Alec Ryrie, "The Age of Hitler and How We Will Survive It" (Reaktion, 2025)

Summary

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Podcast Summary:

Alec Ryrie, "The Age of Hitler and How We Will Survive It" (Reaktion, 2025)
Podcast: New Books Network
Host: Morteza Hajizadeh
Guest: Dr. Alec Ryrie, Professor of History of Christianity at Durham University
Release Date: March 15, 2026

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Episode Overview

In this episode, host Morteza Hajizadeh interviews Dr. Alec Ryrie about his book, The Age of Hitler and How We Will Survive It. The conversation explores the provocative thesis that, in the West, the figure of Hitler has supplanted Jesus as the central moral touchstone. Ryrie examines how postwar societies constructed their moral universe around opposition to Nazism, the evolution and limitations of this system, and the uncertain future as this consensus fragments. The discussion ranges from historical shifts in moral example, the role of religion, the resurgence of antisemitism, to challenges of forging shared ethics in a pluralistic world.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

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1. Author Background & Motivation

• Dr. Ryrie's Expertise

  • Historian specializing in the Reformation era (16th–18th centuries).
  • Previous work focused on the emotional history of doubt and atheism.

• Motivation to Write the Book

  • Felt compelled after realizing features of contemporary society echoed unresolved threads from earlier historical research.
  • Brings an outsider’s perspective from studying previous centuries:

    “The problem with your own time is that fish don’t know that they’re swimming in water.” — Ryrie [03:15]

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2. The Meaning Behind "The Age of Hitler"

• Title’s Intent

  • Not a history of 1933–45, but the era after: 1945 to present.
  • The “Age of Hitler” refers not to his rule but “the age in which the man with the Toothbrush Mustache has dominated our moral imaginations.” [05:09]

• The Shift in Moral Referents

  • Pre-1945: Jesus as culture’s supreme moral figure, even among secularists.
  • Post-1945: Hitler as the fixed point of evil and benchmark for right and wrong.
  • The transition reflects a move from a positive exemplar (Jesus) to negative (Hitler).

• Quote:

  • “We have swapped out a positive exemplar which shows us what we love… for a negative one, which shows us what we’re opposed to and what we hate.” — Ryrie [06:28]

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3. The Fragility of the Anti-Nazi Consensus

• Cracks in the Consensus

  • The “shared set of value systems based around the fact that we all hate Nazis” is unraveling.
  • Resurgence of antisemitism is both a symptom and a catalyst of this unraveling.

• Right & Left-Wing Antisemitism

  • Neo-Nazi groups on the far right (e.g., Nick Fuentes) are more visible due to online amplification.
  • On the left, criticism of Israel has sometimes blurred into broader antisemitism.
  • “There was a time…when people would have gone out of their way to avoid giving any possible grounds that…could be misunderstood as being antisemitic. And…that caution is no longer there…” — Ryrie [13:49]

• Caution Against Historical Cycles

  • While antisemitism’s return is disturbing, “the fascism of the 1930s is not going to reappear in the same form…History does rhyme, but it doesn’t repeat itself.” — Ryrie [16:25]

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4. Religion’s Waning as the Arbiter of Values

• Loss of Moral Authority

  • WWII & the Holocaust marked a colossal failure for Christian Europe, rendering churches less credible as moral arbiters.
  • Referencing Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Christianity’s complicity or passivity discredited its authority.
  • Many postwar Christians strove for a broader, universal ethic—leading to the rise of human rights language and institutions (e.g., United Nations, Universal Declaration of Human Rights).

• Quote:

  • "The fact that they have lost their moral authority is their own doing…The Nazi genocide represents…the greatest moral crisis of modern times…It is a test that the Christian churches flunk pretty badly." — Ryrie [19:34]

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5. The Emergence & Decline of Universal Moral Values

• Anti-Nazism as a Secular Consensus

  • For decades, “universal values” were defined in opposition to Nazism, instilled via stories, education, and civic ritual.

• But This System is Weakening

  • “They’ve turned out not to be terribly deeply rooted…It is falling off the edge of living memory.” [25:42]
  • The allure of postwar universalism, focused on “not being Nazis,” is losing traction, especially outside the West.

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6. A Plurality of New Moral Touchstones (Villains & Heroes)

• Fragmentation

  • As WWII recedes, other touchstones (slavery, apartheid, various atrocities) come to the fore, leading to plural and contested moral narratives.
  • No replacement for Hitler as a universally accepted villain; future moral consensus will likely be more fragmented and pluralistic.

• Quote:

  • “I don’t think we’re moving from one fixed reference point to an alternative…We’re moving…to a more fragmented, plural world…” — Ryrie [29:20]

• Implications

  • Facing a return to a world where morality is more contested and less anchored by a single figure of evil.

