[HN Gopher] 1913: When Hitler, Trotsky, Tito, Freud and Stalin a...
___________________________________________________________________
1913: When Hitler, Trotsky, Tito, Freud and Stalin all lived in the
same place
Author : samdung
Score : 156 points
Date : 2024-09-12 15:09 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bbc.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bbc.com)
| AlbertCory wrote:
| > No-one knows if Hitler bumped into Trotsky, or Tito met Stalin.
| But works like Dr Freud Will See You Now, Mr Hitler - a 2007
| radio play by Laurence Marks and Maurice Gran - are lively
| imaginings of such encounters.
|
| Now I want to check this out!
| QuercusMax wrote:
| It's actually _Mrs_ Hitler (referring to Adolph 's mom):
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dr._Freud_Will_See_You_Now,_Mr...
|
| Can't seem to find any recordings available of the BBC
| production of it, and BBC doesn't seem to have it available.
| But you can buy the script here:
| https://shop.stagescripts.com/categories/plays/full-length/d...
| mikhailfranco wrote:
| The other much-argued encounter is that Wittgenstein was a year
| or two above Herr Schicklgruber in high-school. Obviously
| Ludwig was Jewish, and far more intelligent than Adolf, so it
| established a fervent resentment... or not.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludwig_Wittgenstein#Jewish_bac...
| Joker_vD wrote:
| Imagine how the history would change if someone managed to
| smuggle a 20 megaton nuclear bomb into Vienna of 1913? I would
| read that!
| lostlogin wrote:
| That's just it though. Creaking empires would remain as would
| the politics and attitudes that led to the war and its flow
| into WW2. Something else would start it. What would it be?
| bloopernova wrote:
| Japan and the USSR would start separate expansionist wars.
| Germany would probably have some form of Nazi party in
| charge.
|
| Don't know if there would be an actual Axis, but WW2 in the
| Pacific might be very similar to the original timeline.
| tgv wrote:
| I think that explosion would have been enough to set off WW1.
| causal wrote:
| If anything this highlights how important Vienna was pre-WW1 and
| how much that status has changed. I suspect history articles of
| the future could likewise point to Manhattan as having hosted
| many famous people simultaneously, and anyone living today
| wouldn't find that terribly surprising.
| mikhailfranco wrote:
| Same people.
|
| Many refugees (mostly Jewish) from Vienna went to Manhattan, or
| the Manhattan Project. A few, like Freud or Popper, stopped in
| Britain, but many passed through to New York. Bernays (Freud's
| nephew) used his uncle's psychological insights to invent
| propaganda, marketing, advertising and PR. Others invented
| atomic and hydrogen bombs (probably _less_ devastating than
| therapy and ads :) Some were Soviet atomic spies that reported
| back to the USSR.
|
| Much of American pre-war/post-war intellectual life is due to
| European refugees. It's interesting to posit what might have
| happened without the influx.
| piombisallow wrote:
| And arguably much of current decline in intellectual
| standards in the public space is to blame on the integration
| and Americanization of their descendants.
| thruway516 wrote:
| Woah! what? Lol. Considering the number of nobel laureates,
| manhattan project scientists, turing award winners not to
| mention industry pioneers, prominent cultural figure etc
| that group has produced it would seem they did the
| opposite.
| piombisallow wrote:
| That's what I'm saying, read my comment again. America's
| highest intellectual achievements came after WW2, when
| there was the highest influx of European intellectuals
| (who studied in Europe, or were first generation). The
| current state of affairs is imo a kind of regression to
| the mean, where the culture that created them couldn't be
| reproduced in the US system - thus the integration and
| americanization of their descendants.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| I think they are essentially claiming that "Americanism"
| has lower standards than the ethnicities that moved to
| America as refugees. So the people who were refugees,
| like all the jewish physicists in the Manhattan project
| came from culture that valued higher education and
| socially liberal society and all those good things, while
| American culture doesn't, so getting them "americanized"
| makes them value higher education etc less.
