The conventional and superficial wisdom regarding what we should have learned from the Nazi Holocaust is that “Fascists”, “appeasers” (or, more specifically, Fascist appeasers), “aggressive war” and “genocide” are bad. I put those terms in quotes because, as with any other major lesson of history, people try to use history’s lessons and its associated terms for their own purposes, and in the process of doing so they twist their meaning out of all proportion.
In the aftermath of our Victory over the Nazis in 1945 the world made some major attempts to address some of the lessons of the Nazi Holocaust. The
United Nations came into being on October 24, 1945, with the purpose of bringing “all nations of the world together to work for peace and development, based on the principles of justice, human dignity and the well-being of all people.” To follow this up, the “
Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide” was adopted by the United Nations in 1948, with the
United States Senate ratifying the Convention in 1986 (though the United States was the first country to sign the Convention, under the Presidency of Harry Truman). The creation of the United Nations, along with the Genocide Convention, was an excellent start towards a world-wide commitment to prevent and combat the evils that I listed in the first sentence of this post.
However, it was only a start, and though the United Nations has had many successes and may have thus far prevented World War III, it has also had many notable failures. In recent times, the most notable of those failures have been its failures to prevent the
Rwandan genocide of 1994, which resulted in nearly a million genocidal deaths, the U.S. invasion of Iraq, and the current ongoing
genocide in Darfur, which has so far resulted in nearly half a million genocidal deaths.
The need to recognize Fascism and Genocide early It should be obvious that if we are going to prevent the evils of Fascism and genocide we must be able to recognize them early. Terrible events in history usually don’t happen all at once, but rather begin slowly and follow a gradual course. Milton Mayer describes this process in his book, “
They Thought They Were Free – The Germans 1933-45”. This is how a German colleague explained the rise of Hitler to him:
What happened here was the gradual habituation of the people, little by little, to being governed by surprise; to receiving decisions deliberated in secret; to believing that the situation was so complicated that the government had to act on information which the people could not understand, or so dangerous that, even if the people could understand it, it could not be released because of national security. And their sense of identification with Hitler, their trust in him, made it easier to widen this gap and reassured those who would otherwise have worried about it.
This separation of government from people, this widening of the gap, took place so gradually and so insensibly, each step disguised (perhaps not even intentionally) as a temporary emergency measure or associated with true patriotic allegiance or with real social purposes. And all the crises and reforms (real reforms, too) so occupied the people that they did not see the slow motion underneath, of the whole process of government growing remoter and remoter.
The politics of the Fascism label in the United States todayThe question of
how to recognize the early stages of Fascism and genocide has special relevance in the United States today because the two opposite sides of the political spectrum in our increasingly divided country are trying to tag the other side with the Fascism or the appeaser label.
Many DUers, perhaps hundreds, and
including myself, have used the word Fascism when referring to the Bush administration or its enablers in today’s Republican Party. I have also written a post in which I discuss a point by point
comparison between Hitler’s Nazis and today’s Bush administration (which I don’t intend to address in this post).
On the other side,
Donald Rumsfeld, speaking for the Bush administration, has called anti-Iraq War Americans “appeasers”. And in a coordinated attack on anti-war Democrats following the arrest of terrorists suspected of devising plans to blow up planes flying to the United States from Britain,
Dick Cheney and
Ken Mehlman gave similar speeches. And they have introduced the word “Islamo-Fascism” into our language. Thus, it is very important that, in addition to being able to recognize the difference between Fascists and their appeasers versus those who are falsely accused of those things, that we be able to coherently and concisely explain that difference. Make no mistake about it – this is a political minefield.
Richard Durbin, speaking on the floor of the U.S. Senate in June of 2005, walked into that minefield (very courageously in my opinion) when he compared the treatment of our prisoners to the treatment of prisoners of the Nazis and Stalin’s and Pol Pot’s Communists. After reading the testimony of an FBI agent who had witnessed abhorrent conditions, including torture, at Guantanamo Bay, Durbin proceeded:
If I read this to you and did not tell you that it was an FBI agent describing what Americans had done to prisoners in their control, you would most certainly believe this must have been done by Nazis, Soviets in the gulags, or some mad regime – Pol Pot or others – that had no concern for human beings….
It is not too late. I hope we will learn from history. I hope we will change course. The president could declare the United States will apply the Geneva Conventions to the war on terrorism. He could declare, as he should, that the United States will not, under any circumstances, subject any detainee to torture, or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment. The administration could give all detainees a meaningful opportunity to challenge their detention before a neutral decision maker.
Such a change of course would dramatically improve our image and it would make us safer. I hope this administration will choose that course. If they do not, Congress must step in.
Unsurprisingly, Durbin was mercilessly castigated for this speech by the Republican attack machine, as exemplified by
this speech by Karl Rove to the New York Conservative Party. But Durbin’s speech was not only courageous, it was also right on target. He did not imply that the Bush administration was the equivalent of the Nazis and others in their treatment of prisoners or in any other regard. What he did do was point out similarities – similarities that Americans would be wise to recognize if they intend to address the lessons of the Holocaust in a timely enough manner to prevent catastrophes.
Genocide and “pre-genocide”Of all the evil things that Hitler did, the most evil, in my opinion and in the opinion of millions of other people, was the genocide that he perpetrated against the Jews and others.
I have never said or implied that the Bush administration’s treatment of its prisoners of war or its war of aggression in Iraq constitute genocide. Nor did Richard Durbin. Clearly these actions do NOT constitute genocide by any commonly agreed
definition of the term.