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7. Seeking Positive Values Beyond “Anti-Nazism”

• Need for Positive, Not Just Negative, Ethics

  • The age of defining good solely by opposition to evil (“What would Hitler do? Let’s do the opposite”) is inadequate.
  • Societies must rediscover what they affirm and love, not just what they hate.

• Potential Role of Religion and Secular Philosophies

  • Positive, rooted value systems (religious or otherwise) are needed to handle complexities like diffuse, systemic evil (inequality, climate change, etc.), not just obvious villains.

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8. Practices for Morality Without a Single Villain

• Challenges in Moral Practice
  • Anti-Nazi moral logic is poorly adapted to address complex, diffuse problems of the 21st century (e.g., climate change, pandemics).
  • “Our assumption…that most evils are best dealt with by identifying a clear, preferably human villain…is not adequate. It can often make problems worse.” — Ryrie [36:31]
  • Emphasis on forgiveness, repentance, and accepting shared responsibility.

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9. Institutional & Civic Responses

• Civic Rituals and Institutions

  • True civic rituals express pre-existing values; they can’t simply be invented from scratch.
  • The pressing challenge: developing systems and spaces (secular or religious) for plural societies to cultivate positive values and coexistence.

• Role of Religious and Secular Traditions

  • Communities must move from confrontation and aggression—“browbeating and denouncing”—to offering “something within them that is actually worth loving.” [42:58]
  • Non-religious traditions also have a role in anchoring positive values.

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10. Progressive Secularists and Conservative Traditionalists

• Chapters 5 & 6: Critique & Synthesis

  • Ryrie critiques both camps: progressive secularists risk rootlessness and superficiality; conservatives risk nostalgia and hostility to modernity.
  • They need each other:

    “I’m basically trying to knock their heads together and explain to them both why they need each other.” — Ryrie [45:21]

• Steps Toward Synthesis

  • High-minded Step: Genuine, open conversation across divides; leaving “Internet bubbles”; recognizing that “people who disagree with you…are probably not much more likely to be monsters than you yourself are.” [46:13]
  • Practical Step: Political and cultural advances will come from those who “park their tanks on the other guy’s lawns,” allaying the other side’s fears and demonstrating positive value.
  • “So much of our political polarization…is based around fear…the only way…is…to reassure their fears…while also demonstrating that you’ve got something positive to offer them.” [47:03]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• The Central Thesis:

  “Adolf Hitler…is our fixed reference point by which we measure good and evil. And so we’ve swapped out a positive exemplar…for a negative one…” — Dr. Alec Ryrie [06:28]

• On the Fragile Consensus:

  “Maybe the most obvious and certainly the most disturbing sign that this moral consensus I’ve been talking about is unraveling…is the resurgence of antisemitism.” — Dr. Alec Ryrie [13:08]

• On Historical Amnesia:

  "We should be a little ashamed of our naivety in imagining that this...feature of Western culture could have been eradicated in a single generation." — Dr. Alec Ryrie [16:09]

• On Adaptation:

  “Our anti-Nazi values are simply not very good at helping us deploy tools like [forgiveness and repentance] for dealing with the sorts of crises that we’re…” — Dr. Alec Ryrie [36:51]

• On Breaking The Stalemate:

  “If you can reassure their fears, whoever they are…while demonstrating you have something positive to offer them…that is the only way these culture wars actually get won…” — Dr. Alec Ryrie [47:03]

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Key Timestamps

• Author Intro & Background: [01:46–04:18]
• The Book’s Core Argument / Meaning of Title: [05:00–11:13]
• Resurgence of Antisemitism and the Breaking Consensus: [12:29–17:17]
• Religion’s Failure, Moral Authority, and Bonhoeffer: [19:07–27:15]
• Moral Pluralism & Fragmentation of Touchstones: [28:39–34:06]
• Forgiveness, Repentance, and New Moral Tools: [35:54–39:52]
• Institutions, Civic Rituals, Education: [41:00–44:54]
• Chapters 5 & 6: Progressive vs. Conservative & Steps Toward Synthesis: [44:54–50:54]
• Closing Thoughts & Upcoming Projects: [51:43–52:20]

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Conclusion

Dr. Alec Ryrie’s compelling thesis reframes recent Western history as an era defined by a negative moral exemplar. As the anti-Nazi consensus weakens and plural moral reference points emerge, societies face the urgent challenge of constructing positive, rooted ethics capable of addressing the complexities of the 21st century. The episode explores the historical, philosophical, and practical dimensions of this transition, culminating in a call for deeper engagement, empathy, and synthesis across ideological divides.

