Four Quirky Post-WWI Utopians

World War I shook European society.The first 15 years of the 20th century were la belle epoque—the banquet years. Society was more optimistic about its prospects than Harvey Weinstein at a cocaine-fueled casting session.And then came the genocide against English, French, and German youth that occurred when the great nations combined Lincoln’s “total war” with modern industrial innovations. Ten bodies exchanged for a foot of ground; men losing limbs to mud-induced disease. Nasty stuff. Harvey Weinstein’s life today.Then came the aftermath. People previously looked at existence with optimism. Now they looked at existence as nonsensical. Disillusion was the dominant feeling.The WWI wake brought us the Lost Generation, T.S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land,” the devil-may-care excesses of Weimar Germany, the sheer fictional existence of a guy like Gatsby.But it also brought us a wave of Utopian movements that have faded from memory. We all know about Communism, Socialism, and Fascism, all of which picked up steam after WWI, but there were a lot of smaller movements that tried to capitalize (so to speak) on society’s collective disillusionment with the industrialization of modern life that, they thought, manifested itself in the mechanical horrors of World War I.Mustard gas, land mines, tanks, and machine guns come from factories. Therefore, factories are bad. Factories come from capitalism. Therefore, capitalism is bad. Capitalism flourishes in urban areas. Therefore, urbanization is bad. It was time to get everyone off the grid, living in common.These reformers took that line of thinking really seriously.Remaining show notes here