Acceptable hate. Allowable hate. Sanctioned hate. Legal hate. Mandated hate. What’s the flavor of the day?

Members of Nevada Desert Experience hold a prayer vigil during the Easter period of 1982 at the entrance to the Nevada Test Site. In the public domain. Author: National Nuclear Security Administration / Nevada Site Office.

By Rev. Doe West

I have been giving honest contemplation to sponsored hate throughout my life.

A kickover moment came when I posted something on Facebook about the POTUS using the word “animals” to describe immigrants and received a reply pointing out that he was applying that term very specifically to gang members, not all immigrants.

I get it, but that leads me to more questions:

  • should we ever allow this level of dehumanizing towards any human being?
  • Is it okay to dehumanize those who dehumanize others?
  • What does it do for ourselves, our society, humanity, to make hatred and dehumanization acceptable, even mandated?

Culturally acceptable ways to denigrate any group become signposts for directing our hate–sometimes literally, as in “no Irish,” “no Italians,” “no Chinese,” “no Colored.” People have found countless ways to communicate how and when and whom to hate.

Tragically, religious beliefs cannot be trusted to assure mercy, grace, and love, or lead society to higher ground.

On one hand, Father James Martin, SJ, a Jesuit priest, pulls no punches: “Calling people animals is sinful.  Every human being has infinite dignity.  Moreover, this is the same kind of language that led to the extermination of Jews (”vermin”) in Germany and of Tutsi (“cockroaches”) in Rwanda.  This kind of language cannot be normalized.  It is a grave sin.”

On the other hand, the most radicalized right religious of any faith consider anyone they hate to personify  sin and to be exterminated in the name of their God.

If God is not a safe covering for peace – if language can be easily swung from tool to weapon – if it all comes down to individual belief and personally comfortable boundaries, who is safe?  And who or what becomes a place of hope?  Is there no clear rallying cry or unifying moral understanding that we can count on to help us all rise to higher ground together?

Personally, I am holding space for hope, and I am working daily to help shape our culture by my words and actions.  Today, I will use the words from the Old Testament of the Judeo-Christian text as I did in the ‘60s, when I worked for peace and justice, and as I continue to do today:

“And he shall judge among the nations, and shall rebuke many people: and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore.” (Isaiah 2:4)

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.

Reflections on Witnessing the Republican Presidential Candidate Debate

Philippe-Jacques de Loutherbourg, Richard Coeur de Lion à la bataille de Saint-Jean d’Acre, New Walk Museum and Art Gallery, Leicester
Image by Ji-Elle and licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

By guest author Anthony J. Marsella

(December 15, 2015 – CNN TV – Las Vegas, Nevada)

I sat and watched, speechless, at what was unfolding before me. Billed as a debate of potential presidential candidates, I expected — hoped — the candidates and CNN would respond to the gravity of the event by producing educated and informed discussions and disagreements of global and national challenges and solutions. What emerged was a display of personal insults, character assaults, and offensive remarks more often found in testosterone-stench locker rooms.

What occurred was a CNN-produced “theatrical” display of inept potential leaders of our nation pandering to media-hype, and to endorsements of hate-filled agendas designed to brutally persecute and murder human lives nationally and across the world. Could this be happening? Was this what was celebrated as a display of democracy? “Demoncracy,” I say!

I understood! This was nothing more than a ratings-driven and profit-making entertainment spectacle for those seeking an affirmation of media-fed stereotypes and minds closed by anger, fear, and frustration. This was a “Joseph Goebbels-like propaganda creation.” Recall: Joseph Goebbels was Reich Minister of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda in Nazi Germany. He sought to prepare Germany for “total war.” Who is in charge here?

What a shameless display of ignorance! What guilt-free and conscienceless display of murderous impulses! What an egregious display of Judeo-Christian morality! What a humiliating display of the moral-less pursuit of power and position! What a tragic display of American cultural decline, shown to the world in a theatrical format insulting the very word “democracy.” What a depressing display of the collapse of America’s noble heritage, now embraced and controlled by bigots under the guise of salvation and apocalyptic-visions.

How can it be we find ourselves faced with such choices in national and international leadership? To what do we attribute the sheer insanity of justifiable murder and destruction without recognizing our own culpability in generating the very foes we now seek to “erase” from existence? Has the media we once relied upon to provide us an educated awareness of our political and economic limitations and faults become a partner in our demise? Could they be ignorant of their power and responsibility to shape opinion through biased and prejudiced information, posing as accurate and factual news?

