategy, share resources, and begin developing specific plans in advance of the convening itself. The Progressive Roundtable^SM website is scheduled for launch on January 1; it will be available at www.progressiveroundtable.org. After the convening, the website will continue to function as a meeting place and collaborative center for those involved in building progressive infrastructure. Meanwhile, you can find more information about progressive infrastructure on the CI website, at www.commonwealinstitute.org/IssuesPI.htm.

ENDORSEMENTS

"America needs a true marketplace of ideas, not a one-sided monologue by the right. At a time when airwaves and emails are filled with conservative voices, the Commonweal Institute is more important than ever." -- Robert B. Reich, former U.S. Secretary of Labor, University Professor at Brandeis, and co-founder of The American Prospect magazine

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Uncommon Denominator

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