Those of a progressive disposition have differing moral foundations to those on the right. Moral foundations theory was first proposed by Jonathan Haidt and subsequently developed in his 2012 book, The Righteous Mind. The theory’s intention is to explain human variation in moral reasoning based on innate moral foundations. Right-wing foundations would be best characterised as group-oriented values centred around order and hierarchy; left-wing foundations would be best characterised as individualistic values.
Rightists value all five moral foundations, but uniquely value in-group loyalty, purity and obedience to authority. Right-wingers care about harm avoidance and fairness, but to a lesser extent than their left-wing counterparts — leftists only care about these foundations. This creates a situation of asymmetric empathy. The right can empathise with the left, as they share the two individualistic foundations; the left can’t empathise with the right, as they don’t share the three group-oriented foundations. As a result, the left perceives the right as fundamentally nasty and wicked, whereas the right views the left as misguided and ignorant. This asymmetric empathy has been a persistent factor throughout time and allows the left to seize control of culture, pushing ever leftward as they take advantage of the right’s empathy for them. This condition persists until a point of such disorder is reached that a conservative backlash takes place within the society’s elite. A clear historic example of this backlashing tendency would be the social conservatism of the Victorian era juxtaposed with the decadence of 18th century England.
Psychologically speaking, progressives lack a full set of moral foundations, but leftism also correlates with mental illness. Slate Star Codex carried out a survey of more than 8,000 people which showed that those on the further left are more likely to be “formally diagnosed with depression, borderline personality disorder, bipolar disorder, or schizophrenia”.
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Victims, Aren’t We All?
Following Donald Trump’s recent announcement concerning returning to Butler, Pennsylvania just over a month after an assassination attempt was made on his life there, there are many things to reflect on.
One of them is one of the few bright spots from the fallout of that event: that being much of the left finally getting a taste of their own medicine for once when it came to cancel culture. Many of those who attempted to downplay and mock the horror, alongside those who expressed disappointment that the would-be killer didn’t hit his target, felt the full wrath of the Frankenstein’s monster they had developed for decades. The parody band Tenacious D and streamer Destiny were the biggest casualties of this, all the while many others were targeted also, from school administrators and Home Depot employees, with the popular X account LibsofTikTok being the witchfinder general on that end.
Despite such an atmosphere and such scalps, many objected to such behaviour, out of some well-intentioned (if ultimately misguided) commitment to principle against cancel culture as a whole. As expected, many centrist commentators (like Triggernomtrey’s Konstantin Kisin and satirist Andrew Doyle) echoed this point, but more surprising were prominent right-wing accounts, often seen as ‘dissidents’ of the movement, the sort of type expected to appear on Alex Kaschuta’s Subversive podcast.
In particular, anon X accounts, like Peachy Keegan and Posts by Feds came to the defence of those being cancelled, especially when it came to the aforementioned Home Depot employee, who they felt didn’t deserve such vitriol.
All of these are undoubtedly pleasant and well-meaning sentiments, and not without some legitimacy. Indeed, the right shouldn’t perhaps get too carried away with such attitudes when the wind blows in our direction – as Nietzsche once noted, ‘Beware that, when fighting monsters, you yourself do not become a monster… for when you gaze long into the abyss. The abyss gazes also into you.’
Despite this, I can’t help but feel that such attitude overall is not the best for this moment or any like it when we can finally use these tools against the left.
Firstly, it is true that every society has boundaries on what is acceptable and what isn’t. As far as not wanting a political opponent dead goes – especially just after an assassination attempt – that is perhaps a pretty good standard for what isn’t acceptable in a free society to advocate for, all the while being a pretty low bar to meet in a democratic society.
Add to that how politically volatile much of the United States is in right now, any attempt to raise the temperature in such a way to make the tinderbox more likely to explode is beyond reckless and reprehensible. Wanting to stem and cull those who attempt to do so, whether they be well-known celebs or simple custodians, is something perfectly legitimate and sensible to want to do.
This is especially true in Trump’s case. This is a man who has already had much vilification against him to the point whereby his possible death seemed to be something much of the mainstream was happy to egg on, including the several calls for his murder by celebrities, and the Beeb going as far as to air a documentary sympathetic to a previous attempted Trump assassin in Michael Sandford (therefore, the swift backlash to maintaining that atmosphere is an improvement from years past). Given that, alongside the increased political violence against the right across the West (including the attempt against former Slovakian PM Robert Fico), any attempt to further normalise such attitudes is definitely not good for any body politic, let alone the divisive one we have now.
