Meditation on the Failure of Liberalism

Item : Sigmund Freud fashioned psychoanalysis and Theodor Herzl, Zionism, each because he was dismayed at the obstructions facing the advance of liberalism in Europe.

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We—by which I mean “I”—have come to take the world of secular liberalism as a kind of a norm from which any sidetrack is just an aberration. But I’ve been boning up on some 19^th Century history lately, particularly of the Austria-Hungarian Empire, and it is a useful reminder of just how tender this plant really is—how easy it has been over the last couple of centuries for liberal aspirations to get themselves sidetracked by one or another of the multifarious varieties of populism that have so beset us on so many occasions.

Particularly in the 19^th Century, we see dictators or near-dictators learning how to whip up mass aspirations for illiberal purposes. A good place to begin is with the Revolution of 1848—the “Springtime of Nations,” but also the graveyard of so many generous hopes. A pivotal figure here is Louis Napoleon, Napoleon III, nephew (except maybe not even that) and pale imitation of the great man. It was he how benefited, intentionally or otherwise, from the anxiety and the paranoia that swept over France in the wake of the 1848 revolutionary explosion—he who discovered that it is only a half step from popular enthusiasm to despotic rule.

You get another version in Austria-Hungary where the liberals, after the briefest flowering, found themselves up against 68 years of Franz Joseph’s autocratic rule; it took another and far more disastrous war to bring them back to the line of scrimmage. Next perhaps to the Tsars of Russia, Franz Joseph may stand as the most visible reactionary of his time, but it was populist support which, time after time, shored up his power—think of cheerful proto-fascists like Karl Lueger who, as mayor of Vienna, made himself almost as much of a fixture as the Emperor himself. It is hard to find consolation in the fact that Franz Joseph himself loathed Lueger, any more than that the Prussian officer corps came to detest Hitler.

The Tsars themselves were less troubled by liberal madness, but they seem to have known to manage a Pogrom in service of the larger good.

From Otto von Bismark in Germany you get a version of populist conservatism that is, perhaps ironically, more benign—less tainted with anti-semitism, and coupled with an elaborate welfare agenda. But Bismark even more than his peers made his way by outthinking and outplaying the liberals at their own game. In Britain, with Benjamin Disraeli, you get a figure whom American audiences are likely to find more appealing. Yet it was Disraeli more than anyone who learned to turn World Imperialism into a popular cause.

Against a background like this, figures like Hitler and Stalin may stand in a class by themselves, but they can hardly be understood as a discontinuity. t may not be much consolation, but it perhaps adds perspective to recognize that this sort of thing has been going on for a long time.

Item : In coming to found Zionism, Herzl was particularly inspired by Richard Wagner’s Tannhäuser