American Collapse, the 1930s, the 2020s, and Human Civilization
Civilization, collapse, and the future, with a little focus on America’s election.
by Umair
How I Predicted American Collapse
It’s been a while since I predicted a thing I came to call American collapse. The story was simple, and I won’t rehash it for you, but in America I saw a repeat of the classic trends of the 1930s. Long-run stagnation, widespread immiseration, astronomical inequality: all of these are the classic recipe for fascism.
Not according to me. According to the greatest minds of the 20th century, like Keynes, whose book, “The Consequences of the Peace,” was about this startling insight: stagnation is the real drivers of fascism. This was a revolutionary insight. You see, back then, we didn’t understand. Why did Hitler arise? How had he seduced a society? What led Germany down this dark road, which dragged the world into war, and killed millions?
It was social science’s greatest question. Ever. Because World War was humanity’s greatest problem, ever, too, to date, and I don’t mean to belittle slavery and so forth, I’m just discussing how thinkers thought then. Nobody had much of a clue. All kinds of explanations were offered. None were very satisfying. It was Keynes who made the link between Weimar Germany’s stagnation, and the rise of Nazi Germany, as its consequence.
Hence, the title of the book that changed the world, “The Consequences of the Peace.” How did that book change the world? It remade the post-war world.
Leaders and thinkers of all kinds agreed that Keynes was right. And so they agreed, to, try and design a world where World War would never recur, ever, full stop, period, and to do that, they attempted to design institutions that would “never again,” in the famous words, allow fascism to rise.
Those institutions were things like the IMF and World Bank and UN and international courts and charters and treaties and trade organizations, plus America’s sort of soft control of levers of power, like back then, the gold standard, or international diplomacy, because back then, it was the last man left standing. Doesn’t matter—I can explain those later, and I’ve discussed them before.
The point is that we understood something back then.
This was the greatest lesson of the 20th century.
The Lesson We Forgot, and Why
I emphasize it because I want you to learn it. I think it’s important that you grasp it, I think it’s crucial that everyone gets it.
Right now, let me assure you, we don’t, and I’ll come back to that.
So. Now let me put Keynes great lesson, and remember, this is something that literally changed history and human civilization, to you in its simplest form.
Long-run stagnation causes fascism.
Causes. That is a causal link, and that matters, because it gives power. The powers to prevent, to ameliorate, and to predict. If we understand what causes something, we can do something about it.
Now. Some people will dispute this. Some people will “disagree” with it. They are only really flouting their ignorance. This isn’t an opinion. Keynes proved this, beyond a shadow of a doubt. This is knowledge. We know this, and to deny it or dispute it is to be the equivalent of a climate denier, and I don’t say that lightly. It’s foolish, so understand, this is something we should all know. In the way that it is a great lesson and a grave truth.
So. These are the roots of fascism. What do they tell us?
What they told me was that in America’s case, we were about to have big problems. That was years ago now. I saw stats like the middle class becoming a minority, people struggling, generations doing worse than the last, massive inflation for housing, healthcare, retirement, all the basics. These reminded me of Weimar Germany, not in a metaphorical way, but in a statistical one. Sure, things weren’t “as” bad, but in terms of the causal link I’ve explained to you, that doesn’t matter.
Stagnation causes fascism.
When I saw that in America, for example, incomes had stagnated for half-a-century, I was convinced that something ugly was right around the corner. This was Keynes’ point, after all. It was what centuries of social thinking and science had culminated in. Keynes stood on the shoulders like Rousseau, De Tocqueville, Hume, and many, many more, and his insight remains the single greatest idea we have ever had about society. How do we prevent World Wars?
How we keep democracies?
I became convinced something ugly going to happen, because all the statistics told me so. And the deeper I looked, the more they converged on the same story: long-run stagnation, hardening across generations, deepening across social groups, imploding the middle, turning society pessimistic, afraid, dark, easy meat for demagogues.
I understood, too, that something paradoxical had happened. After the last World War, other countries had built guardrails against fascism recurring. Strong and robust one, or at least as strong as they could have been made, then. But America hadn’t. Because of course last time around it was the last man standing, and the thinking then was that it was the only country that didn’t need to be hardened and protected, so that its democracy would endure.
So America didn’t build the protections that Europe did, for example. Which today everyone can see, generous social contracts, expansive safety nets, all of which prevent long-run stagnation, and thus, avert the hand of fascism from developing a killer grip over society. America never built any of those because it didn’t think it needed them.
And so something truly paradoxical happened. The country that led the last fight against fascism is the one that today is on the brink of it. It’s not me calling it fascism, it’s Trump’s own Chief of Staff, Kamala, historians who disputed using the term until right about now, a long, long list of people, who finally all agree what this is.
So this is happening for a reason that’s one of those strange ironies of history. Sure, America has a checkered history with social relations—but most societies do. Where my ancestors come from? Caste is still a thing, and those at the bottom are “untouchable.” Human ugliness is universal.
What happened in America was paradoxical, ironic, and different. Nobody thought it needed to be hardened against fascism, after the last World War, and so it wasn’t. Italy, Germany, Japan—LOL, pretty obviously they did. France, Holland, Belgium—they didn’t want to end up like those guys.
But America was the country that saved the world from fascism. It was the one that nobody thought, therefore, needed to have all these new institutions—new constitutions, new social contracts, new systems—to prevent it’s rise, in some distant future.
That future is right now.