Vive Le Canada - A Window on Despotism and the Mind of the Reactionary

[Editor's note: The following is a book review by Robin Matthews, recieved via email]

A Window on Despotism and the Mind of the Reactionary

Book Review.
Winifred Wagner. A Life at the Heart of Hitler's Bayreuth. By
Brigitte Hamann (trans. Alan Bance), Granta Books, London, 2005, 582
pages.

This large (and compelling) book will delight Second World War buffs,
students in search of "the real Hitler", Wagnerians, anti-Wagnerians,
lovers and haters of the Bayreuth Festival myth (and music), and
anyone who wants to understand the psychology of despotism and the
mind of the reactionary - especially the latter. The book by
Brigitte Hamann is readable, informative, fascinating.

It is so skilful, in fact, it never asks the overwhelming questions:
"Who are the guilty, who the innocent?" That is so, perhaps, because
the writer of Nazi history in Germany or Austria is unfolding - like
it or not - family history for anyone whose family was a normal part
of society there from 1920 onwards.

We shouldn't be surprised that Hamann skirts issues and offers us as
normal that which cannot possibly be considered normal. She writes
of a time when human nature "red in tooth and claw" operated at full
brutality even while it also showed itself ordinary at times and
even, at times, humane.

One of Hitler's closest friends was Winifred Wagner, a Wagner by
marriage to the great composer's son and the presiding force at
Bayreuth through all the Hitler years.

Winifred Wagner's story is a fairy tale. At nine, English, a sickly
orphan, Winifred Williams was shipped to Berlin to distant, elderly
relations. They became strongly attached to her and cared for her
lovingly. At 18, Germanified, she married the only son of the great
operatic composer, Richard Wagner.

The son, Siegfried, was head of the Bayreuth Festival, begun by his
father who had married the daughter of composer Franz Lizst. She
(Cosimo Wagner) took over the Festival when Richard Wagner died.
Wagner had a daughter as well as a son. She, too, married English.
He was Houston Stewart Chamberlain (cousin of the famous British
Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain).

Houston Stewart Chamberlain was a "race theorist" of the dangerous
nineteenth century kind, and an anti-semite of power. He ardently
admired and wrote books about Richard Wagner, as well as Kant and
Goethe. In 1911 he published his most influential work, The
Foundations of the Nineteenth Century. In it he depicted the Jews as
an alien note in a German Aryanism best suited to build a new
European order. He advocated selective breeding and strict
separation of "Aryans" and Jews. He became a willing intellectual
foster-father to Adolf Hitler and Nazis of the inner circle. When
Chamberlain was nearing his death in 1927, leading Nazis went to his
bedside in Bayreuth to pay homage to him.

Houston Stewart Chamberlain lived in the same residential complex as
the family of Winifed Wagner, was an intellectual leader, and helped
make up the "normal" milieu of family and friends that was so
reactionary it could cheer on the desecrations of the Nazis.

In 1923 Adolf Hitler made his first visit to the Bayreuth Festival.
He was familiar with Wagner's operas and a devotee. He met Winifred
Wagner who - in an unsuccessful marriage - was fascinated by "the
saviour of Germany" who became, as well, she believed "the saviour of
the Bayreuth Festival". Hitler's politics made possible his deep
affinity for Richard Wagner and his works. Both of them lived
intense German nationalism, anti-semitism, racism, and abhorrence of
anything Left.

Winifred Wagner and her husband Siegried supported Hitler from 1923.
Siegfried's letters, in fact, are apparently so inflammatory they are
mostly unavailable as are many of Winifred Wagner's papers and those
of her Nazi son, Wieland Wagner.

A primary point has been made here and needs to be underlined. The
Wagners were breath-takingly reactionary, all of them. Hitler felt
immediately at home among them. He became a friend, and was "uncle"
to the four children of Siegfried and Winifred. When Siegfried died
in 1930, Winifred became head of the Festival which Hitler often
attended. He stayed at the Wagner home or nearby, romped with the
children, and sat with the family by the open fire until two and
three in the morning. Harmony, love, warmth, friendship ruled in a
setting that was oppressively reactionary.