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Transcript

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[Morteza Hajizadeh (Interviewer)]

Hello, everyone. Welcome to another episode of New Books Network. This is your host, Morteza Hajizadeh. Today, I'm honored to be speaking with Dr. Alec Ryrie about his most recent book, which is called the Age of Hitler and How We Will Survive It. The book was published by Reaction University Press just a few months ago, and Dr. Alec Mari is Professor of History of Christianity at Durham University and a Fellow of the British Academy. His previous books include An Emotional History of Doubt, which was published in 2019. Alec, welcome to New Books Network.

[Dr. Alec Ryrie (Author and Interviewee)]

Thanks so much for having me.

[Morteza Hajizadeh (Interviewer)]

Before we start talking about the book, can you just very briefly introduce yourself, tell us about your background and expertise, and most importantly, what made you decide to write this book?

[Dr. Alec Ryrie (Author and Interviewee)]

Okay, it's a fair question, because in some ways, this is a book I had no business writing. I'm a historian, and most of my work up till now has been on the religious history of the reformation era, the 16th, 17th, sometimes straying into the 18th century. And so I found myself writing a book about the 20th and 21st centuries. I mean, we'll come to what it's actually about in a second. I stumbled into this kind of by accident, having my last major book that you mentioned just now, Unbelievers, which was an attempt to try to tell the history of doubt, atheism, unbelief, and its trajectory in the emotional life of people in Europe and European cultures over the last 500 years, with a story rooted in the 16th, 17th centuries. But taking it up to the present and that left me with a feeling that there was some unfinished business, that I had seen some things about our own time which seemed to me quite important. So my only excuse for having written a book like this is that as a specialist in another era, it does give me a slightly different perspective on our own age. The problem with your own time is that fish don't know that they're swimming in water. We just think that what we have and what we've lived with is normal because that's what people do. As somebody at least part of whose head lives in a different century, I've maybe got a slightly different perspective on it. And once I had seen what I think I've seen about some of the things about our own age that are so obvious that we miss them, I found myself thinking, I've got something to say here. And I kept tugging at the thread until eventually we've got what is still, I should reassure people, quite a short book.

[Morteza Hajizadeh (Interviewer)]

And I was really, I'm sure like many other listeners and also other readers, I was really captivated by the title. And I must say, the first time I saw the title, I just took things for granted. I thought it was the Age of Hitler and How We Survived it in the past tense. But when I received the book, I realized, no, it's, it's the Age of Hitler and How We Will Survive It. So I'm keen to know more about the title of the book, that why you chose the Age of Hitler and you've written that How We Will Survive It. So it's, it's, it's looks like we still live in that Age of Hitler. Can you talk about the title and what you mean by that?

[Dr. Alec Ryrie (Author and Interviewee)]

Sure. I'm so pleased you had that reaction. That was exactly what I was going for. So, yeah, I mean, the title is. Well, I won't say it's a trick, but it's a hook. When I say the Age of Hitler, I am not talking about the period from 1933-45, period of the Third Reich and of the Second World War. I'm talking about the period from 1945 to the present. And the reason I call it the Age of Hitler is that this is the age in which the man with the Toothbrush Mustache has just dominated our moral imaginations. I start the book by talking about one of my own earliest memories. So, I mean, I was born in 1971, more than quarter of a century after the end of World War II. And I remember as a, as a small child asking my mother something like, who is the worst person ever. You know, it's the kind of question that a child will ask. And I'm sure she gave a very sensible, measured answer. But she did mention one name, and of course she did. Who else would you mention? And you know, that that sense that Adolf Hitler has become our fixed reference point for evil, who we always come back to over the, the last 80 years, seems to me more significant than it might at first appear. And one of the ways that I, I frame this in the book is, is to say that if you were to ask an audience in Europe, North America, Australia, wherever, over the, you know, anywhere within that kind of European world a century ago, to ask people who's the most significant moral figure in your culture, your most potent human symbol of right and wrong, then I think the almost universal answer would have been Jesus Christ. And you would have the same answer from Christians and from non believers. You'll usually find the atheists of the period will go out of their way to emphasize that they may not believe in God, but they recognize Jesus as the supreme moral exemplar. Whereas now, I mean, in my lifetime, I think if you were to ask that same question, who is the most important moral figure in our culture to a Euro American or antipodean audience, then the answer you'll get is Adolf Hitler. He is our fixed reference point by which we measure good and evil. And so we've swapped out a positive exemplar which shows us what we love, what we value for a negative one, which shows us what we're opposed to and what we hate. And I think that's got some significance and I've found it really helpful as a way of thinking about our culture, some of the ways that we've secularized or sort of secularized and that our collective lives have changed over the, you know, the post war period, as we still sometimes call it, and about where we might go from here. Because although it's a shift, this shift from a kind of Christian centered to an anti Nazi centered culture, in some ways it's quite a subtle 1. The two value systems are pretty similar and yet there are some significant differences both in terms of their content and just their dynamics of systems and how it plays out. So the book is really an attempt to think about what it means to understand our lifetimes as living in the shadow of World War II and having that obsession. I don't think obsession is too strong a word with Nazism, with, with, with, with fascism in particular, with the figure of Hitler and the consequences. It's had for us and how we will survive it. Well, that's partly reflecting my intuition. I don't think this is controversial anymore. It kind of was when I first started working on this, that are secure set of value systems based around the fact that we all hate Nazis, that that consensus is unraveling. This nice stable period in our shared values. I think it's plain internationally, is just coming to an end in a way that's often alarming. It's alarming to a lot of people, it's alarming to me. But I also think it's got some positive features to it, or at the very least, there are some real problems with building our values or trying to build our values just around the fact that we hate Nazis. It leaves us blind to a whole range of other evils, ill equipped to deal with them, and teaches us some very troublesome lessons. So my hope, and it's a prediction as well as a hope, is that as we leave this era of Nazi obsession behind us, and I think we plainly are leaving it behind us, we have a decent chance of ending up somewhere better.

