Identity: The Demand for Dignity and the Politics of Resentment

by Francis Fukuyama

Intellectuals from Friedrich Nietzsche to Ernst Troeltsch to Thomas Mann read Lagarde sympathetically, and his works would be widely distributed by the Nazis.6 He spoke to the anxieties of people making the transition from agrarian village society to modern, urban industrial life, a transition that for millions of Europeans experiencing it pushed the question of identity to the forefront. This was the moment in which the personal became the political. The answer given to a confused peasant like Hans from ideologists such as Lagarde was simple: You are a proud German, heir to an ancient culture, connected by your common language to all of the millions of other Germans scattered across Central and Eastern Europe. The lonely and confused worker now had a clear sense of dignity, a dignity that, he now realized, was disrespected by bad people who had somehow infiltrated his society.