I am no longer surprised at the appalling events and forces greeting each day as we head for global disaster, led by the preservation of American interests. These interests are not those of the nation we recall as the hope and light of the world for freedom and liberty. These interests serve chosen and selected individuals, groups, societies, and nations consumed by consumption, oblivious to the consequences of their assault on life in all its forms, wedded to material comforts and conveniences at the loss of their very identity as intelligent, compassionate, and wisdom carriers.

Consider the trade-offs voiced by the near morally-impaired candidates vying to lead the once most powerful world nation. Hark to their responses: (1) we must have mass surveillance and monitoring of all citizen information because this will enable us to protect ourselves from danger; (2) we must carpet bomb our enemies without consideration of innocence; (3) we must build borders with fences — north and south, east and west – protected by fortress walls and deadly traps, to stop desperate people from entering our obviously sacred land; (4) we must build intelligence gathering systems of such scope and magnitude that privacy for all citizens is obliterated; (5) we must turn to warrior generals and a military might of such proportion that death will be welcomed by our foes to escape the suffering of witnessing their families destroyed; (6) we must violate very known international, legal, moral, and religious code in defense of our people and land, even as we know this defense will create an endless supply of domestic and international “terrorists,” bent on our inevitable destruction from the sheer madness pf our policies and methods; (7) we must think first of ourselves – our citizens, culture, and (unspoken: corrupt and crony) political and economic system, designed to preserve the security of the (unspoken: a few hundred individuals) wealthy citizens who guard their wealth in off-shore accounts legally eluding taxation because the lower classes are undeserving of largesse.

Need I go on with this sorrowful dirge, this “We must” trope, pandering to the audience of citizens who feel their heritage of position and privilege is threatened now by the growing omnipresent and omnipotent non-white and non-Christian strangers from distant lands with dark skins, bearded and covered faces, slanted eyes, strange accents, and strange gods now visible in every school, store, restaurant, and hospital.

Can you not see the threat they pose, our potential leaders cry? Their values, dress, and foods are taking over! Mexican, Indian, Chinese, and African numbers in moderation was fine! But not in the numbers now present! They will dominate the population by 2030! We must take back our country!”

I ask: Whose country? When did a nation’s rights and privileges trump (no pun intended) the value of human lives and welfare? Has the United States forgotten the enormous contributions of immigrants to its land? Look at the celebrated figures in science, education, entertainment, culture, and accumulated knowledge and wisdom? Jews, Italians, Chinese, Indians, Poles! Look again, ,  Ari! Who made America great, if it ever was great without imposing victimhood?

The idealistic aspirations of the talented founding fathers soon yielded to abuses of shocking proportion: genocides of American Indians, enslavement of African Americans, dominations of indigenous people, invasions and colonization of the Philippines, Cuba, Central and South America. The list of faults and flaws is endless. We deformed and sullied initial aspirations in favor of selfish and avaricious needs.

As a nation, we pursued empire, stocking the world with more than 900 military bases, overthrowing elected governments, replacing them with purchased lackeys, invading nations to impose our will, killing millions in the process! We and our allies seized the unfolding changes brought by trans-border technologies (e.g., transportations, ownership, finances, communication, treaties) known as globalization, and immediately turned them into our control — a hegemonic globalization – abusing the emerging global interdependencies in favor of selfish national commercial interests.

Is this what we seek to preserve? Is this what we hold before us as national pride? Is this what we think of when we sing a national anthem so ingrained with violence it affirms the glory of wars, charging our souls with a flood of exploding bombs. Is this what the media entertainment program, billed as a presidential debate, was designed to address? If so, what a failure of candidates, vision, and conscience!

I heard only “crusaders” justifying violence in the name of god and country . . . a regression to medieval notions of good and bad, to wars for a Judeo-Christian God, who must be crying at the continued ignorance of his believers. Hymns, anthems, white everywhere, an Anglo-Saxon Jesus legitimizing violence, camouflage clothing and minds, weapons in every pocket and bra, beer cans, fast cars, computer-salvation in algorithms absent any moral code, tumbling numbers and symbols yielding an ersatz wisdom at the cost of billions of dollars and compromised minds.

Consider this reality: (1) corporations have equal or more rights than individuals, and pay fewer taxes; (2) off-shore bank accounts harbor hundreds of billions of dollars; (3) our military expenditures exceed those of all other countries; (4) poverty levels are rising to new heights; (5) foreign and domestic lobbyists dominate government policies and actions; (5) lawlessness has become endemic as “moral” and “legal” codes model justification of any act by those in power; (6) education systems are rife with failure, blaming schools, administrators, teachers, students, and buildings, but not the very daily culture of our society. There is no need to continue.

What have we become? Oh my God! Can we have any pride in what we have become? Can we escape this emerging fate sealing us now in body and mind behind walls of concrete and minds of porous space? What can be done? I do not know! I had a different vision of the Republican Presidential Debate.