[Morteza Hajizadeh (Interviewer)]

I'm glad you talked about this. I personally really enjoyed that. I think it's in chapter one where you talk about the greatest story ever told and you talk about that transition, the 19th century, that secularization. But despite that secularization, you mentioned that Jesus still kind of retained his moral authority and then you had this transition to judo, Christian civilization and that obsession with Nazism. But do you think this is just a speculative question? Of course. Around Europe, in America or even other parts of the world, there is this rise of anti Semitism? Of course, and sometimes. And it has manifested itself in new Nazi groups. And I live in Australia. There's a small group of neo Nazis which have come to the public attention more often now with the rise of, again, right wing populism. Do you think that obsession with Nazism is going away or it's. I think you mentioned that it's going away, but maybe that's anti Nazism. You're talking about that anti Nazism narrative. But do you think there might be a comeback because of the rise of new Nazi groups?

[Dr. Alec Ryrie (Author and Interviewee)]

I mean, if you're looking for signs that this kind of stable moral system that I've been talking about, based around the shared assumption that we're all, you know, whatever else we might disagree about, we all hate Nazis. One of the most obvious signs that that consensus is fracturing, I mean, it's not just obvious, it's kind of sickeningly predictable, is the resurgence of Antisemitism. And I mean, you see it maybe most obviously on the, on the far right, the resurgence of, as you say, of openly neo Nazi groups, and I mean, people like Nick Fuentes have become figureheads for this. And of course the way that online culture works in the 2020s helps to amplify and exaggerate small movements and give them a visibility they might not once have had. I don't think we can ignore the parallel to that on the far left as well, in which for quite a lot of people on the left, Israel, the state of Israel, which once used to be a kind of symbol of the world's repentance and of the fact that we'd moved on from the pervasive anti Semitism of the, of the pre war period, the fact that Israel has ended up being reclassified from victim to villain and well, let's say there are a number of folks on the left who have not been as careful as they might be to separate out their criticisms of the policies of the Israeli government from more generalized criticisms of Israel as an entity and the Jewish people as a group. There was a time, I mean, there's a time not very long ago when people would have gone out of their way to avoid giving any possible grounds that anything they might said could be misunderstood as being anti Semitic. And let's say that caution is no longer there in much the same way as there was a time not long ago when politicians on the center right would go out of their way to avoid giving any impression that anything they said was redolent of fascism, that they would make an un. A particular effort to draw a clear bright line between themselves and that legacy. And as we see in many, many countries, that carefulness is gone. So I mean, the resurgence of anti Semitism in various forms is maybe the most obvious and certainly the most disturbing sign that this moral consensus I've been talking about is unraveling. And although I'm in many ways trying to put a brave face on this and to say there are good things that could come out of this transition, there is no doubt that in that instance in particular, it's got the potential to lead us to some really ugly places. I suppose two things to add to that. One is we should not be surprised at the return of antisemitism. We should more be a little ashamed of our naivety in imagining that this very, very long standing and pervasive feature of Western culture could have been eradicated in the single generation. You know, some diseases just retreat deep into your system and Then, you know, reappear periodically. But equally, wherever we're going, we're not going back. The, you know, the fascism of the 1930s is not going to reappear in the same form. The evils that we're facing this century are, will be, will be distinct. History does rhyme, but it doesn't repeat itself.

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[Morteza Hajizadeh (Interviewer)]

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[Morteza Hajizadeh (Interviewer)]

again, it might be another speculative question that I have here. So in this transition that you mentioned, this shifting, let's say, that great story that you mentioned migrated from life of Jesus to the anti Nazism narrative,

[New Books Network Producer]

do

[Morteza Hajizadeh (Interviewer)]

you think religion has its role as the arbiter of right or wrong? And if it's gone in this transition, let's say, what do you think might replace it? Because you also, in this chapter, you talk about, if I'm pronouncing the name correctly, there was some prison letters that belonged to Dietrich Bonhoeffer. I'm not sure if I'm pronouncing the name correctly, which, in which talks about religious. Less Christianity.