|
| Which would be incorrect, as Manhattan ALSO has a hyper
| conservative Orthodox jewish population which did not
| assimilate largely and basically caused measles outbreaks
| because they are vaccine "hesitant"
| frmersdog wrote:
| The world probably would have missed out on a lot, since
| American industry (and exploitation) funded their R&D.
| Additionally, the next generation of (American, born-and-
| bred) scientists and engineers took us from their
| breakthroughs to more recent ones. The amazing things that
| can happen when people who were able to get an education are
| paid and tasked with something other than selling ads and
| opioids.
| lostlogin wrote:
| > If anything this highlights how important Vienna was pre-WW1
| and how much that status has changed.
|
| The status might have changed, but the city remains beautiful,
| and is an amazing place to visit. It's up there as one of my
| favourite places. The architecture, museums, galleries, food
| etc.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| Vienna is nice, but also a has-been much like Rome or Athens
| is. Not just in raw power, but in intellectual capacity - its
| best minds are gone, or possibly underutilized and working
| some boring jobs. But given the Holocaust, I would bet on
| "mostly gone". (Same with Budapest, BTW. There won't be any
| new Jewish-Hungarian "Martians" like von Neumann or Teller.)
|
| The only pre-WWI European capital that remained truly
| globally relevant is London.
|
| Istanbul and St. Peterburg are also important megacities,
| though stripped of their capital status.
| archagon wrote:
| How do you define global relevance? Plenty of European
| capitals in this list: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glob
| alization_and_World_Citi...
| inglor_cz wrote:
| Let us say "Top 10".
|
| In 1914, most of the Top 10 cities were in Europe. Today,
| London and Paris are.
| piombisallow wrote:
| The Austro-Hungarian Empire and Vienna in particular were an
| amazing place, a sort of proto-EU that really had a shot at
| creating lasting prosperity and peace in Europe. I highly
| recommend Stefan Zweig's "The World of Yesterday", his memoirs of
| life before WW1. It reads disturbingly like an account of today's
| world, written just on the cusp of WW3.
| ViktorRay wrote:
| It's interesting how the way that author you mentioned
| describes the attitudes and views of his parents and the
| upbringing he had when he was a young lad growing up in Europe
| of the 1890's.
|
| It's surprisingly very similar to the attitudes in parents of
| the 1990's America and the upbringing many of us who grew up in
| the 1990's....
|
| Was interesting. Especially the way it all shattered after
| world war 1.
|
| Hell the author fled Europe to escape the Nazis. I read in a
| history book that that author committed suicide in despair
| because he thought the Nazis would win.
|
| His memoirs of his life are filled with sadness and melancholy.
| The enormous optimism that his parents had for him in his
| upbringing during the 1890's. When his parents and many of
| their generation believed the march of science would lead to a
| new century of reason and peace and progress....and then in his
| lifetime the world descended into a level of brutality and
| violence and horror that would have been unimaginable in
| centuries prior...
|
| Poignant stuff
| chx wrote:
| > I read in a history book that that author committed suicide
| in despair because he thought the Nazis would win.
|
| [citation needed] heavily so.
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20101014145959/http://www.time.c.
| ..
|
| > Friends in Brazil said he left a suicide note explaining
| that he was old, a man without a country, too weary to begin
| a new life.
| narrator wrote:
| Dostoevsky really saw the gathering storm clouds, especially
| in his book, "The Possessed." He did a great job of
| criticizing the idle status seeking upper classes who were
| charmed and oblivious to the gathering power of radical
| ideologies like that of Pyotr Stepanovich and his gang of
| radicals in that book.
|
| James Lindsay has spent a lot of time talking about the
| Gnostic and Hermetic currents running through these
| disastrous revolts against liberal ideas that occurred
| throughout the 20th century.[1] It seems that the ancient
| Gnostic and Hermetic cult ideologies and their derivatives,
| imported into the modern world by Marx, Hegel and Rousseau
| are exploiters of many unfixed security vulnerabilities in
| the human psyche, especially in large groups, that are used
| to regularly create all sorts of mayhem, and pointless
| civilizational self-destruction by promising easy societal
| transformation in any way imaginable and a forthcoming great
| vague unspecified utopia where the details of how it actually
| would work are considered unimportant.
