Tag: hatred
Warning: Do not behave like our perpetrators
[Note from Kathie MM: Today we welcome guest contributor John Hess, who has been an anti-war activist for 40 years, and worked for over 30 years in the construction business. He is currently a full-time faculty member in English and American Studies at UMass Boston, where he is a member of the executive committee for the faculty-staff union.]
I found this video the other day and thought it well worth passing on. It is a fascinating comment on the situation in Palestine/Israel from Dr. Hajo Meyer, a Jewish Holocaust survivor.
Meyer observes that Jews were “the pioneers of interhuman ethics” and that he “wants to wake the world” to speak out against the horrible treatment of the Palestinians by Israel.
One of the enduring strengths of Judaism is its strong moral tradition and it is in this tradition that Meyer urges Israelis “not to behave like our perpetrators” (the Nazis) toward the Palestinians and calls on the world to speak out against this behavior.
Watching the video led me to think about both the Holocaust and the situation in Palestine/Israel today. It seems to me they are in some important ways linked, so I took a long look at a book I haven’t glanced in quite awhile, The Cunning of History by Richard L. Rubenstein.
The Holocaust, Rubenstein said, was “a thoroughly modern exercise in total domination that could only have been carried out by an advanced political community with a highly trained, tightly disciplined police and civil service bureaucracy” (p. 4).
Rubenstein provides a warning that it is well worth heeding today: “One of the least helpful ways of understanding the Holocaust is to regard the destruction process as the work of a small group of irresponsible criminals who were atypical of normal statesmen and who somehow gained control of the German people, forcing them by terror and the deliberate stimulation of religious and ethnic hatred to pursue a barbaric and retrograde policy that was thoroughly at odds with the great traditions of Western civilization” (p. 21).
In his view, “The Holocaust was an expression of some of the most significant political, moral, religious and demographic tendencies of Western civilization in the twentieth century. The Holocaust cannot be divorced from the very same culture of modernity that produced the two world wars and Hitler” (p. 6).
What parallels do you see between the Holocaust and the situation in Palestine–or even other parts of the world?
John Hess, Senior Lecturer in English and American Studies, University of Massachusetts, Boston
Jared Loughner in the “mecca for prejudice”
The U.S. is a diverse nation with many subcultures. What do we know about cultural values in the Arizona in which Jared Loughner grew up?
Among the major values shaping the social climate in Arizona (the exosystem) are rugged individualism, conservative Christianity, anti-immigration policies and rhetoric, greater concern with the the First Amendment right to freedom of speech than the rights to freedom of religion and assembly, and aggressive support for the right to bear arms (as long as the bearer of the arms is white).
Where have those values led in recent years? Arizona is the state where local talk radio host “Jon Justice” called for “bloodshed in the polling places.”
Since Loughner’s rampage in Tucson, Arizona is also the state acknowledged by Sheriff Clarence W. Dupnik to have become “the mecca for prejudice and bigotry,” a place where local TV and radio hosts should do some “soul-searching.”
As Roberto Lovato wrote for the Huffington Post (January 13, 2011), “To many of us, the ‘deranged lone gunmen’ on the desert fringe can sometimes bear more than a passing resemblance to the God-fearing, gun-wielding patriot filling our cities and suburbs; we see how the ‘rugged individualism’ of a previous era is being hijacked by powerful interests.”
Arizona is also the state that produced Democratic Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, in many ways a model of personal agency in service of moral engagement. She has described problems (e.g., regarding education, health care, and the dangers of hate rhetoric) realistically; she has invoked moral principles consistent with the ethic of reciprocity in arguing for equal rights for gay people in the military; and she has been a humanizer rather than a dehumanizer of the downtrodden.
We dedicate today’s blog to Gabby. We pray for her successful recovery from violence–recovery not just from one disturbed youth, but from a hatred-filled minority that targeted her as a representative of a “demonized” government and as a spokesperson for values anathema to right-wing extremists.
Kathie Malley-Morrison, Professor of Psychology
Dehumanizing or demonizing the other (Moral disengagement, part 7)
Dehumanizing or demonizing the other is a particularly common form of moral disengagement, especially during wartime or other types of conflict.
Another moral disengagement mechanism described by psychologist Albert Bandura, it refers to portraying your enemy as less than human, as some sort of vile creature.
During World War II, all factions in the conflict created posters of the enemy as a subhuman monster. In addition, propaganda and feature films of that era–as well as during the Cold War and the Vietnam War–stereotyped, sub-humanized, dehumanized, and demonized the enemy.
Consider this quote: “…[This nation is] aiming at the exclusive domination of the [world], lost in corruption, [characterized by] deep-rooted hatred towards us, hostile to liberty wherever it endeavors to show its head, and the eternal disturber of the peace of the world.”
Who do you think said that? To what nation was he referring?
The answer to the first question is Thomas Jefferson, in 1815, when he was President. The nation in question was Great Britain. Imagine what might have happened if weapons of mass destruction were available back then. Suppose Jefferson, as President, pushed Congress for a preemptive strike against Great Britain. Would a more peaceful world have been achieved?
Kathie Malley-Morrison, Professor of Psychology
Note: This post was adapted from my previously published article in Peace Psychology (a publication of the American Psychological Association), Spring, 2009.