A reactionary is someone who believes that a self-chosen elite,
usually of wealth and economic power, should make up the "natural"
leadership of a population. Such a person is usually opposed to or
very easily impatient with what he or she would call "democratic
inefficiency", the necessary friction, give and take, compromise,
consultation - and sometimes stalemate - in a community
democratically governed, possessing parties representing different
constituencies and ideas of the public good.

A reactionary, moreover, lives in a world of artificially created
exclusions, whether of class, race, religion, or ideology. Such a
person is usually a strong believer in "law and order" and a strong
police force given wide latitude, and also a believer in outlawing
things: political parties, dissenting ideologies, protest groups,
social behaviour outside regulated norms, and faiths not recognized
as contributing to prescribed ideas of social cohesion.

A reactionary, then, is someone - whether of the Left or the Right -
who is sympathetic to despotism, dictatorship, or one of the other
forms of narrowly held power in a totalitarian state. Reactionaries
often do what Hitler did when he found street violence met with
disapproval - they use democratic forms to get the power that will
let them destroy democratic forms.

Strange as it may seem Winifred Wagner existed as "a good
reactionary", meaning one who accepts the inhumanities and
brutalities of such a regime but believes "individuals" should be
protected from an over-zealous state. Among the insane laws of the
Nazi regime, for instance, one existed that allowed "the proper
authorities" to name anyone "a full Aryan". Winifred Wagner tried to
squeeze individual Jews and half Jews and other "non-Aryans" through
the Aryanizing process, totally consenting to the brutal system but
"working it" from a privileged position as "Hitler's friend,
Winifred" to do individual acts of "goodness" for some individuals,
often not even individuals she personally knew.

As Brigitte Namann presents the world of the Wagners, it was elitist,
self-assured, superbly confident. When the Nazi organization began
to show itself corrupt, vicious, brutal, and murderous, the "friends"
were able to tack about, to absorb the rough edges, to enjoy the
Hitler circle, while not - that any of them would admit - approving
of terror and brutality. But they did approve of it, for the
"saviour of Germany" had a vision they shared of a newly empowered
Germany. When Hitler said people had to be murdered for the good of
Germany, they acquiesced.

Brigitte Hamann writes that her book "shows the powerful grip, long
before Hitler, that nationalist and racist ideology - in cultural
terms, too - had on the upper echelons of German society". (p.ix)
She suggests that the question of guilt was never really solved in
post-Nazi Germany. The picture she conveys is of a hit-and-miss,
almost careless process of trial and judgement.

For instance, Wieland Wagner, Winifred's eldest son, was an odious
friend of Hitler, an arrogant Nazi, and civilian acting governor of
the Bayreuth [concentration] camp. After the war, he refused to
speak of his Nazi involvement (having, for instance, received a
silver and grey convertible Mercedes as a personal gift from Hitler).
Wieland posed as a lifelong anti-Nazi. He pursued his successful
Bayreuth Festival career after the war without question until his
death.

Only has teacher, Kurt Overhoff (and his mother when provoked) spoke
frankly of him - to no notice: "there was only one idol and one model
-Adolf Hitler, his beloved uncle Wolf - and if anyone dared to offer
the slightest criticism of his idol, he broke off discussion and
threatened to report the speaker�." (p. 463)

In one way, Brigitte Hamann (heroically?) presents everything she
could find about Winifred Wagner, her relation with Hitler, with
Germany, with the Festival, and with her four children. In another
way Hamann eludes the central questions, as I have said, writing on
the book's last page that Winifred Wagner "was neither a heroine nor
a criminal, but one of the great
mass of trusting, misguided people who succumbed to the great seducer Hitler."

That, of course, isn't good enough, however complicated and
entrapping the Bayreuth world became for Winifred Wagner. She
watched the brutalization of the ideas of the "old Nazis" as violence
and lawlessness became standard practice. She knew by grapevine
about the brutalities of the regime. She confronted Hitler with some
of them and accepted his methods of brushing her off. In her
de-Nazification trial she admitted to knowing about Oranienburg,
Dachau, and Belsen-Buchenwald concentration camps. Elsewhere, she
gave evidence of knowing also about Auschwitz and Theresienstadt.

She balanced those facts and her intimacy with Adolf Hitler by
presenting a large number of testimonials from people she fought for,
many Jews, people who declared they would have died but for her
constant, tireless, intervention with Nazi authorities on behalf of
people she believed were facing injustice.

