History seldom repeats exactly. It does, however, rhyme frequently.

A commanding majority of official remembrances this day will focus on the soldiers of the Canadian Expeditionary Force in the First World War. Some will recognize our veterans of more recent conflicts, while a charitable few will pay tribute to the fallen of the defeated powers. All these have their place.

It will scant help to anyone, though, if we build tombs to the dead greater than the houses of the living, and count the deeds of our ancestors more worthy than the hopes for our children.

There is no law of human nature that prevents the ideologies espoused by the defeated fascist powers from rising again in the victors. Ask, instead, whether that is happening now.

Before looking at examples, I should add one caveat. Humans are skilled at finding patterns from random noise, and of course, there is a myriad of differences between the societies of the 1930s and 40s versus those of today.

Even so, certain rhetorical trends rhyme with each other, sufficing a cause for concern. I highlight the following examples only because they are the clearest to observers. There are certainly others.

In France, the chief source of far-right rhetoric in the wartime era was the collaborationist Vichy regime. Its leader, Phillipe Pétain, lamented that France had “fallen from an empire to a republic, which itself collapsed in its impotence of deliberation,” and took the motto of “Work, Family, Homeland.” Early in his rule, he swore the nation would defend those values and grant them the respect they deserved. To this end, he unilaterally scrapped the previous constitution, while hunting Resistance fighters, left-wing opposition, and Jewish French citizens as traitors to the country.[i]

The modern far-right Front National party openly proclaims a similar

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The zero-sum us/them message is clear

worldview, even if they downplay Vichy and choose different targets. Earlier this week on November 9, party leader Marine Le Pen urged supporters to take pride in France’s colonial history, describing those who did not as “censors of our greatness [who] are in the process of creating enormous neuroses; they are creating French generations of who hate themselves.”

Her views have spread since the attacks in Paris and Nice. President Hollande has adopted her proposals to strip citizenship from dual nationals convicted of terrorism, even for those born in France. This is far from neutral; in the prevailing political climate, it is unlikely that an unprovoked attack upon
French citizens who follow Islam would be considered terrorism. Six of the seven candidates for the nominally centre-right party Les Républicains have stated that Islam is not compatible with ‘French values,’ including former president Nicolas Sarkozy.

Armed guards have been and will continue to patrol public places in France until the state of emergency expires in January. In such a political climate, putting forward such views actively endangers the lives of citizens on no other basis than their faith. History rhymes.

In the United States, the 1930s and 40s are typically remembered more for the New Deal era and the beginnings of welfare than for rising far-right sympathies. Of course, in one sense they had already risen: a labyrinth of tests, taxes, and record-keeping requirements had disenfranchised the African-American population for more than a generation by that point. Also problematic was the popular America First movement—an isolationist movement with sufficient sway that Roosevelt’s embargo of Imperial Japan was deemed excessively militaristic. In other words, the violently vicious and voracious violation of human dignity elsewhere was apparently not a concern.

In the present day, the often-repeated slogan from the Republican National Convention “Lock Her Up” is an obvious candidate on the topic of denying and suppressing political opposition, but the more subtle “Take Back Our Country” is only slightly less threatening, implying that the incumbent is a foreign occupier. In an American context, at the end of the first black president’s second term in office, the racial undertones are plain and foul.

Unlike the French example, however, this train of thought in the United States is usually not organized in a top-down manner. Popular and influential figures exist, but they tend to fan the flames and allow their supporters to act spontaneously rather than directly organize, in a sort of free market of hatred.

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Photo: Forsaken Fotos/Flickr/CC BY 2.0

New York Daily News writer Shaun King is at this moment chronicling a wave of vile and grotesque actions celebrating the election result. Racial slurs and direct threats of violence are frequent, so go to his twitter feed @ShaunKing for details at your discretion. If the new administration ignores this trend, it will be a domestic reflection of America First. History rhymes.

The common threads here bear some similarity to the military logic of pre-emptive strikes. Our most precious values, the argument goes, are becoming corrupted and are in danger of vanishing; to restore our country, we must act quickly and radically to prevent this and remove the people responsible.

It is a journalistic faux pas to quote oneself from earlier in the same article, but I’m going to do so anyway because that analogy does not promise happy fun times.

There is no law of human nature that prevents the ideologies espoused by the defeated fascist powers from rising again in the victors. Ask, instead, whether that is happening now.

[i] Speech extracts from Discours aux Français: 17 Juin 1940-20 Août 1944, ed. Jean-Claude Barbas.

By Colin McEwen

Please note that opinions expressed are the author’s own. They do not necessarily reflect the views and values of The Blank Page.