Could it all come back?

The above is from a stunning collection of colour photos, apparently from Life magazine and currently available on line here. [H/T: Irving] Click to enlarge.

Could it all come back? Up to a point one would have to say certainly not. For one thing we simply no longer have a culture of militarism, either in this country or in any other (and certainly not in Germany). And nor is there even any fondness for order and discipline generally, in private life or in public. People nowadays are in love with slovenliness and degradation, and their children are always inevitably worse.

Again though, I say only up to a point. The greatest pity is that much that was wicked and evil about National Socialism (e.g. the nationalism, not to mention the socialism) is still very much alive today. For example, a couple of days ago Irving also linked to a rather ugly story from The Daily Mail. I'm not really into physical fitness, and whenever I've taken myself down to the gymn most of the other boys and girls there have been reasonably civilised. But now it would seem that if the balding old coot on the treadmill next to yours turns out to be a ranting fascist nutter then it's not impossible that he'll be a senior civil servant at the FCO as well.

Similarly, I suspect (or is it just the usual gut instinct?) that Gerard Warner is wrong when he says that fascism is ideologically 'exhausted and discredited'. Morally, of course, fascism always was discredited. But ideologically it would seem to be very much alive. Ideologically it is, after all, merely a "scientific" approach to human existence, based on the theories (now elevated to the level of revealed truths) of Charles Darwin - who is still very much a celebrity du jour. It dismisses rationality and spirituality as mere sentimentality and weakness, prizing the will above human reason and "reality" above religion. Modern science and modern politics, which set no store by the mere humanity of their victims (whether old or unborn - to which latter extent modern doctors are a good deal worse than their Nazi forebears), simply take these principles to their logical extremes.