|
| [1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lk_w2-8snWk
| b800h wrote:
| To save me watching the video, can you articulate why you
| believe that Marx was influenced by Gnosticism and
| Hermeticism?
|
| Is this the Popperian "Plato was an enemy of open society"?
| narrator wrote:
| Gnosticism has the pattern that there is a demiurge that
| created this world as a prison. This is the capitalist
| economy. Gnosticism says that those initiated into secret
| knowledge will become of aware of the real nature of the
| world and seek to wake everyone else up. This is the idea
| of the revolution fixing all problems and bringing about
| the great communist utopia by transferring all capital
| ownership to the state. Marx doesn't say a whole lot
| about how the Utopia would actually operate, those were
| details Lenin, Stalin and Trotsky were figuring out in
| Vienna.
|
| Hermeticism, specifically the emerald tablet, says that
| we can make things become believable by just willing them
| with our minds. Those who believe the things should be
| treated preferentially, and those who don't should be
| persecuted because they stand in the way of the
| implementation of those things. This applies to Marx's
| beliefs in the labor theory of value among other totally
| non-empirically backed beliefs being treated as
| ideological indisputable truth.
| llamaz wrote:
| The credit for the labour theory of value goes to Adam
| Smith, specifically the Wealth of Nations. Whether it was
| true or not is a separate question, but it was based on
| empirical data available at the time. Marx is usually
| credited with it because he altered it, and saw a flaw in
| Adam Smith's version. The idea that "what something costs
| is what people are willing to pay for it" was something
| Adam Smith was familiar with and addressed in the Wealth
| of Nations.
|
| > Those who believe the things should be treated
| preferentially, and those who don't should be persecuted
| because they stand in the way of the implementation of
| those things.
|
| The Gnostics and followers of Hermes were one of the most
| hounded and persecuted groups throughout history. The
| Cathars were wiped out, and Giordano Bruno, an early
| proponent of the Copernican model of the solar system was
| burnt at the stake by the inquisition. It seems to be the
| other way around.
|
| > Hermeticism, specifically the emerald tablet, says that
| we can make things become believable by just willing them
| with our minds.
|
| I don't think this is correct, but I can't prove a
| negative.
| frmersdog wrote:
| I'm wondering how you square this with fascists being
| largely responsible for the body count and the most
| egregious human rights abuses (particularly, for the
| purposes of this conversation, those attributed to Imperial
| Japan).
| narrator wrote:
| Communists believe that classical liberalism does not
| exist. That all systems are an arbitrary unprincipled
| prejudiced exercise of power with law and merit being
| clever illusions hiding raw power and prejudice, so if
| the communists are not exercising it arbitrarily and with
| no concern for any principal except raw power on behalf
| of the proletariat, then someone else must be exercising
| it on behalf of whoever they think should exercise
| tyrannical power for the greater good like the Japanese,
| or the Germans racists.
|
| The fascists have the same gnostic and hermetic beliefs
| as the communists. For example, the Nazi belief in the
| control of the world by the inferior and evil races,
| representing the demiurge and all that garbage.
|
| Liberalism, on the other hand, is based on the idea that
| there are no special people. No enlightened people with
| the true knowledge of the world, or special truths that
| would become true if only everyone started believing
| them.
| gopher_space wrote:
| To the person who had a comment removed:
|
| The reason we don't talk like that is because it turned out
| to encourage wholesale murder. It's not that you're "wrong",
| it's that you're not singling out the responsible individuals
| when you could just do that. It comes across as intentionally
| painting with too broad a brush.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| No they are absolutely wrong. Painting the kinda normal
| violence of a city with richish criminals as a parallel to
| the beginning of a _State sanctioned erasing of an
| ethnicity from their boarders_ is delusion. The case they
| reference is literally a gang banger who shot a cop.
