Judge Dennis Davis
Fascination with Fascism: Then and Now

Judge Dennis David and Professor David Peimer - Fascination with Fascism Then and Now

- [Judi] Hello again, everybody, hi Dennis and David, welcome and I will hand over to you. Start when you’re ready.

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• Thank you very much, Judi, and thank you again together with David who’ve done a whole series of slides which are particularly important, again, as I say, without you, I’m not quite sure how I would certainly function. And I also want to say the same about David, and the wonderful interactions that we’ve had again, and just let me say this, his generosity of spirit is such that as a fanatical Liverpool supporter, he was prepared, as it were, to organise three Manchester United players to wish me happy birthday, I think that shows a cosmopolitan vision, which needs to be complimented unreservedly. Now, our discussion this afternoon, morning or evening, wherever you are, of course entitled “Fascination with Fascism,” essentially we’ve got to do something initially, we have to ask ourselves the following question, well, what do we mean by fascist? Because the word fascist has become so elastic that if a person doesn’t like the views of an opponent, they often say, well, he or she is a fascist.

So we are both very keen to, as it were, button down a conception of fascism with which we can work, and then to develop a series of arguments relating to why there’s a fascination with fascism. So the order of business for the period that we are going to spend together, and of course one could spend hours and hours on this, is the following, I’m going to try at the beginning, just to give us a working definition of fascism, then we’re going to explore, David’s going to explore the manner in which fascism, as it were, is accompanied and very critically so, by a whole range of cultural repertoire, whether it be film, other forms of media, press, pictures, whatever the case may be, it is interesting in this regard, that a number of people have written over time that fascism has no culture.

The very eminent Italian political thinker, Norberto Bobbio, argued as did Hannah Arendt, that actually fascism is the nudity of culture, point is, that’s not so for, but the way in which it interfaces we will get to, and then in the last section of our joint talk, we’re going to try to draw some implications of this analysis for the contemporary world. But who better to give us an idea of what fascism is about and the definition thereof, that Yuval Noah Harari, who did a TED Talk on this particular topic. We’re not going to play the whole 20 minutes or 18 minutes of it, but I’m going to play the first part in which he tries to distinguish fascism from forms of nationalism and gives us a working idea with the concept in which we can work in relation to the rest of this talk. So let’s have a look at what Harari has to say.

• Hello, everyone. It’s a bit funny because I did write that humans will become digital, but I didn’t think it’ll happen so fast and that it’ll happen to me. But here I am as a digital avatar and here you are, so let’s start, and let’s start with a question. How many fascists are there in the audience today? Well, it’s a bit difficult to say because we’ve forgotten what fascism is. People now use the term fascist as a kind of general purpose abuse or they confuse fascism with nationalism. So let’s take a few minutes to clarify what fascism actually is and how is it different from nationalism. The milder forms of nationalism have been among the most benevolent of human creations. Nations are communities of millions of strangers who don’t really know each other. For example, I don’t know the 8 million people who share my Israeli citizenship, but thanks to nationalism, we can all care about one another and cooperate effectively.

This is very good. Some people like John Lennon, imagine that without nationalism, the world will be a peaceful paradise. But far more likely without nationalism, we would have been living in tribal chaos. If you look today at the most prosperous and peaceful countries in the world, countries like Sweden and Switzerland and Japan, you will see that they have a very strong sense of nationalism. In contrast, countries that lack a strong sense of nationalism, like Congo and Somalia and Afghanistan, tend to be violent and poor. So what is fascism and how is it different from nationalism? Well, nationalism tells me that my nation is unique and that I have special obligations towards my nation. Fascism in contrast, tells me that my nation is supreme and that I have exclusive obligations towards it, I don’t need to care about anybody or anything other than my nation. Usually, of course, people have many identities and loyalties to different groups.

For example, I can be a good patriot, loyal to my country, and at the same time, be loyal to my family, my neighbourhood, my profession, humankind as a whole, truth and beauty. Of course when I have different identities and loyalties, it sometimes creates conflicts and complications. But well, whoever told you that life was easy, life is complicated, deal with it. Fascism is what happens when people try to ignore the complications and to make life too easy for themselves. Fascism denies all identities except the national identity and insists that I have obligations only towards my nation. If my nation demands that I sacrifice my family, then I will sacrifice my family. If the nation demands that I kill millions of people, then I will kill millions of people. And if my nation demands that I betray truth and beauty, then I should betray truth and beauty. For example, how does a fascist evaluate art? How does a fascist decide whether a movie is a good movie or a bad movie? Well, it’s very, very, very simple.

So it’s really just one yardstick. If the movie serves the interests of the nation, it’s a good movie. If the movie doesn’t serve the interest of the nation, it’s a bad movie, that’s it. Similarly, how does a fascist decide what to teach kids in school? Again, it’s very simple, there is just one yardstick. You teach the kids whatever serves the interests of the nation. The truth doesn’t matter at all. Now, the horrors of the Second World War and of the Holocaust, remind us of the terrible consequences of this way of thinking. But usually when we talk about the ills of fascism, we do so in an ineffective way because we tend to depict fascism as a hideous monster without really explaining what was so seductive about it. It’s a bit like these Hollywood movies that depict the bad guys. Voldemort or or Darth Vader is ugly and mean and cruel. They’re cruel even to their own supporters. When I see these movies, I never understand why would anybody be tempted to follow a disgusting creep like Voldemort? The problem with evil, is that in real life, evil doesn’t necessarily look ugly, it can look very beautiful. This is something that Christianity knew very well, which is why in Christian art as against Hollywood, Satan is usually depicted as a gorgeous hunk.

• As much as I want to carry on this, I think we can probably stop the discussion here. Sorry about that, you’re very welcome to look at the YouTube recording of the whole 18 minutes, but I wanted and David wanted us to introduce our topic ‘cause it’s very useful and I wanted then to just draw out a couple of implications of this for our discussion. It’s actually, I’m getting senile, it’s not Griffiths, but Gryphon on fascism, he wrote a book, Roger Gryphon called “The Nature of Fascism,” which I can recommend. But just to have a look at his definition, he says, “Fascism is a revolutionary forward nationalism bent on mobilising all, in inverted commas, healthy social and political energies to resist the onslaught of, inverted commas, decadence so as to achieve the goal of national rebirth, a project that involves the regeneration, the palingenesis, of both the political culture and the social and ethical culture underpinning.” It seems to me that really does reinforce the point that Yuval Noah Harari is making. But it’s very interesting that when he wrote the book and then reflect on it, I’m talking about Roger Gryphon as a professor of politics, he in an interview then said the following, and I want to quote this again, “Nonetheless, what was missing from "The Nature of Fascism” was a serious consideration of the role played by ritual, political dimension of what I was looking at.

