Open Society as Western Post WWII Paradigm
Description
Micha Narberhaus (Protopia Conversations):
"In his recent and very significant essay, NS Lyons shows how, since the Second World War, the West, led by America, has elevated the open society to its ultimate overriding dogma, a dogma that has been taken to extremes in recent decades. "Never again" became our highest priority; we were led to believe that our only choice was between the open society and Auschwitz.
Influential liberal thinkers such as Karl Popper and Theodor Adorno helped convince an ideologically receptive American post-war establishment that the fundamental source of authoritarianism and conflict in the world was the closed society.
Philosopher Matthew Crawford describes how, in 1946, the US government feared that hidden psychological forces within its own population could lead to authoritarianism, as they had in Nazi Germany. To counter this perceived threat, officials turned to Freudian psychoanalysis as a tool of social control. The aim was to reshape individuals' inner lives so that they would internalise 'democratic values' and become reliable supporters of liberal democracy. This initiative was modelled on similar psychological adjustment programmes used in occupied Germany.
Beyond direct psychiatric intervention, the US government also used propaganda techniques to manipulate public perception. Drawing on methods developed during World War I, Edward Bernays, Freud's nephew, applied psychoanalysis to mass persuasion, influencing advertising and public messages to steer people away from ideas deemed dangerous.
At the same time, politicians and intellectuals, suspicious of the so-called irrational masses, sought to transfer political power from democratic participation to expert bureaucracies. Theodor Adorno's influential 1950 study The Authoritarian Personality reinforced this trend by identifying traditional values - such as a belief in gender roles and strong family structures - as indicators of authoritarian tendencies. The combination of psychological intervention, mass persuasion and technocratic governance created a 'therapeutic state' in which experts managed social change and ensured that ordinary citizens remained compliant with a carefully controlled vision of democracy.
However, it is far from clear that the link made by the post-war Western establishment between the closed society and the horrors of the Second World War was accurate. In her seminal book, The Origins of Totalitarianism, Hannah Arendt came to the opposite conclusion in many ways. She argued that totalitarianism thrives in societies where individuals have become isolated from traditional social structures (such as family, class or political institutions). This atomisation makes people vulnerable to propaganda and mass mobilisation, making them more susceptible to totalitarian control. We saw something similar during the Covid 19 pandemic, when totalitarian tendencies such as the exclusion of the unvaccinated from public life emerged from a society that was even more atomised and isolated, and therefore very susceptible to the propaganda people saw on their screens.
Moreover, as the historian Niall Ferguson has pointed out, even before Hitler came to power, Germany's academic elites were more prone to anti-Semitism than ordinary people. “Lawyers and doctors, all credentialed with university degrees, were substantially overrepresented within the NSDAP, as were university students (then a far narrower section of society than today).”
But over the past 80 years, the Western establishment didn't seem to have any such doubts as it embarked full steam ahead on three interlinked post-war projects: the progressive opening up of societies through the deconstruction of norms and borders, the consolidation of the managerial state, and the hegemony of the liberal international order.
To stand in the way of any possible aspect of societal opening and individual liberation – from secularisation, to the sexual revolution and LGBTQ rights, to the free movement of migrants – was to do Hitler’s work. (NS Lyons)
Lyons suggests that the long twentieth century, dominated by the idea of the open society, began in 1945 and ended with the inauguration of Donald Trump in January this year. Now we're witnessing the final beginning of the twenty-first century.
This powerful and all-encompassing post-World War II myth of the open society as the essential project to combat the 'authoritarian personality' and the 'irrational masses' explains the reactions of elites and polite society to the recent wave of national populism: if anything less than an open society clearly means a return to the Third Reich, then the fight against national populism seems justified."
(https://michanarberhaus.substack.com/p/the-end-of-the-open-society-era-part)
Discussion
Why the era of the open society has to end
Micha Narberhaus:
"However, the proportion of people in Western societies who still have faith in the promise of the open society is steadily declining. Trust in elites is waning, and social trust and cohesion are rapidly eroding. Anyone who hasn't been brainwashed by propaganda can see that our societies are getting weaker by the day.
The Western obsession with the idea of the open society has weakened our societies by undermining the deep sources of meaning, identity and cohesion that sustain strong civilisations. This ideological project, which sought to free individuals from traditional structures such as nation, religion and culture, has instead left them atomised, directionless and vulnerable to nihilism.