|
| France is not experiencing a genocide FFS
|
| "We don't talk like that" because being that absurdly
| catastrophizing, that disingenuous about a situation, is
| called being a liar.
|
| Imagine calling Al Capone's violence a genocide.
| FrustratedMonky wrote:
| Exactly. The modern take is to try and compare the US to Pre-
| WW2 Germany. But really the entire Globe is more like pre-WW1
| so something like Ukraine or Gaza is the flame to start the
| bomb fire.
| quickthrowman wrote:
| Maybe if you ignore the vast nuclear arsenals that various
| countries have aimed at each other at all times..
| piombisallow wrote:
| How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. Let's
| hope that MAD will deliver lasting world peace.
| CalRobert wrote:
| What, me worry?
| ill13 wrote:
| Love the eggcorn as it works in well in context [bomb fire /
| bonfire]
| tgv wrote:
| The US is a bit like pre-WW2 Germany, in the sense that a
| group of power-hungry, self-proclaimed defenders of the
| people want to overtake government, by whatever means, and
| suppress basic rights for large groups, based on political
| conviction and ethnicity.
|
| The world isn't pre-WW1. Russia stands alone in its conflict
| with Ukraine, and Palestine's neighbors don't give a shit.
| The only thing that could turn it into a wide scale war, is
| use of nuclear weapons. It would be a madman's hubris, not
| geopolitical games of a fading elite that drives the process.
| onemoresoop wrote:
| > Palestine's neighbors don't give a shit
|
| I wouldn't say that, they just can't do anything about it
| or whatever they do is emotionally triggered retaliation
| without thought or strategy such as firing rockets into
| Israel of which very few explode on land or nor cause any
| real casualties to Israel.
|
| Had Egypt been ruled by the Muslim Brotherhood they'd
| likely retaliate against Israel. Then there's Turkey, a
| serious regional power, they seem to do give some shit,
| they just can't do much about it.
| aguaviva wrote:
| Actually, there are lots of things that could happen to
| "tip the cart" still.
|
| Though unlikely, Trump could (conceivably) win, ditch
| Ukraine exactly as promised (not in 24 hours but over
| time), which would of course deeply embolden Putin (and/or
| lead to a nuclear escalation in itself, particularly if
| Ukraine does something really desperate). Putin could die
| (or be assassinated) and easily be replaced with someone
| way more ideological and/or simply stupid.
|
| Farther afield: though it would irrational in every respect
| -- China could make its move on Taiwan. And as always, in
| the Middle East, anything can happen (especially if the
| current government in Israel stays in power and continues
| to radicalize and throw oil on the fire).
|
| Any of these could escalate on its own. But it is the
| prospect of the these three theatres deteriorating rapidly
| at once that has people up at night. Not so much on WWI or
| WWII lines, but a different kind of global conflagration
| altogether.
|
| I'm not a doomer on the prospect, but it's by no means out
| of the question. These are indeed very unsafe times.
|
| (As an aside, and in line with what the other commenter,
| it's just not true to say that Palestine's neighbors "don't
| give a shit". Their interest may not be altruistic, but to
| many of them the situation there is deeply significant, for
| a host of geopolitical, ideological, and religious
| reasons).
| trynumber9 wrote:
| Though seen by many of its contemporaries as an anachronistic,
| oppressive state which was doomed to collapse (and it did
| indeed).
| odiroot wrote:
| > I highly recommend Stefan Zweig's "The World of Yesterday",
| his memoirs of life before WW1
|
| I'm only about 1/3 in but as far as I can tell Zweig only
| claimed Vienna to be this "enlightened" place. He's still
| writing quite a lot of critique of the rest of Austria. He's
| also fully aware of how fragile that Viennese subculture is.
| surfingdino wrote:
| The Eastern European population ruled by Austrians lived in
| abject poverty and there was no talk about making them partake
| in the prosperity of the elites. The affluence of Vienna did
| not extend onto the rest of the empire.
