At the turn of the 20th century, there wasn’t a more cosmopolitan city in the world than Vienna, Austria. The city seemed to be brimming with thought leaders in medicine, science, and art. Ideas spilled out from this Central European country like an ever melting ice pack streaming down the Alps and flooding other nations with its ideas. Vienna at that time was the capital of the Austrian Monarchy, then nearly a thousand years old.

Intellectuals, artists, outcasts, architects, composers; all flocked to Vienna at the turn of the 20th century. Cafes and lecture halls buzzed with ideas. Marxist intellectuals, artists, and reformers discussed the future of socialism and democracy. Psychoanalysis, avant-garde theater, and modernist architecture thrived alongside progressive education reforms and public health initiatives.

Some of these residents of Vienna changed the world with their ideas. Ground breaking psychologists like Sigmund Freud and Alfred Adler roamed the city. The Zionist Theodr Herzl. Artists such as Schiel, Klimt. Even not so good people like Stalin and Trotsky were residents for a time. So many influential people lived and worked in Vienna in this time it would be a very long list to name them all along with their accomplishments.

But it wasn’t just ideas debated and published, these things were put into action. Vienna was the first to try and successfully blend socialism and democracy. Modern Scandinavia, and even the UK, have all borrowed from Red Vienna’s model to form their current government and societies. The idea that a city–or government–could improve the lives of its residents through access to healthcare, housing, and education became a key tenet of our current western democracies.

America would borrow heavily from Vienna’s models in the form of the New Deal and urban public housing projects.

But then it stopped being the center of progressivism and culture. It took a sharp turn in the wrong direction.

The fragility of the social democratic government of Austria during this time might be the biggest lesson of all from this time period. Progressivism in the face of authoritarianism is fragile indeed. How can such a free thinking place, pushing the boundaries of free thinking and equality, do a complete and drastic turn into fascism?

Right before this shift in 1933-34 when Engleburt Dolfuss took power with the fascist Fatherland Front Party (this party’s symbol, the Jerusalem Cross, is tattooed on our current Secretary of Defense Hegseth’s chest); there was a brief period of extreme tolerance for the time. This tolerance for radical thought from all corners of the intellectual spectrum allowed something else to fester and grow. Tolerance fed authoritarianism. And pretty soon Vienna wasn’t tolerant at all. It became oppressive of any thought that didn’t align with its leaders. Then worse, of course, when Nazi Germany absorbed the country.

With all the crazy news stories flying around these days, bombing my mind, I’m torn between burying my head, or amping up the news so that I’m not blind to what’s taking place. Most all of the news stories I come across are antithetical to my thoughts on government and my identity as an American; without turning to politics, I’ll leave it at that—no, wait I won’t leave it at that.

Not this time.

This time I’m going to say how I feel. I will not remain silent. I have a blog…so I’ll use my tiny corner to release the thoughts that have been swirling around my mind the last few weeks. This post is related to personal finance, maybe more personal, but feel free to not read this.

Nobody likes change. Even when change is for the good, it’s uncomfortable. And change is indeed taking place in my country.

2025 so far makes me think back to other societies that have made ‘the turn’ from one thing to another. Looking back it’s easy to say, oh of course that happened, and here’s why. In the moment, for those people who lived in these places and anyone alive during those times of change, it didn’t feel inevitable. Nobody knew what was going to happen. Nobody thought that war or a loss of democracy was near.

There’s a book a read I few years back titled The World of Yesterday by Stefan Zweig that I think about often. Recently I re-read a few chapters of it, again it captivated me, particularly the first chapter titled The World of Security. Zweig was born almost 100 years before me, Zweig in 1881 compared to me in 1983. And in the span of 100 years from when Stefan grew up, to when I did, the world could not have changed more dramatically.

Stefan was a Jewish writer who grew up in Vienna, Austria. This autobiography of his was written in 1942 and finished one day before Zweig committed suicide with his wife in South America, having fled Nazi Germany. It’s a memoir and utterly compelling in every facet for me. Not only does it give significant insight into one of the most dramatic periods in the 20th century, it also sheds light into daily life in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Specifically Vienna in the late 19th and early 20th century.

But it’s not the ideas and progressivism in Vienna and Austria as a whole that captures my attention. It’s the sense of everlasting security that its residents felt, and the transformation from that city to one utterly destroyed, and in many ways the epicenter for the disaster that took hold of Central Europe, then the world, in the 20th century.

The first chapter is jarring for me, because this is exactly how I feel in America. It’s not often that I quote such a long few paragraphs from other writers, but I feel compelled to share this right now.

