In response to the gentiles posting about the humanity of Hitler and the Nazis on Yom Hashoah

[attackfish]

If we’re going to be humanizing Hitler and the Nazis, okay, let’s do that. Let’s talk about how they had friends, and families, and flirted, and didn’t stop doing all the things humans do just because they started becoming monsters. Okay, that’s nice. Let’s talk about how when it was all over, they managed to put all that death and murder, and hate, and cruelty back in a box and keep doing all those nice human things. Let’s talk about how many of them were nice to their kids and loved their families. Let’s talk about how entire nations grew up telling themselves: “not my parents. Yes my dad was a member of the party, but he didn’t know. My mom worked for a company that used slave labor, but she didn’t know. Not my aunt, not my uncle, not the people who I love and love me. They didn’t know.” Let’s talk about how “no one” knew. Let’s talk about how that is absolute bullshit. Let’s talk about the lies that people have been telling themselves for thousands of years, that they are still telling themselves, that made this possible, about the greedy parasitic Jew, and the thieving, cheating dirty G*psy. Let’s talk about how at the start of WWII, more Americans were worried about how much power Jews had than how much power Hitler had, while Jews didn’t even have the power to keep themselves alive. Let’s talk about how antisemitism and anti-Romani racism are alive and well in Europe and the Americas today. Let’s talk about how maybe, just maybe you should look at your mother’s favorite great uncle, and your grandmother who made you cookies, and your friends’ grandparents and the way they look so human, and ask yourself: “Did they really not know?”

And maybe then we can talk about all those dead human beings they “didn’t know” about.

 

Comments

[ljlee]

Oh good, you've put it here too. Humanizing killers and onlookers is all well and good, but my problem is that these stories tell an incomplete and therefore misleading truth. In my mind a good humanizing story should be, "Look at these people who are totally not monsters but people who could be you. And look at the awful things they did to these other people who are also all too human, just like you. See? You are not immune. You, too, have the capacity for evil within you." A proper villain-humanization story should make people uncomfortable, it should make people examine what they believe and what they do.

Instead, all too often the story is "Look at these people who are totally not monsters but people who could be you. And look at the awful things they did to... oh, these interchangeable stereotypes that are totally not like you. Why are we so hard on these poor dears, anyway? They're just people, not monsters! The evil must have happened like a flash flood or an earthquake, who knows. But let's not blame these totally-people for what happened to these not-quite-people, because that's awful to call people bad names like Nazis." These stories soothe where they should sting, and uphold the status quo while giving creators and viewers alike a totally undeserved sense that they are somehow brave and moral.

Humanization should mean acknowledging that humans, all humans, are capable of evil. Instead it's often used as a device to cut out the evil from the wrongdoers' lives while dehumanizing the victims, as though there's only so much humanity to go around. And guess which kind of story sells better and gets more acclaims. Sometimes I hate people.

[attackfish]

I always post here. I have it set to crosspost to livejournal.

The other thing humanizing villain-humanizing story should do is tell you that not only are you capable of evil, but also that the people most likely to give cruelty and murder form, to give the orders and shape the justifications, the ones who not only look away, but take advantage, look a lot like not only you, but your friends and neighbors. Not only do we have to guard against our own potential to do evil, which is the easiest task here really, but we have to learn not to look away when other people do evil, just because they look like us, and they are nice to us. So much of our visual vocabulary of what evil looks like has been shaped by the Nazis, so in retrospect, it looks even more like they were wearing signs around their necks proclaiming their villainy. It's important to realize that this is a retrospective view, and a lot of people, a lot of people managed to convince themselves that the Nazis were doing the right thing.

Humanization should mean acknowledging that humans, all humans, are capable of evil. Instead it's often used as a device to cut out the evil from the wrongdoers' lives while dehumanizing the victims, as though there's only so much humanity to go around.

