MaxedOutMama
Saturday, April 30, 2005
Free Speech And Thought
Coyote Blog has an excellent piece on free speech on campuses and in society:
Now that "Mein Kampf" is back in vogue in a large chunk of the world, those of us who haven't read it might want to. It is a horrible and upsetting book, but it is worth reading. In it Hitler clearly laid out his guiding principles and his way of looking at the world, and when he got power he did pretty much exactly as he said he would. No one should have been surprised at what he did.
I have read historical excuses for the western world not offering a haven and a helping hand to the Jewish refugees from Germany, and they always amount to "we didn't know, who could have imagined". That is wrong and a lie, and when various Nazi functionaries were greated with applause at Harvard and Yale in the 1930's, those cheering should have known what they were cheering and generally did, but rationalized this knowledge away. In part they did so to justify their own anti-Semitism and racialism (which looked mild and gentle by comparison). This is what Hitler wrote in chapter 2:
Hitler believed that the only way for his race (the Aryan race) to save themselves from extinction was by brute force and a war of extermination. He also dismisses the basic ideas of the Judeo-Christian tradition as an attempt by the Jews to fool society into not exercising its superior strength to throw off the fearsome power of the Jews. So mercy, and not killing the innocent, and helping the weak, etc were all false values in Hitler's view of the world, promulgated by the Jews in order to win the war of races.
The reason we remain confused about how the Holocaust could happen is because we have lied to ourselves about our own history. Social Darwinism, anti-Semitism and racialism (the denial of the essential unity of the human race) were concepts spread wide across the western world before WWII and most predominant among intellectual and scientific circles. Euthanasia was being openly recommended before World War II. Sterilization of those considered hereditarily unfit was a program recommended by the United States Surgeon General. We have pulled the horrors of the Nuremberg trials over our own culture's deficits like a curtain.
Darwin's basic scientific insights were magnificent, but they were almost immediately turned toward justifying the domination of the powerless by those in power in western society. And Darwin himself, for example, believed that women represented a more primitive form of life than men and in the "Descent Of Man" seems to be considering the Malthusian idea that racial varieties of man are doomed to fight with each other over limited resources, and that this may prove to be beneficial to the continuing evolution of the human race. He does say that the Negro is an intermediate form between apes and man. Darwin was a stunningly brilliant observer; his observations applied to public policy were anything but brilliant. You can find the Project Gutenberg text of The Descent Of Man here; here's a snazzy quote from Chapter 1:
Darwin wasn't Hitler, and he wasn't advocating Hitler's policies, but Darwin did blur causes and effects in this book. He thought apparently not at all about the effects of nutrition, education, religion, philosophy and ethics (i.e. culture and enviroment) on human populations and placed a great deal of importance upon what he could observe empirically, which was the current state of existence of different ethnic populations. From his observations he derived the ideas that white people were more "evolved" than black people and that women represented a more primitive form of the species than men. And thus, the western world was prosperous and powerful not because of certain cultural values it held, such as an emphasis on education and justice, but because our lighter skins were a sign of our more evolved race.
The incredibly seductive power of this type of reasoning to justify injustice was not long resisted by the older mandates of Judeo-Christian thought and the humanist tradition of the Enlightenment among western intellectual circles. Now feeding the weak and the hungry could be shown to be a futile resistance against the inexorable and benevolent course of nature. Now policies intended to help the oppressed and the powerless could be shown to be intellectually and scientifically barren - to share power was to nurture the unhealthy and unfit and thus to weaken the best of us.
The reason the western world didn't react in absolute rejection against Nazi Germany was that its ideas were only extremist versions of western intellectual and popularized versions of intellectual thought.
Given our own cultural history and its terrible flowering in the Holocaust, we should not now ignore the reality that Hitler's "Mein Kampf" is again popular across areas of the world. It's selling well in Turkey and parts of the Middle East. No cognitively and ethically sane person can read this book without being appalled. We should not turn our eyes away from the implications of its popularty now. Both the sexism and the anti-Semiticism of "Mein Kampf" have obvious appeal to some segments in these societies. They can also be valiantly rejected by reference to the older traditions within those societies, including Islam itself. However, for this to occur open debate and freedom of expression must be permitted within those societies.