Here’s an excerpt from the first chapter of The World of Yesterday:

“When I attempted to find a simple formula for the period in which I grew up, prior to the First World War I hope that I convey its fulness by calling it the Golden Age of Security. Everything in our almost thousand year-old Austrian monarchy seemed based on per- manency, and the State itself was the chief guarantor of this stability. The rights which it granted to its citizens were duly confirmed by parliament, the freely elected representative of the people) and every duty was exactly prescribed. Our currency, the Austrian crown circulated in bright gold pieces an assurance of its immuta­bility. Everyone knew how much he possessed or what he was entitled to what was permitted and what forbidden. Everything had its norm its definite measure and weight. He who had a fortune could accurately compute his annual interest. An official or an officer for example, could confidently look up in the calendar the year when he would be advanced in rank, or when he would be pensioned. Each family had its fixed budget, and knew how much could be spent for rent and food, for holidays and entertainment; and what is more, in­variably a small sum was carefully laid aside for sickness and the doctor’s bills, for the unexpected. Whoever owned a house looked upon it as a secure domicile for his children and grandchildren; estates and businesses were handed down from generation to generation. When the babe was still in its cradle, its first mite was put in its little bank, or deposited in the savings bank, as a “reserve” for the future. In this vast empire everything stood firmly and immovably in its appointed place, and at its head was the aged emperor; and were he to die, one knew (or believed) another would come to take his place, and nothing would change in the well-regulated order. No one thought of wars, of revolutions, or revolts. All that was radical, all violence, seemed impossible in an age of reason.

This feeling of security was the most eagerly sought-­after possession of millions, the common ideal of life. Only the possession of this security made life seem worth while, and constantly widening circles desired their share of this costly treasure. At first it was only the pros­perous who enjoyed this advantage, but gradually the great masses forced their way towards it. The century of security became the golden age of insurance.  One’s house was insured against fire and theft, one’s field against hail and storm, one’s person against accident and sickness. Annuities were purchased for one’s old age, and a policy was laid in a girl’s cradle for her future dowry. Finally even the workers organized, and won standard wages and workmen’s compensation. Servants saved up for old-age insurance and paid in advance into a burial fund for their own interment. Only the man who could look into the future without worry could thoroughly enjoy the present.……

It is reasonable that we, who have long since struck the word “security” from our vocabulary as a myth, should smile at the optimistic delusion of that idealisti­cally blinded generation, that the technical progress of mankind must connote an unqualified and equally rapid moral ascent.  We of the new generation who have learned not to be surprised by any outbreak of bestiality, we who each new day expect things worse than the day before, are markedly more skeptical about a possible moral improvement of mankind. We must agree with Freud, to whom our culture and civilization were merely a thin layer liable at any moment to be pierced by the destructive forces of the “underworld”. We have had to accustom ourselves gradually to living without the ground beneath our feet, without justice, without free­dom, without security. Long since, as far as our existence is concerned, we have denied the religion of our fathers, their faith in a rapid and continuous rise of humanity. To us, gruesomely taught, witnesses of a catastrophe which, at a swoop, hurled us back a thousand years of humane endeavour, that rash optimism seems banal. But even though it was a delusion our fathers served, it was a wonderful and noble delusion, more humane and more fruitful than our watchwords of to-day; and in spite of my later knowledge and disillusionment, there is still something in me which inwardly prevents me from abandoning it entirely. That which, in his childhood, a man has drawn into his blood out of the air of time cannot be taken from him. And in spite of all that is daily blasted into my ears, and all that I myself and countless other sharers of my destiny have experienced in trials and tribulations, I cannot completely deny the faith of my youth, that some day things will rise again-in spite of all. Even in the abyss of despair in which to-day, half-blinded, we grope about with distorted and broken souls, I look up again and again to those old star-patterns that shone over my childhood, and comfort myself with the inherited confidence that this collapse will appear, in days to come, as a mere interval in the eternal rhythm of the onward and onward.

 To-day, now that the great storm has long since smashed it, we finally know that that world of security was naught but a castle of dreams; my parents lived in it as if it had been a house of stone. Not once did a storm, or even a sharp wind, break in upon their warm, com­fortable existence. True, they had a special protection against the winds of time: they were wealthy people, who had become rich gradually, even very rich, and that filled the crevices of wall and window in those times. Their way of life seems to me to be so typical of the so-called “good Jewish bourgeoisie”, which gave such marked value to Viennese culture, and which was requited by being completely uprooted, that in telling of their quiet and comfortable existence I am actually being quite impersonal: ten or twenty thousand families like my parents lived in Vienna in that last century of assured values.“

I’m living in my own world of security right now.