Exactly. I read these kind of "pity the poor Nazi" posts and I ask myself is it really so hard to empathize with people who died in terror and pain, who were tortured and enslaved, who survived but lost their whole families, who were starved, who died of disease and overcrowding, without any medical care, whose bodies were taken from them and used for whatever the Nazis thought they could gain, sometimes in that order and sometimes not? Is it really that hard to empathize with dying children?

I think we see the same process with abuse apologia, and bully apologia, and rape apologia, and all of those much smaller scale evils. So many people find it more palatable to empathize with the victimizers than with their victims.

[ljlee]

Oh, I meant here as well as Tumblr. I considered replying there, but I hate reblogging text for discussion.

Not only do we have to guard against our own potential to do evil, which is the easiest task here really, but we have to learn not to look away when other people do evil, just because they look like us, and they are nice to us.

Excellent point! I consider "evil by omission" to be totally evil, and the thing is too many Germans were not only passive bystanders but active supporters of the regime.

Is it really that hard to empathize with dying children?

I think it is psychologically hard. Sympathize, sure, as in "Oh you poor things," and I do mean things--objects to be gawked at, to be pitied, to be saved. But to empathize--to enter into their stories and lives, even to acknowledge that they had lives and stories of their own, to feel what they felt, to realize that this could have been you, that is painful and it makes the world feel less safe.

Obviously it is moral cowardice not to take this conceptual leap of empathy. To withhold empathy is to cling to a fantasy of safety at the cost of disregarding and perpetuating oppression. I know that temptation as someone who has always been in the majority or at least a tolerated minority, the temptation to hold myself aloof from the oppressed and tell myself it could never be me and they must be less human or must have done something wrong. I can see why others give in to it, which does not make it any less inexcusable or wrong.

I am reminded of James Baldwin's words from Stranger in the Village: "People who shut their eyes to reality simply invite their own destruction, and anyone who insists on remaining in a state of innocence long after that innocence is dead turns himself into a monster." Innocence becomes monstrous, willful ignorance when maintained for the purpose of shielding one's self from the discomfort of reality. I agree it is very much the logic of abuse and the enabling of abuse: Your personhood matters less than my momentary comfort. I will deny your humanity for as long as I can just so I can feel safe.

[attackfish]

Many Germans, and non-Germans for that matter, were active participants, as you said, but many more just turned their backs, and they were just as necessary as the ones who actively committed the crimes. And it's so much easier to just turn your back than it is to participate or to fight. Every Jewish kid grows up playing a mental game, looking around at their friends and schoolmates and thinking "Who would hide me? Would someone hide me?" meaning of course, who would really risk their lives to protect ours. I grew up playing this game, but I also grew up playing the "If you had seen me in third and fourth grade, or middle school, when it was really bad, would you have stood up for me?" game. About three years ago, I tried to explain to my therapist that it wasn't enough for me that most people I talked to wouldn't hurt me, if most people I talked to would let me be hurt, and I still feel like taking everybody and making them see that they can't let other people be hurt any more than they can hurt other people.

Maybe it's because I was so badly bullied, and spent so much time alone and afraid, and my illness brought me close to death pretty regularly, maybe it's because I never had the illusion of safety, but even before my mom converted and we found out about the family history, I always found it much much easier to empathize with the victims. Perhaps easy is the wrong word. It hurts, and it feels awful, but I can't help it. When I hear those stories, and read accounts of what happened, even when I just read names in a database, that feeling of pain, that wish that someone, something could have stopped it, and that knowledge that they must have been so scared, and so desperate, for themselves, for their families is almost overwhelming. The people who lived though it talk about existing for years on despair and panic. Whenever I think about the Holocaust or Nazism even casually, I feel a tiny echo of that, whether I want to or not, and everything in me wants to find a way to make everything better, even though it's impossible. I mean, I can empathize with the Nazis, but it's harder and I have to actually try. Empathizing with the victims just happens. There are times when I think about the magnitude of who was lost, what was destroyed, and I just feel so sick with it that I don't know what to do. I don't know how people turn that off.