| piombisallow wrote:
| There were multiple projects meant to increase the standard
| of living in the outer provinces, especially in the ones
| ruled by the Austrians. Compulsory education,
| industrialization, electrification. Sarajevo had the first
| tram system!
| mlinksva wrote:
| And there was at least some moving to where the opportunity
| was. I got a hint of this doing some superficial family
| research; based on graves and directories, some people made
| their way from a town in Bohemia where everyone with a
| version of my rare last name seems to come from to Vienna
| and Trieste (the imperial port city). Reflected in the
| article too:
|
| > "While not exactly a melting pot, Vienna was its own kind
| of cultural soup, attracting the ambitious from across the
| empire," says Dardis McNamee, editor-in-chief of the Vienna
| Review, Austria's only English-language monthly, who has
| lived in the city for 17 years. Less than half of the
| city's two million residents were native born and about a
| quarter came from Bohemia (now the western Czech Republic)
| and Moravia (now the eastern Czech Republic), so that Czech
| was spoken alongside German in many settings.
| RicoElectrico wrote:
| The Austrian partition of Poland was the poorest (even if
| it has the most political liberties).
| tpm wrote:
| Which populations? Because most were ruled by Hungarians.
| mamonster wrote:
| Zweig was hopelessly delusional about what was actually going
| on, especially when so many of his contemporaries (Kraus,
| Musil, Broch to name a few) understood what was happening.
|
| With regard to Vienna, Frohliche Apokalypse(The happy
| apocalypse) is probably much more accurate than Zweig's
| cosmopolitan dreams.
| mttpgn wrote:
| To be fair to Zweig, history's events could have unfolded
| differently than they did.
| mamonster wrote:
| They could've, but tbh its just very hard to read the
| memoirs of a guy who is extremely privileged, uses his
| family's money to travel around Europe just as it is ready
| to fall apart completely, and he is just stuck in this
| cosmopolitan idealism.
|
| I've found Mann to be absolutely insufferable for the exact
| same reason(although both are very good writers when one
| only considers literary skills and ignores the actual
| themes).
| aaaasmile wrote:
| Also with the Wes Anderson movie "The Grand Budapest Hotel" you
| can get into the mood.
| thruway516 wrote:
| Interesting. I too see many parallels with present-day United
| States. Especially with all the current political turmoil and
| cultural ferment. History doesn't repeat perfectly but reading
| about Vienna and Austro-Hungary before the war and knowing what
| came after out of this melange- Nazism, Communism, Fascism, it
| feels somewhat portentous.
| tgv wrote:
| I don't see how Austria-Hungary could be seen as a proto EU,
| unless you mean that they couldn't agree on many things and had
| muddy compromises on authority and autonomy. How it could have
| created lasting peace is beyond me. Germany was its natural,
| but more powerful ally, and France, England and Russia were
| sworn enemies of Germany, and didn't seem to care for the
| double monarchy. It had very little credit in world affairs, so
| how could it have swayed the whole continent?
|
| Also: we're not on the cusp of WW3.
| markus_zhang wrote:
| > unless you mean that they couldn't agree on many things and
| had muddy compromises on authority and autonomy
|
| Kinda reminds of EU right now...
| ryanmcbride wrote:
| yes that's part of the point that the comment you're
| responding to was making
| IgorPartola wrote:
| Russia also was a complete mess at this time. Its serfdom and
| class system were oppressive as hell.
|
| To give you one idea: soldiers could never be out of uniform.
| Officers could strike soldier at any time and routinely did.
| Soldiers were paid roughly 50 kopeks a month while officers
| go 50-1000 rubles (100k = 1r).
|
| Europe was also 60 years into the emergence of Communism at
| this point because there was very little upward mobility from
| general populace to the higher classes. Sounds more like
| author bias and wishful thinking but I will add this book to
| my list to see if I am wrong.
| roenxi wrote:
| > Also: we're not on the cusp of WW3.
