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redemptive expectations. An illustration for this is the contemporary resur–
gence in the United States of anti-"Big Government" sentiments and their
exploitation by different political actors. As Norbert Frye noticed, the
mythological universe is made up of human hopes and desires and anxieties.
In times of historical confusion, when the old certainties have col–
lapsed and the new ones are still inchoate, these mythologies play a
significant role in alleviating human suffering and disorientation. Whether
they guide humans into more or less free forms of life is another story, to
be sure. The twentieth century's radicalisms were the repository of politi–
cal myths: to attain the promised Holy Grail, to reach the ultimate, sacred
unity and pacified existence, no price was too high.
The total ideologies of Communism and Fascism held in common a
belief in the plasticity of human nature and in the possibility of trans–
forming it in accordance with some utopian blueprint. Both Marxism and
Fascism have inspired unflinching loyalties, a fascination with the figure of
the perfect society and romantic immersions in collective movements
promising the advent of the millennium. Fascism was historically defeat–
ed during World War II, but, as we have seen in recent years, its echoes
continue to be present and resurface each time condi tions deteriorate and
individuals find themselves under unbearable psychological constraints.
Beyond its historical context, there is a psychological and social matrix
to which Fascism responds: the rejection of modern institutions and prac–
tices, the repudiation of reason in the name of some primeval, vitalistic
instincts, the cataclysmic celebration of soul against intellect, etc.
In the mid 1990's the attraction of significant sectors of the Western
intellectual left toward the writings of Carl Schmitt, who was, at least until
1936, the legal theorist of the Third Reich, is not simply cultural fashion.
Its roots are to be found in the common dissatisfaction with liberalism and
the yearning for a solution that would avoid the "mediocrity" of parlia–
mentary democracy.
Meanwhile, the shock of modernity, the difficult adjustment of indi–
viduals to the collapse of traditional communities and solidarities, and the
inner tensions of still fragile democracies have engendered popular and
some intellectual interest in the former communist societies in "recovered"
history and myth instead of liberal ideas and institutions. Among the most
forceful myths have been the the myth of the nation, of the heroic past, of
the victimized community, and the simultaneous glorification and stigmati–
zation of the West. Not unlike the Western anti-liberal thinkers examined
by Stephen Holmes in his
Anatomy
<if
Antiliberalism
(1993), East European
political myth-makers, both between the World Wars and after the collapse
of communism, looked backward and were inspired by the visions of an
homogenous community presumably ruined by the advent of modernity.
