tag:theconversation.com,2011:/fr/topics/hitler-19712/articlesHitler – The Conversation2024-01-31T18:28:58Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2213442024-01-31T18:28:58Z2024-01-31T18:28:58ZHow the social structures of Nazi Germany created a bystander society<p>In the initial post-war judicial proceedings to establish what had happened under Nazism, and to punish the perpetrators of crimes, victims’ accounts were often <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/reckonings-9780198811244?lang=en&cc=in#">discredited</a>. Only in 1961, with the high-profile trial of Nazi war criminal <a href="https://www.yadvashem.org/holocaust/eichmann-trial/about.html">Adolf Eichmann</a> in Jerusalem, did the focus shift.</p>
<p>For many survivors, the concept of “Holocaust testimony” – accounts of what they had lived through – took on almost sacred dimensions. In 1989, author and Auschwitz-survivor Elie Wiesel <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1989/06/11/movies/art-and-the-holocaust-trivializing-memory.html">argued</a> that it was unethical for anyone besides surviving victims of the Holocaust to try to represent or explain it. </p>
<p>In some ways, Wiesel’s insistence that only surviving victims could really “know” the Holocaust has contributed to the mystification of this historical period. Holocaust deniers <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/24461408">have misappropriated</a> this very process to their own ends. </p>
<p>Examining contemporary non-victims’ perspectives can help us to understand the violence perpetrated as, in part, the result of social systems. <a href="https://ellenpilsworthorg.wordpress.com/knowing-the-nazis/%22">My research</a> explores how accounts by anti-Nazi refugees were received (in translation) by British readers at the time. </p>
<p>Such memoirs <a href="https://jpr.winchesteruniversitypress.org/articles/10.21039/jpr.5.1.96">can illustrate</a> the process by which Nazism transformed the German population into what historian Mary Fulbrook calls a <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/bystander-society-9780197691717?cc=gb&lang=en&">“bystander society”</a> – even before the conditions of wartime normalised acts of excessive violence. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="An archival photograph from Nazi Germany." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/572157/original/file-20240130-23-ou6z5g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/572157/original/file-20240130-23-ou6z5g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=447&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/572157/original/file-20240130-23-ou6z5g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=447&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/572157/original/file-20240130-23-ou6z5g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=447&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/572157/original/file-20240130-23-ou6z5g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=562&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/572157/original/file-20240130-23-ou6z5g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=562&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/572157/original/file-20240130-23-ou6z5g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=562&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">German citizens line the streets to see Hitler in Bad Godesberg am Rhein, in 1938.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bundesarchiv_Bild_183-H12704,_Bad_Godesberg,_Vorbereitung_M%C3%BCnchener_Abkommen.jpg">Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-H12704</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Living in Nazi Germany</h2>
<p>In 1939, Sebastian Haffner, whose real name was Raimund Pretzel, wrote a memoir titled <em>Geschichte eines Deutschen. Die Erinnerungen 1914–1933</em> (Stories of a German. Recollections 1914-1933). </p>
<p>It was published after the author’s death in 2000, using the pen name under which he had become famous as a journalist in post-war West Germany. An English translation followed in 2003, titled Defying Hitler. Historian Dan Stone <a href="https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1057/9780230282674_9">has described</a> it as “among the more remarkable contemporary analyses of Nazism and the Third Reich”. </p>
<p>Haffner was a law trainee when Hitler took power. As the Nazi regime destroyed the democratic legal system he had studied, he took up journalism instead. His partner, Erika Schmidt-Landry, had been designated “Jewish” according to the <a href="https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/the-nuremberg-race-laws">Nuremberg race laws</a>. When she became pregnant with Haffner’s child, the couple left Germany for England. </p>
<p>In the UK, Haffner started writing a memoir of his life so far, including his view of the rise of Nazism. In one telling scene, he describes how he felt when the Jewish colleagues in his law firm were forced out by Nazi storm troopers (AKA brown shirts) on April 1 1933, the day of the Jewish boycott. Some colleagues paced about nervously. Others sniggered. One Jewish colleague simply packed his bags and left. </p>
<p>Haffner writes: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>My own heart beat heavily. What should I do? How keep my poise? Just ignore them, do not let them disturb me. I put my head down over my work. […] Meanwhile a brown shirt approached me and took up position in front of my work table. ‘Are you Aryan?’ Before I had a chance to think, I had said, ‘Yes.’ […] The blood shot to my face. A moment too late I felt the shame, the defeat. […] I had failed my first test. I could have slapped myself.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>On another occasion, at a compulsory indoctrination camp for law students, Haffner is forced to perform the Hitler salute and sing pro-Nazi songs. He writes: “For the first time I had the feeling, so strong it left a taste in my mouth: ‘This doesn’t count. This isn’t me. It doesn’t count.’ And with this feeling I too raised my arm and held it stretched out ahead of me for about three minutes.”</p>
<p>Haffner’s account illustrates the self-deception and denial by which many people who did not actively support the Nazi regime survived within it. In an interview given in 1989, Haffner <a href="https://www.penguin.de/Buch/Geschichte-eines-Deutschen-Als-Englaender-maskiert/Sebastian-Haffner/DVA-Sachbuch/e226084.rhd">said</a> it wasn’t that all Germans were Nazis but nor did Nazism hardly affect everyday life: “It was possible to live in a way alongside it.”</p>
<h2>A bystander society</h2>
<p>Fulbrook <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/bystander-society-9780197691717?cc=gb&lang=en&">has shown</a> how ordinary Germans were drawn into “processes of complicity”. Under Nazism, standing by as state-sponsored acts of collective violence were perpetrated gradually became the required norm. The personal risks of doing otherwise were very real. “What might be a morally laudable stance in a liberal, democratic regime,” Fulbrook writes, “may be, in other circumstances, both ineffective and potentially suicidal.”</p>
<p>If someone in the UK in 2024 judges German bystanders to Nazi crimes as “guilty” for not standing up for victims, they do so according to the moral obligations of a liberal democracy. Hitler’s ascension to power in 1933, however, had marked the end of German democracy. The Third Reich was a brutal police state. People were encouraged to denounce opponents to the regime. Defiance ran the risk of arrest, imprisonment or political “re-education” in a concentration camp under <em>Schutzhaft</em> (“protective custody”).</p>
<p>Both in Germany and across the international community, everyone had to understand the violence enacted under Nazism on their own terms. Even the words “genocide” and “Holocaust”, by which the era has since been defined, were not yet in people’s vocabulary. </p>
<p>The term “<a href="https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/coining-a-word-and-championing-a-cause-the-story-of-raphael-lemkin">genocide</a>” was coined by the Polish lawyer, Raphael Lemkin, in 1944 to describe the Nazis’ programme of Jewish destruction. “<a href="https://www.britannica.com/story/what-is-the-origin-of-the-term-holocaust">Holocaust</a>”, a comparatively older word, only came to be widely used to formally describe the genocide perpetrated under Nazism against Jews <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/146235200112409">from the late 1950s</a>.</p>
<p>Further, racial segregation was also practised in other liberal democracies at the time. <a href="https://www.crf-usa.org/online-lessons/black-history-month/a-brief-history-of-jim-crow">Jim Crow laws</a> enforced racial segretation across the <a href="https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/black-codes-and-jim-crow-laws/%22">southern US states</a>. The notion of racial hierarchy underpinned the British and other European empires. </p>
<p>Engaging with contemporary non-victims’ perspectives can help us to understand the violence perpetrated during the Holocaust as an effect of social systems. American literature and Holocaust studies scholar Michael Rothberg <a href="https://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=25356">has argued</a> for an approach to historical violence that considers the perspectives of “implicated subjects”. </p>
<p>Rothberg suggests the categories of heroes and villains, victims and perpetrators are inadequate in accounting for the harms done. Moving beyond them can also elucidate the destructive social dynamics of our own period.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/221344/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ellen Pilsworth receives funding from the British Academy and Wolfson Foundation, and the Martin Miller and Hannah Norbert-Miller Trust</span></em></p>The German population was transformed under Nazism into a “bystander society” – even before the conditions of wartime normalised acts of excessive violence.Ellen Pilsworth, Lecturer in German and Translation Studies, University of ReadingLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2041832023-04-27T20:17:48Z2023-04-27T20:17:48ZFriday essay: Stan Grant on how tyrants use the language of germ warfare – and COVID has enabled them<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/522488/original/file-20230424-22-d7xzj9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C9%2C3020%2C2269&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A Uighur woman protests before a group of paramilitary police in western China's Xinjiang region.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Ng Han Guan/AP</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>It is 2019. There is a virus lurking in China. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is warning that if it is not contained, it could infect the entire country. It could turn the country upside down. Tear at the social fabric. The CCP’s dream of harmony cannot withstand this. So they tell their people: this must be wiped out. Memories are too fresh in China of what happens when things spiral out of control.</p>
<p>China is a nation that barely hangs together. Throughout time, empires have risen and fallen. Bloodshed beyond imagining – on a scale almost unseen in human history – marks each turn in China’s fate. </p>
<p>The hundred years between the mid-19th century and the Communist Revolution in 1949 were brutal. The Opium Wars with Britain, the fall of the Qing, the Taiping Rebellion, the Boxer Rebellion, the civil war between nationalists and communists, the Japanese occupation – tens of millions were slaughtered.</p>