|
| How could you know that? Are you a time traveller? It is
| unlikely in any specific year, but over 100 years a 1% chance
| is likely to happen and the risks seem elevated right now.
| There isn't anything in particular stopping WW3 and there are
| lots of ways it could happen (open war with Russia, China or
| Iran spring to mind, civil war in the US spiralling globally
| is thinkable, the EU is re-arming and something absurd might
| happen there for a 3rd time). The US doesn't have the
| economic sway it used to either, it appears unable to just
| dictate military terms to its competitors right now which has
| been a major factor for the last 70 years.
|
| Even a good argument isn't comforting. There were really good
| arguments why WW1 and WW2 wouldn't break out. In the case of
| WW2 for example, it was pretty foreseeable what could happen
| - devastation of Europe, probable defeat of the Germans by a
| large coalition and a roughly century-long occupation. No
| real upside for them. Happened anyway. And famously before
| WWI there was that book that correctly argued that the
| economic interconnections between European powers was so
| great that war could only bring economic ruin - which also
| happened to be right in hindsight, WWI set up some of the
| most catastrophic economic conditions ever seen and was also
| the death knell of Europe's long term economic dominance.
| Animats wrote:
| > Also: we're not on the cusp of WW3.
|
| >> How could you know that?
|
| We're rather close. All it would take is a major blowup in
| the Ukraine war. The war has stepped up a notch in the last
| two days. Ukraine has been attacking Moscow with drones.[1]
| What if they stop hitting apartment buildings and level the
| Kremlin? Or Russia steps up attacks on Latvia, a member of
| NATO.[2]
|
| [1] https://www.cnn.com/2024/09/10/europe/ukraine-drone-
| strikes-...
|
| [2] https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/russian-drone-
| crashes-i...
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Ukraine has been attacking Moscow with drones.
|
| That's not new, see this from a year ago:
|
| https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-65475333
| shadowtree wrote:
| It literally forced a bunch of peoples into a single entity run
| by a family (aka monarchy). It predates the nation state, it
| was blown up by the very desire of the peoples within it to get
| out.
|
| Vienna was the center of this entity, not a part of "Austria".
| Stefan Zweig, being Jewish, also wasn't connected to the native
| Austrian population - just like most the persons mentioned in
| the article. Vienna was an unaligned entity, what New York
| became later.
|
| The backlash against this amalgam fueled WW1 and WW2. It's
| still reverberating, as can be seen in various European issues
| today. Bolshevism and its reaction, fascism, geared up to
| eradicate the old Christian/Aristocratic structures across
| Europe. The Habsburg emperor wasn't just leading
| Austria/Hungary, but also the Holy Roman Empire (of German
| Nation). Christian god-given authority, verbatim.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > Bolshevism and its reaction, fascism
|
| One might argue that fascism is a natural consequence of
| unfettered rabid capitalism, no need for Bolsheviks at all.
| BoingBoomTschak wrote:
| And one would be wrong, unless by fascism you mean "Italian
| fascism".
| aaplok wrote:
| It can be both. The Bolshevik revolution scared the rulers
| of many European countries, and its capitalist class.
| People were very impressed that a regime as stable as that
| of the tsar could fall like that. This is a regime people
| invested in at the time because it was considered safe.
|
| It is arguably as a consequence of this, that these rulers
| and capitalists supported more or less enthusiastically
| fascism as a way to contain the masses. Without that
| (implicit) support, it's hard to say whether fascism would
| have been anything more than a bizarre cult.
| Animats wrote:
| "Workers of the world, unite! You have nothing to lose
| but your chains! Let the ruling classes tremble..."
|
| They brought it off. In an era when most of Europe was
| ruled by weak, aging monarchs.[1] In 1917, most of Europe
| except for France and Portugal still had a monarch, most
| with real power.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_last_monarc
| hs_in_E...
| keybored wrote:
| It is according to level-headed history.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| Some of the nostalgia for A-H empire is driven by the hindsight
| of "what happened after 1914". Which tends to give you rosy
| glasses.