Secondly, the left has cancelled several people on the right for far less over the years, and no-one was safe from that. One many lament Tenacious D being dropped from their talent agency but joking about the assassin missing Trump is objectively far worse than what Winston Marshall did to be chased out his own band Mumford and Sons or what Morrissey did to be effectively shunned by much of the music world that once adored him. Their crimes? The former praised Andy Ngo’s book Unmasked: Inside Antifa’s Radical Plan to Destroy Democracy while the latter supported unpopular political parties and criticised much of the UK political class.
Many fans of Destiny may be irritated that he can no longer be monetised on several platforms, but that is nothing compared to YouTuber Felix Kjellberg (better known by his ‘PewDiePie’ alias) being fired from his Maker Studios agency after a smear campaign by the Wall Street Journal to portray him (falsely) as antisemitic over edgy jokes, let alone the lawfare against YouTubers Mark ‘Count Dankula’ Meechan and 6oodFella over similar social media edgy jokes.
One may feel sorry for the Home Depot cashier, but many other custodians were thrown under the bus to little attention. Take Brian Leach, a disabled Asda worker who was fired for sharing a Billy Connelly joke seen as ‘anti-Islamic’ by colleagues. Or Beverly Lockwood, a woman fired from Arc Engineers for being a member of dissident political organisations. Or Gillian Phillips, a children’s author fired from HarperCollins for supporting J. K. Rowling and had to retrain as an HGV driver to make ends meet. Or William Kelly, a Virginian police officer, who was fired for financially supporting Kyle Rittenhouse in his 2021 trial. And the worst part is that this is by no means exhaustive, with these links providing more comprehensive lists to that regard.
That leads me to my final point. We are in a culture war. One side is taking it very seriously, using their power and influence to silence those it doesn’t like for banal reasons – the recent culling of the anti-mass immigration website VDare by lawfare is a good example of this. If the other side isn’t willing to fight back in a similar matter because of some so-called principle, it will not win and doesn’t deserve to.
I for one would love nothing more than a return to the idea of having an equilibrium with the left about not cancelling anyone. For that to work however, there must be one in the first place – something impossible when one side is hopelessly unbalanced. Until the right can wield some scalps and cancel its opponents on its own reasonable terms – such as not wanting the death of a much-maligned political enemy – then there is nothing to be gained from being high and mighty while accomplishing precisely diddly squat, an albatross the right has borne around our necks for far too long. The equilibrium can only emerge once we win, and the left has to agree to our terms of peace.
So do not weep for those on the left who are cancelled. At best pity them, but no more. In fact, I would suggest this: when they happily laugh and wallow in glee as VDare is shut down or they grin as the recent wave of rioters in Britain are jailed for holding sticks or naughty social media posts, revel in similar behaviour when the shoe is on the other foot, whether it be against the unemployed Home Depot colleague or in support of the hefty sentences for the midwit extremists of Just Stop Oil they are so in dismay of.
Until there is victory, there can be no honour. While we wait, we might as well take advantage for when the roles are reversed as best we can, to hopefully end this once and for all. Or to quote the villainous Derrick Lynch from Namco’s Crisis Zone arcade game: ‘So you will understand and fear, your own foolish mistakes’.
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The Monarchy isn’t Britain’s Soul
Increasingly pessimistic, this article may very well just be me being unwarrantedly critical. However, there is nothing like a smidgen of conflict to get people interested in reading what we have to say; here goes nothing, I’m going to disagree with Daniel Hawker.
Let me be clear: I am not a republican, nor am I indifferent to the monarchy that we have. I also do not dislike either Edmund Burke or the late Sir Roger, having read works from both – and yet, I disagree with Mr Hawker’s recent commentary piece on the role of our monarchy. The King, or the Royal Family, isn’t ‘Britain’s Soul’, nor is it ‘our one national continuity’ (my emphasis, not Mr Hawker’s). Though, perhaps first I should commend what I think he has gotten right, and where we have common ground.