It is best for any society that people who do espouse ideas like Hitler's are given a forum along with everyone else. This way everyone can understand the whole of their thinking and debunk their ideas. If you drive this sort of thing underground you give it a false legitimacy and rob yourselves of the opportunity to directly challenge it. Ideas do have consequences, and wars of ideas are always being fought out in human history. It is better to fight those wars intellectually before we must fight wars with weapons. "Mein Kampf" is still illegal in Germany. It would be better for Germany and Europe (not to mention America) to confront its own history openly and honestly. There is no free thought without free speech.
Speech limitations are a very slippery slope. So much so that I have never encountered speech or expression by adults aimed at other adults that I would limit. Nazis, communists, birchers, pornographers, racists, revolutionaries, militia, muslims, atheists: Have at it....The point about Hitler is true. There is a lot more to the Coyote blogger's post, and I'd hope everyone would go over there and read it.
I have never understood why so many people think that the right approach to people who have stupid, awful ideas is to keep them from being heard. This applies not only to speech codes but the increasingly frequent attempts to ban speakers from campus or, if that is unsuccessful, drown their speech out with chants and interruptions. Why? I have always thought that Sunlight is the Best Disinfectant not just for government proceedings but for bad ideas as well. Let them be heard and ridiculed. After all, Hitler "called his shots" more than a decade before he began his horrible reign. The world would have been better off if he had been listened to carefully in those early years.
Now that "Mein Kampf" is back in vogue in a large chunk of the world, those of us who haven't read it might want to. It is a horrible and upsetting book, but it is worth reading. In it Hitler clearly laid out his guiding principles and his way of looking at the world, and when he got power he did pretty much exactly as he said he would. No one should have been surprised at what he did.
I have read historical excuses for the western world not offering a haven and a helping hand to the Jewish refugees from Germany, and they always amount to "we didn't know, who could have imagined". That is wrong and a lie, and when various Nazi functionaries were greated with applause at Harvard and Yale in the 1930's, those cheering should have known what they were cheering and generally did, but rationalized this knowledge away. In part they did so to justify their own anti-Semitism and racialism (which looked mild and gentle by comparison). This is what Hitler wrote in chapter 2:
When over long periods of human history I scrutinized the activity of the Jewish people, suddenly there rose up in me the fearful question whether inscrutable Destiny, perhaps Or reasons unknown to us poor mortals, did not with eternal and immutable resolve, desire the final victory of this little nation.Hitler declared Total War against Jews long before he ever rose to power. It's all here - he both feared Jews and wished to destroy them all. The social Darwinism and the Nature-as-God-and-Fate blather permeates his disturbed thoughts and his distress is focused on the Jews because he fears them. He doesn't consider them human - he really considers them a type of exceptional intellectual human, capable of taking over the world and exterminating all "real" humans by the force of their terrible ideas. He compensates for this perception with the belief that they are genetically physically weaker.
Was it possible that the earth had been promised as a reward to this people which lives only for this earth?
Have we an objective right to struggle for our self-preservation, or is this justified only subjectively within ourselves?
As I delved more deeply into the teachings of Marxism and thus in tranquil clarity submitted the deeds of the Jewish people to contemplation, Fate itself gave me its answer.
The Jewish doctrine of Marxism rejects the aristocratic principle of Nature and replaces the eternal privilege of power and strength by the mass of numbers and their dead weight. Thus it denies the value of personality in man, contests the significance of nationality and race, and thereby withdraws from humanity the premise of its existence and its culture. As a foundation of the universe, this doctrine would bring about the end of any order intellectually conceivable to man. And as, in this greatest of ail recognizable organisms, the result of an application of such a law could only be chaos, on earth it could only be destruction for the inhabitants of this planet.
If, with the help of his Marxist creed, the Jew is victorious over the other peoples of the world, his crown will be the funeral wreath of humanity and this planet will, as it did thousands l of years ago, move through the ether devoid of men.
Eternal Nature inexorably avenges the infringement of her commands.
Hence today I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord.
Hitler believed that the only way for his race (the Aryan race) to save themselves from extinction was by brute force and a war of extermination. He also dismisses the basic ideas of the Judeo-Christian tradition as an attempt by the Jews to fool society into not exercising its superior strength to throw off the fearsome power of the Jews. So mercy, and not killing the innocent, and helping the weak, etc were all false values in Hitler's view of the world, promulgated by the Jews in order to win the war of races.