<p>The CCP knows it should fear its own. It knows what happens when people rise up. The party seeks stability, but stability can only come with force and threats. Nothing can be tolerated that strays too far from the reach of the party.</p>
<p>Now, a virus is loose. In 2019, the world is not watching. Not really. Some warn of what is happening, what is to come. But who listens? It is too far away. We are trading with China and we grow rich as China grows rich.</p>
<p>So, the Communist Party goes to work in secret. It is rounding up people infected with the virus. It is locking them away in secret facilities. Prisons. Isolating them. Choking off the virus at its source. Nothing short of elimination will do.</p>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-who-are-the-uyghurs-and-why-is-the-chinese-government-detaining-them-111843">Explainer: who are the Uyghurs and why is the Chinese government detaining them?</a>
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</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>An ideological virus</h2>
<p>This virus has a name. Uighur. Many, if not most, in the West cannot spell it. Nor can they pronounce it. Uighurs. Muslims. A people in the outer western regions of this vast country. People who have been yearning to be free. Who speak their own language. Practise their culture. Pray to their god.</p>
<p>They are a virus. At least, that’s what the CCP calls them.</p>
<p>The Communist Party transmits “health warnings”. As reported by Sigal Samuel <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2018/%2008/china-pathologizing-uighur-muslims-mental-illness/568525/">in The Atlantic</a>, and <a href="https://www.rfa.org/english/news/uyghur/infected-08082018173807.html">translated</a> by Radio Free Asia, it aims them at Uighurs via WeChat, a popular social media platform in China:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Members of the public who have been chosen for re-education have been infected by an ideological illness. They have been infected with religious extremism and violent terrorist ideology, and therefore they must seek treatment from a hospital as an inpatient […] The religious extremist ideology is a type of poisonous medicine, which confuses the mind of the people […] If we do not eradicate religious extremism at its roots, the violent terrorist incidents will grow and spread all over like an incurable malignant tumour. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>In 2018, Human Rights Watch released a report, titled <a href="https://www.hrw.org/report/2018/09/10/eradicating-ideological-viruses/chinas-campaign-repression-against-xinjiangs">Eradicating Ideological Viruses</a>. The warnings are there. Even if the world is slow to wake to them. The report says:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Perhaps the most innovative – and disturbing – of the repressive measures in Xinjiang is the government’s use of high-tech mass surveillance systems. Xinjiang authorities conduct compulsory mass collection of biometric data, such as voice samples and DNA, and use artificial intelligence and big data to identify, profile and track everyone in Xinjiang. <br></p>
<p>The authorities have envisioned these systems as a series of “filters”, picking out people with certain behaviour or characteristics that they believe indicate a threat to the Communist Party’s rule in Xinjiang. These systems have also enabled authorities to implement fine-grained control, subjecting people to differentiated restrictions depending on their perceived levels of “trustworthiness”. </p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/522492/original/file-20230424-14-d7xzj9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/522492/original/file-20230424-14-d7xzj9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/522492/original/file-20230424-14-d7xzj9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522492/original/file-20230424-14-d7xzj9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522492/original/file-20230424-14-d7xzj9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522492/original/file-20230424-14-d7xzj9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522492/original/file-20230424-14-d7xzj9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522492/original/file-20230424-14-d7xzj9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Uighur Abudwaris Ablimit points to a photo of his brother during a gathering to raise awareness about loved ones who have disappeared in China’s far west.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Christina Larson/AP</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Note the language. Biometric data. Voice sampling. DNA. This is ideological and it is biological. People are treated as viruses that transmit illness. If not stopped, they will threaten us all, is the message.</p>
<p>Human Rights Watch says in the name of stability and security, authorities will “strike at” those deemed terrorists and extremists, to rid the country of the “problematic ideas” of Turkic Muslims. Not just Muslims, but anyone not expressing the majority ethnic Han identity. As Human Rights Watch says: “Authorities insist that such beliefs and affinities must be ‘corrected’ or ‘eradicated’.”</p>
<p>This is not new. What the CCP is doing is what other tyrannical regimes have done. They seek to create what’s been called a “harmony of souls”. They want nothing less than to produce the perfect, subdued, sublimated human. Compliant. Passive. </p>
<p>In the words of Joseph Stalin: “The production of souls is more important than the production of tanks.” Historian Timothy Snyder says the Nazi and Soviet regimes turned people into numbers. And tyrants everywhere have used the language of germ warfare. They define their enemies as diseases or infections and they seek to inoculate their own societies.</p>
<p>Authoritarian regimes seek to sterilise and “purify” society. Listen to them.</p>
<p>Stalin’s henchman <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Vyacheslav-Molotov">Vyacheslav Molotov</a> spoke of purging or assassinating people who “had to be isolated” or, he said, they “would spread all kinds of complaints, and society would have been infected”.</p>
<p>The architect of Hitler’s Holocaust, Heinrich Himmler, in sending millions to the gas chambers, <a href="https://www.museumoftolerance.com/education/teacher-resources/holocaust-resources/what-is-holocaust-denial.html">said</a> he was exterminating “a bacterium because we do not want in the end to be infected by a bacterium and die of it”. He said: “I will not see so much as a small area of sepsis appear here or gain a hold. Wherever it may form, we will cauterise it.”</p>
<p>And then there is Adolf Hitler, who compared himself to the famed German microbiologist <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/medicine/1905/koch/biographical/">Robert Koch</a> who found the bacillus of tuberculosis. Hitler said, </p>
<blockquote>
<p>I discovered the Jews as the <a href="https://academic.oup.com/book/27387/chapter-abstract/197176732">bacillus and ferment</a> of all social decomposition. And I have proved one thing: that a state can live without Jews.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>To Hitler, Jewish people were “no longer human beings”. He described the Holocaust as a “surgical task”, “otherwise Europe will perish through the Jewish disease”.</p>
<p>It is no mistake these regimes use the language of virus, disease and contamination. Just as a virus is to be eradicated, so too people are to be removed, eliminated or exterminated. These attitudes do not belong to a time past. There are leaders today who exploit the same fears, who focus on difference and create division using the same language of disease.</p>
<p>Remember what Donald Trump <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/jul/06/donald-trump-mexican-immigrants-tremendous-infectious-disease">said</a> of Mexican immigrants? That they are responsible for “tremendous infectious diseases pouring across the border”.</p>
<p>And in China, the Communist Party <a href="https://theconversation.com/leaked-documents-on-uighur-detention-camps-in-china-an-expert-explains-the-key-revelations-127221">has locked up</a> a million Uighur Muslims in “re-education camps”, where human rights groups say they are brainwashed with Communist Party ideology. A virus to be eradicated.</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/un-report-on-chinas-abuse-of-uyghurs-is-stronger-than-expected-but-missing-a-vital-word-genocide-189917">UN report on China's abuse of Uyghurs is stronger than expected but missing a vital word: genocide</a>
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<hr>
<h2>Virus of tyranny</h2>
<p>The virus of tyranny has haunted our world. Albert Camus warned us of this in his novel <a href="https://theconversation.com/guide-to-the-classics-albert-camus-the-plague-134244">The Plague</a>: the story of a rat-borne disease that overruns an entire city. His was a bleak vision of death and fear, of a city sealed off and a people locked down, then shot when they tried to escape. </p>
<p>Written in 1947, just two years after World War II, when the West was still celebrating the victory of freedom, Camus’s plague is an allegory of authoritarianism.</p>
<p>Camus wanted to tell us of the courage that swells within us, that when the plague was at its worst, brave people fought against it. But he cautioned us, too, that the plague can return. It is “a bacillus that never dies or disappears for good”, but bides its time “slumbering in furniture and linen”. It waits patiently “in bedrooms, cellars; trunks, handkerchiefs, old papers”, until one day it will rouse again. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/522493/original/file-20230424-16-u9uicp.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/522493/original/file-20230424-16-u9uicp.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/522493/original/file-20230424-16-u9uicp.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=840&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522493/original/file-20230424-16-u9uicp.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=840&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522493/original/file-20230424-16-u9uicp.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=840&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522493/original/file-20230424-16-u9uicp.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1056&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522493/original/file-20230424-16-u9uicp.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1056&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522493/original/file-20230424-16-u9uicp.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1056&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Engraving of a plague doctor in 17th-century Rome.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Paul Furst/Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>In coronavirus, tyranny may have found the perfect host: a fearful population and all-powerful government. French philosopher Michel Foucault long ago made the link between the plagues of the 17th century and authoritarian control. </p>
<p>Behind state-imposed discipline, <a href="https://www.penguin.com.au/books/discipline-and-punish-9780241386019">he wrote</a>, “can be read the haunting memory of contagions”: not just the memory of a virus but of rebellion, crime, all forms of social disorder, where people “appear and disappear, live and die”. It is the state that brings order to the fear: “everyone locked up in his cage, everyone at his window, answering to his name and showing himself when asked”. </p>
