Peace and Contemporary Resistance: Cédric Herrou, and Us

As you may have seen in Schindler’s List, it is customary to leave a rock to mark your visit to a grave. It would seem that this grave has been visited quite a few times. Picture taken at Tiberias (Israel) cemetery. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license. Author: James Emery from Douglasville, United States.

by Alice LoCicero

In a tiny village in southern France, in 2017, lives a courageous contemporary resister: Cédric Herrou [1].

Herrou is a farmer who has helped African refugees along the treacherous route to Europe through Italy and France.  He has done this openly, publicly, in violation of the law, and despite much criticism. He has been tried in court and could be jailed for it, although he has not, so far.

Which of us would resist convention and law in order to help others who desperately need help in just to survive? How many of us have taken the safe, self-protective route, and advised others to do so as well? Are there ways we can increase the likelihood that we, or others, will be resisters? How can we teach selective obedience and selective disobedience? What does it take to disobey civil law, and comply with  moral, spiritual, and ethical mandates?

When we look back into history and consider well known Holocaust resisters and rescuers, such as Oskar Schindler, we celebrate them, and we are sure they made the right choice.[2]  But at the time they were making those choices, they were not celebrated; they were either doing so in secret, or were criticized harshly. They were disobeying the law and defying their governments. They were doing what they did at grave risk.

If we were to make the right choice today, we would face the same risks. We could be jailed. We could lose our jobs and standing. We could lose professional respect. We could be sued. We could be killed. What does it take to disobey?

Every psychology student and professor knows about Milgram’s studies of obedience and later partial replications of those studies—partial because contemporary research ethics would not allow researchers to put participants through what turned out to be an emotionally wrenching  experience. Most of the participants in most of these studies obey the person they see as an authority, even when it means applying what they are led to believe are painful and—in the early studies—what they believed were deadly–shocks to a stranger.

Most, but not all. What are the qualities common to those few participants who disobey? Some recent studies by Burger [3] answer that question. Those who resist in obedience studies are no more compassionate or empathic than those who continue to shock. That is not the common theme.

The common theme is that they believe themselves to be personally responsible for their actions. They do not, in other words, attribute responsibility to others. They take responsibility. This finding is consistent with a finding reported by Kelman and Hamilton in their classic text On Obedience. [4]

At the same time, we know from a well-supported principle of social psychology, that one person who breaks with convention is likely to lead to others doing so as well. And the more who do so the more likely others will join.

Honoring Resisters, Becoming Resisters

In Oslo, there is a museum dedicated to Norway’s many resisters during World War II. [5] Most of their names will never be well-known. Most of them died without anyone thanking them or giving them glory. Without their courage—had everyone taken the safe route, and had there been no resisters to the Nazi regime–we might already be living in a tyrannical, authoritarian society.

We face a very similar challenge today.  If we do not resist the anti-humanitarian, pro-war, xenophobic, white supremacist forces rampant in American society and its leadership in 2017, we will very likely be seen by future generations as complicit in the establishment of authoritarian and tyrannical rule and genocide. Silently standing by will not be seen, by future generations, as having been sufficient or acceptable.

Can we teach ourselves to take responsibility for our own behavior? Mentor others to do so as well?  How can we and others be prepared to resist and disobey when given unethical orders?

Had we done a better job of teaching psychology students to take responsibility and not obey unethical orders, psychologists might have put a stop to torture at Guantanamo and in black box sites during the Bush era. Had they publicly and openly refused, their actions might have inspired others.

If we teach current psychology students to disobey, we might have more humane treatment of those with mental illnesses who are currently detained in hospitals and prisons. We might have a system of incarceration that focuses on rehabilitation rather than punishment. And we might have a chance to prevent authoritarianism in the US.

References

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/02/10/defiant-french-farmer-cedric-herrou-given-suspended-fine-helping/

https://fcit.usf.edu/holocaust/people/rescuer.htm

Burger, J. M., Girgis, Z. M., & Manning, C. C. (2011) In their own words: Explaining obedience    to authority through an examination of participants’ comments.  Social Psychological and Personality Science, 2(5), 460-468.

