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1. A few thoughts on the historian John Lukacs (1924-2019), whose death at age 95 has just been announced. Here a something he wrote in 1975 for @commonwealmag predicting that a post-Soviet Russia would be dominated by a criminal underworld. 
2. Lukacs was born in Hungary in 1924 to a mixed-faith family (Jewish & Catholic). He identified as Catholic but his Jewish heritage (shaped by grandparents he was close to) was important for making him wary of nationalism & faux-populism
3. Lukacs was a conservative but of a type that is virtually extinct in America (& indeed in much of the world): a traditionalist wary of mass politics based on nationalism & scapegoating of minorities. He was for that reason properly scornful of American conservative movement.
4. Lukacs' scorn for right-wing populism surfaced in the early 1950s. As a refugee from Hungary he was anti-communist, but still quick to detect & denounce the dangers of demagogues like Joseph McCarthy, who he feared would destablize society & incite war.
5. I'm emphasizing Lukacs's anti-populist conservatism because its proved prophetic, especially in the Trump era. He long feared that populist-nationalist-authoritarian demagoguery was the wave of the future.
6. A good quote:
7. Here's a Boston Globe article I wrote about how Lukacs' anti-populist conservatism put him in tension with George Bush's Republican politics: archive.boston.com/news/globe/ide…
8. Lukacs in 1970: "Bismarck was supposed to have said that the most important fact of the twentieth century would be that Americans speak English; it is not impossible that the most important condition of the next hundred years might be that the Russians are, after all, white.”
9. Aside from his valuable critiques of nationalist populism, Lukacs was an eloquent defender of historical consciousness as a distinct & valuable form of thinking, with his own work exemplifying how being steeped in history can help illuminate the present & future.