Brigitte Hamann makes much of that, as she should. The apparent
contradiction is astonishing.

But how astonishing is it? In Canada many of us know reactionaries
who would strip Canadians of all social securities and human rights
and who, nevertheless, believe in private charity, personal concern
for individuals downtrodden. The reactionary, perhaps, more than the
so-called progressive believes in private charity.

Living in England for a short while, I was touched to see the only
(real) aristocrat in the village (an "Honourable"), taking hot soup
on damp days to three or four homes of elderly, needy folk. When I
remarked upon her good actions to some young Britons, they sneered.
"Lady Bountiful", they said. "She'd wipe out social welfare to lower
her taxes and drive through the village in her Rolls Royce delivering
thin soup to the hungry".

The "progressive" is not such a fool. Knowing his or her own concern
for personal comfort and the inability of individual people to take
on the whole problem of poverty and destitution, the progressive
doesn't focus on personal acts of charity. That person asks for
public responsibility for the needy, taxation from all the able to
assist all the unable. Great progressives pass legislation to
protect all. Great reactionaries open private shelters for a few of
the poor. Mother Theresa was no progressive. A nice lady. Heroic.
But no progressive.

On the subject of personal charity Winifred Wagner remarks that the
life saver who drowns with the person she is trying to save gets no
medal. The person who saves the drowning one and goes on to do more
is the one who matters.

That, of course, is true, though over-simplified. If Winifred Wagner
urged Hitler on, approved when he took fraudulent control of Germany,
looked aside when he engaged in genocide and torture on a grand
scale, and received, for herself and her family, many personal
favours from him, then - we have to ask - what did her personal
intervention on the part of individuals (even some she didn't know)
mean? Can she be said to be merely "one of the great mass of
trusting, misguided people who succumbed to the great seducer Hitler"?

The answer probably has to be "No". It has to be No for much larger
reasons than whether Winifred Wagner's life is properly accounted for
by Brigitte Hamann. It has to be No because we have learned in the
twentieth and twenty-first centuries that we cannot accept the
arguments of ignorance, of "merely following orders", of having
friendships that are unaffected by the murders committed among those
who we call "purely personal" friends, of being employed to do evil
without the power to refuse to do it.

One of Winifred's warm associates was a doctor to Hitler, Karl
Brandt. When he fell out of favour with Hitler, Winifred was unhappy
because Brandt could get around Hitler's closest aides to pass on her
messages. Only near the end of the book are we told Karl Brandt was
"responsible for coordinating human experiments in the concentration
camps" and was hanged "for his involvement in human experiments". (p.
441) Those "experiments" were among the most ugly and offensive acts
in which the Nazis engaged.

Winifred Wagner's comment is simply not adequate: "What a nice,
decent fellow he was, and what a price he's got to pay now for the
things he was made to represent." Such a statement can only be made
by a kind of reactionary who sees personal relations as coming before
all principles of human decency. It can only be made, moreover, in a
society that has become so corrupt that moral judgement of immoral
action becomes impossible to those who benefit from it, people,
mostly, who fit the word "reactionary".

In these present days the question of totalitarianism is, again,
before us. The whole Western world is caught up in the drive for a
"new fascism", lurking behind words like "globalization",
"anti-terrorism", "privatization", and "neo-liberalism".

The goal of "the new fascism" is simple and clear. It is to strip
real democratic power from populations. It is to funnel massive
economic and political power into the hands of inter-linking
Corporations which may then set up consenting puppets to prate about
preserving democracy and expanding it in the world. It is to create
a completely false world of information (such as existed in Joseph
Goebbel's Nazi Germany) in order to dislocate and destabilize
opposition and to anaesthetize the general population in the face of
flagrant, on-going injustice. It is, finally, to render the larger
population into precariously employed, financially borderline,
socially unprotected, unionless atoms. In that condition they can be
used as virtueless slaves, furthering the goals of corporate
totalitarianism.

The example of growing state and corporate fascism is probably
clearest in the U.S.A. Treaties there have become decorative
conveniences. Internal law has stripped away fundamental rights from
even U.S. citizens. International law is openly rejected.

As I have repeatedly reported Europeans are in an open struggle
against encroaching state and corporate domination - which have
undoubted fascist intentions.