Burger, J.M. (2014). Situational factors in Milgram’s experiment that kept his participants shocking. Journal of Social Issues, 70 (3), 489-500. doi:10.1111/josi.12073

Dr. Alice LoCicero is currently a visiting scholar at The Wright Institute in Berkeley, California, and president-elect of the Society for the Study of Peace and Conflict (Division 48 of the American Psychological Association.) Dr. LoCicero was the first president of the Society for Terrorism Research. She is author of two books and several peer-reviewed articles on terrorism. Her recent scholarship has documented the costs of the US counterterrorism policies, focusing on the flawed Countering Violent Extremism programs, and the American Psychological Association’s actions that supported torture of detainees at Guantanamo and other sites. Dr. LoCicero was shocked to see water protectors at Standing Rock, who were committed to non-violence, being treated as if they posed a threat equivalent to terrorists.

Celebrating Rebellion and Revolution (the Non-Violent Variety)

by Kathie MM

This week, citizens from all over the United States celebrated the anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, “written by the rebelling fathers of the United States”. Symbolic of the long-ago battles, fireworks lit up the skies and enactments of various forms of resistance filled the parks.

I chose to celebrate the day by giving thanks to rebels and revolutionaries who resist violence non violently, adhering to the principles of non-killing advocated by Glenn Paige.

In particular, I honored a young girl who wrote one of history’s most important books, a book with the power to promote empathy and compassion and to energize readers to fight prejudice, cruelty, scapegoating, and passive obedience to unrighteous authority.

I am talking about the mesmerizing diary of Anne Frank, the young teen writing her story while hiding with her mother, father, sister and four other people in a neglected factory annex in Amsterdam during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands and genocidal pursuit of Jews.

Anne’s tale of coming of age in that annex under such dire circumstances is engrossing, inspiring–and heart-breaking because we know that shortly after her last entry, German and Dutch police stormed the annex and seized the eight inhabitants plus two of the Dutch men and women who made it possible for Anne and the others to avoid becoming victims of the Holocaust for more than two years.

Think of the risks faced by those stalwart supporters bringing food, beverages, clothing, medicines, books, magazines, newspapers, week after week, month after month.

Anne’s diary bears witness to the horrors of one of the not-to-be forgotten episodes of man’s inhumanity to man, a horrifying example of what people who feel angry and mistreated can be led to do by power hungry leaders with a skill for identifying scapegoats, promoting anger and hatred, and stirring up prejudice.

The diary is also a testimonial to goodness, a reminder that there are always good people who will risk everything to resist evil and rebel against cruel and unjust authority—as indeed did the patriots who turned to warfare to free themselves.

Perhaps the greatest achievement of Anne’s diary is that it memorializes not just Anne but also the brave souls who fought to protect them– Victor Kugler, Johannes Kleiman, Miep Gies, and Bep Voskuijl.

It seems likely that, in part, the loyalty of such friends was what made it possible for Anne to write, while hiding in the Annex:

“It’s really a wonder that I haven’t dropped all my ideals, because they seem so absurd and impossible to carry out. Yet I keep them, because in spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart.”

 

 

Trump Has Taken A Page Straight From The Hitler Playbook

28 January 2017. Author: Social Justice – Bruce Emmerling. This file is made available under the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication.

by Steven Reisner

And you shall not mistreat a stranger, nor shall you oppress him, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.” ― Exodus 22:20

As a child, I lived in two worlds: the world that I shared with other kids on the streets of Brooklyn, and the world inside my house – a place of tension, strange stories, uncomfortable silences and sudden outbursts; a place where you never knew what would evoke rage and fear or what would trigger a horrific memory or what would turn light, empty talk into the subject of a dire warning. My parents were refugees who had escaped from Poland during the Second World War – and my family kitchen was, in a way, an outpost of the Holocaust.

 So, although I lived the privileged life of lower middle-class white America in the 60’s, I didn’t know it as a child. Because simultaneously, I lived in a world where friendship was determined by who I believed would hide me when the Nazis came to take us away; and where naiveté was represented by those who wouldn’t take these threats seriously or wouldn’t recognize when it was time to flee.