The process and steps I wanted? I imagined a truth and reconciliation process with the following steps:

1. Confession: I envisioned each candidate falling on their knees and confessing our nation’s faults, and uttering “Mea culpa – mea maxima culpa! I apologize for what we and I have done! I apologize for accepting and promoting the lies and deceit we accepted – strategic communications – lies to serve a purpose.

  1. Forgiveness: I wanted each candidate to ask for forgiveness from the world’s people. I wanted each candidate to beg for forgiveness for what we have done in endless egregious in acts and consequences. We have killed, tolerated, endorsed, authorized, and permitted murder by us and our allies. Forgive us! Forgive us! Forgive us!

  1. Restitution: I imagined each candidate advancing an agenda for healing the world: economic programs, educational supports, legal and justice systems, condemnations of violence, support for peace, changes in government policies and institutions, and on and on. Costs? Less than our military budgets, less than accumulated government waste, less than failed programs, and on and on.

The result: The beginning of a new era of global cooperation with hope, integrity, individual and collective worth, and the discovery of the possibilities of life. Reform! Rebirth! Renewal! Renaissance!

If not: “We reap what we sow!” More deaths and destruction! We become consumed with the fear fostered, and only gun dealers, war mongers, and hate-filled demented continue to thrive. Terrorism is an ancient act! Terrorism was present as Jewish zealots assassinated Roman soldiers in ancient Palestine. They sought escape from oppression and abuse, insults to their religion and way-of-life. Terrorism has been present throughout history, arising whenever a group of people believe they no longer have legal and non-violent options for correcting injustice. Terrorism by individuals, groups, and nations (i.e., state terrorism) is alive and well? Why?

At what point do we as a nation acknowledge we have helped create the tragedy of terrorism by our own actions — policies serving our selfish needs and those of a few allies. For this we have thrown the world into chaos and disarray! We cannot continue imposing our will and interests on the world without consequence. Think! Hate begets hate! Nuclear weapons now proliferate.

This essay was originally posted by Transcend Media Services, December 17, 2015; reprinted with permission.

Anthony J. Marsella, PhD, is emeritus professor of psychology, University of Hawaii, and former president of Psychologists for Social Responsbility (http://www. psysr.org). His recent publications include Marsella, A.J. (2012). Globalization and psychology. Journal of Social Issues, 68, 454-472; and Marsella, A.J. (2011). Nonkilling psychology and lifeism: I am what am. In J. Pim & D. Christie (Eds.), Nonkilling Psychology (pp. 361-378). Honolulu, HI: Center for Global Non-Violence.

ajmarsella@gmail.com

Enemies of the State . . .

President George W. Bush addressing the media, National Security Agency in Fort Meade, Md., Jan. 25, 2006. In the public domain. Photo by Eric Draper.

 

This is the third post in a series on Two Paths in the Woods by guest author Dr. Anthony Marsella.

A popular tactic used by “national security agencies” to neutralize critics does not involve directly interfering with an individual’s efforts to promote peace and social justice or to be a voice for moral actions.

Rather, these agencies simply collect and collate extensive information from surveillance, monitoring, and searching archives from distant years. At some point, if the critic becomes too “unbearable” to the agency, they simply begin the process of neutralization by releasing “offensive” information gleaned from many sources, and systematically destroying the critic’s character and moral standing.

All our lives involve sins of commission and omission. Some are apparent and well-known. Others may be buried in the privacy of the critic’s soul. But  agencies intent on “neutralization”  engage in building a systematic profile designed to destroy the words and ideas of the critic. This is done by using different cooperating sources to affirm their conclusion. Was this not what occurred in Nazi Germany, STASI East Germany, Fascist Italy, Communist USSR, North Korea – “Enemies of the State”?

Is this not what is happening in the USA and its allies today?

These destructive acts, whether done by a person, society, or nation, are equally violent and devastating, leaving scars on minds and bodies that are painful and memorable for the agony they have carried. We accuse, vilify, slander, denigrate, abuse, and malign individuals, groups, races, religions, nations, and the very planet on which we live through choices we make and utter each day. This is the way it begins! This is the root of hate and violence. This is the seemingly innocent path that leads so easily to broader acts of violence, destruction, killing, and war.

Anthony J. Marsella, Ph.D., Emeritus Professor, Department of Psychology, University of Hawaii. Dr. Marsella’s essay was originally published by Transcend Media Service at https://www.transcend.org/tms/2014/10/two-paths-in-the-wood-choice-of-life-or-war/ . We will publish excerpts from it intermittently over the next few months.