8th January 2026
Watching from afar further shifts in a worsening polity
The Berlin novels and notebooks of Christopher Isherwood from the early 1930s contain fascinating characters – even though the apparent real-life inspirations for the likes of Sally Bowles (Jean Ross) and Arthur Norris (Gerald Hamilton) were somewhat different from their fictional counterparts.
But the most fascinating – and complex – creations in those works were the narrators – sometimes “Christopher Isherwood” (in inverted commas), sometimes William Bradshaw.
Do not be taken in by the deft misdirections of the narrator:
“I am a camera with its shutter open, quite passive, recording, not thinking.”
The narrator is not any passive camera, though he wants you to think so.
(For, as always, Isherwood is very charming.)
He is instead skilfully writing about difficult subjects – including the visible slide to Nazism and barbarity all around him – while making you feel you are working these things out for yourself from the details he provides.
He says he is recording, not thinking – but he is very much making you think.
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Like Isherwood – or “Isherwood” – walking the Berlin streets or looking down from his apartment window, we all – via social media and mobile phone footage – can now have glimpses of an ever-worsening situation in the United States (and also elsewhere).
And again like those reading his narrative, we can put two and two together and realise what is going on in what we don’t glimpse – which is not reported on social (or mainstream) media or recorded on mobile devices.
What happened yesterday to a woman in Minnesota was horrific – and yet we know that it cannot be unique. One can tell that the distinctive quality of this incident is that it was caught on camera when many others are not. There is no reason to believe it was a one-off.
As such anyone watching can tell what is happening off-camera – but, as with Isherwood and others in the early 1930s, there is very little which we can do (especially from the other side of the Atlantic).
(And, which is a fair point, the well-documented record of the United Kingdom state in killing and torturing people in Northern Ireland, Kenya, Iraq and Afghanistan confers on us no moral superiority.)
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No slide towards barbarity and Fascism is inevitable: even in the 1930s some countries were able to steer their polities in a different direction. Little or nothing is bound to happen in human affairs. Things can change for better, and sometimes do.
But nonetheless the sense of dread and doom that must have been a feature of the early 1930s is sometimes inescapable.
The evidence from our virtual apartment window does not point in an encouraging direction.
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Very acutely and eloquently observed, as one expects from you, but with an almost tender vein of feeling running through it, very much in keeping with Isherwood’s writing, and indeed adaptations.
As we contemplate the murder of Renee Good in Minnesota by agents of the U.S. Federal Government, and generally, the unlawful conduct of these ICE agents and the manner in which ordinary citizens appear to have lost any meaningful recourse to law following the trampling of their civil rights, in no small measure cheered along by government departments and cabinet ministers who lie with impunity to demonise them, we might appropriately reference Isherwood’s observation to a friend in Berlin in 1933 [as recorded in: “Isherwood: A Life Revealed”, by Peter Parker – 2004 – https://www.amazon.co.uk/Isherwood-Life-Revealed-Peter-Parker/dp/1400062497%5D
“Adolf, with his rectangular black moustache, has come to stay and brought all his friends…. Nazis are to be enrolled as ‘auxiliary police,’ which means that one must now not only be murdered but that it is illegal to offer any resistance.”
As we note the similarities between the current US slide into authoritarianism, and that experienced by various European countries in the 20th century, I wonder if we might also ask whether there are any differences which might ultimately mean that the descent may be arrested?
Two aspects might be:
First, it seems to me that the presence of the First Amendment might be one such difference. Unlike the comparable ECHR provisions, this part of the constitution lacks caveats or nuance that malign forces might use to justifiy ignoring freedom of expression, the ‘enabling right’. Moroever, the First Amendment is incredibly well known and understood within the polity. Might we posit that it will be much much harder for a government in the 21st Century United States to suppress critical coverage?
Second, could the strata of power provide the basis for resistance? There are city mayors and state governors who have their own budgets and levers of power, and their own constitutions. These are not easily tinkered with in the same way that British Government may emasculate a county council by simple majority. Of the top 10 richest states by GDP, 6 have Democratic Governors.
There may be other aspects that would make it more difficult truly take control.
The best hope must be that democratic elections continue.