<p>In the response to the plague, Foucault saw the forerunner of the modern prison: the panopticon; the all-seeing eye.</p>
<p>The plague-stricken village, <a href="https://www.penguin.com.au/books/discipline-and-punish-9780241386019">wrote Foucault</a>, is </p>
<blockquote>
<p>traversed throughout with hierarchy, surveillance, observation, writing; the town immobilised by the functioning of an extensive power that bears in a distinct way over all individual bodies – this is the utopia of the perfectly governed city.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The coronavirus shutdowns remind us freedom is the province of the state. The crisis has centralised government control. Around the world, governments have used physical and biological surveillance to control the pandemic. To eradicate the virus.</p>
<p>We have all become, to varying degrees, a little bit like China.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/guide-to-the-classics-albert-camus-the-plague-134244">Guide to the Classics: Albert Camus' The Plague</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>A strange illness in Wuhan</h2>
<p>Coronavirus emerges out of China in the dying months of 2019. I remember reporting on it. A strange illness is being detected in the city of Wuhan. Dozens of people are being treated for pneumonia-like symptoms. In January 2020, there is the <a href="https://www.who.int/news/item/27-04-2020-who-timeline---covid-19">first reported death</a>. Then quickly, deaths in Europe, the United States, South Korea, Japan, Thailand.</p>
<p>We are still so blasé. It feels so far away. We have seen this before, haven’t we? SARS, swine flu, Ebola. They come and they go. Life goes on. We go to the beach. We get on planes. We have parties. And if we have a cough or feel a bit under the weather, we most likely still go to work.</p>
<p>We don’t realise what is happening. I am <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/qanda/2020-24-02/11983216">on ABC’s Q+A program</a> in February 2020. Footage is shown of lockdown in Wuhan. People are barricaded in their apartments while police forcibly remove and restrain. The audience is appalled.</p>
<p>It couldn’t happen here, could it? An epidemiologist on the panel says, actually, yes. We have laws to allow for just these extreme emergency measures. Surely though, we agree, it isn’t likely.</p>
<p>On the same program is China’s deputy ambassador to Australia, Wang Xining. Minister Wang, as he is known, is an old acquaintance. A sparring partner. When I was based in China for CNN, he was my minder. He was appointed by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to watch everything that I did.</p>
<p>In China I was arrested and detained, taken to Chinese police cells for doing stories the authorities did not approve of. I was, on several occasions, physically attacked and beaten. My family was under constant surveillance. Now the man responsible was sitting next to me in an ABC studio.</p>
<p>In the audience, a Uighur man asks a question. He was separated from his wife and child. He had come to Australia ahead of them, hoping to settle and secure visas so they could follow. He didn’t know where they were. He had family in the Chinese “re-education” camps. He was clearly worried.</p>
<p>Minster Wang defends the China COVID lockdown. And he defends the lockdown – soon to be called the genocide – of the Uighurs.</p>
<p>In this moment were twinned the two crises – the two “viruses” – threatening our world. COVID-19 threatened our health. Soon, we would indeed follow China’s lead and introduce lockdowns. And the virus of tyranny was spreading.</p>
<p>In 2020, as COVID crossed borders, so, too, did tyranny. Liberal democracy was in retreat. Freedom House, which measures the health of democracy, <a href="https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/2021/democracy-under-siege">now counted</a> 15 straight years of democratic decline. From the post–Cold War boom, freedom was now being crushed.</p>
<p>Within democracies, too, people were falling under the sway of autocrats and demagogues. This had been a slow burn. Growing inequality, war-fuelled refugee crises and a blowback against globalisation had eroded trust. The poor and left-behind felt abandoned.</p>
<p>The devil dances in empty pockets. From the early 2000s, anti-immigration attitudes grew. Racial division became even more stark. Far-right parties made a comeback in Europe as barbed wire went back up on borders. People wanted their countries back and they were primed for populists. Türkiye’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-the-20-year-rule-of-recep-tayyip-erdogan-has-transformed-turkey-188211">Recep Tayyip Erdoğan</a>, Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, India’s
<a href="https://theconversation.com/as-pressure-builds-on-indias-narendra-modi-is-his-government-trying-to-silence-its-critics-159799">Narendra Modi</a>, <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-philippines-is-set-for-a-fiery-election-even-without-any-dutertes-at-least-for-now-169535">Rodrigo Duterte</a> in the Philippines, Brazil’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-now-for-brazil-president-lula-strengthened-but-bolsonaro-supporters-wont-go-quietly-197530">Jair Bolsonaro</a> – all would come to power. Each spouted easy solutions to complex problems. Each divided to conquer.</p>
<p>Into the picture came a political circus act. A Manhattan real estate billionaire and reality television star. Donald Trump styled himself as the anti-politician. He promised to “<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-drain-the-swamp/2020/10/24/52c7682c-0a5a-11eb-9be6-cf25fb429f1a_story.html">drain the swamp</a>” and “make America great again”. Eight years of the first Black president of the United States, Barack Obama, ended in 2016 <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-trumps-victory-will-mean-the-end-of-us-soft-power-68654">with the election</a> of a man who exploited racism.</p>
<p>To populists, COVID-19 initially was a boon. They seized on it to strengthen their grip on their countries. This was the state of the world in 2020, when the virus took hold. This was a perfect storm. A virus that robbed us of our freedom just as democracy was imploding and freedom was in retreat. And China was proudly boasting that its authoritarianism was ascendant.</p>
<p>If the 20th century was a triumph of democracy, the 21st century, to China’s Xi Jinping, would crown the China dream.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/kafkaesque-true-stories-of-ordinary-people-inside-the-first-days-of-covid-19-in-wuhan-china-180039">'Kafkaesque' true stories of ordinary people: inside the first days of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China</a>
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<h2>Plagues, political repression and violence</h2>
<p>Plagues have historically been a harbinger of political repression and violence. The Spanish flu after World War I <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/06/1918-flu-pandemic-boosted-support-for-the-nazis-fed-study-claims.html">contributed to</a> the rise of the extreme right in Germany. The Black Death in the 14th century <a href="https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/the-black-death">unleashed violence</a> against Jews.</p>
<p>Sydney University Professor of Jurisprudence Wojciech Sadurski, in his book <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/pandemic-of-populists/E75407A3309F868636BBA65F9F1ED783">A Pandemic of Populists</a>, says COVID has been a “powerful accelerator of many of the pre-existing trends, both negative and positive, in business, culture and politics”. </p>
<p>Populist leaders declared states of emergency and, as Sadurski writes, pushed them “well beyond the limits of the necessary”. Viktor Orbán <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-europe/how-viktor-orban-used-the-coronavirus-to-seize-more-power">set aside parliament</a>. He was a one-man government. People critical of him could be arrested. In <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_misinformation_in_the_Philippines">the Philippines</a>, as <a href="https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/04/17/fake-news-real-arrests/">in India</a>, police were given powers to detain anyone “spreading misinformation” or inciting mistrust.</p>
<p>Sadurski points out that, in most cases, these authoritarian leaders used militaristic language. Fighting COVID was a war. The people were conscripted.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/522499/original/file-20230424-20-u9uicp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/522499/original/file-20230424-20-u9uicp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/522499/original/file-20230424-20-u9uicp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522499/original/file-20230424-20-u9uicp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522499/original/file-20230424-20-u9uicp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522499/original/file-20230424-20-u9uicp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522499/original/file-20230424-20-u9uicp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522499/original/file-20230424-20-u9uicp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán set aside parliament and became a one-man government during COVID. He’s pictured here with medical supplies flown from China.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Tomas Kovacs/AP</span></span>
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<p>Xi Jinping is not a populist leader. He doesn’t seek legitimacy at the ballot box. He is an authoritarian. And he believes his system is better. To Xi, the battle against coronavirus is <a href="https://www.npr.org/2020/02/13/805760466/china-declares-peoples-war-on-covid-19-including-reporting-family-and-friends">also a war</a>: a “people’s war”.</p>
<p>It has been a war without end. Xi cannot allow the virus to win. Long after lockdowns passed elsewhere, Xi continued to keep a stranglehold on COVID flares. It has weakened the economy. It is straining nerves. People are angry. There have been <a href="https://theconversation.com/protests-against-strict-covid-zero-policy-are-sweeping-china-its-anyones-guess-what-happens-now-195442">protests</a>. Some are even calling for Xi to go.</p>
<p>But Xi has strengthened his grip. By <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2018/02/26/asia/china-xi-jinping-president-intl/index.html">altering the constitution</a> and scrapping two-term presidential limits, he is now leader for life. Under cover of fighting COVID, he has used <a href="https://melbourneasiareview.edu.au/covid-19-and-the-rise-of-the-surveillance-state-in-china/">enhanced surveillance</a> and tracking technology to peer into every part of people’s lives. The COVID crackdown <a href="https://www.nippon.com/en/in-depth/d00829/">coincided</a> with crushing democracy in Hong Kong. He has arrested dissidents. Silenced rivals. He is <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/International/china-ready-fight-after-3-days-large-scale/story?id=98494152#:%7E:text=TAIPEI%2C%20Taiwan%20%2D%2D%20China's,McCarthy%20in%20the%20United%20States.">threatening</a> war on Taiwan.</p>
<p>And Uighurs remain a target. Still a “virus” to be eliminated.</p>
<h2>A hinge point of history</h2>