It wasn’t enough to talk about ideas or ideology of rebirth, and how they cast light on the trajectories of individual fascisms. I needed to look more seriously at the praxis, at the way it was implemented, the way it was lived out and experienced.“ So in other words, what he’s saying is we can talk as much as we like about what possible ideas or ideology fascism is, and if you look at the first definition, you’ve got it. But what he failed to do, he says, and I think this is a very important point, is to look at the praxis, how on earth is it implemented? How does it actually come about? And how does it therefore become a fascination, an attraction to people? And it’s with that in mind, that we wanted to have a look at a whole range of trajectories of how this actually has played out from the Nazi period and other periods and David, with that in mind, I hand over to you to actually explore precisely these points.

• Thank you, Dennis, and thanks so much, it’s been great as always preparing for today during the week with you, Dennis, always as fantastic and wonderful. And thank you, Judi as well for your help as always. Just a couple of things here, as Dennis has mentioned, Roger Gryphon, and then a couple of ideas that we are also going to draw from today, are Susan Sontag’s really similar book in 1974, which was called "Fascination with Fascism,” where she looks primarily at cultural artefacts or artworks, film, theatre, literature, advertising and so on, which was really a groundbreaking book and the title is the title of today’s talk. And then a very contemporary Oxford historian, Paul Betts, who writes about Holocaust studies, culture of memory studies and so on. So some of the ideas in a way, are triggered by these three writers. What’s important from the first idea of national rebirth, this is as old as one doesn’t have to be a Junia, but as old as the hills. National rebirth is obviously, we can see in religious experiences or religious myths and history of many different religions, we can see it obviously in the Nazis, in national socialism, we can see it all over the world and contemporary politicians will use ideas about the rebirth, the regeneration, the remaking, whatever words they are using.

I’m not going to just use the obvious ones, whether from America or wherever in the world today where fascism is threatening on the shores of the great democracies, but it’s necessary to have a national rebirth, which has become in the words of Gryphon and Betts, what they call a political religion. And Betts gives the example based on Gryphon, that there was a need after the war, Second World War, to move quite quickly to give the liberal western ideas a regeneration, a rebirth. And the phrase was used after the war, that the war and some of the horrors, and I’m not mentioning the Holocaust at the moment, but the war and the horrors of it, as they call it, came to be seen as, in inverted commas, a regressive interlude. So the fascism in that period, was a regressive interlude in the overarching narrative of an imagined or real enlightenment and a progression in history of the liberal ideas, liberalising and emerging ideas and developing ideas of the democratic West. And it was necessary to have a rebirth, as they called it, of the enlightenment, a redemptive story of the triumph of the liberal West.

So it’s very important that even in a positive sense of after the war, the absolute essential, the crucial necessity to have this rebirth, but it nevertheless, it fits the narrative of the mythological idea of a national rebirth of any kind. Even at the end of Hamlet, go through all the horror, the dictatorship that Claudius has set up, et cetera, and at the end, when they’re all dead and dying from poison or being stabbed, along comes Fortinbras. And Fortinbras is the good king, the good leader, who will give Denmark a regeneration, a rebirth. Some of the phrases even link to that. And there are many examples in literature and in theatre, in art of all kind, the redemptive story is necessary. Adam Tooze, the very interesting historian and theorist, talked about the destruction, I’m quoting, “The destruction of European jury is only intelligible in terms of a violent theory of redemptive purification for the Nazis.” So even for the Nazis, it was necessary for them to say, exterminate Jews and others, but it had to be phrased as a redemptive purification for the Germans doing it.

That’s an extraordinary insight, I think, of Adam Tooze’s. And then after the destruction of the Nazis and the absolute horror of that era, it was necessary to have another redemptive purification. So it’s part of a myth that comes and goes at different times in history and different cultures. Together with that, just a couple of other ideas, is that part of it, and this is what I think Harari is alluding to when he talks about difference between nationalism and fascism, that with fascism, everything is sacrificed for the good of the state. The state and the one single way of seeing or ideology of the state, is everything. No other questioning, no other thought is allowed, or is possible. And for that, it’s necessary to have the strong man or woman image, the strong person character image and the “Triumph of the Will” by Leni Riefenstahl, as everyone knows, we see Hitler coming first on the aeroplane and coming down the Nuremberg rallies and so on. The ecstasy of the crowd is what’s important. And she understood it in the cultural form, the power of culture and film and the visual image, to show the ecstasy of the crowd, not only the great leaders.

And when we watch it today, today when we watch experiences on TV or the internet or social media, we see the ecstasy of the crowd caught up, and I don’t only mean sort of happy ecstasy, but there’s an ecstatic emotional inequality which has taken the group over, group think the group mind, and it’s vital to have this together with the leader. It’s the idea also of group identification or belonging, where the group mind or the herd mind takes over completely in a sense of belonging. The old debate of freedom versus security, the hatred of the other, we’ve spoken often about that. But what’s important is what Dennis and I spoke about also during the week, is this idea in contemporary times of globalisation, perhaps giving rise to an anxiety, a hesitancy and a sense of a fragile insecurity almost, because where is the nationalism to identify with? So the irony of globalisation, which is meant to be breaking boundaries and humans can interact with other humans, the irony is that the nationalist idea that Harari speaks of, and that’s really what he means by the community needs its myth and its stories so it can live by those myths and those stories and everything flows from that.

And that’s great, but when it becomes fascism, it’s so single-minded. But the irony in globalisation times, is that there’s no longer a national myth to hold communities together. And so we have a result now, of a lot of these coming out in democracies where people are desperately, or some people anyway, are trying to find some sense of a myth and it’s spilling over into fascism as we can see often. And there’s another irony which comes from Betts, which talks about at the end of the Cold War, the Cold War was really sort of goodies and baddies. There was communism and dictatorship, and then there’s democracy and capitalism, and goodies and baddies playing off against each other. And there’s an irony of a strange sense of comfort or security, even though the threat of nuclear war is there all the time. But remove the Cold War after 1989, 1990, and ironic is that globalisation takes over, and what I just mentioned before is ironically, there’s a possible gateway into that and a resurgence of fascism. Of course there are many other ideas as well about it. So these are just a couple of the ideas that link to the notion of Roger Gryphon and Paul Betts.

Going on with speaking about the praxis, and this goes to a phrase that Eric Hobson, who was a really interesting theorist, cultural theorist and historian, where he actually, this comes from Goebbel’s, who Goebbels spoke about the new art, the new art is politics or politics is a new art, was a phrase from Goebbel’s. And Hobson talks about the theatre state, and if the theatre state is to live the show must go on. And he argues that after the Second World War, the curtain is down and that will not be raised again. But many have come to disagree, the curtain isn’t down and ironically, the curtain is back up. The theatre state is being reborn and the theatre state, where the devices of theatre, the praxis that we’re mentioning here, as ways of implementing fascism today and what is being lived out, that we have to look at it, we have to be aware of it because that’s what is the message that is coming through so powerfully. And the phrases that Paul Betts use is of audio-visual regimes, the visualisation of politics, a virulent nationalism, which borders obviously on the fascism that we’re speaking about today.