|
| The Austrian part (Cisleithania) was okayish place to live,
| relatively industrially developed (less than Prussia or
| England), but it had a massive problem with political
| dysfunction. The Babel of nations was unable to agree on pretty
| basic things, resulting in paralysis of local and central
| parliaments and frequent governmental crises. There also was
| visible, very nasty anti-Semitic resentment. Hitler learnt to
| hate the Jews from certain Georg Schonerer [0], a rabid
| Austrian Jew-hater who came up with the idea of a "Final
| Solution".
|
| The Hungarian part was outright backward and oppressive towards
| non-Hungarians, who constituted at least half of its
| population.
|
| [0]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georg_Ritter_von_Sch%C3%B6nere...
| lo_zamoyski wrote:
| It was certainly the most delicate of the 19th century European
| empires. Its attempts to Germanize its subjects was not what
| you saw in Prussia/later the German Empire, or as bad as
| Russification in the Russian Empire.
|
| I see some similarities between Austria-Hungary and Poland-
| Lithuania. I think their Catholicism is what permitted the
| tolerance you saw, because it was tolerance of the authentic
| sort, not the liberal ersatz: they were both Catholic
| confessional states that tolerated a variety of religious
| belief pragmatically, but the parameters were openly and
| decidedly Catholic. And because Catholicism acknowledges that
| forced conversion is not only impossible, but immoral, as well
| as counter to the common good, when accommodation of other
| religions occurs, it occurs genuinely and according to a clear,
| realistic, and substantive position.
|
| Liberalism, OTOH, simply pretends to be an impossibly big
| "neutral" tent, but it practices its jihad in secret. No
| religion is allowed to dominate or function as the organizing
| principle of the realm, it claims. But liberalism is itself a
| worldview rooted in a distinctive anthropology, and it is the
| worldview that reigns. The result is that:
|
| 1) Liberal doctrines become these organizing principles, which
| are sold as "neutral" and therefore beyond discussion and
| disagreement, something that leads to their imposition and the
| undermining of other worldviews. A supposed pragmatic doctrine
| forces other worldviews into the private sphere, and itself is
| elevated into an ideology that denies it is one. In a Catholic
| confessional state, no one is pretending to be "neutral", and
| so someone of another worldview can accept the Catholic terms
| of the polity on pragmatic grounds without ever being duped or
| coerced into thinking these are anything but Catholic terms.
| They are asserted as true, yes, but toleration is identical to
| acknowledging and accepting the existence of theoretical
| disagreement, even if there are pragmatic limits.
|
| 2) The public sphere becomes anemic and restricted to
| "pragmatic" things like economics, which vulgarizes the
| culture, elevating consumption into the religion of
| consumerism. This vulgarization not only produces a vulgar
| public culture for the polity, but it necessarily spreads into
| the private sphere and suffocates the dynamism, richness, and
| higher ends offered by other, more substantive worldviews,
| hence negating the very tolerance that it purported to have.
| The net effect is decadence.
| screcth wrote:
| Life as a rich person in the capital city of an Empire is
| great.
|
| I doubt that people in conquered territories felt the same way
| about the Empire.
| mortenjorck wrote:
| If the Assassin's Creed franchise ever decides to do the
| Twentieth Century, 1910s Vienna certainly seems like a leading
| candidate for the setting.
| luckystarr wrote:
| I've been to Cafe Central. There was a waiter standing outside
| telling you only to come in whenever a seat has been vacated.
| Once in it didn't feel crammed, and it was quite the sight. Don't
| eat "Sacher Torte", it's quite bland for today's standards. The
| Kaiserschmarrn was fantastic though.
| buildsjets wrote:
| I worked a 6 month aerospace industry assist detail in Vienna.
| They put me up in the Hilton hotel on Stadtpark for the entire
| time. Loved having my breakfasts right across the street in
| Cafe Pruckel, with their 90 year old tuxedo clad waiters.