In Canada, as we have seen with the B.C. sell-off of public
corporations, the teachers strike, and with the federal government's
quiet policy to welcome foreign (mostly U.S.) ownership, the conflict
is on-going. In B.C. transport minister Kevin Falcon was accused of
flagrantly misleading the legislature about the sale of B.C. Rail to
CN. He and the B.C. Liberal cabinet are engaged in an on-going
cover-up of the negotiations and sale. Today, he taunts the NDP
Opposition and jeers at it across the House. The B.C. Rail sell-off
is a running sore, involving allegations of large-scale lying,
fascist-style secrecy, of collusion with the courts and the RCMP, of
hidden pay-offs, fraudulent bulk party membership purchases involving
Provincial and federal Liberal parties and the involvement of cabinet
level Liberals in B.C. That is to name just some of the allegations.

Instead of conducting an untiring campaign on the issue (1) to force
the resignation of Kevin Falcon and (2) to force a full-scale
investigation of B.C. Rail wrong-doing, the Carole James NDP
Opposition is, literally, playing at politics. It sits in the
legislature questioning Kevin Falcon as if they are all in a normal
parliamentary situation. In secret it agrees to wage hikes for MLAs
far, far higher than anything the government will give its employees.
At the same time it walked away from the B.C. Teachers Federation,
leaving it to fry in the heat of a government/mediator/press/and
supreme court attack that was a disgrace to a free society.

Throughout B.C., moreover, highly paid administrators are working to
destroy public corporations, social securities, the healthcare
structure, and the unions. Highly paid administrators are preparing
to welcome, wherever possible, foreign takeovers of B.C. wealth and
resources.

Look at the Texas energy firm's $6.9 billion move to take over
Terasen, formerly B.C. Gas (with a legislated prevention of
out-of-B.C. sale), and, before that, existing as a healthy part of
the large B.C. Hydro/B.C. gas Crown Corporation. The Campbell
Liberals quietly removed it from protected Canadian ownership -
though it was efficient, productive, and profitable. The Vancouver
Sun of November 11, 2005 works hard to convince British Columbians
that the sell-out to a Texas company is just dandy.

Admitting that a record number of British Columbians filed complaints
about the sale, the three-person Public Utilities Commission (one
more branch of highly paid Campbell sell-out administrators) assured
readers of its report that the British Columbians didn't know what
they were talking about. They were merely stupid people who didn't
know the Commission is set up to facilitate sell-out.

What must be seen with clear eyes is that the Public Utilities
Commission is like the Commissioner of B.C. Ferries: it is an
"objective", "neutral" body placed in position to gut the resources
of British Columbia on behalf of private, mostly foreign
corporations. The commissioners declared they don't have power over
the sale of public utilities but must "adjudicate this application
within its statutory mandate and relevant provisions of the Utilities
Commission Act." That is the way of saying they are lackeys
purveying Gordon Campbell sell-out policy for excellent pay, acting
as objective, neutral officers serving the Public Good.

Should all the sleazy Gordon Campbell officials be called to account
in the future, they will argue that they were merely following
orders; they were ignorant of the damage they were doing; and they
had to engage in the evil even when they recognized it because they
didn't have the power to refuse. They will repeat and repeat the
argument of Nazis in the de-Nazification trials at the end of the
Second World War.

Carol James will probably say she believed so completely in the
democratic process she wasn't aware she was helping to destroy it.
That will be little consolation to Canadians robbed of real democracy
in Canada.

The anatomy of totalitarianism requires the study of the character
and psychology of those who believe they stand against
totalitarianism as well as the totalitarians themselves.
Responsibility for the creation of totalitarian states often rests
with both kinds - and perhaps more with those who believe they stand
against totalitarianism - because they often live in a euphoria of
complacent, congratulatory self-delusion.

In detailing the events of the life of Winifred Wagner, Brigitte
Hamann throws open a window on one kind of despotism for us - Nazism
in Germany with its brutal, levelling power. She also provides us
with a close look at reactionaries in action. Without intending to,
she shows us the danger they present. It is that latter revelation we
should study, for reactionaries are all around us in Canada as I
write - with goals not greatly different from the reactionaries who
gained power in Germany after 1933.