Introduction: Political Violence and Democracy in Western Europe, 1918–1940

Abstract

Political violence was far from unusual before 1914 and did not die out after 1945. Nevertheless, the immense success in the interwar years of two forces — fascism and communism — that openly espoused the use of violence and illegality for political ends did seem to conflict with the self-image and expectations of liberals and democrats, both at the time and in subsequent historiographical accounts. Not surprisingly, democrats’ explanations of this violence depicted it as an anomaly, a temporary blip in the peaceful evolution of the West, Europe and the world (in that order). Integral to this progress narrative was a set of concepts derived from crowd psychology, which is usually associated with Gustave Le Bon, although in fact he had only systematised ideas that were part of the intellectual furniture of the time. For Le Bon, the masses did not assimilate knowledge through reason, but by repetition and rituals, and so they needed simple explanations, images and beliefs to understand the world. In happier times, an elite would guide the ‘instincts’ of the masses in the right direction. But the shock of economic crisis, war and defeat disoriented the masses, and rendered them vulnerable to manipulation by demagogues — false elites who were themselves close to the crowd. Demagogues shared the masses’ propensity towards irrationality and violence, but possessed just enough education to develop half-baked theories, and since they believed these theories fanatically, they were prepared to use violence to enforce them.