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Matt McManus Profile picture
@MattPolProf
May 4 • 5 tweets • 2 min read • Read on X
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Actual historians of Fascism and Nazism have pointed out that without toleration and often active help of big business and "conservative" elites, Nazism in particular would have ended up being a footnote in history.

Paxton stresses this in The Anatomy of Fascism... Image
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And its also stressed by Evans in The Coming of the Third Reich, forgrounding how "the conservatives who levered Hitler into power" shared a good deal of his objectives and also despised the SPD and KPD-they were determined to block it government... Image
...This extended to outright coalitions with the German National People's Party, a more generically right of center political party which aimed at something like revanchism but overlapped with the NSDAP in despising the left and Weimar Democracy.
You don't have to look far for explanations either. Hitler rejected the "Jewish doctrine of Marxism" for rejecting the "aristocratic principle of nature" and racial struggle. Mussolini was a socialist early in life but turned rightewards for power and because he... Image
..rejected the humanist, materialist, cosmopolitan qualities of socialism and Marxist "deterministic" theory of history. Mussolini (really probable Gentile) framed fascism as the "resolute negation" of "so-called scientific and Marxian socialism" because of this emphasis Image

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More from @MattPolProf

Matt McManus Profile picture
May 27
The Nazis were helped into power by conservative factions and big business in no small part because of their militant anti-socialism.

Historians of the period like Paxton even stress how they might never have taken power without support from others on the right... Image
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Evans also makes that point in "The Coming of the Third Reich"-highlighting how the conservatives who levered Hitler into power were nostalgically attracted to the idea of a return to a hierarchical time when workers knew their place... Image
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Even the quite conservative historian Stanley Payne-who despises the left and has soft peddled Francoism-correctly stresses how conservative elites settled on Hitler in the decisive time. Though they would have preferred a more conventional authoritarian regime. Image
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Read 8 tweets
Matt McManus Profile picture
Jul 19, 2025
The right has always had a pronounced anti-intellectual streak

In The Meaning of Conservatism Roger Scruton applauded "unthinking people" who accept the burdens life imposes on them without complaint.

They want a society of subjects who uncritically defer to their "superiors."
There are innumerable examples of this going way back. Joseph De Maistre called reason a fundamentally destructive force and recommended people be indoctrinated into dogmas and come into the world with all their opinions ready made.

Nietzsche said people should be educated...
...to be slaves and servants, not taught how to participate in politics.

Willmoore Kendall mused Athens was right to execute Socrates since his nagging questions were fostering revolutionary sentiments. The parallels to condemning critical theory were clear. Image
Read 5 tweets
Matt McManus Profile picture
Jan 31, 2025
Catholic philosopher Charles Taylor points out that the egalitarian and universalistic ethics of liberal modernity which develop out of Christianity is "higher" and more demanding precisely because it insists that we need to take our ethical obligations to everyone seriously.
That is very much the opposite of the Trump regimes , which is not that we prioritize those closest to us-but that we can do harm to others if it advances the interests of those we align with. Which is neither a Christian ideal or any ethical ideal worth defending.
I should add the irony of all this is whenever I see conservatives decry the idea of taking ethical universalism seriously as utopian they're implicitly conceding it is harder and demands more from us than their self-serving doctrines. Conservatism appeals because its easier.
Read 5 tweets
Matt McManus Profile picture
Oct 18, 2024
Appreciated this acidic take by @GregTSargent in @newrepublic where he talks about how MAGA projects itself as speaking for the people, even after majorities of Americans have consistently rejected it....

newrepublic.com/article/187269…
...Two things to say about this. Firstly is that this is very typical of right forms of populism. The "people" right populists project to are usually those who feel they once possessed status, wealth, and prestige relative to others which has been taken away from them...
....Its important to understand that to grasp the sense of victimization and persecution inherent to the aesthetic style.

Secondly, Trumpism is the latest in a long line of reactionary styles that have emerged in the United States which try to couple a kind of...
Read 5 tweets
Matt McManus Profile picture
Jul 20, 2024
I'd argue that right has a much better instinctive understanding of how the left behaves, but a much worse understanding of its intellectual drives. I say this having been routinely impressed by the right's ability to predict how mainstream leftists with react...
...and having sighed over too many books where allegedly serious intellectuals moan about how Marx wasn't interested in economics.

Part of the reason is the general different between how ideas tend to be treated on different ends of the political spectrum...
...Generally the right is more comfortable with abstract ideas than its intellectuals sometimes concede. Someone like Yoram Hazony will characterize conservatism as "historical empiricism" but be very happy appealing to non-empirical entities like the "nation" or "God"...
Read 10 tweets
Matt McManus Profile picture
Jun 4, 2024
Good piece by @GregTSargent on Trump's talent for projecting an aura of personal and political invincibility despite repeatedly losing the popular vote, mid terms, and elections....

newrepublic.com/article/182111…
...and it is without a doubt projection. As far back as The Art of the Deal Trump acknowledged he "played to people's fantasies" by insisting he was doing something big and spectacular. This was intended to excite people and get the to invest in his project...
...albeit as subordinates. Trump has channeled the same skill set into his political career, which itself has a deep basis in the reactionary tradition. It was Burke who after all said leaders need to have sublime qualities attached to them less the people realize...
Read 4 tweets

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