This insight provides the context for Wright’s discussion of both fascism and communism, equivalents in that both are “political expressions of the twentieth century’s atheistic way of life”:
“I admit they are different,” Cross conceded. “But the degree of the “Without the Consolation of Tears” limited basis; they preach nationality,race,soil and blood, folk feeling and other rot to capture men’s hearts. What makes one man a Fascist and another a Communist might be found in the degree to which they are integrated with their culture. The more alienated a man is the more he’d lean toward Communism.”