Our late Sovereign Lady was indeed an embodiment of moral courage and civic duty. I would go so far as to say she was a fantastic public figurehead for traditional, protestant Anglican Christianity. Likewise, it is indeed true that the more radical left want to tear down our traditional institutions, while the soft left want to turn them into glorified green-social democrat mouthpieces – we know. One could even go so far as to say that we should be vocally supportive of our King, or at least the institution of monarchy, perhaps solely on the basis that it annoys the right people.
Britain, however, is not the monarchy; Britain is a nation; a nation is a collective of people. What defines those people is what those people do – the customs and common practices, attitudes and values. The ‘soul’ of the British is our popular culture, or even our values (I would prefer the term religion), in how the British think and so how the British act. British people have generally enjoyed popular sovereignty and familiarity in regards to what is visibly around them. This is why the 2016 Brexit campaign focused on “take back control” and mass immigration changing our familiar towns and cities – against distant institutions on the continent. Nigel Farage did not invoke, at least not prominently, the idea that Brussels had taken power from the Queen.
It is not a good thing that we have a ‘personal connection’ to the Royal Family, or that we view the King as some kind of dad that we never had. It is not ‘trad’ to have the monarch be at the forefront of Britons’ minds; this is counterintuitive to a mystical, sacred monarchy. The word ‘mystical’ is, unsurprisingly, from the same root word as ‘mystery’; secret. How is it possible to maintain mysticism and a sacral quality if the King is supposed to seem intimate to us? How is it possible for the monarchy to be sacred if they appear ordinary? It is this attitude that was the root of the subsequent celebrification of the Royal Family, which has been disastrous. The King does not have to be #relevant to the everyday lives of British people.
There is a necessity in balancing civic involvement, mystical and sacred qualities, and representing public morality – if not a higher morality – that the Royal Family has a duty to pursue. Our King has to remain sufficiently far-off to be sacred. He also has to be visibly moral enough to be respected and involved publicly enough to maintain institutional confidence. Balancing what can be at odds with each other is not easy, but an overly-involved and relevant, though not in the progressive sense, monarchy, which I think, perhaps unconsciously, was guiding Mr Hawker’s thought, is not the right way forward.
If you want to discover and influence “Britain’s Soul”, turn away from institutions and towards the people. Institutions are important, vital even, but they are another subject to what Mr Hawker was trying to tackle. Turn towards what moral, dare I say even religious, forces are guiding everyday people, and what ordinary people do communally. The monarchy did not compel me to love my country, nor does it govern my every action; Jesus Christ does, and I pray in every beloved Book of Common Prayer service that we will only be quietly governed by our monarch. At the end of the day, I do not think that it is historically or presently accurate to pin our whole national being on one institution, albeit an important one, while that which is popular is effectively sidelined.
If you want to discover and influence ‘Britain’s Soul’, be practical, straightforward and actually change how people think and act; how people’s souls are actually oriented. Avoid placing too much emphasis on a single institution, especially when they do not govern our everyday lives. Some institutions ought to, like the Church (which has a presence in every community, I am told), and you may find that they are more relevant to the subject of souls. Other institutions currently hold too much sway over the developing souls of Britons, like schools – as opposed to parents. Other institutions try to suppress the outward signs of inward Graces in our souls, like the police. You will not make any progress in a ‘conservative revolution’ by having tunnel vision.
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From Weimar to the Third Reich: the birth of a dictatorship
History has seen its fair share of wicked and corrupt leaders and regimes, from Ivan the Terrible, to Joseph Stalin and Mao Zedong, to Pol Pot and Saddam Hussein. These men, and others like them, desired to tightly grip the reins of power and not let go, entrenching themselves and their position within the political system. Of all the possible regimes to explore with this piece, Hitler’s Third Reich was chosen because to its dual notoriety and anonymity – Nazi Germany is known to almost everyone as a significant historical period, but the system’s context, beginning and how Hitler came to be Führer is a far more elusive story.
A solid understanding of Hitler’s time in power requires some historical context, specifically the end of the First World War and the subsequent years of the democratic Weimar Republic. The country’s crushing defeat, as part of the Central Powers, saw the victors gather to decide how both to punish and subdue Germany – the result was the Treaty of Versailles, signed by Foreign Minister Hermann Müller in 1919. The terms were far harsher than the Germans had anticipated, due mainly to France’s involvement: they accepted war guilt, had to pay 132bn marks in reparations (as well as all war pensions), their army was limited to 100,000 men, and they lost the key territories of Saar, Alsace Lorraine and Danzig. From the perspective of almost all Germans, regardless of region or class, Versailles represented the most heinous betrayal by the political elites. Having been the catalyst for the Weimar Republic, this new political system never managed to escape the Treaty’s legacy, with its dark shadow tarnishing the concept of ‘democracy’.