And we have coming from the Second World War, and we can find the links into how they go into the world today in a moment, but we have the yellow star. Just think of some of these things. There’s some research going on at the moment that the swastika is almost as powerful and well-known an image globally, as the cross. That’s an extraordinary insight and it’s extraordinary thought, provocative in terms of research going on. The swastika, the yellow star, the touchless processions, the deaths speak, the deaths cult, the cap, the skulls, et cetera. Identification of people with government, where resistance is dissolved and the ideal of a unified purpose of a one single way of thinking and being in the world is being pushed. Let’s just go back to January the 6th for a moment, the Shaman image there. There’s so many, it’s such a popularity of historical references in that one guy and some of the others there, but it’s not by chance and how it can resonate. We may laugh and it is a bit of P.T. Barnum and almost joke circus and it is fire circle. But there’s a very serious terrifying undertone, and I’m just talking about some of the images that come through that one as an example.

Just to go on very quickly, is in terms of what Paul Betts and Susan Sontag mentioned, but he takes it up and others as well, where they talk about how do we actually represent the memory because the memory of the Holocaust, the memory of the war was meant to be then be explored, was then meant to be examined and represented and taught. And it was thought that through education, through discussion, through understanding the images of fascism, the ideas of fascism and the Holocaust in particular, it would not happen again or other possible genocides. What happened? What happens now, and this is another thought from Paul Betts, when mechanical reproduction of images on our TV screens, on our social media, transform reality into fiction and memory, we can watch an actual killing, an actual genocide taking place. Rwanda, Bosnia, everywhere, we’re not sure is it real, is it fiction, is it memory, is it present? It’s a dreadful, terrifying notion that in the so-called post-truth era that we live in, what is the truth? How do we represent the present and the memory?

And the terrifying, comforting myth as they call it, the comforting memory of seeing all the Nazi regalia being replayed in such a horrifying way, but it becomes almost equalised. It’s just taken and used for any protest, for any kind of march. As Ferrari says at the beginning, the word fascism itself is so bandied about these days. So it’s a job that we have to find ways to make it, to imbue it with meaning again, not just allowed to become part of cultural kitsch. And I want to show some examples of how it has become 'cause that’s a powerful and important job. So after the war and after the Holocaust and the Nazi era, the idea was that all of this would have a cathartic effect and therefore it would not rise again. And the recurrence of such horrific antisemitism and such evil would not arise because enlightened knowledge would understand it, would give insight about it and educate, and therefore, it had reached the end. But it’s in jeopardy and this is what some of these guys, Paul Betts and the others suggest, and the same as Susan Sontag, in terms of art. It’s in jeopardy because the culture of memory is expanding. Do we have too much memory and culture representing it?

Film, media, TV, art, et cetera, social media, or do we have too little memory or too much? How do we represent memory, the debates on memorials and so on? How do we try and use it in education so it does not just stand and deliver in classes like just another boring history lesson on whatever, some mediaeval whatever? It’s a really profound and I think dreadful challenge that we have to face, I think is so important 'cause I think it is rearing its head, such. I wanted to just give some examples here of how the icons of culture have such power and the use in such a mass entertainment way of literature, of images, of social media today, film and radio, all the rest of it, how powerful it is and remains. Now this is linking Coca-Cola, and I want to try, we’re trying to use some images today, Dennis and I, of some images which are not as well-known as well. This is Coca-Cola. In 1936 they were amongst the biggest sponsors of the Berlin Olympics, ein Volk, ein Reich, et cetera, Coca-Cola, I think it’s self-explanatory. Then this is taken from a museum in Berlin. Now, we chose it purposely because these are not the shining images that you see in the Hollywood movies and the others, this is from a museum.

So these are the real uniforms, they’re not made by a costume designer in Hollywood studios or in social media, et cetera. So they look faded, tatty and it’s intentional. They don’t have the same glorified or romanticised allure of the Nazi image and the fascist image. They’re faded, they’re old and they’re a bit disgusting, kind of like an old jacket you might pick up at a secondhand store in some village market somewhere, in a pair back or two, and you have it there as a bit of a joke piece. Is it part of cultural kitsch or is it actually helping us educate with the message we’re trying to about the icons of fascism from the past to today? Let’s never forget great Hugo Boss designed all of these, made an absolute fortune from the SS and other uniforms, et cetera, and continues today without much knowledge of the link, whether it’s Coca-Cola or Hugo Boss. Just to link it briefly to the power of film, and although I have my own opinion on “The Night Porter” and Visconti’s movies and others, there are many others, and Dennis and I are going to be looking later at the representations in contemporary film and literature of some of all this iconography of fascism and how culture appropriates it and does it make it attractive and alluring, or disturbingly so, or not.

It’s up for each person to choose, but look at the images that are used and where they come from. On the one hand it’s terrifying, but objectively, it can be seen as alluring, enticing, erotic and dreadful and scary or a mixture of all of them, or maybe banal, but it’s evil in another way. But it cannot be ignored is the real point I want to make today and this is what Susan Sontag was at, was all about. You can’t ignore it. To ignore it, would be ignoring something profoundly powerful in mass entertainment and mass culture. Not only in films, but in the internet and mass media. This is a stamp that was used during the Nazi period in Germany, obviously it’s of Heydrich, but look at the image is the SS with the lightning image there, but Heydrich himself is glorified and the link of the regeneration, the mythic, the rebirth, and this goes back to ancient Rome, ancient Greece, the image of Heydrich, image of Heydrich himself is seen as almost like a Caesar, a young Caesar, Augusta Caesar, a young Julius Caesar, or whatever, and in bronze and it’s on a postage stamp. But it’s not by chance all of this and we’ve got to look at everything, I think, from postage stamps, to uniforms, to the obvious images and the less obvious, and find echoes of it in today, how it’s become in today’s.

And if one wants to listen to the rest of Harari’s talk in Ted, where he talks about it’s the digital world that obviously is the mass communicator, the mass artistic and cultural medium of our time. But all the devices of theatre in the theatre state, as Hobson calls it, all the devices of the theatre state are in it 'cause these are designed, these are drawn with a visual artist in mind, with a performance in mind and a theatricality, not by chance. Okay, just one or two others quickly to show. This is Henry Ford, the founder of the Ford Motor Company, the International Jew, and this is him receiving a great honour in Berlin in the late '30s from Nazi Germany, for those of us that look at the image of the Jew there, of course, and for those of us who don’t, well, are discovering this, he paid 50,000 dollars a year towards Hitler’s salary. I dunno if anyone knows about that, but it’s true. There’s excellent book out by Claire Folley, F-O-L-L-E-Y, and she goes into all the connections happening on the business and other level and finance level between the Western democracies and the growth of Nazi Germany.

