World War II Was a Catalyst

A ‘refugees welcome’ and ‘no racism/no fascism’ spectacle being held in Glasgow today. pic.twitter.com/wmrRxeRkmd

— SL (@Steve_Laws_) September 7, 2024

I don’t have much time to write this morning.

Before I head out the door though, I want to clarify something. In my earlier series about the roots of modern liberalism and modernism and Western cultural decline, I was describing what was essentially the vanguard stage of what is now known as the post-war consensus. The intellectual roots of the postwar consensus – modern liberalism (distinct from 19th century classical liberalism), modernism, antiracism, cosmopolitanism – can be traced back to the interwar period.

In the United States, the Great Depression was the crisis that discredited the old order and triggered the massive political realignment that was the foundation of New Deal liberalism. Modern liberals ascended to power during the FDR presidency. They transitioned from being a counter-cultural vanguard in the late 1910s and 1920s into becoming a political establishment. World War II was the culmination of the crisis. It was a massive, deeply polarizing war between liberalism and fascism that killed millions. Liberals won that war and everything associated with the vanquished fascists was discredited.

At least in the United States, World War II was the hinge point in which White racial and cultural attitudes underwent the dramatic shift that made “antiracism” mainstream. Before the war, White Americans did not believe in racial equality. During the war, White Americans even said in polls that they preferred losing the war to racial equality. After the war, White Americans believed in racial equality. This shift in public opinion is why “civil rights” leaped to the top of the Democratic agenda under the Truman administration. Adolf Hitler became the cartoon racist boogeyman during the war. Both antiracism and antifascism became essential to the identity of elite modern liberalism. It wasn’t this way before the war.

In the UK, Winston Churchill didn’t start the war with Hitler. It was Neville Chamberlain’s foolish guarantee of Poland that triggered the British declaration of war on Germany. Churchill pushed for the war and after coming to power refused to deescalate the crisis. He stubbornly pushed it through to the end and was willing to drag us into the war and form an alliance with the Soviet Union to do it. In much the same way, he made antiracism and antifascism part of the identity of the British liberal establishment.

World War II is like the Chicxulub crater in our history. Nothing was the same after that event. It was the founding event of our age. We live in the shadow of it.