Economic collapse destroyed social fabric and private life before Nazism’s rise
Evidence
Those who had jobs were haunted by the fear of losing them. People who could not afford homes became vagabonds or relied on relatives to put them up, which strained family relationships to their limits. Catastrophe could strike anyone; ‘you see elderly men in stiff collars and bowler hats begging at subway exits or singing in cracked voices in the streets.’ The old suffered, while the young, who had never known anything else, did not even have good memories to escape into. — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 253
Categorization
- SEED: Simone Weil’s report as a case study in how economic precarity tears family bonds and identity — angle for an essay on precarity sociology.
- XREF: connects to: Competing state-capitalist blocs destabilized the global economy and caused World War II. — Alex Callinicos, Against Postmodernism: A Marxist…, 521; May 1968 actually began the implosion of the social — Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation, 251; The evil capitalism unleashed predates and exceeds Nazism — Aimé Césaire, Discourse on Colonialism, 183 (+8 more)
Broader Connections
- Economic precarity of the lower middle class fueled sudden antisemitism
#expands(0.85) — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 141 - The evil capitalism unleashed predates and exceeds Nazism
#expands(0.82) — Aimé Césaire, Discourse on Colonialism, 183 - The collapse of class parties after WWI opened the way for totalitarian movements
#expands(0.78) — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 653 - World War I’s mass experience dissolved national identity into generational comradeship that Nazism exploited
#expands(0.75) — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 783 - The Holocaust resulted from distinctly modern social and political conditions
#corroborates(0.72) — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 170