 This is why, when reading about what Donald Trump and his appointees are doing to our current immigrant population and to those seeking refuge, I can’t help but identify with the “aliens,” intuitively replacing the words ‘Muslim’ and ‘Syrian refugee’ with ‘Jew’ and ‘Jewish refugee.’ I instinctively transpose the language, for example, of Trump’s new Federal program, Victims of Immigrant Crime Engagement, to Victims of Jewish Crime Engagement, just to feel what it would be like to be Trump’s target, and wondering, if it were written that way in newspaper headlines, whether it would change anyone’s consciousness of what is happening.

 This is not to say that Trump is preparing concentration camps or the mass extermination of Muslims. But it is to say that that I read Trump’s policy-making as borrowing a page from Hitler’s playbook, galvanizing populist support by mobilizing his followers’ sense of special suffering at the hands of a specific population of alien usurpers. And, by ‘Hitler’s playbook,’ I am not speaking in generalizations or euphemisms; I am referring to Hitler’s actual playbook, the 1920 25-point program of the Nationalist Socialist Party. Like Trump’s playbook, this plan identified aliens as a threat to national unity, responsible for the usurping of jobs and the weakening of “positive Christianity.” Here are excerpts from Hitler’s 25-points:

Only members of the nation may be citizens of the State. Only those of German blood… may be members of the nation. Accordingly, no Jew may be a member of the nation… Non-citizens may live in Germany only as guests and must be subject to laws for aliens… We demand that the State shall make it its primary duty to provide a livelihood for its citizens. If it should prove impossible to feed the entire population, foreign nationals (non-citizens) must be deported from the Reich…

My friends tell me that, as a child of Holocaust survivors, I am too sensitive to these issues, and I, too, have always been skeptical of the overuse of the Hitler card to criticize political hate-speech. But the vitriol of the language of used by the current administration, coupled with the skill with which Trump mobilizes this hatred, has changed this reticence, not only for me, but for other historians of the Holocaust.  

One of the stories that was frequently told in my house was the story of my mother’s father, a tailor who delayed my family’s deportation to Auschwitz from the Lodz ghetto, because he spoke German and made uniforms and other garments for the German elite. One day, a neighbor, who had escaped to the Soviet Union, returned to the ghetto to try and help his family escape and warn the Jews of what was happening. He told terrible stories of mass shootings of Jews at the hands of the Germans. My grandfather, who learned German as a young soldier in the German army during the First World War, refused to believe his stories. He told my mother that he had been treated very well in the military and that the Germans were a civilized people.

 For my mother, this was not simply a cautionary tale, but simultaneously a story about how her father, even in the ghetto, had not given up hope in others’ humanity. For me, it is a reminder that, sometimes, holding on to long is the greater threat. My grandfather, my grandmother, my aunt and two uncles died in Auschwitz as a direct result of the hatred of the foreigner, stoked by Hitler’s playbook.

 So when Trump stokes ethnic hatred by painting an immigrant ethnic group as criminals, rapists, and drug dealers (in much the same way that Nazi propaganda highlighted Jewish crimes); creates a special Office on Victims of Immigrant Crimes; and calls for a weekly report to “make public a comprehensive list of criminal actions committed by aliens,” it does not feel like a leap to harken back to Hitler’s creation of a special Office of Racial Policy, and the order from Hitler’s Minister of Justice that called on prosecutors to “forward a copy of every [criminal] indictment against a Jew to the ministry’s press division.”

 I play my language game very seriously because, as a Jew, I know that when one group is targeted, we must see all groups as targeted. As a Jew, I know that when bystanders ignore one outrage and then another and another, they become complicit and less likely to protest as time goes on. As a Jew, I know better than to confuse my current privilege with safety. And as a Jew, I know that when they come for the aliens, the Muslims, the Mexicans, when they come for the [fill in the blank], they come for me.

  Originally published on the Huffington Post, 04/09/2017 06:16 pm ET. Republished with permission.

Steven Reisner is a psychoanalyst and founding member of the Coalition for an Ethical Psychology and adviser on ethics and psychology for Physicians for Human Rights.