For conservative nationalists and monarchists however, even Germany’s military defeat couldn’t be accepted, resulting in the anti-Semitic ‘Stab in the Back’ myth, which essentially argued that, far from being the fault of the soldiers, Germany’s defeat had actually been the result of traitorous elites and politicians (many of whom were Jewish) working to undermine the country’s war effort. This was a narrative that greatly appealed to Adolf Hitler, who similarly couldn’t accept the reality of the situation – he described Germany’s defeat in Mein Kampf as “the greatest villainy of the century”, and one which anti-German propaganda greatly contributed to, “with Jewish, socialist propaganda spreading doubt and defeatism from within”.
With such widespread shared outrage following Versailles, it is no wonder that the Weimar Republic was plagued with social unrest, political violence and attempted coups from the very beginning. From the communist left, you had the Spartacist Uprising in 1919, fuelled by a desire to replace Weimar with a Soviet-style system (inspired by the Bolshevik Revolution), and from the nationalist right, you had the Kapp Putsch in 1920 (and Hitler’s Munich Putsch in 1923), who harkened back to the authoritarian monarchical style of Kaiser Wilhelm II and Bismarck. Add to this list the regularity of politically-motivated street violence, as well as the assassinations of major politicians (the finance minister in 1921, and the foreign minister in 1922), and you have a government unable to defend either itself, or it’s citizenry.
Public confidence in the Weimar regime was perhaps most seriously damaged by the country’s economic instability across the entire period, from 1918 to 1933. Already decimated by mass-printing and borrowing during the War, the German economy would suffer numerous economic crises, beginning with hyperinflation in 1923. The result of a French invasion and occupation, the government was forced to increase its borrowing, further decimating living standards – increased alcoholism and suicide rates were recorded, along with a decline in law and order, and more generally, public trust in the government. Although briefly graced with the ‘Golden Years’ (1923-29), Germany once again faced economic decimation in the form of the Great Depression, which again saw mass social unrest, as well as six million unemployed citizens (1933).
By the early 1930s therefore, extremist anti-Weimar parties were becoming increasingly popular with the angry and struggling German electorate. This is reflected in seat counts: the Nazis went from 12 seats in 1928, to 107 in 1930, before reaching their all-time high of 230 in July 1932 – similarly, the communist KPD reached an impressive 100 in November 1932. Fundamentally, what Hitler and the Nazis were offering increasingly spoke to much of the German population – ending reparations, regaining national pride, the promise of full-employment, a Kaiser-like leader, and an uncompromising stance against the boogeymen of the time, Jews and Communists.
His appointment as Chancellor wasn’t guaranteed by any means however, thanks to President Paul von Hindenburg. Having once described Hitler as a ‘bohemian corporal’, he was concerned with Hitler’s lack of government experience, although had offered Hitler the position of vice-chancellor in 1932. What forced his hand however, was the enormous influence wielded by the industry elites, who viewed Hitler as the authoritarian figure that the chancellorship needed, an opinion fuelled by their fear of communism’s increasing popularity
However, once Hitler’s appointment became necessary and inevitable, Hindenburg, along with former chancellor Papen, conspired to control a Hitler-led government, believing Hitler’s lack of experience meant he would be like a puppet who could be ‘tamed’. The two men thought that, with few Nazis in the Cabinet, and with Papen as Vice-Chancellor, true power could lie with them, with Hitler being Chancellor in name only. How wrong they were.
Having attained the chancellorship in January 1933, Hitler now set about securing his position, first through legislative changes. This came most significantly in two forms: the Reichstag Fire Decree in February 1933, and then the Enabling Act in March. Both pieces of legislation legally grounded the fledgling regime, granting them the authority and power to act as they wish, and silence those who opposed them.