<p>We are at a hinge point of history. Thirty years after the end of the Cold War, there is <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/03/06/sliding-toward-a-new-cold-war">talk</a> of Cold War 2.0. The United States is staring down a new rival: China. We are witnessing a return of great power rivalry. It is a supercharged great power rivalry. </p>
<p>China is <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/china-soviet-union-containment-polarization-foreign-policy-11639526097">more powerful</a> today than the Soviet Union was then, and the United States is unquestionably diminished. America is politically fractured, it is deeply divided along racial and class lines; it has <a href="https://theconversation.com/american-exceptionalism-the-poison-that-cannot-protect-its-children-from-violent-death-184045">an epidemic</a> of gun violence and it has been devastated by coronavirus.</p>
<p>Donald Trump thought he was bigger than COVID. He was slow to act, he was dismissive and his populism was eventually revealed as reckless. Yes, he fast-tracked vaccine research and production. But he was a master of mixed messaging and so much damage was done. At the time of writing, in the United States there have been more than <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2022/12/28/us-records-100-million-covid-cases-but-more-than-200-million-americans-have-probably-had-it.html#:%7E:text=The%20U.S.%20has%20officially%20recorded,even%20more%20difficult%20to%20control.">100 million cases</a> and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/may/15/1-million-us-covid-deaths-effects">one million deaths</a>. The only country to reach that number. Trump lost office.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/522501/original/file-20230424-22-paq5g6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/522501/original/file-20230424-22-paq5g6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/522501/original/file-20230424-22-paq5g6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522501/original/file-20230424-22-paq5g6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522501/original/file-20230424-22-paq5g6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522501/original/file-20230424-22-paq5g6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522501/original/file-20230424-22-paq5g6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522501/original/file-20230424-22-paq5g6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Donald Trump thought he was bigger than COVID – and lost office.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">zz/Dennis Van Tine/STAR MAX/IPx/AP</span></span>
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<p>By contrast, Xi Jinping is entrenched in power. The country where COVID first emerged is the world’s biggest engine of economic growth. It is on track <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/dereksaul/2022/12/06/china-and-india-will-overtake-us-economically-by-2075-goldman-sachs-economists-say/?sh=3f8d5a358ea9">to usurp the United States</a> as the single biggest economy in the world. It is extending its influence and economic reach via the <a href="https://www.oecd.org/finance/Chinas-Belt-and-Road-Initiative-in-the-global-trade-investment-and-finance-landscape.pdf">Belt and Road Initiative</a>, the biggest investment and infrastructure program the world has ever seen.</p>
<p>Xi is building an army to match his economic might. And he is leading the way on artificial intelligence research. The numbers tell the story. In the 20 years between 1997 and 2017, China’s global share of research papers <a href="https://www.science.org/content/article/china-rises-first-place-most-cited-papers">increased</a> from just over 4 per cent to nearly 28 per cent. And what is it focusing on? Speech and image recognition. The Chinese Communist Party can track anyone, anywhere, anytime.</p>
<p>Technology was meant to liberate us. Some saw the death knell for authoritarian regimes. How can you control the internet? But China has. Cyberspace has become a tool of tyranny. China has taken the digital age and put it in service of genocide.</p>
<p>There are lessons here for journalists. Our job is not to simply report events, it is to connect them. To join the dots. To reveal the big forces at play in our world. We missed this opportunity.</p>
<p>We cannot understand the COVID pandemic and its impact without understanding the currents shaping our world. COVID emerged out of China at a time when Xi Jinping had his eyes on global supremacy. He had shown how far he would be prepared to go to “harmonise” the nation. He had trialled his lockdown measures on what he callously called the “virus” of the Uighurs. </p>
<p>Around the world, democracy was in retreat and authoritarianism on the march. And now a virus was spreading that would attack the liberal democratic West where it believed it was strongest: its freedom.</p>
<p>Media can so easily be overwhelmed by events. One of the most common failings – particularly of television – is to report what we see, not what it means. Images can drive coverage. And images of people in white suits locking down entire cities obscured what was even more important. COVID was a 21st-century virus; a virus of a globalised world, of high-speed travel and borderless trade. It was also a virus of an increasingly authoritarian world.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/522533/original/file-20230424-20-ydq9i6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/522533/original/file-20230424-20-ydq9i6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/522533/original/file-20230424-20-ydq9i6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=917&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522533/original/file-20230424-20-ydq9i6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=917&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522533/original/file-20230424-20-ydq9i6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=917&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522533/original/file-20230424-20-ydq9i6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1153&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522533/original/file-20230424-20-ydq9i6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1153&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522533/original/file-20230424-20-ydq9i6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1153&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<p>The COVID-19 pandemic was a stress test. It revealed and accelerated fault lines already there. Populists were stripped bare. Their slogans, easy answers and arrogance meant they were slow to act. Millions died who might otherwise have lived. In strong democracies where there is trust in science and authority, countries emerged stronger. Yet they, too, walked a fine line between surrendering liberty and saving lives.</p>
<p>In China, Xi Jinping believes the People’s War is <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/china-declares-victory-over-both-the-coronavirus-and-critics-of-the-communist-party-at-the-biggest-political-event-of-the-year">a victory</a> for the Communist Party. The Party – the all-seeing eye – can control everything. It sits at the heart of everything. Xi believes he is the fulfilment of prophecy. The man who follows the great leaders, Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping. The one who delivers on China’s greatness.</p>
<p>Xi walks a tightrope, too. He has strained the nation to breaking point. The relentless, cruel lockdowns have slowed the economy and crushed the spirit of Chinese people. And they are angry and rising. China, like the rest of the world, is also reaching a tipping point.</p>
<p>In December 2022, Xi felt the pressure from the Chinese people, following mass demonstrations and unrest, and lifted the lockdowns abruptly. COVID quickly ran rampant. However, though the COVID lockdowns have ended, the Uighurs continue to suffer.</p>
<p>The virus of tyranny sleeps within democracy, too. It has always been in our bloodstream. China has edged us, the democracies, closer to what political scientist Vladimir Tismaneanu <a href="https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520282209/the-devil-in-history">has called</a> “the age of total administration and inescapable alienation”.</p>
<p>The COVID pandemic has passed, at least as a political crisis. Our minds are turned now to <a href="https://theconversation.com/essentialising-russia-wont-end-the-war-against-ukraine-might-real-and-credible-force-be-the-answer-195938">war in Ukraine</a> and economic strife. But journalists must remember that, as in contagions past, COVID will shape us. It leaves behind the trace of tyranny. And that is the true virus. The virus that will not die.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>This is an edited extract from <a href="https://publishing.monash.edu/product/pandemedia/">Panemedia: How Covid Changed Journalism</a> (Monash University Press).</em></p>
<p><em>This essay was originally written in November 2022.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/204183/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Stan Grant does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>China’s Xi Xinping had trialled his COVID lockdown measures on what he callously called the ‘virus’ of the Uighurs, writes Stan Grant. COVID lockdowns are now over, but the trace of tyranny remains.Stan Grant, Vice Chancellors Chair Australian/Indigenous Belonging, Charles Sturt UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1911162022-10-24T17:03:11Z2022-10-24T17:03:11ZHow Hitler conspiracies and other Holocaust disinformation undermine democratic institutions<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/490176/original/file-20221017-6899-yxtviw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C475%2C4673%2C2668&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A Ukrainian serviceman inspects a classroom with a sign 'Z' on the door used by Russian forces in the retaken area of Kapitolivka, Ukraine, Sept. 25, 2022. Russian President Vladimir Putin spread an outlandish conspiracy theory to justify military invasion of Ukraine.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)</span></span></figcaption></figure><iframe style="width: 100%; height: 100px; border: none; position: relative; z-index: 1;" allowtransparency="" allow="clipboard-read; clipboard-write" src="https://narrations.ad-auris.com/widget/the-conversation-canada/how-hitler-conspiracies-and-other-holocaust-disinformation-undermine-democratic-institutions" width="100%" height="400"></iframe>
<p>Godwin’s Law posits that any online argument, if it continues long enough, will <a href="https://www.dictionary.com/e/memes/godwins-law/">inevitably invoke a comparison to Hitler</a>.</p>
<p>Perhaps there should be an updated version: If you examine any given conspiracy theory, even seemingly innocuous ones, it won’t be long until you find coded and explicit antisemitism. </p>
<p>Some cases are obvious. Remember how far-right U.S. congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene embraced the <a href="https://www.globalnews.ca/news/7607501/marjorie-taylor-greene-jewish-space-laser/">“Jewish space lasers</a>” theory after the California wildfires in 2018? </p>
<p>Other conspiracy theories, such as those that claim <a href="https://www.adl.org/resources/reports/antisemitic-conspiracies-about-911-endure-20-years-later">9/11 was an inside job</a>, require a little more deciphering. </p>
