More on Kristallnacht and David Brooks

My post about Kristallnacht and David Brooks's NYT column has drawn some critical reaction from Steven Lubet (in the comments to the post) and from co-blogger Calvin Massey.  Steven asks "precisely what [I was] suggesting by cautioning Brooks about Kristallnacht," if I was not "criticizing Brooks for encouraging violence against minorities."  Calvin argues that "[t]o remind the nation of some obvious facts [about Nasan's apparent motives] is not to endorse the Holocaust."

In response to Calvin:  Kristallnacht was not "the Holocaust."  Kristallnacht was a night of violence against an unpopular group widely thought to be an internal enemy of the German state.  To the extent that the pogrom was part of a larger government plan at that point in the Reich's developing Jewish policy, the plan was to terrorize Jews into leaving Germany and forfeiting their property, not to commit mass genocide.  

This distinction matters in the context of David Brooks's piece, because Brooks faults us as a nation for indulging a "paternalistic" assumption that if we had been quick to label Nasan a jihadi, "the great mass of unwashed yahoos in Middle America would go off on a racist rampage."  The Kristallnacht pogrom was, in a basic way, just that:  a great mass of unwashed yahoos in Germany go[ing] off on a racist rampage.  To point out a parallel between the "racist rampage" that Brooks hypothesizes and the Kristallnacht pogrom is not to equate anything with "the Holocaust."

In reply to Steven:  David Brooks himself acknowledges the very point I am trying to make:  "It’s important to tamp down vengeful hatreds in moments of passion," he says.  But then he undercuts the point, saying that to move away from rather than toward calling Nasan a jihadi is "patronizing" and not "the reaction of a politically or morally serious nation."  

This is precisely the point I dispute with my reminder about Kristallnacht.  Brooks calls a very important question:  how does a "politically and morally serious nation" deal with its anxieties about an internal enemy at moments of provocation?  Brooks says that the will to indulge less-threatening explanations is "well-intentioned" but a "flight from reality," a denial of "the possibility of evil" in our midst that does not befit a serious nation.  That is where I disagree with Brooks.

In my view, a serious and mature nation treats a narrative casting racial and religious minorities as internal enemies with great caution.  (This is especially true where the serious and mature nation in question has its own painful history of over-indulging such narratives.)  Nearly forty percent of Americans believe Islam is more violent than other faiths.  Among conservative Republicans, 55% hold that view.  According to a Newsweek poll in 2007,  one in four Americans say they would support mass detentions of American Muslims in the event of another terrorist attack in the United States.  Nearly half say they would not vote for a Muslim candidate.  Over half support the wiretapping of mosques.

Brooks appears to be of two minds on the question:  he acknowledges that tamping down rather than building up vengeful hatreds at moments of provocation is "important," but he goes on to say that it's also "unserious."

I would have stopped with "important." 

Comments

[Matt]

Thanks for this, Eric. It's a very thoughtful and useful discussion.

[David Bernstein]

"The Kristallnacht pogrom was, in a basic way, just that: a great mass of unwashed yahoos in Germany go[ing] off on a racist rampage."

No, it wasn't, it was well-planned and organized in advance. In fact, I was just reading, I think in the Jerusalem Post about how someone was just pouring over the planning documents found in the Nazi archives.

Sure, there were plenty of more or less spontaneous pogroms against Jews in European history, but Kristallnacht wasn't one of them.

Kristallnacht also came after five years of government agitation against Jews in Germany, by a government with an officially racist policy toward Jews. Nothing of the kind has happened in the U.S. re Muslims. Bringing Kristallnacht in to this discussion at best wild hyperbole.