My American way of life feels so secure. My freedoms. My rights. The rule of law in my country. Democracy. Free speech. All of it feels old and solid.

But I get a wake up call when I read Zweig’s words. It reminds me of how fragile things are. To know that there were once other people, in other times, who felt their world unshakable, as I do, only to end up oppressed because they were outsiders is a much needed dose of reality. As a minority in this country, an ethnicity that is centrally focused on in today’s headlines as causing excessive ‘crime’ and economic hardships to other citizens, this is a reality check. There’s talk of enacting (unconstitutional) banning of birthright citizenship. Why? Because certain people in this country don’t like that non-whites are moving here and that their kids are becoming citizens. Immigration of Latinos to the United States is being called an ‘invasion’ by our president. I’m a living breathing result of this ‘invasion’. So in this light, I’m an invader. Me and people who look like me don’t belong here, is what’s being implied by the president of my country.

I was talking to a coworker the other day about how surreal all of this feels, another Latino, and in a management position in our company higher up than me. He told me his nephew had just gotten into a fight with some racists yelling at him to ‘go back to Mexico’ in of our East Bay malls. Luckily, his nephew’s girlfriend had the entire interaction on camera and showed the police. The messed up part is that his nephew isn’t Mexican (but he’s latino), he doesn’t even speak Spanish, he just has brown skin. But racists can’t tell the difference. Racists can’t tell the difference between an undocumented or documented human. This is just the reality of having a vocal racist as president. It emboldens those who would otherwise keep quiet about their racist feelings.

Maybe, like Zweig’s picture of his childhood Vienna, I’m just living in a ‘castle of dreams’.

Again, Zweig writes about this in his memoir:

“Nationalism emerged to agitate the world only after the war, and the first visible phenomenon which this intellectual epidemic of our century brought about was xenophobia; morbid dislike of the foreigner, or at least fear of the foreigner. The world was on the defensive against strangers, everywhere they got short shrift. “

If progressive places fell victim to fascism once, it can and will happen again. At one point, as I described earlier, pre 1930’s Germany and Austria were both known for their writers, intellectuals, and poets. Central Europe was the thought leader for the west–now of course, if we think back to early to mid century Central Europe, they’re known for other, terrible things. Everything else, any good that might have been there, is forgotten and wiped away.

Progressive governments, and we can call America’s current version a progressive government, are especially vulnerable to authoritarianism and fascism.

In the 1930’s, it was economic crises, political fragmentation, and fear of communism. Divided leftist and centrist parties failed to unite against rising authoritarian movements. Meanwhile, elites and businesses often supported fascists as a bulwark against socialism. Fascists exploited nationalist rhetoric, mass propaganda, and street violence to undermine democracy from within.

In the 2020’s, the shift we’re seeing is due to a number of things, but what I can see very clearly are economic instability, political polarization, disinformation, fear of change, all of this leads to the erosion of trust due to the way we now get our media.

In my world view, the United States are supposed to be the good guys: pushing democracy, aiding impoverished countries, fighting oppression, a shining example of what free markets and trade can do for a people…it doesn’t feel like we’re any of that right now.

With advisors to our president giving Nazi salutes in public. My federal government backing and supporting ultra right wing groups that are quasi Nazis and under watch by intelligence agencies in Germany. The sudden turn on our allies and NATO. The president passively aggressively joking to annex countries, much like Germany’s leader in the 1930’s. Paraphrasing Hitler’s quote’s when talking about immigrants ‘poisoning the blood’ of America. Talks of a third presidential term. Stacking the federal police force and Department of Justice with loyalists. Picking and choosing journalists for the White House press pool, blocking access to those that don’t ask the right questions.

It was just 80 years ago this country forcibly incarcerated Americans, solely because of their ethnicity into camps. Operation Wetback was another mass round up of Mexicans, including American citizens. Now we’re sending immigrants into ‘terrororist prison’ camps in Guantanamo Bay, where they are allowed outside twice a week and not allowed to call or contact the outside.

It just doesn’t feel right where my country is heading.

I can’t think of a single time in history where fervent and deep seated nationalism has helped out a country and the country’s neighbors.

