Literature offers insights into the rise of extremism | Letters

Katharine Burdekin’s Swastika Night was first published in 1937 and, like Sally Carson’s Crooked Cross, discussed in Charlotte Higgins’s article, was ahead of the curve in predicting the effects of 20th-century European fascism (A prophetic 1933 novel has found a surprising second life – it holds lessons for us all, 18 October). The difference is that Burdekin (originally published under the pseudonym Murray Constantine) imagined a future world in which the Nazis have been in power for 700 years.

What is most striking about Burdekin’s novel is the way in which she locates the psychopathology of fascism in a form of toxic masculinity becoming increasingly familiar to contemporary readers. She anticipates, equally, the retreat of women to traditional gender roles in a vain attempt to assuage masculine pride. But where Burdekin offers hope is in her analysis of fascism as, ultimately, self-defeating.

Like the contemporary young men discussed in Jack Urwin’s Man Up, the young Nazi soldiers in the novel are taking their own lives in unprecedented numbers. As Charlotte Higgins notes of Carson’s male characters “there is nothing inherently terrible about these young men” but they stand as a warning that rightwing gender ideologies and totalitarianism are inseparable.
Debra Benita Shaw
Reader in cultural theory, University of East London

In her article about Sally Carson’s the Crooked Cross, Charlotte Higgins points out how easy it is for extremism to take hold and concludes that “The resonances with today are impossible to overlook.”

The similarly prescient Agatha Christie in Passenger to Frankfurt described a character’s visit to listen to a speech by Hitler. After being initially impressed and enthusiastic, the character then realised that there was no substance in the speech. The words were meaningless but the delivery was charismatic and it was successfully promoted through the insidious cult of violence.

Such leadership “qualities”, which Christie went on to describe (more than 50 years ago) perfectly depict, for instance, Boris Johnson, Nigel Farage, Stephen Yaxley-Lennon and Donald Trump. As Higgins suggests, we disregard these warnings at our peril.
Dyllis Wolinski
Mossley, Greater Manchester

As a nonfiction parallel to Sally Carson’s novel Crooked cross (and sequels), may I suggest A Village in the Third Reich: How Ordinary Lives Were Transformed by the Rise of Fascism by Julia Boyd and Angelika Patel, published in 2022. Then for a novel of foresight for the present-day US, can Sinclair Lewis’s It Can’t Happen Here (originally published in 1935) be beaten?
Kevin Scullin
Croydon, London

Charlotte Higgins might have mentioned that Crooked Cross was serialised in August on Radio 4.
Catriona Graham
Methven, Perth and Kinross