In his 2002 memoir Interesting Times, the British historian Eric Hobsbawm offers a succinct definition of the 1900s. “Nothing is more characteristic of that century,” he notes, “than what my friend Antonio Polito calls ‘one of the great demons of the 20th century: political passion’.” Naturally, the question is personal to Hobsbawm. It is closely related to his reputation as an unreconstructed Stalinist, who refused to leave the Communist Party after the crises of consciences caused by the 1956 invasion of Hungary, which drove swathes of intellectuals away from communism. Avoidantly, Hobsbawm insists that his reasons for having stayed in the British Communist Party were emotional rather than rational – a fierce attachment to politics that he was never able to relinquish. In 2026, this problem of “political passion” has an uncanny resonance, at once immediately recognisable and hopelessly removed.
Later in his memoir, Hobsbawm offers a more visceral account of what such “political passion” entailed. In a passage, he recalls the last legal demonstration of the Communist Party of Germany, held on 25 January 1933. The event proved unforgettable for the historian, who 70 years later could summon the atmosphere:
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