[Dr. Alec Ryrie (Author and Interviewee)]

Sure. So, yeah, I mean, I spent a little while in the book talking about Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who became famous as one of the first Christian pastors in Germany, really, to recognize Nazism for what it was in 1933. He is talking about the radical evilness of evil that the, that the Nazis represent, which I know sounds weird, but it works better in German. And he ends up imprisoned. And ultimately he's, he's, he's. He's shot. Who's judicially murdered in his prison camp in April 1945, just, you know, weeks before it would have been. It would have been liberated. And he writes a series of letters from prison meditating on the meaning of the disaster that has engulfed his country and the whole of Europe, and in particular of Europe's Christian culture, in which he sees, and I think sees clearly and correctly that this is a disaster in, in which Europe's Christian cultures have been deeply implicated. The fact that they have lost their moral authority is their own doing. So when I talk about a transition in our fundamental values from a Christian based to a sort of anti Nazi based system, I think we need to recognize, as Bonhoeffer did, he's not the only one, that one of the fundamental reasons, maybe the fundamental reason why the Christian churches have lost that sense of moral authority, of being the arbiters of value for our culture, is because they have lost it, they have forfeited it in their behavior over many centuries. But in particular, World War II, the Nazi genocide represents, it's the greatest moral crisis of modern times. I mean, arguably one of the greatest moral crises of the whole of world history. And it is a test that the Christian church is flunk pretty badly. I mean, not just that so many of them are so slow to wake up to what Nazism and fascism represents or indeed actively collaborate with it, but even the ones who don't collaborate don't really see it. The resistance of the so called anti Nazi church in Germany, the Confessing Church, largely consists of their rejecting state oversight over their own affairs. They want to be able to govern themselves, which is great, but they are not engaged in actually confronting the evils that their regime is involved in. And Bonhoeffer is one of the very few who really sees this. He, he, he calls it a conspiracy of blindness that the, the Confessing Church is engaged in, you know, of willful blindness. And I think one of the things that you see happening in the, the 1950s and especially in the 1960s as, as you know, Bonhoeffer's letters are, are found and published and they become enormously popular, enormously influential on, you know, thoughtful radical Christians of all kinds. They have feed through into the American civil rights movement, into the anti apartheid campaign in South Africa and a series of anti Vietnam War protests, series of other movements where they're saying, you know, we need a new, a wider, a broader moral basis for our beliefs than what these, these corrupt and discredited churches can offer. So I think one of the reasons why you have this, this move away from the moral authority of Christianity is that some of the most thoughtful and impressive Christians of the post war period are themselves pushing this line. They recognize that their own institutions have been discredited in this way. For a great many people, most of the most thoughtful authoritative observers in this period, the 50s, 60s into the 70s, if they are looking for moral urgency and moral excitement, they tend not to be finding it from their churches, which are either refusing to or coming grudgingly into compliance with the values of the post war age. So, I mean, I think what's really striking about this period is that as you move from the attempt to build a worldwide coalition that fights against Nazism in the name of all humanity, and this is very much the rhetoric of the allies in the 1940s, and which leads directly through into the foundation of the United nations and the promulgation of the Universal Declaration of human rights in 1948. This is a vision of universal values which has a power, an urgency, an emotional appeal that transcends what the Christian churches or any particular group is able to offer. And for that period, this sense of universal values, I mean, this is the phrase they use, has a moral urgency and appeal, which makes Christianity seem kind of frankly parochial. And that system of universal values defined around human rights, and which very often, all too obviously defines itself simply in opposition to Nazism, it knows what's right by asking, what would Hitler do? And doing the opposite. That has been the system that we've lived with. And those values have been the sacred values that we raise our children in, that we tell ourselves stories again and again which reinforce them. We. We've learned how important it is not to question them. The trouble is that they've turned out not to be terribly deeply rooted. And it may simply be the passage of time. You know, we're now at the point 80 years after the war. It is falling off the edge of living memory. There are very few people left who have a live memory of that world. To those born in this century, it seems an impossibly long time ago. And of course, it's a European struggle. And there are a number of parts of the world who no longer feel that they want their values to be defined by a war between different colonial powers. So for all those reasons, I think this valiant attempt that we collectively made to build universal values around the memory of World War II, to hope that that would be enough. There's every sign that that's not going to work in the longer term, which means we're going to have to go back and find our values from somewhere else.