So we can’t ignore not only the power of culture, but the power of business, and that they can be seen, not everybody, of course, not everybody in culture, and not everybody in business of course, but we need to be aware of it. Then there’s a great book by… which is about Henry Ford by Richard Overy, who’s a really fantastic British historian, so aware of culture and this is it, “Hitler’s Third Reich in 100 Objects,” this is a popular book. There’s the images for us all to see and how they are regurgitated but in a very contemporary way. And to show you one or two examples today, this is from a protest in London from last year, anti-vaccination, the conspiracy theory, anti that COVID is real. And what is the image on the lady’s dress?

Yellow star, can you believe it? I mean, this is, for me, it’s profoundly terrifying that that image can have become, and I’m going to use the word, but I hope you can please accept my intention behind using the word, it’s kitsch. It has become so horrifyingly taken out of its context, taken out of meaning, so that it’s put into a protest march about a conspiracy theory of anti-vaccination, anti-COVID, it’s quite extraordinary to me. But this is the contemporary iconography and the way it’s been used and taken up that Paul Betts and Sontag began this whole idea of how it’s all so theatrical, it’s costumed, it’s designed, the praxis of it. We cannot ignore it otherwise these people would not wear it, they wouldn’t do it. And they know exactly what it’s referencing and it’s terrifying, but it’s real, one has to be aware of it. This is an image from a… That was in London, the previous one, and this is from one in Germany in Berlin very recently, which is anti-vaccine, the same being used.

So it’s just important for us to be aware, I think, and this is just a couple of examples to try and give a context of the power of culture, the power of praxis in implementing fascist ideologies. There’s no discussion, there’s no questioning, it’s a one way of thinking as Harari and Dennis was saying at the beginning, it’s one approach and it’s the regeneration, the rebirth of the one idea that answers every problem and every thought in life, given by the state. The state equals ideology, which equals way of being, the way of living in the way of any dogma, extreme dogma of religion or any extreme dogma will give us. And these icons are being appropriated and used in order to propagate this message or these ideas. We cannot ignore it, we have to know… and this is what the Nazis and the Germans did by taking like in the Heydrich image, by referencing ancient Rome, ancient Greece, and the heroic myth that comes from there.

And the iconography of the swastikas as everyone knows, even the swastika comes either Asia, comes ancient from India, from the East, it’s got a totally different meaning, it’s still worn and was worn before by certain armies and units of the military in Britain, America and elsewhere. Totally different meaning the swastika, but it has a completely different meaning today. So I guess before… to want to hand over to Dennis now, is just a sense that cultural iconography and the power of culture to manifest or to implement the praxis of these ideas of fascism goes hand in hand with the ideas, and the fascination with fascism needs an attempt by us to look at both. On to Dennis.

• And thanks, David. I just want to make a couple of comments, if I may, in relation to what you’ve said and then just to move it on to the contemporary. So it’s interesting you mentioned Liliana Cavani’s “The Night Porter,” and I suppose the thing about that film, which is quite remarkable, is of course it was the beginning of Charlotte’s Rampling’s career and Dirk Bogarde is quite remarkable as a Nazi, it was panned as an exploitation of sexual psychopathology in a sense, almost saying like the kitsch, if you wish, same way exploiting it. On the other hand, there were those who suggested that really when you looked at that film, it represented a psychological continuity of characters locked into compulsive repetition of the past, and is that, which is really interesting, the repetition of the past, and I want to come back to that in a moment, but I also want to suggest you, it wasn’t only in Nazi Germany that these cultural manifestations had traction.

So I’ll give you two examples, well, one example and one warning. In 1933, a centre biography of II Duche of Mussolini called “Mussolini Speaks,” received its Broadway premier. In the United States of America, a march had five days off the Nazi Party ceased control of the , six days after the inauguration of Franklin D. Roosevelt as the US President, which is not uninteresting. And it’s on YouTube, you can have a look at it, but it was very interesting that even The Boston Globe said about the film, to be sure it showed only a glorified Mussolini. “But Mussolini rises above personality, he’s a great figure, perhaps one of the greatest in the world today.” And you’ve got to ask yourself a question, why in 1933 would The Boston Globe be saying that? Well, again, it comes back to something that David had spoken about, the economic crisis and the uncertainty of the times in which that film was actually shown as Roosevelt began, before he began his initiatives at the New Deal.

And it was clear that at that time, that the conditions which were being suffered by the whole world, including the United States at that particular point in time, really were running as a theme long before Philip Roth wrote “The Plot Against America.” The Nobel Prize winner, Sinclair Lewis wrote a book called “It Can’t Happen Here” in 1935, which was basically about American fascist dictatorship brought about by a corporatist party led by the reactionary populist, Buzz Windrip, and of course it created a huge amount of controversy. But the simple proposition I’m making is that it is fascinating that in conditions of great deal of uncertainty, of course Lewis was warning against the danger, The Boston Globe was effectively praising Mussolini, and the film did extremely well for that particular reason. So I think we have to therefore locate this total debate in the fact that it is reinforced through culture as David has suggested, and through the media and all of these various means, but what is it about fascism that should cause us concern today?

Well, in a book which I can certainly heartily recommend by one of my favourite philosophers, Jason Stanley, I’ve mentioned to you before, wrote a wonderful book about propaganda. Well, he wrote an equally good book recently about fascism. And he says basically, “Fascist politics generally focus on a dominant cultural group. The goal is to make the group feel like victims, to make them feel like they’ve lost something and that the thing that they’ve lost has been taken away from them by the specific enemy, usually some minority out-group or some opposing nation.” Now you can expand that, but it’s really about that, that fascism ultimately, it’s the idea that in levels of uncertainty, something’s been taken away and people then willingly, it sadly suggests, willingly adopt the mythical past. Fascists are always telling a story about a glorious past has been lost and they tap into the nostalgia.

So when you fight back against fascism awards, you’ve got one hand tied behind your back 'cause the truth is messy and complex and the mythical story is always clear and compelling and entertaining. And I just want to make two final points in regard to this. The one, is to remind you of what Hannah Arendt said in her work on totalitarianism, where she says that fascists are never content to merely lie, they must transform their lie into a new reality and they must persuade people to believe in the unreal reality they’ve created. And if you get people to do that, you convince them to do anything. And in a way, much of that whole panoply of culture which the Nazis developed over time, was precisely designed for that particular purpose. Now, turning to the contemporary era, let me say, I was saying to David, and I’ve just sent it to him and I think it’s on YouTube, a remarkable exchange. It’s a long discussion of an hour and a half between Yuval Harari and Daniel Kahneman, the Nobel Prize winner, “Thinking Fast, Thinking Slow” man. And in discussing precisely these issues and the component of their exchange, Kahneman has asked the question, how is it that you’ve got people in the United States who truly believe that Joe Biden is nothing more than a construct of artificial intelligence?