[Eric Muller]

You vastly overstate the extent of pre-planning for Kristallnacht, David. See Leni Yahl, "The Holocaust: The Fate of European Jewry" 108-12 (1990). It was an unleashing of pent-up hatreds among party members and others. There's no question that Goebbels stimulated the violent outburst (to the surprise of Himmler, Heydrich, and others), and that party officials eagerly transmitted Goebbels's approval down the chain of command. But it is inaccurate to call the event "well-planned and organized in advance." In fact, the biggest problem that the Nazis had in the wake of Kristallnacht was the wave of international condemnation that it triggered -- something for which the Nazis had definitely not prepared.

Your distinctions between US policy towards Muslims since 9/11 and German policy towards Jews between 1933 and 1938 are certainly correct.

Why, though, at a moment when we're talking about how our nation should come to grips with an "enemy within," is it inappropriate to think about how other nations (and our own) have dealt come to grips with it in the past? Kristallnacht strikes me as a very good illustration of the value of resisting, rather than indulging, narratives about racial and religious subversives.

[David Bernstein]

I wish I could find the link now, but either Ha'aretz or the Jerusalem Post had a story in the last few days about a Jewish guy who hid out in Berlin throughout the war. He has written a book about it, and, according to the story, he found a document in the archives that detailed the extensive plans and preparations for Kristallnacht, a discover that might postdate 1990.

"Why, though, at a moment when we're talking about how our nation should come to grips with an "enemy within," is it inappropriate to think about how other nations (and our own) have dealt come to grips with it in the past?"

Well, for one thing, the Jews in Germany were only an enemy within in the Nazi imagination. A much better analogy was how the U.S. dealt with Communist subversives in the 1940s and 50s. Two errors were made: broadly, the "left" denied that there were any subversives (see, e.g., the Witch Hunt analogy), leading the mass of American people to distrust them, given that there obviously were subversives, like Alger Hiss and the Rosenbergs. The "right," broadly, went into a McCarthyistic frenzy, thereby limiting the effectiveness of the government in going after real subversives while harming innocents.

It's fine to be concerned about a reprise of the latter, but it's also wise to be concerned about a reprise of the former, which encouraged the latter. Denying the obvious--that Hasan had adopted an ideology of Islamic extremism that motivated him to kill 13 people--is less likely to make Americans more tolerant, and more likely to be make them paranoid and suspicious of the elites.

[David Bernstein]

Found the link:

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1257770023580&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

As a part of his personal tale of surviving in Nazi Berlin, he researched the German archives and located a key Nazi military order describing what was to happen on Kristallnacht. For his book he has reprinted the document in the original German signed by Reinhard Heydrich, deputy chief of the Gestapo, and translated it into English. Seventy-one years later, what an eye-opener; each sentence of the order spells out precisely how Kristallnacht was to occur throughout Germany - not a detail is lost.

[jncc]

"Denying the obvious--that Hasan had adopted an ideology of Islamic extremism that motivated him to kill 13 people..."

That statement says much about your reflexive worldview but really doesn't supply any reliable information about Hasan.

He wasn't a sudden convert to Islam - he'd been attending Mosques for years. On the other hand, he recently did learn that he was to be sent overseas and protested going. Why, exactly, do you believe that his "ideology of Islamic extremism" motivated him any more than ordinary, run-of-the-mill nutjob anger?

Also, Timothy McVeigh identified himself as a Patriot and a Christian. Do you believe that the "ideology of Christian extremism" or the "ideology of extreme Patriotism" motivated him?

Unfortunately, whenever there is a tragedly like this, intellectual hacks start lining up to pick out whatever they disliked about the shooter as "the cause." Following the VA Tech slaughter, anti-immigration nuts stepped up to whinge about the shooter being of Asian ancestry. Then, as now, the anti-gun folks want to talk about how the shooting is the fault of easy access to guns.

And, finally, even if Hasan someday does give a statement averring "I did this because of my Muslim faith" that really wouldn't mean anything because I would submit to you that he did it because he is unbalanced and evil. If a shooter says, "I shot up the preschool because the my Martian overlords told me to" one wouldn't lay the blame at the foot of the Martian overlords - you would just say the shooter is nuts. (That is, unless you have a track record of nursing grievances against Martian overlords.)