The reason we remain confused about how the Holocaust could happen is because we have lied to ourselves about our own history. Social Darwinism, anti-Semitism and racialism (the denial of the essential unity of the human race) were concepts spread wide across the western world before WWII and most predominant among intellectual and scientific circles. Euthanasia was being openly recommended before World War II. Sterilization of those considered hereditarily unfit was a program recommended by the United States Surgeon General. We have pulled the horrors of the Nuremberg trials over our own culture's deficits like a curtain.
Darwin's basic scientific insights were magnificent, but they were almost immediately turned toward justifying the domination of the powerless by those in power in western society. And Darwin himself, for example, believed that women represented a more primitive form of life than men and in the "Descent Of Man" seems to be considering the Malthusian idea that racial varieties of man are doomed to fight with each other over limited resources, and that this may prove to be beneficial to the continuing evolution of the human race. He does say that the Negro is an intermediate form between apes and man. Darwin was a stunningly brilliant observer; his observations applied to public policy were anything but brilliant. You can find the Project Gutenberg text of The Descent Of Man here; here's a snazzy quote from Chapter 1:
The enquirer would next come to the important point, whether man tends to increase at so rapid a rate, as to lead to occasional severe struggles for existence; and consequently to beneficial variations, whether in body or mind, being preserved, and injurious ones eliminated. Do the races or species of men, whichever term may be applied, encroach on and replace one another, so that some finally become extinct? We shall see that all these questions, as indeed is obvious in respect to most of them, must be answered in the affirmative, in the same manner as with the lower animals.And here's another couple of quotes from Chapter 1 "Man differs from woman in size, bodily strength, hairiness, etc., as well as in mind, in the same manner as do the two sexes of many mammals." and "The variability or diversity of the mental faculties in men of the same race, not to mention the greater differences between the men of distinct races, is so notorious that not a word need here be said."
Darwin wasn't Hitler, and he wasn't advocating Hitler's policies, but Darwin did blur causes and effects in this book. He thought apparently not at all about the effects of nutrition, education, religion, philosophy and ethics (i.e. culture and enviroment) on human populations and placed a great deal of importance upon what he could observe empirically, which was the current state of existence of different ethnic populations. From his observations he derived the ideas that white people were more "evolved" than black people and that women represented a more primitive form of the species than men. And thus, the western world was prosperous and powerful not because of certain cultural values it held, such as an emphasis on education and justice, but because our lighter skins were a sign of our more evolved race.
The incredibly seductive power of this type of reasoning to justify injustice was not long resisted by the older mandates of Judeo-Christian thought and the humanist tradition of the Enlightenment among western intellectual circles. Now feeding the weak and the hungry could be shown to be a futile resistance against the inexorable and benevolent course of nature. Now policies intended to help the oppressed and the powerless could be shown to be intellectually and scientifically barren - to share power was to nurture the unhealthy and unfit and thus to weaken the best of us.
The reason the western world didn't react in absolute rejection against Nazi Germany was that its ideas were only extremist versions of western intellectual and popularized versions of intellectual thought.
Given our own cultural history and its terrible flowering in the Holocaust, we should not now ignore the reality that Hitler's "Mein Kampf" is again popular across areas of the world. It's selling well in Turkey and parts of the Middle East. No cognitively and ethically sane person can read this book without being appalled. We should not turn our eyes away from the implications of its popularty now. Both the sexism and the anti-Semiticism of "Mein Kampf" have obvious appeal to some segments in these societies. They can also be valiantly rejected by reference to the older traditions within those societies, including Islam itself. However, for this to occur open debate and freedom of expression must be permitted within those societies.
It is best for any society that people who do espouse ideas like Hitler's are given a forum along with everyone else. This way everyone can understand the whole of their thinking and debunk their ideas. If you drive this sort of thing underground you give it a false legitimacy and rob yourselves of the opportunity to directly challenge it. Ideas do have consequences, and wars of ideas are always being fought out in human history. It is better to fight those wars intellectually before we must fight wars with weapons. "Mein Kampf" is still illegal in Germany. It would be better for Germany and Europe (not to mention America) to confront its own history openly and honestly. There is no free thought without free speech.