The hurried passing of the emergency Reichstag Fire Decree came in the wake of a suspected Communist-led arson of the Reichstag building. Arriving at the scene alongside other leading Nazis, Hitler viewed the crime as a blatant assault on the German state, and all it stood for. In response, Hitler pressured Hindenburg to sign the Act into law, which saw the suspension of essentially all freedoms and civil liberties (e.g., the right to association, speech, freedom of the press etc). These rights wouldn’t see a revival later on. Aside from removing freedoms, the Decree also saw a brutal crackdown of political opponents (as the police no longer required cause, and could hold people indefinitely). Indeed, the first 2 weeks following the Decree’s signing saw around 10,000 people arrested in Prussia, including many prominent communist leaders. From the perspective of Richard J. Evans, “this was the first of the two fundamental documents on which the dictatorship of the Third Reich was erected”.
Even more significant, however, was the passing of the Enabling Act. Single-handedly transforming Germany into a legal dictatorship, the Act allowed the Cabinet to pass legislation without requiring the consent of either the Reichstag or the president. Indeed, this paved the way for the Nazis to further tighten their grip on the political system – for example, the founding of new parties was banned in July 1933. Fundamentally, with an unrivalled number of NSDAP Reichstag members, Hitler had made democracy into dictatorship in only a few months – in the words of Evans: “By the summer of 1933 all opposition had been crushed, more than a hundred thousand Communists, Social Democrats and other opponents of the Nazis had been sent to concentration camps, all independent political parties had been forced to dissolve themselves and the Nazi dictatorship had been firmly established”. Combining the offices of president and chancellor in 1934 (following Hindenburg’s death), Hitler’s adoption of the Führer title cemented his authority and that of his party.
In consolidating Nazi power, Hitler definitely made his position within the new hierarchy very clear. This can be seen in the ‘Hitler Oath’, introduced for the judiciary, military and civil servants. Having previously sworn loyalty to ‘the German Reich’, officials now swore “unconditional obedience” to Hitler personally. This reflected the broader ruling philosophy of the Nazi regime, one in place since the party’s reorganisation in 1924, Führerprinzip (essentially that the Führer’s decisions are always correct, and that he is all-powerful and above the law). With the effective spreading of propaganda, Hitler came to encapsulate a past era of Germany’s history, one dominated by patriotic and statist authoritarians, notably the much-sentimentalized Bismarckian and Wilhelmine Reich.
Regarding institutional control, Hitler set about ensuring political conformity within branches of local government and the Civil Service. Although dominated by conservatives from the Wilhelmine Reich, a purge of ‘enemies of the State’ was still required of civil servants – this came in the form of the anti-Semitic ‘Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service’, which banned Jews, progressives and others. Germany’s Jewish community would, later on, see further exclusion from institutions, including education (both as students and as teachers). Additionally, the local government saw its own purge of dissidents, as well as an overhaul of its structure, with Reich Deputies introduced to administer the different states – in doing this, the Nazis ensured that all areas of the country were under their top-down control.
Nazi actions were similar towards the media establishment. Fearing the damaging impacts of rogue leftist reporting, the Reich Association of the German Press was set up, to review all content and keep the journalists, editors and publishers in line with the regime’s messaging. The same happened within the cultural and artistic spheres of German society – fearing the spread of ‘degenerate’ modern art (labelled as Cultural Bolshevism), it was the Reich Chamber of Culture that reversed the artistic progressivism seen in the ‘Golden Years’ of the Weimar Republic.
Whilst these two agencies monitored for anti-Nazi media sentiment, it was through the Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda (headed by Joseph Goebbels) that the regime was able to most effectively spread its hateful rhetoric, with a unified radio system being established in 1934, and radios being mass-produced for the population. Allowing Hitler to more easily speak to his people, this communications technology proved vital in further cementing Nazism into the everyday lives of the citizenry. Aside from this, the agency also oversaw the production of pro-Nazi films, which praised Aryan physical qualities, all the whilst presenting Jews as parasitic, manipulative and barbaric (most famously seen with the release of The Eternal Jew in 1940).
These structural changes however, would only get Hitler’s vision for Germany so far. He could make himself the supreme leader, root out opponents in state institutions and the media, and spread the party’s ideas of racial purity all he wanted, but what the Führer really needed was a population ideologically committed to National Socialism, a concept the Nazis referred to as a Volksgemeinschaft, or ‘national/people’s community’. With the population having been divided under Weimar, Hitler aspired to rule a unified Germany, one with a populace devoted to the Fatherland. For this to work however, all social groups would have to see real life improvements.
