The debate over whether Trump counts as a fascist may seem pedantic, but its consequences for progressive thought are anything but. When we see America as Weimar and Trump as Hitler, we risk repeating past mistakes.
This danger is best illustrated in Eric Weitz’s recent essay, which calls on liberals to resurrect “militant democracy.” This political theory, espoused by many thinkers who fled Nazi Germany, held that free nations must view all dictatorial movements as existential threats. Democracy, they argued, cannot coexist with the enemy; extremist radicals have to be actively destroyed. According to Weitz’s logic, our generation must embrace these sentiments to resist Trump’s fascist takeover.
It may be empowering to see oneself as part of the venerable tradition of antifascist resistance, but reviving militant democracy might end up working against progressive politics. Their analysis of the Weimar Republic made these anti-Nazi thinkers elitist and technocratic; they came to believe that democracy’s survival depends on restricting the people’s power and on forming an unelected, bureaucratic elite shielded from public scrutiny.
To understand how the democratic fear of fascism ultimately eroded democratic practice, we must return to militant democracy’s original theorists. Their story should give pause to anyone who sees their ideas as an answer to our contemporary dilemmas.
Power From the People
Karl Loewenstein and Hans Speier, militant democracy’s first and most influential theorists, best embody the transformation from liberal antifascism to elitist technocracy. At the beginning of their careers — Loewenstein as a liberal political theorist, Speier as a social-democratic sociologist — they were two of the Weimar Republic’s few good guys, powerfully defending democracy’s legitimacy against its authoritarian critics.
Not surprisingly, their agenda did not sit well with the Nazis, and Loewenstein and Speier fled Germany in 1933. From their exile in the United States, they resumed their pro-democratic campaign, but now with a crucial twist. Fascism’s triumph, they wrote, showed that democratic states had to transform into new, “militant” regimes, ready and willing to use whatever means necessary — including those used by fascists — to defeat their opponents.
Three insights founded Loewenstein and Speier’s project. First, they insisted that all free nations needed to recognize that they faced the same threat. Fascists were trying to take over not only in Berlin and Rome, but also in Amsterdam, Washington, and Rio. If successful, they would form a “Fascist International,” Loewenstein warned, “transcend[ing] national borders.”
Second, and more substantially, the two maintained that democracy’s weakness lay in the freedoms it granted its enemies. Democratic states, they noted, gave rights like free speech to every member of society, regardless of political affiliation. This naïve moralism, however, allowed antidemocratic activists to infiltrate political institutions, exploiting freedom in order to undo it.
Like some of today’s theorists, they grounded this argument in Weimar Germany. Hitler and his violent supporters, they explained, used democratic rights to undermine the republic long before coming to power. Loewenstein believed that “the mechanism of democracy” represented “the Trojan horse by which the enemy enters the city.”
Finally, and most importantly, fascism’s success demonstrated that the people could not be trusted to protect democracy. In moments of crisis, the masses succumbed to “emotionalism” and gave up their rights in favor of vague promises of future national and/or racial glory. The people’s embrace of demagogues’ blatantly unrealistic — if not outright idiotic — visions proved that ordinary folks had no real politics, just fantasies.