| Interesting to think of the famous persons that may have
| gathered there in days of yore.
|
| Agree on the Sacher Torte, it's just an extraordinarily dry
| chocolate layer cake with a bit of apricot jam as the layer
| separator, enrobed in a tasteless waxy ganache. I tried it all
| over the city including of course at Hotel Sacher. I'm sure I
| could make a modern version at home that was actually
| delicious.
|
| For every hit there is a miss... and for every Wienerschnitzel
| there is a Tafelspitz.
| spacechild1 wrote:
| > Agree on the Sacher Torte, it's just an extraordinarily dry
| chocolate layer cake
|
| That's why it's served with whipped cream :)
| imp0cat wrote:
| This. It's actually quite delicious when eaten together.
| harry_ord wrote:
| Tafelspitz is waste of good altweiner backfleisch.
|
| I quite like the Sache Torte in the place I live. More
| importantly though it's coming up to Krapfen season.
| colinb wrote:
| There's a rather lovely Tom Stoppard play [0] that centers on the
| fact that James Joyce, Tristan Zara and Lenin all lived in Zurich
| in 1917. It's been a long time since I saw it, but I
| approximately recall a line were one of the characters tells
| [noted Dada-ist] Zara to sober up with the words "You want
| multicoloured micturition? Go to Moscow. They'll make you piss
| blood there!"
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Travesties
| fiftyacorn wrote:
| Didn't lenin meet musolini in Zurich too
| botswana99 wrote:
| There was also a lot of other cool stuff happening in Vienna in
| that time period - Math, Philosophy
| (https://www.diplomacy.edu/blog/deep-roots-digital-era-
| five-v...), the Arts
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vienna_Secession), music
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Viennese_School) and even
| physics (Boltzmann). Too bad they had to screw it all up by
| getting all nationalist, nativist, and anti-Semitic.
| mikhailfranco wrote:
| The best single volume overview is this page-turner, which
| embraces Vienna and Paris, for math, science, philosophy,
| literature and art at the turn of the 20th century:
|
| _The First Moderns: Profiles in the Origins of Twentieth-
| Century Thought_
|
| William R. Everdell
|
| https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/244346.The_First_Moderns
| roschdal wrote:
| If only they had let him into Art school...
| samatman wrote:
| For once the headline is under-selling it, I'm used to hearing
| this put as "all attended the same cafe".
| cafard wrote:
| How about _The Man Without Qualities_ for an interesting view of
| Vienna about then?
| costco wrote:
| Is it good? I really liked Wittgenstein's Vienna, but I haven't
| read anything else about the era so I don't have much basis of
| comparison. Tempted to work on my German so I can understand
| Karl Kraus though.
| stonethrowaway wrote:
| Went to Cafe Central one evening without knowing any of this
| until today. Just on a vacation. The interior was strikingly
| rustic and I enjoyed the coffee and cake they had but had
| completely forgotten about it otherwise. I suspect Trotsky and
| Hitler forgot about it too.
| isoprophlex wrote:
| Makes you wonder if there's a group of people living somewhere
| right now in 2024, that will be talked about similarly in 2135...
| ljlolel wrote:
| Obviously San Francisco
| carapace wrote:
| Who are you thinking of?
| booleandilemma wrote:
| Maybe it'll be the people of HN. I wouldn't mind getting
| romanticized.
| ein0p wrote:
| Some of the coffee houses are still there. I visited them when I
| was in Vienna. They aren't the hotbed of revolutionary thought
| anymore, it seems. Vienna was basically the center of western
| civilization for quite a while, and it shows to this day.
| UncleSlacky wrote:
| I have an idea for a great "Young Ones" reboot...
| worstspotgain wrote:
| I guess that's where the guy running the simulator was zoomed in
| on for that year.
| Flatcircle wrote:
| wow
| effed3 wrote:
| don't forget Karl Kraus, was somewhere around, and has something
| to say....
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| The first rule of Time Travel is - don't nuke Vienna.
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