Meaning of Weimarization | Babel Free

Definitions

A state of economic crisis leading to political upheaval and extremism.

British, English, Oxford, US, uncountable

Equivalents

Examples

“In a last frantic move, the Peronist government again turned to a stringent stabilization plan (i.e. another 100 per cent peso devaluation, 90 per cent increases in publicly-controlled prices, coupled with a meagre 20 per cent increase in nominal wages). […] Some idea of this incredibly rapid ‘Weimarization’ of Argentine politics can be gleaned from an extrapolation of the first quarter’s inflation to a 3,000 per cent annual rate. Using the March figure, the same calculation yields a fantastic 17,000 per cent annual rate.”

“Politicians have several times warned that there could be a "Weimarisation" of the postsocialist region, including Hungary. It should be remembered that it was mass unemployment and waves of inflation in Weimar Germany that led to mass disillusionment and rejection of the institutions of democracy and the parliamentary system. This economically-induced disillusionment provides a fertile breeding ground for demagogy, cheap promises and desires for iron-handed leadership.”

“If the strength of this discontent reaches a certain threshold, that could bring dangers to the new Hungarian democracy … we have to defend ourselves from Weimarisation in the political and ideological spheres … we also need to draw the necessary conclusions in economic policy.”

“On the one hand, it was feared that right-wing conservatism could go to extremes by admitting racism into government offices, threatening a scenario of Weimarization; on the other, the revival and in certain cases the return of postcommunist parties represented a threat of restoration.”

“There has been a kind of Weimarization of the American working class, and there's a terrible instability in the middle class.”

“The ‘Weimarisation of Europe’ staged in the German and international press seems to correspond to a simultaneous affirmation that all European citizens are members of the same community, ‘in precisely the same way [as] the modern bourgeoisie [sees] its non-earning members’ […].”

CEFR level