[Morteza Hajizadeh (Interviewer)]

Let me ask you another question which is relevant to the question that I had before, and that comes from chapter three, which is a really fascinating title, Villains and Heroes. Part of the argument in that chapter is that Second World War as a touchstone, as a moral touchstone, is kind of slipping away, moving away from our memory. And we have lots of other, let's say, moral touchstones. And I think you also mean that some of them are used very liberally, you know, genocide. There is also an argument whether, for example, the Atlantic slave trade was a genocide or not. So it seems that there are lots of other moral authorities, such as slavery, civil rights, apartheid, that are anti Zionism, sorry, anti Nazism is no longer the monopoly of that moral authority. And there are many plural reference points, let's say. So my question is that now that that obsession with anti Nazism is going away and we have all these different moral touchstones, how do we. How can we cultivate a shared ethic when we have so many reference points that may no longer match or may no longer have the same weight? You know,

[Dr. Alec Ryrie (Author and Interviewee)]

it's a really important question. I mean, in some ways this is the question. Given that as I'm arguing that shared set of values is unraveling, how can we find something fresh beyond it? I think trying to look for another single shared reference point is the wrong way to approach it. I mean, both. I think it's mistaken and also I think it wouldn't work. I talk about a series of other reference points that have. Have been used especially on the left. And, and so, you know, the, the Atlantic slave trade, apartheid. I mean, increasingly, I don't talk about this so much in the book because things have moved on so much since I wrote it, but I mean, increasingly, it seems that you mentioned anti Zionism a moment ago. For some people, it does appear that anti Zionism is becoming a moral touchstone in the same sort of way. I think what's distinctive about all of these different reference points is not that we are going to build a new consensus around any of them that seems very, very unlikely, but that they themselves are not really points of unity which have the power to compel the degree of attention that the narrative of Nazism once did and to a great extent still does, either because these are things that are sufficiently distant and don't have the kind of degree of narrative power to them that the stories of World War II did, or because they're actively controversial and you won't be able to unite people around them. So I don't think we're moving from one fixed reference point to an alternative, a successor to it. I think we're Moving from the relatively unusual situation, I think historically really pretty unusual, where our values could be defined in opposition to a single symbol for evil, to a more fragmented plural world in which we're going to be disagreeing about what our fixed moral reference points are. And in some ways this takes us back to the pre war world. There's a great book out there with a title called something like who was Hitler before Hitler? And you know, who were the great symbols of evil before World War II? And the answer is there wasn't really anyone, no one around whom there was a near universal consensus. In the same way, you know, Napoleon was a great bogeyman for lots of people, but he was a hero for a great many others, not just in France. So, you know, you've got that sort of disunity about our bogeymen is in some ways normal. Where I think we need to go from here, and where I suspect we will go, if only because in the end there'll be no alternative, is to revert from looking for symbols on of evil to define our values by and start looking for more positives. And that is going to me, I think, returning to a degree to religious value systems, but of course not just to one. It's not as if the whole of the world, let alone not even the whole of the Western world, is suddenly going to return to some kind of Christendom. I mean, that's, you know, just, just, you know, implausible for a whole range of reasons, partly because history just doesn't repeat itself. And I do think there's one key feature of, well, more than one. But you know, one, one that I want to mention now. One key feature of the, that post 1945 anti Nazi value system that we've lived with all our lives, that will endure, that provides us with the key ingredient we need to survive in a properly globalized plural world as we just unavoidably now have. And that is its ability to allow different groups to coexist alongside each other and to recognize one another's fundamental legitimacy. So I think the question for us going forward, I mean for us, for Western culture more widely, is where are we going to find our positive values from to work out what we love, what we see as good, rather than simply what we see as evil. And how are the different positive values that we find alongside each other going to work out how to coexist?

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[Dr. Alec Ryrie (Author and Interviewee)]

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[Morteza Hajizadeh (Interviewer)]

Experian there's another question that I have which again revolves around that question of villain and hero. So in 20th century, 21st century, sorry, evils are diffused, there is inequality, environmental crisis, there are wars, politics and the rift between the right and the left, there are many. But my question is what practices can help public to act morally without, let's say, an identifiable will and how to do forgiveness and repentance. How do these two concepts also fit into that toolkit that you might have.