And the reason he wears a mask is because I haven’t got the mouth right for robots. Now, we all might laugh at that, but people begin to believe that. And you only have to look at some of the extraordinary rhetoric that comes out of the United States at the moment, to realise that concern and he’s asked this question particularly, since he lives in the States. And Kahneman makes a really interesting point. He says that the mind is focused both for intellectual and emotional coherence. And if you can tell people a story which actually coheres in this sense, that it reflects a past which is long gone and probably never existed, a nostalgic one, and you can re-appropriate it in a coherent way so that it presents certain people as heroes and other people as villains, the very way in which the mind focuses, actually latches onto that and it has an extraordinary effect. Now, that is not to suggest that… 'cause I’ve seen all sorts of questions posed in the chat line about Donald Trump.

Well, I think we need to be clear about this, that when we… and that was why we put up the Harari interview in the first place, one must make a distinction between fascism as a holistic sort of political ideology in the way it was propagated by Mussolini and Hitler, and on the other hand, or totalitarian, the antithesis to being the totalitarianism of Stalin, and a range of repertoires which unquestionably could fit within this analysis, but do not necessarily make the state a fascist state, one must be nuanced in this regard. But there can be no doubt about that in circumstances of great deal of uncertainty, and the 1930s were very uncertain, that this idea of coherence, of being able to present a narrative which coheres intellectually and emotionally and is reinforced by the sort of repertoires that Riefenstahl employed in her films and which were very interestingly documented in that very famous essay of Susan Sontag, which was in the New York Review of Books in 19, I think, 74, '75, and on the other hand, the propaganda that he used. If you take that as a starting point, well, the answer is it has traction in an uncertain world.

And I want to remind you that those of you who listened to what Gill Marcus, the ex-governor of the South African Reserve Bank had to say on Tuesday night when I was interviewing her and Ruth Mayer, where she made the point that the problem about the 1930s was that because to a large extent, the economic crisis was not resolved in any time this way and left people completely vulnerable to the collapse of the capitalist system at that particular point in time, the possibility of constructing a nostalgic narrative of the past, the glories of the German people who essentially had had the benefits taken away by the Jews and by the communists, exactly the point that Jason Stanley talks about in which… if I remind you again, where he says, “The goal is to make them feel like victims, to make them feel like they’ve lost something and that the thing that they’ve lost has been taken away from them by a specific enemy.”

Now when they have lost something, it becomes much easier to actually construct the enemy, whether that be immigrants, whether that be Jews, whether that be communists, whether it be any group, and let us remind ourselves of what’s outside of the Washington Holocaust Memorial about they came for the communist and I wasn’t a communist, et cetera, the famous Niemoller statement. Of course, we kind of forget that once you have that kind of rhetoric, it always leads ultimately to quintessential disaster. And what Gill Marcus was saying, that at least it took a war, it took a war for the world to kind of reconstruct itself and essentially the birth of social democratic regimes starting admittedly earlier with the New Deal in the United States of America, but only to having traction in much of the world after the Second World War, that was the resolution to the problem. And one has to be extremely anxious, in fact, Kahneman makes the point too, extremely anxious that to a large extent, if you are going to not resolve the problems of inequality and poverty in the world, well, then in fact these particular repertoires get great attraction and I’ll make one final point about it.

So this is an alternative narrative that is developed and it is incredibly dangerous. Harari in the talk that he gives, makes a very interesting point about vaccines. He says, “I’m not going to take a Chinese vaccine because quite frankly, I have not the slightest idea how reliable it is. And the only time I’ll take it is when the democratic countries, their regulatory authorities approve it. At that point, I will take the vaccine because truth and democracy are in fact intertwined. And the less you have on your… the more you hollow out of democracy, the more the fake news, the alternative reality gets traction and it effectively hollows out democracy as a whole.” So it’s a precious value, which we need to be very, very careful about. And when David and I were talking, it’s fascinating how in the early days of Hitler, everybody fobbed him off and there are probably many people in this audience now saying, “Oh, you’re being hysterical, it’s not that bad.” Well, I agree, at this particular point in time, freeze the frame, it probably isn’t.

But the dangerous signals are there. And what we’ve learned from this discussion is just precisely how that particular form of narrative becomes so attractive in a uncertain and difficult world. David, I’m essentially running out of time, I’m going to stop and hand over to you to make some concluding remarks.

• Sure, thanks, Dennis. Just to bring it to conclude, what’s important in what you were saying as well, Dennis, is the idea of a story and what Harari said in that clip, where the truth is the non-issue in fascism, and what you said now, Dennis, which we discussed, is that in democracy, the truth is important and it does have a space wherever it comes out, in social media or newspapers, whatever, or in literature or art, but the story, and if you can control the story and who tells the story and what the story is, and you get the majority of the people to buy into it, then you’re on a win. And if you can convince the majority and I’m going to put myself on the line here, that Brexit it’s irrelevant about your pocket, it’s good for the country, or the lie about the election, whether Dominion’s computers work or not, et cetera. So if you control the story and you get enough people to believe, you start to get what Harari is talking about, enough people to believe in the one story, the one storyteller or the master storyteller, if you like, and you can, enough people who will believe and sacrifice whatever, for that narrative.

And that’s when the tipping point starts to kick in. And I think to link what we’ve been trying to say together with what Harari is saying, that’s the tipping point moment. And it’s vital therefore, from my perspective, from a theatre and literature perspective, to follow, well, what is the dominant story? How is it being told? Are people believing in it or not? Are multiple stories allowed? Do they have equal weight? What is the dramaturgy, the theatricality of all of it together? And that’s where for me, the implementation of the praxis together with the content, if you like, meet hand in hand. And just to show here one or two examples from four. So this is from the New York Times, 1924. And so this is what? Six, nine years before Hitler ascends to power. “Hitler Tamed by Prison. Released on Parole, He is Expected to Return to Austria.” 1924, New York Times. “Adolph Hitler, once the demi-god of the reactionary extremists, was released on parole from imprisonment at Fortress Landsberg, Bavaria, today and immediately left in an auto for Munich.

He looked a much sadder and wiser man today than last Spring when he, with Ludendorff and other radical extremists, appeared before a Munich court charged with conspiracy to overthrow the Government. His behaviour during imprisonment convinced the authorities that, like his political organisation, known as the Volkischer, was no longer to be feared. It is believed he will retire to private life and return to Austria, the country of his birth. He will retire to private life and return to Austria.” Nine years later, we all know the difference. This is another one from the New York Times, 1922. “But several reliable, well-informed sources confirmed the idea that Hitler’s anti-Semitism was not so genuine or violent as it sounded, and that he was merely using anti-Semitic propaganda as a bait to capture his followers and keep them aroused, enthusiastic and in line for the time when his organisation is perfected and efficiently powerful to be employed effectively for political purposes. A sophisticated politician credited Hitler,” et cetera, et cetera, with political cleverness.

