Shadows of Tyranny: Defending Democracy in an Age of Dictatorship, by Ken McGoogan (Douglas & McIntyre)

[Editor’s Note: Although it could be argued the B.C.-related content of this book is thin, the outcome of the November election in the United States will affect the province. Perhaps Ron Verzuh’s reflective review might soothe nerves in advance of the big event, in the sense that, historically, threats to democracy are nothing new.]

Reviewed by Ron Verzuh / writer and historian  /  The British Columbia Review

Not for the first time (or the last) has the world been turned on its head with cockamamie conspiracy theories, lying politicians, religious quacks, and snarly citizens who would undo democracy. Ken McGoogan takes us back to earlier times when the world went crazy and voters made deadly decisions.

McGoogan’s histories have often focused on Arctic explorations. Favourites of mine are about the ill-fated Franklin Expedition and Mrs. Franklin’s earnest efforts to find her lost husband. This time, however, he highlights the rise of Spain’s Franco, Italy’s Mussolini, Russia’s Stalin and, of course, Nazi Germany’s Hitler. He does this mostly through historical biography.

Short chapters remind us of the horrors perpetrated by these men and introduce us to some of the courageous people who opposed them and fought to expose them. George Orwell’s 1984 and Animal Farm are cited as examples of how people get convinced through political propaganda to accept dictators as the rest of us suffer the consequences.

Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale also makes an appearance as McGoogan points to ways we are heading down a similarly destructive path should Donald Trump re-enter the White House on November 5. “Were Trump to regain office, he would not hesitate to subvert the democratic process,” he warns.

Readers who have long asked themselves how people could vote into power monsters like Hitler will find some probing analysis here. We are also re-introduced to people who resisted such horrifying dictatorships. Writers mentioned include H.G. Wells, Jack London, Canadians Hugh Garner and Farley Mowat.

Also covered are wartime journalists Edward R. Murrow, Martha Gellhorn, Ernest Hemingway and the Toronto Star’s Mathew Halton. Entertainers like Josephine Baker, “The Creole Goddess,” are shown as courageous supporters of the French Resistance. Baker who was adored in Europe, was shunned by her fellow Americans because she was black.

Other fascism resisters, some little known, appear in chapters on spy extraordinaire Betty Pack, codename Cynthia, a.k.a. “The Mata Hari of Minnesota,” the Canadian spymaster William Stephenson (a man called Intrepid) and Dr. Norman Bethune whose mobile blood transfusion unit saved the lives of members of Canada’s Mackenzie-Papineau Battalion who volunteered in the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939).

The Mac-Paps did not receive Canadian government recognition or support, McGoogan shows, and our government refused to assist the Spanish government fighting for democracy against Francisco Franco’s fascist invaders. They world would soon pay a massive price as we entered the Second World War.

Not forgotten are the bad guys. Among them is American-born fascist poet Ezra Pound who broadcast pro-Mussolini radio messages, Senator Joseph McCarthy, “the Devil King,” Nazi death camp murderers like Klaus Barbie and “ruthless dictator” Joseph Stalin.

McGoogan saves some criticism for wartime Canadian prime minister William Lyon Mackenzie King, who sided with British PM Neville Chamberlain in thinking Hitler would play by the rules. King referred to the Nazi dictator as a fellow spiritualist guided by his dead mother. “The world will yet come to see a very great man – a mystic, in Hitler,” he confided to his diary. It is a sad and bitter reminder of the wrongheadedness of Canada’s longest running PM. No wonder Churchill dismissed him as a lightweight.

German-born historian and philosopher Hannah Arendt provided this salient point for Trump cultists: “The ideal subject of totalitarianism is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist,” she stated, “but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.”

Antisemitism is an over-arching theme of the book showing how dictators need scapegoats. Hitler targetted the Jews. Our current crop of right-wing leaders, including Trump with his Haitians-eat-our-pets nonsense, have chosen immigrants. McGoogan offers historical evidence of what happens when voters support such madness.

Neither McGoogan nor anyone else can fathom why so many Americans continue to believe in Donald Trump despite his many flaws and felonies. What he has shown is that people have historically and perhaps unknowingly supported authoritarian dictatorships.

The publisher’s blurb calls the book a “crucial alarm.” As we watch the U.S. presidential election steamroll to a finish on November 5, the world hopes Americans will hear that alarm.

Ken McGoogan will appear at the Ottawa International Writers Festival on Sunday, October 27.