[Dr. Alec Ryrie (Author and Interviewee)]

Thank you. I think, I think I earlier said you'd ask the most important question, but maybe that's the most important question. Two parts to the answer. The first one is to recognize the problem and to recognize that one of the, the core problems with our anti Nazi values is that they've actually equipped us pretty poorly for dealing with any evil that is not wearing jackboots. You know, the, we try when faith to rinse them through the, the memory of World War II is, you know, at times kind of bleakly comical. There are cases like for example the war in Ukraine, which, I mean you can, you can make that fit that, that, that template reasonably well. There are others like, I mean the way we, maybe this was a peculiarly British problem during COVID The extent to which we used the, the memory of the, of the Blitz, of the, you know, the crisis of survival that the UK faced during the, the early part of the Second World War became one of the main templates through which we understood what was going on during the, the early months of the COVID pandemic. Even though, you know, viruses are not Nazis, these are different Kinds of problems that need to be dealt with very differently. Our assumption that, that a default assumption that most evils are best dealt with by identifying a clear, preferably human villain who can be made to take the blame for it, and fighting a war of some sort, perhaps a metaphorical, often a literal war against them, recognizing that that's not adequate. And in fact it can often make problems worse than rather than better. Recognizing that evils are, as you say, diffuse and often things for which we ourselves are partially responsible. That would seem like a real development and the importance of forgiveness and of repentance as really kind of essential moral tools for navigating a world in which we're all a bit guilty, at least a bit guilty. These things seem just unavoidably useful. And our anti Nazi values are simply not very good at helping us deploy tools like that for dealing with the sorts of crises that we're. Many of the sorts of crises that we're likely to be facing this century. As to how we can do those. Well, that's why I say we need to go back to deeper rooted systems of values. And that's going to mean for a great many of us, religious systems, because those are the ones that have been developing these tools and thinking about them for centuries. But by no means exclusively there are secular philosophical systems out there that have some of that same sort of depth. I just think as a pattern of pragmatic reality, that's not where most people are going to find the resources that we're going to need to navigate this century.

[Morteza Hajizadeh (Interviewer)]

Another thing came to my mind when I was listening to you when you mentioned those traditional vowels, and in this case, for example, religion might have an answer.

[Dr. Alec Ryrie (Author and Interviewee)]

I.

[Morteza Hajizadeh (Interviewer)]

So there is this rise of secularism. Well, mainly in Western countries, so I can't say it's also happening in Latin America. But again, even in Western countries, people are still looking for some sort of spirituality. Maybe not in the form of an institutionalized religion and in the public mind, and I think wrongly, but in the public mind, wrongly. Religion is usually associated with violence and secularism is associated with progress. Whereas we know, I mean, historians know that secularism has also had a long, has had a long history of violence as well. But how, how can we. Maybe I can tie to my next question, which is what sorts of institutions, civic rituals, or even educational changes do we need to, to be able, you know, to. To bring those gains and also add more depth to them? Like when I say those gains, anti Nazism gains, I mean like rights pluralism, and also add more Depth, depth of religion and religious and philosophical traditions and values.

[Dr. Alec Ryrie (Author and Interviewee)]

That's a really intriguing question of how we do this in practice. The focus on what kind of civic rituals and rites we might need. I mean, that's an interesting way of framing it. I think we probably need to start a couple of steps further back than that. You can do kind of like pop up rituals, but the rituals that actually have bite, that really have power in human lives, are the ones that actually express something that's already there, rather than those are trying to kind of take something off the shelf. So in some ways I want to throw that back and say that the challenge for our times is to develop the sorts of systems that are able to do this. And I guess I would want to say that that's a problem that we can come at from two sides. That if your instinct is to be coming at this from the, that world of secularism that you've been talking about, where religion is generally regarded with suspicion for all kinds of excellent reasons, and for whom holding on to the lessons of that anti Nazi legacy is profoundly important, then your challenge is how do you find something which helps you to express those values, but in a positive way? And rather than simply giving us a kind of version of Orwell's two minutes hate directed at whoever the enemy of the day might be, how we can actually construct something that draws on those deeper values without being corrupted by the various ways in which they can go wrong? The parallel challenge, and I guess this one is the sharper one, maybe the more urgent one, is for those who do still feel a direct rooting and attachment to one or other of these traditional systems of value, religious or otherwise, which is to think, how can this be made to offer something positive to our own era? I mean, one of the horrible ironies of the way that religious communities in particular have responded to this era in which we've defined our values around what we hate, is to polish up their own powers of hate as well and to emphasize their, their aggression and opposition to various aspects of modernity, apparently in the basis that aggression and opposition is what this world seems to like. So let's give it some more of it. But the particular thing that these traditional value systems are able to bring to us is to offer something positive. They don't need to, to berate and to browbeat and to denounce. You know, they can woo, they can seduce. They've got something within them that is actually worth loving. Or if not, then why is anybody ever bothered with them in the first place? So I think that's the challenge for those parts of our cultures to find ways in which they can seriously repent of and overcome the very real past problems that they've come labored with and actually offer something to our own age.

[Morteza Hajizadeh (Interviewer)]

One final question that I have is on chapter five and six of the book, and I'm going to be terribly reductive. Your chapter five, you talk about progressive secularists and your chapter six is about conservative traditionalists. And you kind of, you try to find what some of the weaknesses they have.