<p>More recently, Russian President Vladimir Putin spread an outlandish conspiracy theory to justify his military invasion of Ukraine. Nothing less than the <a href="https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/disinformation-threat-to-democracy-requires-stronger-response-by-noelle-lenoir-2022-05">de-nazification of Ukraine</a> was required, Putin bizarrely claimed, while neglecting the fact that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is Jewish <a href="https://www.kyivpost.com/ukraine-politics/in-israel-zelensky-tells-own-familys-holocaust-story.html">and lost family members in the Holocaust</a>.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/ukraine-war-putins-denazification-campaign-hits-babyn-yar-holocaust-memorial-to-33-000-murdered-jews-178403">Ukraine war: Putin's 'denazification' campaign hits Babyn Yar holocaust memorial to 33,000 murdered Jews</a>
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<p>All too often, such theories and disinformation are rooted in <a href="https://www.wgbh.org/news/local-news/2022/02/09/abbie-richards-fights-tiktok-disinformation-with-a-cup-of-tea-a-conspiracy-chart-and-a-punchline">antisemitic tropes</a>. These promote false claims of Jewish control over institutions and even the outcome of specific events. </p>
<p>While it might be easy to dismiss such disinformation as harmless or too bizarre to be believable, in reality disinformation and conspiracy theorizing often spreads harmful antisemitic messages and also <a href="https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691188836/a-lot-of-people-are-saying">undermines our democratic institutions</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A man seen holidng a sign that says 'We shall not forget.'" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/491077/original/file-20221021-19-d7qc47.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/491077/original/file-20221021-19-d7qc47.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=478&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/491077/original/file-20221021-19-d7qc47.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=478&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/491077/original/file-20221021-19-d7qc47.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=478&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/491077/original/file-20221021-19-d7qc47.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/491077/original/file-20221021-19-d7qc47.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/491077/original/file-20221021-19-d7qc47.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Anti-Nazi demonstration, Carlton St., Toronto, May 31, 1981.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Ontario Jewish Archives, item 3076-3077)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Longevity of antisemitic conspiracy theory</h2>
<p>One of the longest lasting conspiracy theories — even though it has been repeatedly proven false — is the narrative of a Jewish world conspiracy presented in <em><a href="https://www.theconversation.com/why-the-protocols-of-the-elders-of-zion-is-still-pushed-by-anti-semites-more-than-a-century-after-hoax-first-circulated-145220">The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.</a></em> </p>
<p>British historian <a href="https://www.richardjevans.com/">Richard Evans</a> will explore the longevity of the Protocols and how they are seen within the framework of Nazi ideology, in Toronto on Nov. 2, <a href="https://www.holocaustcentre.com/hew/featured-programs2022">opening Holocaust Education Week 2022</a>.</p>
<p>Evans’s book <a href="https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/314851/the-hitler-conspiracies-by-evans-richard-j/9780141991498"><em>The Hitler Conspiracies</em></a> is an important reminder of the perennial fascination with and longevity of the inherently antisemitic conspiracy theory that historian <a href="https://www.commentary.org/articles/walter-laqueur/warrant-for-genocide-by-norman-cohn/">Norman Cohn famously described as a “warrant for genocide.</a>” </p>
<p>As Yehuda Bauer, honorary chair of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, stated, “a half truth is worse than a full lie.” </p>
<p><a href="https://www.teenvogue.com/story/most-popular-conspiracy-theories">Myths and disinformation about the Holocaust</a> continue to permeate social media and increasingly, political discourse, even while the <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/genocide/deniers_01.shtml">Holocaust is one</a> of the <a href="https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/documenting-numbers-of-victims-of-the-holocaust-and-nazi-persecution">most thoroughly documented events</a> in history.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A woman seen standing at the side of a wall of names." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/490193/original/file-20221017-17-bkatbe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/490193/original/file-20221017-17-bkatbe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/490193/original/file-20221017-17-bkatbe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/490193/original/file-20221017-17-bkatbe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/490193/original/file-20221017-17-bkatbe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/490193/original/file-20221017-17-bkatbe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/490193/original/file-20221017-17-bkatbe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A woman lays a flower on the Wall of Names during a ceremony at the memorial garden of the children of the Vel d'Hiv Roundup in Paris, July 16, 2022.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Christophe Ena)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Distortion, misinformation</h2>
<p>Whether intentional or not, disinformation breathes new life into old, often violence-inducing antisemitic narratives. The power of distortion and misinformation is its seemingly immutable ability to defy the historical truth. </p>
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Read more:
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<p>Dangerous narratives found in the <em>Protocols</em> continue to inform attempts to deny and distort the Holocaust. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum calls it the <a href="https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/protocols-of-the-elders-of-zion">most notorious and widely distributed antisemitic publication of modern times</a>.</p>
<p>Born out of fear and hatred, Holocaust conspiracy theories have enormous longevity and regain traction in times of uncertainty and societal unease. </p>
<p>As <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/conspiracy-theories-and-the-people-who-believe-them-9780190844073?q=Conspiracy%20Theories%20and%20the%20People%20Who%20Believe%20Them&lang=en&cc=ca#">distortion and disinformation attempts to erode our belief</a> in the historical record and cast aspersions on Jews, it simultaneously nourishes conspiracy theories that encourage extreme nationalism, and not infrequently antisemitism. </p>
<p>Antisemitism is inherently conspiratorial. In the 20th century, it became <a href="https://www.middlebury.edu/institute/academics/centers-initiatives/ctec/ctec-publications/violent-impact-anti-semitic-conspiracy">deeply enmeshed in western antidemocratic and fascist politics</a>.</p>
<p>Visions of shadowy Jewish cabals pulling the strings behind world events and orchestrating disasters, both macro and personal, continue to hold sway in our political imagination. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1547250248204095488"}"></div></p>
<h2>Pandemic misappropriations</h2>
<p>During the COVID-19 pandemic, anti-lockdown protesters around the world frequently <a href="https://www.euractiv.com/section/politics/news/holocaust-survivor-decries-abuse-of-yellow-star-at-covid-protests/">appropriated the yellow star</a> that was forced upon Jews during the Holocaust. Others invoked visuals of the <a href="https://ca.finance.yahoo.com/news/shameful-auschwitz-style-banner-polish-133615944.html">notorious death camp Auschwitz-Birkenau</a> in a misguided attempt to compare their supposed victimization to the genocide of European Jewry. </p>
<p>Holocaust distortion and conspiracism are equally dangerous: both open the door to entertaining fantasies and ideas that have historically led to mass murder of Jews. </p>
<p>This is the case whether it is the intentionally hateful kind espoused by infamous neo-Nazis <a href="https://www.auschwitz.org/en/history/holocaust-denial/ernst-zundel/">like Ernst Zundel</a>, or misguided appropriations by anti-lockdown protesters <a href="https://www.againstholocaustdistortion.org/news/debunking-inappropriate-holocaust-comparisons-the-covid-19-yellow-star">during the pandemic</a>.</p>
<p>One result of this phenomenon is <a href="https://www.governing.com/now/conspiracy-theories-cast-shadows-over-washington-midterms">the weakening of our democratic institutions</a>, which are the foundation of western democracy itself. </p>
<h2>Weakend public trust</h2>
<p>Just as the spread of this disinformation and false equivalencies instrumentalize history, they also <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/19485506211000217">weaken public trust in</a> the bodies <a href="https://www.oecd.org/coronavirus/policy-responses/transparency-communication-and-trust-the-role-of-public-communication-in-responding-to-the-wave-of-disinformation-about-the-new-coronavirus-bef7ad6e/">that determine public health guidelines</a> and oversee public safety <a href="https://thehub.ca/2022-08-25/rudyard-griffiths-wef-conspiracies-are-antisemitic-and-a-moral-stain-on-conservative-politics">and economic policy</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Health-care workers in scrubs and masks look out a window at the top of protest signs." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/491079/original/file-20221021-16-35nb6u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/491079/original/file-20221021-16-35nb6u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/491079/original/file-20221021-16-35nb6u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/491079/original/file-20221021-16-35nb6u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/491079/original/file-20221021-16-35nb6u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/491079/original/file-20221021-16-35nb6u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/491079/original/file-20221021-16-35nb6u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Health-care workers watch from a window as demonstrators gather outside Toronto General Hospital, in September 2021, to protest against COVID-19 vaccines.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Chris Young</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Characteristically, conspiracy theories, disinformation and misinformation don’t need to prove their claims. They need only to cause doubt and undermine the agencies and departments that function as part of the democratic process.</p>
<p>We are living in conspiratorial times. The concerning prevalence of Holocaust distortion and denial material online today poses a serious challenge to educators. Even when debunked, disinformation can remain accessible through online platforms influencing new generations unaware of how this information has been discredited. </p>
<p>A recent UNESCO study reported that <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/07/13/holocaust-denial-telegram-history-distortion-content-moderation/">nearly half of the Holocaust content on the app Telegram</a> contained denial and disinformation. <a href="https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000381958">Educational programs have been developed</a> that target the specific challenges posed by this proliferation of falsehoods and disinformation. </p>