However – and this is my central point – I do believe that these actions constitute “pre-genocide”.
I don’t know if “pre-genocide” is a term that is used to any significant extent. Given the difficulties in defining genocide there is no doubt that coming to an agreed upon definition of pre-genocide would be a monumental task. But it is a crucial concept, and we should consider it.
We must recognize that genocide per se did not occur in Nazi Germany until World War II got underway – more than six years after Hitler came to power. The intentions were there. The signs were there. But it was not yet genocide in the early and mid-1930s. World War II gave Hitler the opportunity to proceed with genocide in a setting where it would be difficult for the outside world to identify it. The only difference, with respect to genocide, between what Hitler did in Germany prior to World War II and the genocide that he perpetrated
during World War II, was the magnitude. World War II gave Hitler the opportunity to escalate a very sinister situation to genocide.
Pre-genocide in the context of the Bush administration’s “War on terror”So, why do I consider what is going on today to be “pre-genocide”? Let’s consider our treatment of prisoners and the Iraq war separately:
The habitual abuse including torture of our prisoners of war has been repeatedly justified by the Bush administration and his Republican Party enablers by reference to our “War on terror.” Part and parcel of this justification, when George W. Bush talks publicly about this issue, just as Hitler demonized the Jews in the early 1930s, Bush demonizes our prisoners.
One might object to this characterization of mine by saying that Bush’s demonizing of “terrorists” is very different than Hitler’s demonizing of Jews, since the former is based on actions and the latter is based on race. But look closer and the difference largely disappears. Hitler imputed evil actions and intentions to the Jews, and he used that imputation of evil actions and intentions to demonize an entire race of people.
Racism and genocide have very bad connotations among most Americans today, so a regime cannot openly claim to advocate them. But consider what George Bush is doing whenever he invokes the use of the word “terrorist” to refer to and to justify his abuse and torture of our prisoners. The use of the word “terrorist” to refer to these people is a very inaccurate characterization. The phrase “suspected terrorist” would be much more accurate, but it would not serve to accomplish Bush’s purpose of demonizing these people. I’m not quibbling over a small point here. In
this article I’ve referenced several sources which suggest, when taken together, that only a very small portion of our prisoners are actually terrorists. By repeatedly referring to them as “terrorists”, given that they are almost all of Middle Eastern descent and Muslim, George Bush is demonizing an entire race of people – just like Hitler did with the Jews. Yes, I know, most Muslims in our country today are not in prison, and they appear to have the same rights as any other American. But again, the Bush administration probably recognizes that if they went after too many too soon it would encounter a good deal of resistance from most Americans.
The Iraq war poses a similar issue. Despite the fact that all of the original justifications for the war have been proven to be a
pack of lies, George W. Bush continues to defend the war in public. And when he does so, using the same slight of words that he uses to characterize our prisoners of war, he always talks about what the “terrorists” did to us. Here is a
typical exchange between Bush and a journalist, reproduced from a
“Top Ten” article from two weeks ago:
Bush: You know, I've heard this theory about everything was just fine until we arrived, and kind of "we're going to stir up the hornet's nest" theory. It just doesn't hold water, as far as I'm concerned. The TERRORISTS attacked us and killed 3,000 of our citizens before we started the freedom agenda in the Middle East.
Journalist: What did Iraq have to do with that?
Bush: What did Iraq have to do with what?
Journalist: The attack on the World Trade Center?
Bush: Nothing, except for it's part of -- and nobody has ever suggested in this administration that Saddam Hussein ordered the attack. Iraq was a -- the lesson of September the 11th is, take threats before they fully materialize, Ken. Nobody has ever suggested that the attacks of September the 11th were ordered by Iraq. I have suggested, however, that resentment and the lack of hope create the breeding grounds for terrorists who are willing to use suiciders to kill to achieve an objective. I have made that case.
Don’t ask me to translate that last paragraph into English. It’s a perfect example of Bush’s repeated attempts to justify everything he does by reference to terrorists, while denying that that’s what he’s doing. Idiocy is only a partial explanation for Bush’s inability to talk coherently most of the time. The larger explanation (Read
The Bush Dyslexicon, by Mark Crispin Miller) is that he usually tries to imply a pernicious meaning to his words while at the same time denying that that is what he is trying to do. That is quite a trick and, to be honest about it, George Bush usually performs that trick well enough to fool a sizable minority of the American people (with a great deal of assistance from our corporate media).
The bottom lineFollowing the Nazi Holocaust of 60 + years ago, the world promised that it would never allow such a thing to happen again. But its record since that time has been far from perfect. If we are to prevent genocide (and its associated tyranny) from continuing to be a recurring phenomenon in our world we must become adept at recognizing it in its early stages.
One thing that makes that a difficult task is that crooks, racists, power-mad politicians, and combinations of the above admit to their pernicious intentions and plans only to the extent that they believe that doing so will be to their advantage. Thus, we must be able to look beneath the surface of what our politicians are saying, to what they really intend.
Whenever the Bush administration wants to justify policies that result in the abuse, torture, or deaths of people of Middle Eastern descent or of the Muslim faith, they trot out the words “terrorist” or “terrorism”. Terrorism is a real phenomenon, and something that we need to squarely address. But we must not allow that word to be used as an excuse for power-mad politicians to justify their plans to make our world into one in which the rules of a civilized and humane society have no meaning.
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