[Dr. Alec Ryrie (Author and Interviewee)]

I'm basically trying to knock their heads together and explain to them both why they need each other.

[Morteza Hajizadeh (Interviewer)]

That's right. So the question I have, well, leave it to you just maybe to very briefly talk about those two chapters in terms of what themes do they cover. But the question I'm really keen to know is if you could give one concrete theme, if you had to give one concrete step to either, to both progressive secularists and also conservatives to start the synthesis, to have that synthesis, what would it be and how do you think it might work, if it ever works?

[Dr. Alec Ryrie (Author and Interviewee)]

Okay, you asked for one concrete step. I'm going to give you two, if that's okay. There's a sort of high, there's a high minded one and there's a kind of a low pragmatic one which I don't think contradict each other. So the, the high minded one is, is simply to talk, to get out of your Internet bubble and recognize that the people who disagree with you, who have deeply different assumptions and starting points from you, I mean, they're probably not much more likely to be monsters than you yourself are. And you know, if large numbers of people, I mean, many of our cultures seem to be split kind of close to 50, 50 on a lot of these, these culture war issues. On the whole, in a democratic world, if half the population disagree with you, it could be that they are all deluded and monsters, but it seems unlikely. The odds are that they are onto something. And so working out that doesn't mean you have to agree with them, but listening to them and trying to understand their perspective, working out what it is that they have to offer, doesn't just give us the chance of building something that will work better. There is even the outside possibility that you may learn something from them, whoever they are. So I mean, in some ways the emergence of those sorts of spaces in podcasting world, you know, I'm seeing, and this may just be where I choose to spend my time, a little more of that kind of cross cutting conversation and attempt to do end runs around the polarization that our algorithms want to push us into. I'm seeing a little bit of this kind of thing taking root in various places. So I would. My high minded answer is pursue that sort of conversation. My, my more kind of low answer is to say there's political potential to be harvested here if you're able to park your tanks on the other guy's lawns and identify that you are not as frightening as they fear you are. You know, so much of our political polarization, our cultural polarization, is based around fear. The assumption that the other guys, if they get in, will do something terrible. If you can reassure their fears, whoever they are, whoever you are, in this instance, while also demonstrating that you've got something positive to offer them. I mean, that is the only way that these culture wars actually get one, that we get out of our trenches, we stop just bombarding each other and actually succeed in seizing some territory. So I mean, if you. To some extent, I really don't care who it is who breaks this logjam, whether it's conservatives who genuinely find a way of reassuring and appealing to that secularist world and showing that they've got something positive to offer, or whether it's your secularist progressives who are able to break out of their particular trenches and say to that conservative world that they properly understand and accept its preoccupations and values and are happy to work with with it. Either one of those could break the logjam. I think there's a real opportunity in cultural politics there waiting for the groups, the peoples who are able to seize it, not in some kind of tedious, lowest common denominator, centrist way, but in an ability to actually transcend the, this kind of mutual culture war bombardment that we're in. The movement that actually succeeds in doing that is not only going to break us out of this moment of zero some political conflict that we're in, but it's going to reap some significant political rewards as a result. So if you're looking for signs that the synthesis realignment that I'm predicting is going to happen, that is the main one I would keep an eye out for.

[Morteza Hajizadeh (Interviewer)]

And I think that's a really good advice. I really like that idea of get out of that Internet bubble. When I sometimes listen to some really, really extremist right wing extremists, I'm more on the left myself. Of course. I tend to find myself that I agree with them on a lot of things they say. Like they say the government has abandoned us. I agree with them. But they blame someone and start scapegoating either immigrants or minorities. And that's where I'm not sure that I would agree with them. But anyhow, just like to thank you very much for your time. But before we end this conversation, I'm keen to know if there is any other work that you're working on or any other book that might be published sometime soon.

[Dr. Alec Ryrie (Author and Interviewee)]

Sure. I've got a book coming out this summer which is a much more traditional work of history about the global spread of Protestant Christianity in the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries. So that's going to be called the World's Reformation. And beyond that, there'll be other things in the next two, three years, but nothing that I could give a title or a date to.

[Morteza Hajizadeh (Interviewer)]

Well, I hope to be able to speak to you about your new book as well. I'll keep an eye open. Do you know which publisher it's going to be published?

[Dr. Alec Ryrie (Author and Interviewee)]

Sure. That's with Yale University press.

[Morteza Hajizadeh (Interviewer)]

Oh great. Dr. Alec Ry, thank you very much for your time to speak with us on New Books Network. The book we just discussed was the Age of Hitler. How We Wish Will Survive it published by Reaction Press. Thank you so much for your time.

[Dr. Alec Ryrie (Author and Interviewee)]

Thank you very much.

[I]

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