the original Harper's article. (alternative link) The thesis of the original article was that certain temperments and life-styles were especially susceptible to the appeal of a tribal and dictatorial philosophy. I use the word "tribal" rather than racist to generalize the claim. AVI noted that many of the "expected resisters" had already resisted groupthink in small ways.
We could distinguish the early embracers from the go-alongs. From You Call This Living?: "Comrade, I heard that you are a Christian" "A believer, but not practicing." "But you are a party member?" "Practicing, but not a believer."
If "everybody" else is doing it, well, "it is not good for man to be alone" and we're made for community--we're apt to adjust ourselves to that community. In the short term this can happen pretty quickly if your job prospects depend on not noticing that there are 2 sexes, or on not noticing that the Party can make mistakes. The next generation grows up with a new normal.
I spent my junior year bused to Little Rock Central High School. An experimental class on film-making called Project Tiger wrote and produced a movie on the famous integration of LRCHS in '57. I applied and got in on the script-writing team. We went through the archives, and were duly horrified at the racist calling cards and speeches; but we also watched some footage of protestors and I had a little epiphany of sorts. The folks I was watching were no better, and no worse, than the folks I saw on the streets outside. The only real difference was what sorts of evils were fashionable and accepted. Overt racism of that '57 sort (from whites anyway) was almost unthinkable in '72. But in '57 it was almost unremarkable in that town.
Were they hard-core racists? That depends on what you mean. They acted the part quite well, and got angry at the appropriate moments, and said the correct vile things. But some of those same people were alive in '72. I never tried to find and question any of them, which probably showed uncharacteristic wisdom on my part. But given how widespread the protests were, I undoubtedly knew some people who had supported the protesters. I'd bet that if pressed they would say that those were different times and they know better now. "Different times" = "different fashions" If you worked hard enough, and earned their trust, you would find a few that would say things in private that they wouldn't say in public. But most, unless I completely misunderstood the people I knew, wouldn't say such things even in private. (Some say that American society is and always has been irredeemably racist. Either they never learned what actually happened then, or they live in an echo chamber today--or they are lying for advantage.)
Could those attitudes come back? Sure. Similarly tribal attitudes are deeply entrenched in academia--not on the basis of skin color, but just as "othering" and angry. I've heard quite a bit of venom attached to the phrase "red-neck." Anything can happen. Who resists those attitudes? That's like the "Who Goes Nazi" question, but harder--since it isn't just a matter of rejecting the blandishments of a rising power. It's trying to swim upstream; the ideology is already in power.
It is harder than it seems to think outside the Zeitgeist. Orwell wasn't entirely right, but it is hard to think different thoughts when the language categories don't make it convenient. Suppose the category of "rights" wasn't part of the way people talked. "Duties" and "traditions" and "appropriate" and "outsider" and "family" and "clan" and "ruler" and "subject" ... how do you talk about "human rights" in that environment? If we're cut off from the thoughts of the past, we're especially vulnerable. And if we're cut off from God...
"The modern boy might think he too would stand nobly aloof from a degraded age as Columbus set out from Palos, refusing to participate in the expulsion of Jews, or going along with the Spanish version of the Inquisition, or watching slaves be sold in the market. But he would. Nearly all of us would, or would put up with it." America is claimed to be a Christian nation, but I don't think it would take twenty years for a shift to Chinese or Henry VIII-type state-approved churches to become the norm, and the members thereof be ready to complacently watch the punishment or even execution of the orthodox Christians. I'm not predicting this, but it is possible, and my point is that I judge that the change could happen very quickly. So could civil war, or a number of other bad things. But good changes can happen too. The Spirit of the Age has an opponent.
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