i didn't see any refs to the social science research on bigotry. what he was arguing against was that bigotry was natural. there is no evidence that this is the case. i would agree that he was using some heavy rhetoric with "fomented" by "elites" but technically i think the definition of foment is accurate here -- to arouse or stimulate something perhaps already there. he doesn't try to explain the source of bigotry, but the does suggest that, wherever it comes from, fomenting it is a tool used by elites. but again, later, he reverts to dodgy wording. nonetheless, it surely isn't accurate to argue that any of it's "natural" and, in the end, marxist theories to explain this by reference to the mode of production, yadda, right? so the only problem is his rhetoric and failure to flesh out a more complex, structuralist analysis.
>Recent scholarship on the Nazi rise to power demonstrates
>that it had cross-class support, with the largest support
>from the middle class.
>
>See:
>
>Fritzsche, Peter. (1990). Rehearsals for Fascism: Populism
>and Political Mobilization in Weimar Germany. New York:
>Oxford University Press.
>
>Fritzsche, Peter. (1998). Germans into Nazis. Cambridge, MA:
>Harvard University Press.
since i don't have time to read this stuff, could you perhaps summarize? this is in sharp contrast to what my historical soc. professor, gunter remmling, taught and wrote about and he was actually there and was a pretty hardheaded realist. and what of the research on the whitecollar professionals and workers? Mann's "Sources of Variation in Working-Class Movement" NLR?
>Furthermore, almost all current social science research into
>bigotry and prejudice demonstrates that it is commonplace
>and banal, and not unilaterally resulting from "elite"
>propaganda.
but it surely isn't 'natural'.
is this research, below, debunked? is remmlings? i don't know. remmling retired and got shoved outo f the department in a feminist purge.
"The leaders of German fascism did not come to power through the votes of the majority of the people. Under the conditions of the bourgeois parliamentary system of the Weimar Republic they received somewhat more than one-third of the electoral vote. Late in 1932 the National Socialist German workers party NSDAP was faced with a dramatic loss of voters. All efforts taken to make good the loss on the occasion of a state parliament election in a miniature landslide early in 1933 were not fully successful. The Nazis did not win the same number of votes as they had in the summer of 1932. In terms of mobilizing the voters, that had arrived at a hiatus they were unable to breach so long as their rivals and opponents were allowed to act unrestrictedly. <...>
Once the situation had fundamentally changed through Hitler's being appointed chancellor of the Reich, which made it possible to combine the power of the Nazi organizations with the power of the state, the fascist politicians thought it possible to win over the majority of the people during a Recihstag election. They did not succeed in subsequently legitmizing the undemocratic formation of a government on January 30, 133 that was repugnant to the letter and spirit of the law. Not doubt, the NSDAP won votes on the wave of their success--2/5 five of voters gave their support tot he Nazi party--but the government could surpass the 50% mark only due to the fact that the union of the German nationalist allies of Nazi fascism provided the margin and that narrowly. The elections of March 5, 1933, reflect a fatally tragic decision by half of the electorate in the German Reich. Organization of the majority of the people under the swastika still lay ahead. When did it in fact occur? There are no election returns or opinion polls available to answer this question. It is not appropriate to consider those votes given in November 1933 on the occasion of the German Reich's provocative withdrawal from the League of Nations. to be a general declaration for the Fascist regime. <...>
The first stage in the consolidation phase of fascist dictatorship, which lasted from late January to approximately mid July 1933 was marked above all by the attempt of the Nazi leadership to manipulate public opinion through terrorism and brutality. Consequently, they punished any basic opposition toward the regime. All parties other than the Nazi party were made illegal. the trade unions were smashed. Many other more-or-less political organization, federation, and associations disappeared. some were eliminated through the intimidation and violence of the paramilitary formations of the Nazis and the state; others quite of their own free will and declared themselves dissolved.
Political opponents were murdered in public places. The Communists, Social Democrats and other opponents of Hitler, bearing the marks of the torture to which they had been exposed in the "brown houses" and other meeting places of the fascist storm troops, were sent back to their homes, to the employment offices, and to the factories to be a living warming. In most cases, the first concentration camps were located in or near towns and industrial districts so that what occurred within these camps would become more well known than would be the case in the concentration camps built later whose names have become notorious. The first Communists executed, for example, were sentenced to death by a court even before the Reichstag fire trial."
"Terror and Demagoguery in the Consolidation of the Fascist Dictatorship in Germany, 1933-34" Kurt Patzold, trans M. Dobokowski and Isidor Wallimann in _Radical Perspectives on the Rise of Fascism in Nazi Germany 1919-1945_ Michael Dobkowski and Isidor Wallimann