I think we shouldn’t ignore that US had its own version of slide into authoritarianism in the 30s, that of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. He was a similar executive figure feeling overly constrained by the legistlature, judiciary, and federalism, and attempting to bypass or ignore it at various times. Favoring executive orders, emergency powers, talking directly with the corporate leaders to enforce policies he couldn’t pass through the Congress, and famously trying to pack the Supreme Court. And yet, the system, however battered, held. FDR defined an era, but the system after him still continued on as a democracy. Contrary to various European countries that folded. In general, imperfect as it may be, US is one of the most successful democratic experiments in history. Even UK had its constitution changed by violence because the system couldn’t sort things out internally not long ago (in state terms at least), that’s essentially what the Troubles and the resulting Good Friday Agreement were. So while being wary about US is understandable, they’re really far more resilient as a republic than people give them credit for.
Many thanks as ever: ‘No slide towards barbarity and Fascism is inevitable: even in the 1930s some countries were able to steer their polities in a different direction. Little or nothing is bound to happen in human affairs. Things can change for better, and sometimes do. But nonetheless the sense of dread and doom that must have been a feature of the early 1930s is sometimes inescapable.’ And yet how far fascism? This is what Isherwood watched. The thuggery is frightening. Yet the yanks with their guns are already half-way there.
It’s a ghastly truism that a small cabal of well-resourced, well-protected thugs with shared interests often has the ability to control and terrorise much larger communities.
We’ve been recreating the economically and socially polarised societies of the post-Depression 1930s with a few twists of our own (eg advanced IT based systems of mass manipulation and oversight) to make it even MORE difficult for the many to resist the oligarchs and fascists.
Parts of the USA are fighting back … and winning some battles in the law courts and in Congress. Maybe Trump and co will be defanged within a few months if they’re unable to stop the Midterms?
The Victorian sci-fi / sociological classic “The War of the Worlds” also makes me HOPE Trump, Vance, Netanyahu, Thiel, etc will eventually be crushed by “enemies” they can’t anticipate.
You may remember what happens in this book? Earth’s humans (Englishmen) fight the Martian invaders with their most advanced warships and artillery. They mostly lose but keep fighting because there is no alternative. In the end, it’s the laws of biology that kills the Martian forces. The piled high human corpses spread lethal infections to which the Martians have no resistance.
We’ve already seen some of the Trump faction’s weaknesses. They are overwhelmingly arrogant so they don’t see the threats that can defeat them. Perhaps because of this, they make unforced, amazingly stupid mistakes (like Hegseth putting out sensitive military information on an insecure phone).
” Maybe Trump and co will be defanged within a few months if they’re unable to stop the Midterms?”
No need to stop them when there are so many ways to steal them. This explanation by Marc Elias deserves the widest-possible circulation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qN3_Oq0kWgM
I’d encourage anyone struck by David’s account of Isherwood’s take on 30s Berlin to also look out Helmuth James von Moltke’s letters to his wife, Freya. They watched the same progression; both were jurists, Moltke was active in defence of people wrongly arrested, and as a Wehrmacht diplomat / lawyer actively blocked (some) proposals for POW executions or reprisal killings in occupied countries. He also led the Kreisau Circle, the most politically developed ‘government in internal exile’ within the German Resistance.
Freya spent most of the war on their family estate at Kreisau, key to organising the many Kreisau conferences .. Helmuth James considered her the braver of the two.
He was eventually executed, but up to his execution, while working in Berlin and then later from prison, he wrote to Freya virtually every day.
The correspondence is incredibly readable, personal, often touching, and a unique insight into the Resistance. It’s published as ‘Letters to Freya’.
Roughly a thousand Jews survived the war while living in Berlin, and there are several outstanding memoirs. There are also many memoirs, many by surviving Jews, from other places; I’d particularly recommend Viktor Klemperer’s memoir of life in Dresden. Two volumes and a much tougher read than Moltke’s. But together with Moltke’s they give a view from inside the beast and it’s a salutary contrast with Isherwood’s account, which is, as David so clearly explains, also unmissable. But Isherwood was relatively safe. What they all give, which is so different to what we see as we watch what’s happening in the US, is the non-headline take, the personal, the individual stories .. the things you’d never guess at, like the Klemperers having to put down their pet cat (there were restrictions on Jews owning pets). Nobody will now read Renee Macklin Good’s perspective on what happened in Minnesota, the unique moments that outsiders wouldn’t expect but that often suddenly illuminate. Perhaps her partner will write her story. I hope so.