As we struggle to make sense of our ‘unnamable present’, one logical direction to turn is backwards. Historical analogs are sought out, comparisons are offered, and sooner or later, a reference is inevitably made to the Nazis. Certainly, historical reflection is a vital part of comprehending and acting in the world, but the manner in which it can work as a guide is less straightforward than what is often hoped. As E.H. Carr proposed in his classic work on historiography:
learning from history is never simply a one-way process. To learn about the present in the light of the past means also to learn about the past in light of the present.
In looking back, the lessons we find, the insights we identify, these are powerfully shaped by who is doing the looking, when and where they are doing it from. None of this detracts from the value of engaging with the past, but it does complicate what exactly is revealed through doing so.
The history we create and call on are part of our attempts to comprehend and act in the present. Different historical analogs are proposed, each laying claim to best illuminating the current moment; be it the 1940s, 1970s, that old chestnut of interwar Germany, or getting creative and digging deeper to find another reference. Perhaps turning to history is a way of assuaging the psychic burden of the uncertainty we face. It is just a matter of finding the right historical point of comparison, then we’ve found our map. This often is simply another route to the same cul-de-sac of modelling; the false promise of knowing where we are going.
Drawing the past onto the present can conceal as much as it reveals. We risk shading out the most important aspects; instead wrong lines are emphasised, vital features missed. Some of this is captured, albeit with different imagery, in Bertolt Brecht’s evocative ‘Parade of the Old New’ (1939), which is worth quoting in full:
I stood on a hill and I saw the Old approaching, but it came as the New.
It hobbled up on new crutches which no one had ever seen before and stank of new smells of decay which no one had ever smelt before.
The stone that rolled past was the newest invention and the screams of the gorillas drumming on their chests set up to be the newest musical composition.
Everywhere you could see open graves standing empty as the New advanced on the capital.
Round about stood such as inspired terror, shouting: Here comes the New, it’s all new, salute the new, be new like us! And those who heard, heard nothing but their shouts, but those who saw, saw such as were not shouting.
So the Old strode in disguised as the New, but it brought the New with it in its triumphal procession and presented it as the Old.
The New went fettered and in rags; they revealed its splendid limbs.
And the procession moved through the night, but what they thought was the light of dawn was the light of fires in the sky. And the cry: ‘Here comes the New, it’s new, salute the New, be new like us!’ would have been easier to hear if all had not been drowned in a thunder of guns.
Brecht’s words generate an eery, uneven recognition, capturing something in the air. Here I want to linger on the powerful duality at the heart of the poem: the old new and the new old. He points to the danger of old ways of thought and action being misapprehended as new; but also, new forces and realities not being recognised, too quickly dismissed as old.
Insofar as there might be echoes of ideologies and mindsets from the last century, we should not assume they will be presented to us in the same forms as before. As politics, economics and society all become more fraught and fragile, turning to the scripts of democracy and authoritarianism, calling on the spectres of fascism and communism, digging up on the doctrinal skeletons of Keynes, Hayek and other academic scribblers, all can impede understanding. It is doubtful what insight is gained from Chicken Little commentators prophesying new cold and hot wars, the return of totalitarianism, and bemoaning the dire conditions liberal societies find themselves in.
From Brecht we can also take the warning that genuinely new developments can come concealed within comforting forms, quiet revolutions occur in places where it appears continuity reigns. The poem is so troubling as it suggests that the bait and switch is working, that we are missing what is most distinctive and consequential about what is unfolding.
…what they thought was the light of dawn was the light of fires in the sky.
Distinguishing daybreak from destruction, this is what scouring the past might assist with. No easy models or clear answers, but it can help us become more attuned to the ways that old patterns of thought and power structures can continue or reappear in new places, with fresh outfits and faces; while genuinely new developments can fly under the radar, exploiting weaknesses in our conceptual defences. The old in the new, and the new in the old.