<h2>Robust Holocaust education, digital literacy</h2>
<p>It will require however, prioritizing teaching digital literacy and robust Holocaust education — and repeatedly equipping learners with <a href="https://www.wgbh.org/news/local-news/2022/02/09/abbie-richards-fights-tiktok-disinformation-with-a-cup-of-tea-a-conspiracy-chart-and-a-punchline">tools to critically analyze what they encounter in online forums</a>. </p>
<iframe src="https://www.tiktok.com/embed/v2/6890257204004359430?lang=en-US" style="border:0;width:100%;min-height:825px;" width="100%" height="400"></iframe>
<p>Holocaust distortion and conspiracism are only one form of ugly disinformation swirling our polluted media ecosystems and social networks, but they are a particularly venomous and dangerous one. </p>
<p>Addressing this problem will not be easy. It requires a collaborative response that must include international co-operation from all levels of governments, leaders and international organizations devoted to nurturing and protecting civil society. When a celebrity such as <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/music/2021/oct/19/kanye-west-changes-name-ye">Ye, formerly known as Kanye West</a>, can espouse <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/24/us/los-angeles-demonstrators-kanye-west-antisemitic-remarks/index.html">antisemitic conspiracy theories</a> and still have a business partnership with Adidas — <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2022/10/25/adidas-terminates-partnership-with-ye-following-rappers-antisemitic-remarks.html">now ended after mounting public pressure</a> — there is indeed a lot of work to do. To their credit, <a href="https://fortune.com/2022/10/21/kanye-west-balenciaga-antisemetic-comments-twitter-instagram/?queryly=related_article">sponsor Balenciaga severed ties</a> with him after his <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/24/arts/music/kanye-west-adidas-balenciaga-yeezy.html">antisemitic outbursts</a>.</p>
<p>To effect real change, education, collective responsibility and action are essential for success.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/191116/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Carson Phillips is affiliated with the Holocaust Education Centre in Toronto, Canada and a Canadian delegate to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance.</span></em></p>Many conspiracy theories and disinformation are rooted in antisemitic tropes which spread harm and undermine our democratic institutions.Carson Phillips, Adjunct, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Gratz CollegeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1796472022-03-28T15:47:56Z2022-03-28T15:47:56ZUkraine war: The history of conflict shows how elective wars ultimately fail<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/454520/original/file-20220327-19-fg9dym.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C8%2C5499%2C3647&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A Ukrainian police officer is overwhelmed by emotion after comforting people evacuated from Irpin on the outskirts of Kyiv on March 26, 2022. History shows that wars launched for nebulous reasons generally backfire on those who launch them.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Vadim Ghirda)</span></span></figcaption></figure><iframe style="width: 100%; height: 100px; border: none; position: relative; z-index: 1;" allowtransparency="" allow="clipboard-read; clipboard-write" src="https://narrations.ad-auris.com/widget/the-conversation-canada/ukraine-war--the-history-of-conflict-shows-how-elective-wars-ultimately-fail" width="100%" height="400"></iframe>
<p>Throughout history, elective wars like the one in Ukraine — armed military conflicts that countries wage without compelling and urgent reasons for action — have mostly failed to achieve their aims. Instead, they worsen the problems they set out to solve and often become the undoing of those who started the conflict.</p>
<p>Of the oldest written records of how this dynamic played out <a href="https://www.history.com/topics/ancient-history/thucydides">is contained in the work of Thucydides</a>, the Athenian historian and general who chronicled <a href="https://www.history.com/topics/ancient-history/peloponnesian-war">the Peloponnesian War</a> (431-404 BCE) between ancient Greece’s most powerful city-states: Athens and Sparta. </p>
<p>In his <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/files/7142/7142-h/7142-h.htm"><em>History of the Peloponnesian War</em></a>, Thucydides records that in 416 BCE, the Athenians decide on a whim to invade the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/place/Melos">island of Melos</a>, which, although an ally of Sparta, didn’t join Sparta in the war against Athens. </p>
<p>The Melians’ pleas for justice fell on the deaf ears of the Athenians who demanded that the Melians surrender, pay tribute to and join Athen’s confederacy or face destruction. <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Peloponnesian-War">The campaign ended tragically</a> with the entire civilian population of Melos facing all kinds of atrocities for refusing to surrender to the Athenians, who saw their unbridled power as sufficient basis to inflict grave injustice. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A painting of a funeral during the ancient Peloponnesian War." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/454379/original/file-20220325-23-13sm9km.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/454379/original/file-20220325-23-13sm9km.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=292&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454379/original/file-20220325-23-13sm9km.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=292&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454379/original/file-20220325-23-13sm9km.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=292&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454379/original/file-20220325-23-13sm9km.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=366&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454379/original/file-20220325-23-13sm9km.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=366&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454379/original/file-20220325-23-13sm9km.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=366&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A painting shows Pericles’ funeral oration at the end of first year of the Peloponnesian War on a 1955 Greece 50 drachma banknote.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Intoxicated by power, the Athenians’ reply, according to Thucydides’ account, was essentially: “The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.” This principle, Thucydides shows, was the driving force behind Athens’s aggressive approach toward its neighbours. </p>
<p>Over time, it fuelled deep-seated anger and resentment among Melians and citizens of other city-states who sought revenge by ultimately <a href="https://www.history.com/topics/ancient-history/peloponnesian-war">joining forces with Sparta to defeat Athens in 404 BCE</a>. </p>
<h2>Downfalls triggered</h2>
<p>As the Russian invasion of Ukraine illustrates, the dynamics of great power politics haven’t changed much in more recent history. The lure of using brute force to achieve quick economic and geopolitical gains has created a rolling tide of military mobilization that has carried countries into battle.</p>
<p>History often repeats itself in that those battles trigger the downfall of the stronger party who unnecessarily drew the first blood.</p>
<p>In the 1930s, fascist regimes used offensive wars as consolation when grandiose promises proved hollow. As <a href="https://www.federalreservehistory.org/essays/great-depression">the Great Depression</a> dragged on, Italy’s <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Benito-Mussolini">Benito Mussolini</a> sought to divert public attention from his economic failures through a series of costly military adventures <a href="https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/italy-invades-greece">in Greece</a>, <a href="https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/axis-invasion-of-yugoslavia">the former Yugoslavia</a> <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Italo-Ethiopian-War-1935-1936">and Ethiopia</a>. </p>
<p>These episodes created economic havoc for Italians rather than glory before Italy’s entry to the Second World War. The war accelerated Mussolini’s downward spiral even among <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jul/26/mussolini-loses-grip-on-italy-archive-1943">his own fascist clique, which ousted him in 1943</a>.</p>
<p>In the same time period, <a href="https://www.history.com/topics/world-war-ii/adolf-hitler-1#section_19">Adolf Hitler</a> thought Germany needed <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/wwtwo/hitler_lebensraum_01.shtml"><em>Lebensraum</em></a> — living space — to ease its economic strains. He then proceeded with unprovoked invasions of Czechoslovakia and Poland to expand Germany’s territory, sparking the Second World War in 1939. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A black and white photo shows a group of men in military uniforms." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/454521/original/file-20220327-25-x6hpb7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/454521/original/file-20220327-25-x6hpb7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=431&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454521/original/file-20220327-25-x6hpb7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=431&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454521/original/file-20220327-25-x6hpb7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=431&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454521/original/file-20220327-25-x6hpb7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=542&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454521/original/file-20220327-25-x6hpb7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=542&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454521/original/file-20220327-25-x6hpb7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=542&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">High-ranking officials of the Nazi and Fascist Parties. Left to right: Herman Goering, Benito Mussolini, Rudolph Hess and Adolf Hitler.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(National Archives of Canada)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>To achieve his ideal of a racial utopia, Hitler’s war not only unleashed <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Holocaust">a genocide of six million Jews</a> and persecution on a scale few could have imagined, it also undermined the entire German economy and the country’s military capabilities. </p>
<p>Hitler’s delusional leadership ultimately resulted in <a href="https://www.historynet.com/hitlers-greatest-blunders/">a series of defeats</a> <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Rudolf-Hess">and defections</a>, culminating in <a href="https://www.history.com/news/6-assassination-attempts-on-adolf-hitler">assassination attempts</a> on Hitler himself and finally the collapse of Nazi Germany and <a href="https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/adolf-hitler-commits-suicide">the führer’s suicide</a> on April 30, 1945.</p>
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Read more:
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<hr>
