The Nazis are among us. The crisis returns. Nationalisms are gaining ground. The war is raging. We all know that. It is therefore very surprising that an authoritative voice has not been heard for some time to exclaim: “We live in the 1930s.” Or maybe I wasn’t paying enough attention.
It’s because the chorus is known and feeds the chronicle with perfect regularity. We remember of course the book by Pascal Blanchard and Farid Abdelouahab, published in 2017, The 30s. And if the story started again? We also remember the excellent Recidivism. 1938 by Michael Foessel, where the author traveled through the 1938 press in search of similarities with our time. Political speech is not exempt from this reference: Manuel Valls in 2014, Emmanuel Macron in 2018 expressed their strange impression of reliving the 1930s.
Often, these analogies have focused on this or that aspect of the 1930s, in particular the rise of extremes and the peril of war, without going all the way to the term-to-term comparison, which is obviously impossible and would lead to an impasse. . This is where this parallel finds its greatest limit, and would almost make you smile.
Think about it, in the 1930s, we trembled before the red peril, which has completely disappeared from our societies. Even the radical left seems to have deserted the doctrine of revolutionary communism as it then prevailed in the young USSR. I am nevertheless told that it prevails today in a China that has rediscovered the refined taste of the gulags and reminds its elites of reading Marx.
But anyway, in the 1930s, we were completely at loggerheads with the Germans, who regarded us with mortuary and whom we looked down on. The Franco-German couple spares us such tension in the heart of Europe. Unless, of course, the renewed selfishness of our two countries under the effect of the crisis measures persists in pushing our two nations apart and comforting them in the certainty that their individual destiny is taking shape outside of the shared dialogue.
Let’s hope the 2020s of the 21st century aren’t worse
Come on, at least war is an illusion of the past, and it no longer threatens the stability of our continent. Besides, there is no Hitler in Europe today. Except, of course, when this war is happening close enough to us for us to feel its hot breath on our necks and when a head of state considers it his right to deport children, send young conscripts to massacre, bridle the means of information and bombard the civilians. Even the Anschluss was less bloodthirsty.
The important thing is that in France no longer reigns that pestilential atmosphere of political anti-Semitism which strongly corrupted the public climate of the 1930s before finding expression during the Collaboration. Unless, of course, one reads with an attentive eye the study of Fondapol which attests to the persistence of a particularly religious anti-Semitism, of regular and numerous anti-Semitic acts, and of an inveterate political recovery of this anti-Semitism under various forms (parody of yellow stars, lack of public support for victims of anti-Semitic acts, etc.).
Yes, but after all we are no longer at the Protocol of the Elders of Zion, this forgery which had hit the headlines and fed the conspiratorial delusions widely exploited by Hitler and his followers. It is true that, to be convinced of this, you have to refrain from visiting social networks too often and lower your eyes before these figures with long noses and hooked fingers that seem ready to devour the planet, which sometimes even bloom on the walls of our cities, as very recently in Avignon.
Rest assured. The 1930s were also those of great political instability, due to unstable parliamentary majorities forcing the parties into often fragile coalitions. Hem, yeah, maybe that’s not the best example.
A bit like saying that in the 1930s, not everyone had guaranteed electricity and heating as they do today. Or that we, at least, are not experiencing runaway inflation. It must be said quickly. Or not say it at all.
No, we are not in the 1930s of the 20th century, I tell you. We are in the 2020s of the 21st century, and we just have to pray that they are not worse.