With unemployment having reached six million by 1933, Hitler’s aim with Germany’s workers was more jobs and improving their living conditions. Emphasizing ‘recovery’ during the first few years, unemployment was indeed reduced, to a staggering 1.6m by 1936. As far as conditions went, the ‘Beauty of Work’ programme managed an overhaul of factories, including improvements to safety measures and the quality of toilets. Alongside this came the ‘Strength through Joy’ (KdF) initiative, which provided workers with cheap leisure activities, such as holidays in the country and trips to the theatre, all of which were eagerly taken advantage of. Despite these steps taken by the German Labour Front (DAF), modern historians have raised the concern that, far from being genuinely dedicated to the regime, workers simply publicly supported Nazism to continue enjoying these benefits.
Having enjoyed uniquely-progressive freedoms under the Weimar Constitution, women under the Nazi regime were reverted back to their traditional domestic childbearing role. Indeed, women under this system were granted easier access to divorce, as well as the ‘Cross of Honour of the German Mother’, to encourage them to have more and more children. With many women enamoured by the image of the Führer as the eternal bachelor, the regime saw essentially no organised opposition by women, along with emotional displays of love for Hitler at public events.
The Nazis’ approach to the youth was focused on combining physical war training with lessons in National Socialism. Achieved through both schools and the Hitler Youth (which became compulsory from 1936), young German boys went on hiking and camping trips, as well as new Nazi content, such as racial science and reading extracts of Mein Kampf. Indeed, many schoolboys became obsessed with the legendary figure of Hitler, and were successfully transformed into puppets of the regime, reporting their neighbours and family members to the authorities for anti-Nazi sentiment. However, the many opposition youth movements of the late-1930s represented a growing disillusionment with the regime and its ideology – groups like the Swingers, who adopted American fashions and jazz music, and the Edelweiss Pirates, who mingled with the opposite sex.
The extent to which a genuine Volksgemeinschaft was actually created however, is greatly debated amongst historians. Fundamentally, whilst these groups may have appeared satisfied and ideologically committed at public events, they were all terrified of what would happen if they weren’t. Everyone in the country was kept in line by the omnipresence of the Reich’s repressive terror apparatus.
Although relatively small in numbers, the Gestapo was, in the mind of the average German, around every street corner – it was this image that people had that made them so terrifying. Reading mail, making midnight arrests and utilising torture, they served to root out enemies of the regime and strike fear into the population. However effective their own methods were, the Gestapo relied even more heavily on public tip-offs and denunciations of neighbours and acquaintances, from which they received 57% of their information from. Established by Goering as the Minister President of Prussia, the Gestapo would soon be transferred over to the head of the SS, Heinrich Himmler.
The parent organisation of the Gestapo, the SS served as the regime’s key intelligence, security and terror agency. Rooting out political enemies (such as remaining party and trade union leaders), it was the SS that oversaw the Fire Decree arrests and executions. Also serving a crucial role in the neutralisation of the regime’s racial targets, the agency would later control the building and running of the concentration (and extermination) camps, as well as the death squads sent into Eastern Europe during the War.
Although these two agencies were ruthless and highly-effective at rooting out opposition, certain figures remained, both within the political and party systems, who posed a serious threat to Hitler’s growing power. This increasing paranoia would culminate in June 1934, with the ‘Night of the Long Knives’. A brutal purge of Hitler’s enemies, it was initiated by growing concern over the direction of the SA, the party’s paramilitary group – they were becoming too brutish and uncontrollable. Thus, to consolidate his position, Hitler had the leadership, including his close friend Ernst Röhm, assassinated in the dead of night. Other victims included internal party rivals, like the progressive Gregor Strasser, and remaining Weimar politicians, like former chancellor Kurt von Schleicher. Serving as a harrowing example of what would become of the regime’s enemies, the purge also guaranteed Hitler the loyalty of the Army, who’d supplied the SS with the necessary weaponry.
Hitler’s rise to power, from a minor nationalist political agitator in the 1920s, to the undisputed supreme leader of Germany a decade later, serves as an extreme example of how charismatic and intelligent figures can take advantage of a peoples’ anger towards the Establishment, coupled with dire socioeconomic circumstances. Having come to be engrossed with the anti-Semitism peddled by Richard Wagner and Pan-German groups in the 1910s, Hitler’s vehement racism, combined with his skill for passionate public speaking, would see him go from a semi-homeless failing artist in Vienna, to arguably the most infamous figure in human history, responsible for the deaths of tens of millions.