So it’s all of these are being written nine or 10 years before he takes power in Germany. This is not that Dennis and I for a second, are trying to raise a false alarm at all, or cry wolf or anything. It’s just as part of the engagement with debates, with ideas, with thoughts and question, just throw out a series of questions. What is the fascination with fascism? How does it represent itself in art, theatre, literature, movies, internet, social media today, digital artificial intelligence, how does it manifest? What are the ideas of a rebirth, a regeneration? What are the economic conditions? What is globalisation? All these questions, it’s not simple, as we all know only too well. What is actually happening? Is it possible or isn’t it? Does one need to be on guard or not? And looking, it’s fascinating fascination with looking at some of these pieces of writing and it’s not only journalists and others and historians, Hemingway was saying at the time as well, he was saying, scratch, Hemingway’s great phrase, scratch a democrat in any country and you might well find a Nazi hiding inside. Hemingway said this in the early 1920s, extraordinary. Mark Twain in his own way, and many, many other of the writers, the artists with insight.

And then lastly, something to show that this is the illusion of what happened in the '20s. Because from my personal opinion, if the New York Times, with all its stature and renowned, is writing this kind of thing then, well, what’s been written in the world? And the reality a couple of years later is this in The Guardian from Vienna, 1938. “Will an English family be kind enough to take aupair my son, aged 14 et cetera, to procure him, et cetera.” Here, “Elementary French, Latin and Greek for foreigners. Will any kind-hearted family receive, boy or girl , or both? Children of Austrian physician, Dr. Trommer, Vienna.” These are adverts and there are many more that were put into The Guardian newspaper in England, the meaning is obvious, the desperation, the absolute reality of the horror, to imagine doing this to one’s own child or grandchild and putting an advert in some newspaper anywhere, and a few years earlier, Hitler is tamed by prison and et cetera, et cetera. Again, it’s not to sound any false alarm or anything, it’s just an awareness in a sense, of a vigilance that needs to be kept of many people in many countries. Dennis, I dunno if you have any other…

• I’m just going to make one final point and then let’s get to questions, I see there are a lot. I just want to remind people of a quote from Goebbels, who said that what he was doing, and I think it summarises a lot of what we’re talking about, that what he was doing was more like art than politics, by which he meant that the task was to create an alternative mythical reality for Germans that was more exciting, more purposeful, and in a sense, more directly involved with their reality than the humdrum of liberal democratic politics which went nowhere and that is why he said that mass media was so essential. And I suppose we have to ask ourselves the question, that the whole range of Facebook and Twitter and various other forms of internet communication today, the question is, they have been used for all sorts of nefarious purposes, it is fascinating to me that I learned last night that one of the lawyers defending a person who invaded the capitol, is now saying that effectively, his client was infected with Foxcitis. Meaning that because he’d kept on watching Fox, he started to believe the conspiracy that the election was fraudulently procured. Fascinating that that’s now reaching the law courts, that people are actually arguing that. And so I think we have to be careful because that is an alternative, there is an alternative reality that’s been constructed, and the real question, which is the reality that prevails, so that whilst I’m not hysterical about this at this point, I certainly think we all need to be vigilant. So David, I think if you want to start looking at the questions, I’m very happy to chip in, but if… I’m happy if you want to start looking at them.

Q&A and Comments

Q: Sure, sure. Anton asks, “How is the fascism of Mussolini different from that of Hitler?”

A: Hu, huge. First, Mussolini didn’t have a policy of extermination of Jews or anybody, that’s the first, and he didn’t necessarily have a desire to conquer the world, and as part of a world war, have a war of annihilation of peoples. I dunno if you want to add anything to Anton…

• Yeah, I think Mussolini essentially replaced any culture of deliberation with a culture of authority and the authority of the leader who then represented Italy, was absolutely crucial. He did not have the broad kind of philosophy of the Hitler, who had vastly, as you rightly say, larger and more nuanced ideological commitments which could lead to the disaster. As you say, Mussolini’s idea at beginning, was essentially to step in and believe that an authoritarian leader was the way in which the crisis in Italy could be solved, no less and no more. Of course later on, he got swept up by Hitler. But there was a difference and there is a difference between fascism and Nazism, even though both are extraordinary toxic.

Q: Okay, then anonymous, “Is it not really a question of extremism? Fascism is always considered right-wing, but one can have left-wing fascism.”

A: Absolutely, yes.

Q: Barry asks, “Was Afrikaner nationalism considered as fascism?” Dennis, would you like to take that?

A: Yeah, that’s an interesting question. I think Africa, I mean, the truth about it was that it was a… there’s no doubt that there were fascist items to it. In fact, I remember Brian Bunting wrote, a member of the Communist Party, he wrote a famous book called “The Rise of the South African Reich,” in which he sought to parallel to a large degree, South Africa under apartheid with the Nazi Germany until 1939, I have to add. And there unquestionably were parallels and there were unquestionably the idea of the fork and farland, which were absolutely crucial to it. But there were sufficient, I think, counterweights at the time, that whilst it was clearly an authoritarian racist regime, it wasn’t able to impose the kind of holistic framework that a Mussolini would do.

Partly because to some extent remember, until 1958, the National Party didn’t have a majority in parliament, secondly, because they had to at least regard white South Africans as part of a democracy, which meant that you had a legal system which essentially gave rights to whites, as a result, it couldn’t completely, as much as it tried to, deny all rights to Blacks, 'cause that would’ve made it extremely difficult, it did very well, in inverted commas, in that regard, but it still allowed the rule of law to prevail. And as I’ve indicated to some extent, in a very qualified extent, and as I’ve indicated in previous lectures, there were very courageous judges, not many, but there were, who were essentially found against the National Party government and therefore curbed the kind of authoritarian surges that they had. So it wasn’t quite a fascist form of government, but it was pretty close thereto.

And then DeGlober, this is a great thought. “How appropriate that today’s talk falls on the anniversary of e-Day?” Thank you very much.

• Thank you Raylene for your… Thank you for your wishes.

• Then Lawrence, “Although I would not call Trump a fascist, I suspect he did not mind the labels who brought him extra attention and support,” thank you.

Then anonymous, “Nationalism is not necessarily bad, it is not necessarily fascism, it depends on the values of the population, especially their leaders, moral responsibility and inclusion of all population groups,” it’s an interesting thought, thank you, Sam N. Lawrence, thank you.

Anonymous, “Trumpism is fascism in the extreme. Me, Trump, me, me, me,” thank you.

Q: Myrna, “Could then draw from Gryphon that the Trump ideology leans towards fascism as he does indeed at the famous rallies?”

