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What Venner said is reminiscent of what Francis Fukuyama was saying 20 years ago. I'd have to go back and look through it again. My recollection, though, is that Europe adopted American's democratic, commercial, technological form of society, but there were key differences.

Less religion in Europe. Less rising to the military challenges of the Cold War. Less economic competitiveness, and that wasn't replaced by a more active political life, but by a welfare state administered from above by unelected Eurocrats. So Europe was closer to the passive, timid, apolitical, risk-averse, consumerist "Last Man" that Nietzsche and Fukuyama feared.

On the other hand, that model really isn't "hypercapitalist" or "turbocapitalist" either. "Hyperconsumerist," maybe, in some countries. But France, say, isn't likely to make much trouble for China's rising economic and industrial might. Also, nowadays people like Venner who express some admiration for the ideologies of the 1930s have to diverge somewhere to avoid being accused of actually being fascist, so what he said may or may not be exactly what he really thought.

Interesting argument, although there is much that one could dispute. I regret that my French is not good enough to read the cited book, which is unavailable in English. I bump this thread because I thought I had heard his name before, and it turns out Venner was the man who very prominently killed himself in Paris a few weeks back.

What Venner said is reminiscent of what Francis Fukuyama was saying 20 years ago

Except Fukuyama -- correct me if I am wrong on that -- largely celebrated the "end of history" while for Venner, and, I think, for any right-thinking person the "democratic, commercial, technological form of society" is a dying society, coasting on its past cultural treasure toward oblivion.

"Ideologies of the 30's" were diverse, ranging from the wisdom of Franco, -- who, I would argue, was the only wholly successful national leader of the 20th century,-- to maniacality of Hitler. Venner is correct in seeing them as an attempt to restore the aristocratic idea. No leader ever emerges by saying "I will plunge my country and all Europe along with it into war and misery, kill innocent people by the million, and then kill myself chased into a bunker", --nor by believing so even inwardly. A good historian understands the reasoning and the motivation of the historical forces behind the propaganda and a caricature. We need more like him.