<p><a href="https://www.britannica.com/place/Middle-East">The Middle East</a> also saw a number of elective wars that marked the beginning of the end of the regimes that waged them. <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Muammar-al-Qaddafi">Muammar Gadhafi’s</a> <a href="https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/war/chad.htm">war against Chad (1978-87)</a> is one example. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Saddam-Hussein">Saddam Hussein’s</a> <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/8/1/thirty-years-on-iraqs-invasion-of-kuwait-still-haunts-region">1991 invasion of Kuwait</a> is another. </p>
<p>Both regimes envisioned wars of national glory only to plunge their countries into quagmires that took huge human and economic tolls and severely diminished public confidence in their leadership. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Oils wells burn and black smoke rises into the sky in a large oil field." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/454522/original/file-20220327-13-dhxpj1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/454522/original/file-20220327-13-dhxpj1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=349&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454522/original/file-20220327-13-dhxpj1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=349&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454522/original/file-20220327-13-dhxpj1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=349&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454522/original/file-20220327-13-dhxpj1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=439&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454522/original/file-20220327-13-dhxpj1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=439&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454522/original/file-20220327-13-dhxpj1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=439&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">In this March 1991 photo, Kuwait’s oil wells burn after defeated Iraqi troops were expelled from Kuwait.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Why elective wars fail</h2>
<p>War is often a failure in itself. However, elective wars constitute a special kind of failure. </p>
<p>First and foremost, they lose public support quickly. They often <a href="https://www.voanews.com/a/putin-saber-rattling-or-preparing-for-war/6323352.html">begin with sabre-rattling</a> and narratives that exalt <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0022009404042129">an alleged heroic past and envision a war of national glory</a>, similar to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s rhetoric prior to the invasion of Ukraine. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/454523/original/file-20220327-15-3175z6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A balding man smiles with a red, blue and gold flag behind him." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/454523/original/file-20220327-15-3175z6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/454523/original/file-20220327-15-3175z6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454523/original/file-20220327-15-3175z6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454523/original/file-20220327-15-3175z6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454523/original/file-20220327-15-3175z6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454523/original/file-20220327-15-3175z6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454523/original/file-20220327-15-3175z6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Putin attends a meeting with young award-winning culture professionals via video conference in Moscow on March 25, 2022.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Mikhail Klimentyev, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But as the war drags on and the futility of war becomes more obvious, people begin to question the strategic importance and moral foundations of war. It’s difficult for regimes to galvanize public opinion or maintain people’s willingness to accept the sacrifices associated with war — especially when <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/poq/nfq001">it’s a drain on resources, causes economic hardship and lowers living standards</a>.</p>
<p>When that happens, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1017/9781316336182.008">regimes face two hard choices</a>. One is to admit their mistake and reverse action. That rarely happens. The second is to <a href="https://theconversation.com/putins-control-over-ukraine-war-news-is-not-total-its-challenged-by-online-news-and-risk-taking-journalists-179540">suppress dissenting opinions</a>, project an image of popular support for the war and stay the course despite mistakes that later lead to further errors and conflict within the power elite. </p>
<p>Elective wars often fail because they attempt to eliminate old animosities but instead create new ones. <a href="https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/axis-invasion-of-yugoslavia">They also shred the ethnic bonds within conquered territories</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Two long-haired girls join hands and dance in front of a burning effigy of Vladimir Putin." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/454709/original/file-20220328-23-1iyzd3v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/454709/original/file-20220328-23-1iyzd3v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454709/original/file-20220328-23-1iyzd3v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454709/original/file-20220328-23-1iyzd3v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454709/original/file-20220328-23-1iyzd3v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454709/original/file-20220328-23-1iyzd3v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454709/original/file-20220328-23-1iyzd3v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Demonstrators dance around a burning an effigy of the Russian President Vladimir Putin during an anti-war protest in Tbilisi, Georgia — a former Soviet republic — on March 27, 2022.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This results in time bombs that can go off at any moment, since few modern economies can function well within a hostile environment. </p>
<p>“The empires of the future are empires of the mind,” <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Winston-Churchill">Winston Churchill</a> presciently said <a href="https://www.harvardmagazine.com/churchill-18">in a 1943 speech</a> at the height of the Second World War.</p>
<p>Churchill seemingly realized that wars aimed at territorial expansion won’t ensure national security or economic prosperity, and the future belongs to those who invest in education, knowledge production and innovation rather than wage meaningless wars that create nothing but misery.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/179647/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Edmund Adam does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>It’s difficult for regimes to galvanize public opinion or maintain people’s willingness to accept the sacrifices associated with a war waged for questionable reasons.Edmund Adam, Postdoctoral fellow, Department of Communication Studies & Media Arts, McMaster UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1752852022-01-21T12:14:51Z2022-01-21T12:14:51ZMunich – The Edge of War: women in historical films are too often unrealistic<p>In September 1938, Britain, Germany, Italy and France met in Munich as a new European war loomed. Hitler was demanding to annex the Sudetenland in western Czechoslovakia so in a bid to avoid war the Four Powers Agreement was signed and Czechoslovakia would surrender its border regions and defences. British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain had Hitler sign a separate Anglo-German agreement and triumphantly called it “peace for our time”. Known as the Munich crisis, this event was the climax of appeasement. </p>
<p>A new film, Munich — The Edge of War, is not a dramatisation of this pivotal event but a work of “what if” historical fiction, based on Robert Harris’s <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/sep/17/munich-by-robert-harris-review-spy-novel">2017 political thriller</a> of the same name. The fictional male leads Hugh Legat and Paul von Hartmann are loosely based on the British AL Rowse and the German Adam von Trott, a good deal of poetic licence taken regarding their respective political insights, foresight and proximity to the centre stage of diplomatic events. The suspense of the story hinges on whether they together can change the course of events. </p>
<p>The film aims to be relatable by subtly framing the strategic and ethical quandaries faced by the appeasers and the would-be anti-Nazi resistors in ways that will resonate with audiences in our own age of crisis and rising extremism. Indeed, in the news now Russia is massing troops on the border of <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-russian-is-ukraine-clue-not-as-much-as-vladimir-putin-insists-173758">Ukraine</a> to prevent it joining NATO, and some commentators are comparing this to the Munich Crisis of 1938.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/AQ7x8odi-OU?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>The portrayal of Neville Chamberlain is nostalgic, highly sympathetic and (perhaps, too) attractive. Jeremy Irons’ Chamberlain is the saviour of peace, the epitome of respectability, good manners and tradition – a striking foil for the current resident of 10 Downing Street, a prime minister who uses the same austere spaces for, we now know, <a href="https://theconversation.com/boris-johnson-sue-grays-report-may-prove-the-final-straw-for-angry-conservative-mps-175098">far less serious business</a>.</p>
<p>The vast majority of ruminations about the historical plausibility of the film will focus on the characterisation of the leading great or guilty men. However, who are the “what if” women in the film? Are they plausible representations of the crisis women of Munich? </p>
<h2>Fictional women</h2>
<p>Munich - The Edge of War features strong, intelligent, well-informed women characters whose actions have a direct bearing on events. The historical fictional genre allows for an attempt to right the wrongs of the very real male-exclusivity and unexamined sexism of interwar diplomacy.</p>
<p>There are four key but still supporting women characters, serving important symbolic, romantic and dramatic functions. </p>
<p>There is Lenya, the German-Jewish friend of both Hugh Legat and Paul von Hartman. Pamela Legat is the protagonist’s wife, standing in for British mothers faced with the terrifying prospect of war from the air, making wrenching decisions about evacuating children, and looking at this new world through the dehumanising visor of newly acquired gas masks. </p>
<p>Third, the film takes one of Chamberlain’s typists on a flight of fancy, so to speak. She is given the name Joan Menzies. While women typists did accompany Chamberlain by airplane to the Munich Conference, as far as we know none served overt or covert functions in the negotiations. </p>
<p>Fourth, on the German side, there is Helen Winter, widow of a General, holding some kind of administrative ministerial post, and both von Hartmann’s love interest and co-conspirator – the pretty face of German anti-Nazism.</p>