A: It would be part of it, it doesn’t, I mean, the notion of spectacle, and also what’s interesting is that often at the beginning of Trump rallies, he used the Beatles’ song of “Revolution” with that incredible guitar riff. But the meaning of the song is completely about false prophets, and it negates the idea of the great heroic leader, it’s the strong man revolutionary, et cetera, leader. But yes, I mean, he certainly understands spectacle, he’s been in entertainment for many, many years.

• Can I just say? Jason Stanley makes a really interesting point, which I think I’d like to share, in which he says, quote, “Trump is presiding…” Sorry, “It’s not that Trump is presiding over a fascist government and I wouldn’t claim he is, but he’s very clearly using fascist techniques to excite his base and erode liberal democratic institutions,” and we should be very troubled because of that. And I think that’s a pretty reasonable way of describing it.

• And also to be aware of how many millions still believe the lie about the vote, which is whether you know actual belief or not, but it’s there.

Then Audrey Davis says, “Everything is sacrificed with the good of the nation,” thank you.

“Is it current day China?” That’s going with what Harari is saying, everything is sacrificed for the state, yep.

Hope, “Where does Trump’s mega movement fit into this fascism narrative?” Dennis…

• I think we’ve answered that.

Q: Yep, Leonard, “Is America Trumpism headed towards fascism?”

A: Hu, huge, I think we need another month of discussion and debate.

“It’s possible that it’s taken the first footprint on the shores,” I don’t know, it’s possible, that’s what we are trying to bring an awareness to, understanding what happened in the past in order to see is it happening now or isn’t it, to be aware of that in both the praxis and the content of fascism.

Q: Great question, Edward, “It seems that fascism left and right always singles out the Jews, who are really accepted as being part of the nation, antisemitism is always part of the fascist national agenda.”

A: Yes, this is a great point. And I read, I mean, just as an example, every time it does come out, the Jews always thrown into the mix and antisemitism is thrown into the mix as well. And I think everybody knows this and can see it, in so many different areas, in so many ways in the West, I’m not talking about the East, that’s a whole story.

• I think we shouldn’t… I think we should not have any illusions about the fact that many of those particular people who marched in support of Donald Trump, were exhibiting most egregious forms of antisemitism.

• And if one actually goes online and if anyone has a chance to look at the dark web and goes online, you’ll be astonished. And I’m sure many people have actually, it’s stunning to you see how much there really is.

Paul, “Do you agree that fascism is being seen today as a backlash against globalisation? Trump was a perfect example of anti-globalization, of modern fascism, ecstatic crowds, et cetera.” I think we’ve answered that as well, thanks, Paul.

Q: Sammy, “Would you consider the authoritarianism of council and work culture as a form of fascism?”

A: Well, if it precludes any other way of thinking and questioning, then one has to question if it is or isn’t.“ I mean, it’s a very difficult… Dennis.

• I don’t think it’s a form of fascism, it’s not fascism as such, but there’s no question about it. It’s a level of authoritarianism, which is utterly and completely at war with any form of deliberative democracy. No doubt about that. One doesn’t have to have an analysis of whether we talk about Mussolini or any of the modern forms of fascism, but the fact that it actually seeks to appropriate for the councillor or the worker, if I could use the horrible word, the power to council, the power to determine, I have the authority to determine what’s right, what’s proper and what can be heard, is unquestionably a form of egregious authoritarianism that should be resisted at all costs.

Q: Then Carol, "Look at Israel 23 years ago, posters of Rabin in SS uniform ended up with his assassination.”

A: Yes, one has to be aware of how the… again, it’s the power of cultural icon and the theatricality of it all.

• There’s a wonderful book called “To Kill A King,” “To Kill A King,” which is all about the assassination of Rabin, deeply, deeply, deeply disturbing.

• Yeah, and the use of this iconography is also so important at the praxis part of it.

David, “Was the model hiding the burst up of Germany?” I’m not sure what that is, okay, I’m not sure.

Then Malcolm, “Nationalism in contrast to patriotism, depends on the concept of monoethnicism and tends to be fascistic when it cannot tolerate dissent, has to rely on force, usually thuggery to repress or suppress it. It cannot accept the rights of minorities.” Yep, okay, thank you, Malcolm.

Q: Phyllis, “I’m confused about the use of the yellow star by the anti-vaxxers. Are they saying that the pandemic is a Jewish conspiracy?”

A: Well, Phyllis, it’s an interesting thought. Why choose the star of the Jewish, I mean, that yellow star? Why choose it? It’s part of an anti-vax, I mean, it’s showing what we’re saying that anti-Semitism and understandings of Jewishness, just goes in every single way, call it Rothschild, call it the yellow star, whatever, all these phrases and words, how it just is absolutely rife in contemporary culture and used in so many ways, you know?

Q: Okay, Mickey, in the same way, I guess, as many other icons from other cultures. “Is the use of the yellow star by anti-COVID implying that Jews are responsible for the epidemic?”

A: Well, if you can blame Jews for communism, for capitalism, for the right and for the left, for everything, then it’s open game.

Pauline, “At least using the yellow star approaches meeting reminds non-Jews that the Holocaust had happened.” Okay, that’s an interesting thought, Pauline.

Suzanne, “Was the yellow star vaccine protest saying that Jews made up COVID?” I don’t think so, but who knows?

It’s Northwood, “The latest London COVID demonstration again featured yellow stars, but also proposed as stating never again.” Yep, thank you.

Hannah, “Claire whom?” Claire Colley, C-O-L-L-E-Y.

Audrey, “Scarier yellow stars in last image have letters that look remarkably like Hebrew characters.” Yep, “Is it intentional slur against Jews?” I’m sure it’s a mixture of all these meanings that we’ve discussed, yep.

Mara, “I wonder what the result would be if we Jews worldwide, we’ve done the swastika and wear it with pride. Maybe we’ll then dilute and remove its connotation.” An interesting idea for a piece of performance art, Mara.

• [Dennis] That’s about .

• Yeah, Dennis, do you want to go for a bit now?

• Yes, it’s a pleasure. I’m going to… Well, let me deal with Bob.

Q: “At what point does fascism’s total loyalty to the state become no more a threat to liberal democracies as a total government controller, communism, or the extreme political left that includes council?”

A: I think we’ve answered that, and it’s not as if, for example, that Stalinism was given the free pass, it was as terrifying as was fascism, it had a different kind of set of ideological underpinnings which gave rise to it and one… but that would require an entirely further talk rather than the one we’re doing at the moment, and that really links to the next point, because why is one interesting is, I don’t think so, that make America again typifies the call to fascism because a number of politicians have used that for a very long time. The point is the way, as we’ve discussed, it’s used, the Trump rallies, the manner in which certain fascist techniques are used to hollow out the liberal democratic institutions. That’s the danger and there’s no question that on its own it doesn’t but when you start attempting to construct a narrative and we’ve said all the time, which recalls some nostalgic past which never existed, in other words, a sort of middle America in which only white males, in a sense, played a role and nobody else and we want to go back to that, that’s seriously dangerous and that’s where you get a problem. I think we’ve answered the question.

