EVEN A CHARITABLE EXPLANATION OF HARLAN CROW'S "GARDEN OF EVIL" IS KINDA REPELLENT

After ProPublica began reporting on the generous gifts Clarence Thomas has received from billionaire Harlan Crow, we were reminded that Crow collects Nazi memorabilia and other artifacts linked to dictatorship, many of which he displays at his home. When Crow was accused of being a Nazi sympathizer, Graeme Wood defended him in The Atlantic; for this service he was invited to interview Crow, and he's now published a follow-up.

Wood describes what he saw at Crow's house:

“There’s so many statues of Lenin,” Crow said, educating me on dictator-statue appreciation the way another rich guy might introduce a friend to the world of fine wine. Having a good story was crucial. “You don’t want a Lenin From Factory 107. You want Politburo.”

The many Lenins joined dozens of other petrified tyrants and world leaders, among them Communist revolutionaries (Ho Chi Minh, Mao Zedong, Che Guevara), a few secular autocrats (Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak), and a few hunched babushkas, in remembrance of communism’s victims. “Most are Communist,” Crow said, but he acknowledged that he hadn’t sorted the statues perfectly according to gradations of evil....

The garden is really a mishmash of 20th-century evil, evil-lite, and a few of Crow’s heroes (in the last category: Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, and Winston Churchill). “I have a number of people who are [just] dictators, like Pinochet and Juan Perón,” Crow said. “You can argue about Juan Perón, whether he was a force for good or a force for bad ... You can argue about Mubarak.” He noted that Yugoslav President Josip Tito was preferable to Stalin, and Zhou Enlai (“one of my favorites”) was a big step up from Chairman Mao. “There are probably a few more guys in storage that I’ll eventually put out,” he said. Mustafa Kemal Ataturk: “Probably more for good than bad,” he said. “But it’s complicated.”

... He owns a signed Mein Kampf, paintings by Hitler, and a Third Reich–era tea service. Crow said he hadn’t felt the need to sort the interior collection by level of evil, either. In the garden, he said, “I like these guys”—he motioned to Thatcher and Reagan, then to Che Guevara and Fidel Castro—“and I don’t like those guys. In my world, that’s blindingly obvious ... But one thing I have learned from this is that I must not assume that things are obvious.”

Why does he collect these things? Wood gives us Crow's answer:

“This is my era. I was born in 1949,” Crow said. “Communism was the great threat to the world.” The choice between capitalism and communism, freedom and serfdom, was a “big philosophical argument.” The Greatest Generation, he said, had a dramatic, existential shooting war. The Baby Boomers did not (“thankfully,” he added). “In my lifetime and your parents’ lifetime ... we didn’t have the Battle of the Bulge or the storming of the beaches of Normandy.” But the big argument was worth memorializing. “I want us to remember it. I want us to learn from it,” he said. “And it’s pretty damn important that we remember it.”

But if he wants us -- presumably he means all of American society -- to "learn from it," why doesn't he dip into his vast wealth and establish an institution where it can be put on public display, accompanied by information that puts it all into context? Maybe when Crow says us he means his close personal friends, the ones who -- like Clarence Thomas -- are admitted to the inner sanctum and get to see the collection. But even then he doesn't seem to offer much explanation for what he's collected. It's just there.

I think a clue is in that reference to Crow's generation. He knows that he and his peers didn't fight a big battle for civilization. Crow is rich, but maybe he knows he's not consequential, in a world-historic way.

But what he can do is buy consequentiality. On some level, he probably doesn't distinguish Hitler and Churchill -- they're consequential figures from a prior era, and he owns them.

Wood portray Crow as an antithesis of Donald Trump, who's roughly the same age and who also took over a real estate business started by his father:

Like Trump, Crow is a real-estate developer.... Both men grew up rich, then took over his father’s empire. In almost every other respect, they are total opposites. Trump cratered the empire he inherited, while investing in the sleaziest possible ventures; under Crow’s stewardship, the family fortune increased. Crow is appalled at the accusation that he used a shady real-estate deal to funnel money to a crony—which is, frankly, the kind of thing Trump would do. Trump commands attention and bellows; Crow speaks in a reluctant mumble. Trump inflates his net worth; Crow does not. Trump contemplates pulling out of NATO. Crow says he has no time for any politician who wavers in supporting Ukraine.... Crow begs to be assessed on whether he is a person of “good character.” Not even Trump’s most loyal fans could keep a straight face if their leader asked the same.

I'm sure Crow is more high-minded than Trump, though that's a low bar to clear. But the Garden of Evil seems like his version of Trump's piss-elegant design excesses and self-branding. Trump buys glitz; Crow buys history. Trump shows off for his potential customers (and for the New York swells who've never respected him); Crow shows off for his select friends. In different ways, they both try to purchase and flaunt what they think matters.