The open society project has effectively deconstructed the idea of what 'nation' used to mean. As Mary Harrington has observed, for most Western elites "citizenship [now] doesn't imply a bond of belonging or loyalty, it's more like a gym membership. Anyone who pays the subscription can join".
But treating people as interchangeable units in a mechanical system is a utopian project that eventually had to face reality. Mass immigration and multiculturalism lead to a steady erosion of shared values and norms, and to violence and crime. When a previously dominant population group loses its power and position, the risk of civil war increases.
Similarly, the project of sexual liberalisation has treated men and women as interchangeable, with gender ideology even denying that sex is a biological reality. Sexual liberation, the sexual revolution and the decline of the family and marriage have benefited some elite men and women, but on the whole have made the lives of both men and women more miserable and lonely. The battle of the sexes has led to great distrust and dysfunctional relationships.
Economic globalisation and free trade have brought enormous wealth to some, but the working class in the West has lost out as whole industries have moved to China and many Western regions have been deindustrialised. Europe and North America have become dependent on supplies from China, making them vulnerable to disruptions caused by war, international conflict and pandemics. The liberal dogma of the international free movement of people, goods, services and capital, enshrined in trade agreements and institutions, has effectively deprived nations of the ability to determine their own economic policies, as they are bound by the constraints of international competition.
The role of the European Court of Human Rights in preventing member states from democratically deciding how to deal with illegal immigration is another example of how the rules-based international order is often highly dysfunctional. When unaccountable international bureaucracies prevent national governments from passing laws to protect their countries from illegal mass immigration, they lose their legitimacy.
It is a key feature of the open society project that contentious political decisions are supposedly depoliticised by outsourcing them to an oligarchic elite class of technocrats who are allegedly making rational and neutral decisions. In reality, many of these decisions are highly ideological and often not in the interests of ordinary people. This is where propaganda and censorship come in. As NS Lyons argues:
The obsessive management of public opinion through propaganda and censorship also became an especially key priority in such regimes, with the objective being both to constrain democratic outcomes (to defend 'democracy' against the masses) and to generally suppress serious public discussion of contentious yet fundamental political issues (such as mass migration policies) in an effort to prevent civil strife.
The more ordinary people feel that their interests are being ignored by the elites the more totalitarian the open society regime is becoming.
The EU's Digital Services Act (DSA) and all the other European initiatives that purport to combat misinformation and hate speech are (for the most part) nothing more than the hysterical attempts of European elites to save the post-war open society project as they struggle to retain control.
In his historic speech at the Munich Security Conference last February, JD Vance held up a mirror to the European establishment and told them the uncomfortable truth. He effectively told them that the post-war project of 'defending democracy' against the 'irrational masses' was finally over, when he said:
But what German democracy—what no democracy, American, German, or European—will survive is telling millions of voters that their thoughts and concerns, their aspirations, their pleas for relief are invalid or unworthy of even being considered. [...] To believe in democracy is to understand that each of our citizens has wisdom and has a voice. And if we refuse to listen to that voice, even our most successful fights will secure very little.
Of course, his speech should have included some more critical remarks about the role of the United States in leading and often imposing the post-war open society project on Europe. Moreover, many of the disastrous regime-change wars waged by the United States, notably in Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria, have led to floods of refugees into Europe, and the US-led expansion of NATO into Eastern European countries and interference in Ukraine's internal affairs provoked Russia to start the war in Ukraine and further destabilised Europe.
But instead of engaging constructively with Vance's speech, Europe's political elite deemed his words unacceptable and have been panicking ever since that the United States now wants Europeans to be largely responsible for their own defence, something that has been announced since the Obama presidency.
European elites now see themselves as the sole defenders of the open society project, while acknowledging that the rules-based international order is most likely a thing of the past.
Since the European elites now believe that Putin is the new Hitler who wants to conquer Europe and that Trump is also a fascist and therefore an enemy of Europe, their seemingly logical conclusion is that Europeans must prepare for war to defend the open society.
But very few young Europeans are actually prepared to defend their country if it is attacked - 17% in Germany, for example. You can't have it both ways: first undermine their sense of national identity and then expect the same people to accept dying for the very nation they were told to disown.
It's hard to see how the European liberal establishment can hold on to power for much longer. The anger of ordinary people will probably lead to some major political changes in Europe sooner rather than later."
(https://michanarberhaus.substack.com/p/the-end-of-the-open-society-era-part)
More information
The essay referred to:
* American Strong Gods: Trump and the end of the Long Twentieth Century. N.S. Lyons.
URL = https://theupheaval.substack.com/p/american-strong-gods