Margaret, “In my opinion, the Brexit had appealed to nationalist persuasion.” Absolutely, absolutely and if you listened to Philippe Sands the other night, he made that point very strongly, I’m not going to say more. I just commend you what he said.

Beryl, “Concerned about why people believe, Trump, which is very concerning, maybe he does some good, but he’s so far out that is…” I agree and I think much of our analysis is sought to examine that particular problem.

Oh God, I’m now gone, where am I? Sorry, David, my usual ridiculous way of… Let me just get…

• No problem.

• And “Stalin comments exhibit similar characteristics.” Yes, I agree, and there are a whole range of books that compare Stalin and Hitler, and I think to some extent, William Tyler mentioned that and there’s a… one could talk about that for a very long time.

The Harari, Kahneman discussion is actually on YouTube. If you actually type in Yuval Noah Harari and Daniel Kahneman, you’ll get it, it’s an hour and a half, but I can’t recommend it strongly enough.

“Trump failed, but his aim was to take America down the fascist street,” well, I think we’ve answered that too. Thank you, Ian, about the fact that there’s a long interview with Kahneman, always worth reading Kahneman.

Q: Tom, “Are the nostalgic elements of the Brexit campaign a manifestation of fascism?”

A: Not on their own, but they’re certainly fascinating, what they certainly do, I think, over a long time, is erode the idea of democracy, and again, I commend the comments that were made by Philippe Sands when I interviewed him the other night, Iris, it is a long remark, I’m not going to read it, thank you very much, since we haven’t got much time,

Q: Ted, “Is totalitarianism a form of fascism and when fascism cross the line of totalitarianism?”

A: Well, I think if you actually have a full-blown form of fascism in which the culture of the leader ultimately is such, and that the nation means the exclusion of all others and as Harari says, “I’m prepared to fight for the nation, kill for the nation, sacrifice my family for the nation, do anything else,” and that the only way in which values are mediated is through the particular prevailing discourse, you pretty much are in a totalitarian society.

Thank you, Joan, the man in the high castle is indeed interesting

Q: David, there’s a question here, “It’s very worrying that Newberg codes adopted and enacted by most nations guaranteeing fundamental human rights are being ignored by democracies today, questioning the safety of vaccine is not anti-vaccine, it’s a right of every individual,” et cetera, et cetera.

A: Yes, it’s the right of every individual but at the end of the day, you can certainly question the safety of vaccines, but you can’t make up your own facts. And I think one of the disturbing features is the way in which science then gets ignored and that itself is enormously dangerous. So yes, of course, when you say fundamental human rights are being ignored, I am much more worried about the fact that democracies across the world are being hollowed out for all of the reasons we are speaking about, and that seems to me, Marlina, to be really the crucial issue. Thank you very much, Margaret, and thank you…

• Is that also, just to add onto that, Dennis, that in that image, what’s also is that she chooses to use the yellow star. So something from an entirely different context, an entirely different meaning, is in a fairly terrifying way, put together. And one cannot ignore that combination in the implementation, in the protest itself. Again, the appropriation of something from history, from culture, in order to propagate an idea. Okay, Dennis, over to you.

There’s a question for you from Barbara but I’m not sure, I mean, “How would Harari categorise Obama’s anti-pride in this country?” I dunno where on earth that comes from. Really I’m sorry Barbara, I didn’t take Obama to be anti-American, so I dunno how one answers that question, I’m sorry to say and I don’t think Harari would be particularly worried about it.

“David, could you both do a follow up talk to look at our fascism, maybe revisit the meanings art and culture?” I’m sure we could.

• [David] Sure.

• Oopsie, is there anything else that we need to do? I’ve done so many here. I’m just going down the line, David.

• Sure.

• Yeah, David, I think there is one here, do from a number 895, et cetera, et cetera, it says, and this for you, “Could you kindly repeat the short comment regarding Henry Ford?” Oh, it’s .

• One can find it on the internet or I can send it in with pleasure. If anyone wants to email, I can send, I can forward it with pleasure.

• Myra, I’m fascinated by your observation that Robey Leibbrandt, of course, was a Nazi in South Africa during the war years and moved into a house opposite yours, wow, that’s really fascinating. I’m sure you must have some stories about that, that’s really interesting. The books’ titles and authors of books, I’ll just give the one that… well, the two that I’ve been relying on is Roger Gryphon, “The Nature of Fascism,” and Jason Stanley, a book called “Fascism Stanley” in the ordinary course. David, you cited one or two others, perhaps you’d like to say what they were.

• Sorry, Dennis, I’m just getting a bit lost here, sorry, just to go back, I just saw that question on Ford, was about that he used to give $50,000 a year to Hitler for his… to him per year. Sorry, Dennis, which one is this now?

• No, any references to books? I cited Gryphon and Stanley, but there may be, there was a request for repeat books that we’ve relied upon, there were a couple that you did cite, but if you don’t want to do that…

• Susan Sontag, Susan Sontag…

• I’m sorry…

• “Fascinations with Fascism,” and Paul Betts got a fantastic book art and when one just Google’s, there’re a couple of them, he’s a very contemporary, brilliant Oxford historian and cultural thinker. And those are the two contemporary ones, yep.

Q: Neville says, “What is truth? Truth is what you believe. Well, no, not necessarily. So many, many people believe truth to be what they believe and their opponents lie.”

A: Well, that’s true, second proposition is absolutely right. But I mean, we’ve got to hold on to certain things. I mean, if you’re going to tell me that the world is flat or that the Holocaust didn’t exist, I’m sorry, that’s wrong. And I think, and one of the points that Harari makes which is so interesting in the discussion that I referred to, is he talks about the vaccine and he says if the vaccine had broken out… Sorry, the vaccine, the COVID, if COVID had broken out in the democratic society, one does not know whether it would’ve expanded to the whole world, it might or might not have, he says, but at least this, that the truth couldn’t have been repressed in the way it was. It is possible that local authorities, if it broke out in an area in a democratic country, might have been prepared to suppress it, but eventually it would’ve got to some journalists in the free press and it would’ve got out. Once you’re into an authoritarian country like this, you can repress the truth or distort it. So I’m sorry, I do not think that anything goes here, otherwise frankly, we wouldn’t be able to have any kind of conversation.

• [Judi] We take one more question…

• Yeah, one more question…

• And then we can finish up.

• Yeah, well, how do you see the role of Drew Steven Melan, Alan Dershowitz in the Trump enterprise? With sadness is all I’ll say, and that’s all from me. Thanks, Judi and thanks, David.

• Thanks, Dennis, thanks, Judi, thank you, everybody.

• Thanks, everyone.

• Take care…

• [Judi] Thank you, everybody…

• Around the world.

• Who joined us, and we’ll see everybody tomorrow, thank you, bye-Bye.