It would be over dramatic of me to compare directly my country today and that of Central Europe before the World Wars; or to even propose we are headed down the exact same path. There are a great many differences that caused the tide of right nationalism now and then. The punishment and economic consequences of losing a world war and having the world cast blame on a single side evoked anger within German society, that eventually gave birth to the national socialists.

There’s no having lost a world war that is causing today’s shift in my country. Instead, something else was lost to those who voted for the nationalists in power now. While I read the news, I can’t wrap my head around what it is, though it’s plainly in my face. Part of it is this country is so huge, that I know I’m caught in an economic bubble that doesn’t reflect the other economic bubbles that voted this in. Some people feel left out of economic opportunity, and so blame must be cast.

But it’s not all economic.

There’s something else afoot.

Could it be that some people feel their way of life is threatened by the increase of minorities in this country? White grievance. The eye of Sauron has been turned onto immigrants and minorities. Brown people who look just like me are now to blame for manufacturing decline, for people who didn’t go to college and get good jobs, for all the change in how America looks and talks. Get rid of the people who speak Spanish, who are taking your jobs picking vegetables and fruits in the fields and cooking your food, is now the sanctioned call. It doesn’t matter if they’re refugees escaping war or crime resulting from US backed policies and governments over the last century.

But, our president just authorized refugee status to South Africans of European descent. Some of the richest and most well off landowners in South Africa. What does this say? There’s no beating around the bush, no refugee status for Latinos, but well off descendants of apartheid, Africans of European descent, they are welcome to our refugee program.

And so a right wing racist has been voted in. Again. The person who sees ‘good people on both sides’. Who tells Proud Boy supporters to ‘stand by’.

I just can’t understand it no matter how much objective empathy I try to have.

I can only believe that large segments of the American public harbor strong racist and bigoted beliefs–whether it’s openly admitted or not, 77 million votes speak volumes to me.

Not fair I say.

But fair doesn’t matter. “Life’s not fair” was a common saying burned into my young brain as a kid by my parents and teachers. It’s absolutely not fair, so I save my money and invest, hoping that I can level the playing field.

It’s times like these I’m glad for my savings. Though my money numbers on my screen only mean as much as the trust our system is built on. I’m not for a second going to change my strategy for investing because of these crazy headlines; tariffs, foreign policy changes, destruction of the unions, loss of federal funding–none of these things will change my boglehead-ish strategy. If any strategy changes, it will be proper asset allocations, more in line with traditional 3 fund portfolios. More international. More bonds than I have at the moment. In these times, FIRE gives me comfort. I’d so glad that a few years ago I dedicated myself to saving and investing. If anything can balance a not fair situation out, it’s money. It can be my ticket out of here if things go sideways. It can help with visa procurement. It just helps.

Going through this at the moment feels scary for a person in my demographic, but on the other side it might only be a blip. COVID and 9/11 were like this. “If you’re going through hell keep going” is the quote attributed to Churchill, whether he said this or not, we’re all going and we’ll see what’s on the other side in a few years.

The ground is shifting.

The world is changing—for me and my ideals, it’s changing in the wrong direction.

Maybe this commentary on the right wing nationalists that have taken over the government in my country don’t belong in a personal finance blog.

Maybe I’m overreacting.

Maybe it’s just my anxious nature worrying about things out of my circle of influence, again.

However the next few years turn out, in this moment it feels dangerous, and I won’t be silent about it. I will not be a collaborator. I object to what’s going on. If a free thinking progressive place like Vienna can make an about turn into darkness, well so can America, if we let it. Democracy is fragile. Free speech and thinking are wonderful elements of a free society, but also dangerous if bad ideas are applied.

There’s one thing for sure I do know in the sort term, all of this affects my finances (which compared to everything else, might be the shallowest take)–and my family. Despite my dramatic takes; I’m staying the course for a few more years before I can exit, not only my job, but the country that I’m quickly becoming disillusioned with.

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I’ll end this post with a few quotes from or about terrible times.

“I have seen great mass ideologies grow before my eyes and spread, Fascism in Italy, National Socialism in Germany, Bolshevism in Russia, and above all the ultimate pestilence that has poisoned the flower of our European culture, nationalism in general.“

Stefan Zweig 1881-1942

“First they came for the Communists And I did not speak out Because I was not a Communist

Then they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out Because I was not a socialist.

Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out Because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak for me.”

-Martin Niemöller

Lastly:

“Nice people made the best Nazis. My mom grew up next to them. They got along, refused to make waves, looked the other way when things got ugly and focused on happier things than “politics.” They were lovely people who turned their heads as their neighbors were dragged away.”

-Naomi Shulman