[David Bernstein]

JNCC,

I agree that there is nothing intrinsic in Islam that explains this crime. But Hasan, in addition to being in contact with Al Qaeda affiliated radicals and shouted "Allahu Akbar" as he mowed down his victims, he had previously said that Muslims should rise up against the military, "repeatedly expressed sympathy for suicide bombers," was pleased by the terrorist murder of an army recruiter, and publicly called for the beheading or burning of non-Muslims, talking "about how if you’re a nonbeliever the Koran says you should have your head cut off, you should have oil poured down your throat, you should be set on fire."

Given all that, I think it's a safe bet to say he was motivated by Islamic extremism, even if he was also stressed, generally a nut job, or what have you.

As for this: "even if Hasan someday does give a statement averring 'I did this because of my Muslim faith' that really wouldn't mean anything because I would submit to you that he did it because he is unbalanced and evil." That is utterly absurd. He may have done an evil act because he was unbalanced and evil, but he chose the particular act he did because of a specific ideology.

Are you going to tell me that the Unabombers' targets had NOTHING to do with his radical environmentalist, anti-technology ideology? That the Sikhs who killed the Indian Prime Minister years back chose a random target? That Yigal Amir and Baruch Goldstein weren't motivated by extremist Jewish nationalism? Come on, I'm sure you don't really believe that!

[Joe]

Professor Muller simply reminds us that in times like this, we all need to be on guard to check our own biases as more innocent people can be hurt. The rest of this debate is somewhat semantical. All agree on the fundamental issues: Hasan's actions were evil, some Muslims are radical, most Muslims are peaceful, it would be wrong to impose collective retribution on all Muslims. Muller, Brooks, all the commentators, and all reasonable people surely agree on these facts. Actions are more important than words. Hasan should be charged with Constitutional Treason and executed. This action would have a greater deterrent effect than any words in a blog or a newspaper. DOJ and JAG prosecutors need to realize that trying him for capital murder under the UCMJ might be easier but would be less effective. And all this talk of Hasan being mentally unbalanced just feeds into his insanity defense. Does anybody really want to see him go to a mental hospital?

[jncc]

"But Hasan, in addition to being in contact with Al Qaeda affiliated radicals and shouted "Allahu Akbar" as he mowed down his victims, he had previously said that Muslims should rise up against the military, "repeatedly expressed sympathy for suicide bombers," was pleased by the terrorist murder of an army recruiter, and publicly called for the beheading or burning of non-Muslims, talking "about how if you’re a nonbeliever the Koran says you should have your head cut off, you should have oil poured down your throat, you should be set on fire.""

Well, it appears that you have combed through the past few days of press coverage to find "facts" consistent with your opinion. Given your apparent willingness to believe unsourced and unverified newspaper reports, I guess you were probably quite shocked when it was revealed that Hasan was not dead and that he was not accompanied by two other shooters. Both of those things had been reported as fact after the shooting.

And, if shouting "Allah Akbar" while shooting folks makes one an "ideological extremist" then I guess you would agree that most actors in porn movies are devout Christians, since they seem to say "Oh God" an awful lot.

Okay, just having some fun with you there.

You choose to view this shooting as the result of "ideological extremism". People who favor gun control state that it would not have happened but for easy access to semi-automatic weapons. Their arguments are as valid as yours.

But the danger of being driven by a desire to shoehorn reality into whatever box defines your ideology is that you run the risk of distorting reality.

Look there are tens, if not hundreds of millions of people around the world who think that the US is the Great Satan, that people should be stoned for various offenses, etc. Just like the are lots of Americans who think that "abortion is murder."

The real question is why do some people choose to act on these views the way Hasan did and the way that people who shoot doctors do? Sure, you can just say that they are ideological extremists - but that is just the beginning of the inquiry.