<p>These token women are all “great” rather than guilty women, with assorted qualities of courage, heroism, pathos, insight and intuition, not to mention sex appeal. They are all variations of the mythical Greek priestess Cassandra – cursed to utter true prophecies, but never to be believed about the consequences of the naive acts performed by men.</p>
<p>To avoid giving away the plot, I won’t give any more detail. But in terms of the historical record, some spoilers are called for. Indeed, the main problem with the plot devices and dramatic functions assigned to these women characters is that women just did not have this kind of access to power, certainly not in an official capacity.</p>
<h2>Historical women</h2>
<p>To say that women would not have been able to act in the events as they do in the film is not to say that women were absent from history, even at the level of high politics and diplomacy. I suspect elements of the life story of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/news/2004/apr/03/guardianobituaries">Sheila Grant Duff</a> have been mined for the composite heroines. </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="Black and white portrait of a woman." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/441700/original/file-20220120-9048-1mknmoh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/441700/original/file-20220120-9048-1mknmoh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=826&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/441700/original/file-20220120-9048-1mknmoh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=826&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/441700/original/file-20220120-9048-1mknmoh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=826&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/441700/original/file-20220120-9048-1mknmoh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1038&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/441700/original/file-20220120-9048-1mknmoh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1038&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/441700/original/file-20220120-9048-1mknmoh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1038&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">It is likely that some of the women in the film were based on the journalist Shiela Grant Duff.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/use-this-image/?email=naomi.joseph%40theconversation.com&form=cc&mkey=mw45889">National Portrait Gallery, London</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Grant Duff and von Trott developed a close friendship at the University of Oxford in the early 1930s. They fell out over politics when he became a supporter of the Nazi regime, and as a woman, she blazed a trail as a foreign correspondent and expert on and advocate of Czechoslovakia. Her best-selling <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europe_and_the_Czechs">Penguin Special Europe and the Czechs</a> (1938) was published just days after the Munich Agreement was signed.</p>
<p>Moreover, a handful of women MPs, from the already small group of women who were MPs in the late 1930s, were formidable critics of appeasement. Amongst them were the Independent <a href="https://www.parliament.uk/about/living-heritage/transformingsociety/electionsvoting/womenvote/parliamentary-collections/eleanor-rathbone/eleanor-rathbone/">Eleanor Rathbone</a>, Labour’s <a href="https://www.parliament.uk/about/living-heritage/transformingsociety/electionsvoting/case-study-radical-politicians-in-the-north-east/introduction/">Ellen Wilkinson</a> and Chamberlain-scourge the Conservative <a href="https://www.scotsman.com/news/politics/red-duchess-scotlands-first-female-mp-3097700">Duchess of Atholl</a>, who made sure that all British MPs were presented with the uncensored translation of Hitler’s <em>Mein Kampf</em>. Other women MPs led from the front as Chamberlain’s fan base, including Conservative MPs <a href="https://www.parliament.uk/globalassets/documents/works-of-art/nancy-astor-leaflet-web-version.pdf">Nancy Astor</a>, <a href="https://www.chu.cam.ac.uk/news/2021/mar/8/remembering-florence-horsbrugh-international-women/">Florence Horsbrugh</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marjorie_Graves">Marjorie Graves</a>. Also, as a collective, the “millions of mothers” of Europe were understood to be the enthusiastic supporters of Chamberlain, the saviour of peace.</p>
<p>Munich — The Edge of War, a brooding and atmospheric fictionalisation of the Munich Crisis, does a commendable job of writing women into the drama and inviting audiences to take a gender-blind view of the event. But it is also a welcome invitation to look more closely and carefully at the historical record and acknowledge the opportunities as well as the significant constraints real women faced in the 1930s to play the kind of decisive roles created for them in this film.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/175285/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Julie Gottlieb does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Women were not really present during the signing of the Four Powers Agreement but they were at home in parliament. Film often demand sexy more sympathetic female charactersJulie Gottlieb, Professor of Modern History, University of SheffieldLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1726022021-12-15T19:08:22Z2021-12-15T19:08:22ZHibbert’s flowers and Hitler’s beetle – what do we do when species are named after history’s monsters?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/437438/original/file-20211214-13-y3duma.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=118%2C0%2C3843%2C2232&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Hibbertia_procumbens_(6691568261).jpg">John Tann/Wikimedia Commons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>“What’s in a name?”, <a href="https://www.bartleby.com/70/3822.html">asked Juliet of Romeo</a>. “That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.”</p>
<p>But, as with the Montagues and Capulets, names mean a lot, and can cause a great deal of heartache.</p>
<p>My colleagues and I are <a href="https://theconversation.com/its-not-the-science-of-tax-and-five-other-things-you-should-know-about-taxonomy-78926">taxonomists</a>, which means we name living things. While we’ve never named a rose, we do discover and name new Australian species of plants and animals – and there are a lot of them!</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/about-500-000-australian-species-are-undiscovered-and-scientists-are-on-a-25-year-mission-to-finish-the-job-161793">About 500,000 Australian species are undiscovered – and scientists are on a 25-year mission to finish the job</a>
</strong>
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<hr>
<p>For each new species we discover, we create and publish a Latin scientific name, following a set of international rules and conventions. The name has two parts: the first part is the genus name (such as <em>Eucalyptus</em>), which describes the group of species to which the new species belongs, and the second part is a species name (such as <em>globulus</em>, thereby making the name <em>Eucalyptus globulus</em>) particular to the new species itself. New species are either added to an existing genus, or occasionally, if they’re sufficiently novel, are given their own new genus.</p>
<p>Some scientific names are widely known – arguably none more so than our own, <em>Homo sapiens</em>. And gardeners or nature enthusiasts will be familiar with genus names such as <em>Acacia</em>, <em>Callistemon</em> or <em>Banksia</em>.</p>
<p>This all sounds pretty uncontroversial. But as with Shakespeare’s star-crossed lovers, history and tradition sometimes present problems.</p>
<h2>What’s in a name?</h2>
<p>Take the genus <em><a href="http://www.flora.sa.gov.au/cgi-bin/speciesfacts_display.cgi?form=speciesfacts&name=Hibbertia">Hibbertia</a></em>, the Australian guineaflowers. This is one of the largest genera of plants in Australia, and the one we study. </p>
<p>There are many new and yet-unnamed species of <em>Hibbertia</em>, which means new species names are regularly added to this genus.</p>
<p>Many scientific names are derived from a feature of the species or genus being named, such as <em>Eucalyptus</em>, from the Greek for “well-covered” (a reference to the operculum or bud-cap that covers unopened eucalypt flowers). </p>
<p>Others <a href="https://theconversation.com/its-funny-to-name-species-after-celebrities-but-theres-a-serious-side-too-95513">honour significant people</a>, either living or dead. <em>Hibbertia</em> is named after a wealthy 19th-century English patron of botany, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Hibbert">George Hibbert</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="George Hibbert by Thomas Lawrence" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/437440/original/file-20211214-15-1u4xyy3.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/437440/original/file-20211214-15-1u4xyy3.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=901&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/437440/original/file-20211214-15-1u4xyy3.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=901&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/437440/original/file-20211214-15-1u4xyy3.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=901&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/437440/original/file-20211214-15-1u4xyy3.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1132&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/437440/original/file-20211214-15-1u4xyy3.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1132&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/437440/original/file-20211214-15-1u4xyy3.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1132&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">George Hibbert: big fan of flowers and slavery.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:George_Hibbert_by_Thomas_Lawrence,_1811.JPG">Thomas Lawrence/Stephen C. Dickson/Wikimedia Commons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>And here’s where things stop being straightforward, because Hibbert’s wealth came almost entirely from the transatlantic slave trade. He profited from taking slaves from Africa to the New World, selling some and using others on his family’s extensive plantations, then transporting slave-produced sugar and cotton back to England.</p>
<p>Hibbert was also a prominent member of the British parliament and a <a href="https://www.ucl.ac.uk/lbs/person/view/16791">staunch opponent of abolition</a>. He and his ilk argued that slavery was economically necessary for England, and even that slaves were better off on the plantations than in their homelands. </p>
<p>Even at the time, his views were considered abhorrent by many critics. But despite this, he was handsomely recompensed for his “losses” when Britain finally abolished slavery in 1807.</p>
<p>So, should Hibbert be honoured with the name of a genus of plants, to which new species are still being added today – effectively meaning he is honoured afresh with each new publication?</p>
<p>We don’t believe so. Just like statues, buildings, and <a href="https://theconversation.com/was-first-governor-james-stirling-had-links-to-slavery-as-well-as-directing-a-massacre-should-he-be-honoured-162078">street or suburb names</a>, we think a reckoning is due for scientific species names that honour people who held views or acted in ways that are deeply dishonourable, highly problematic or truly egregious by modern standards.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="Anophthalmus hitleri" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/437442/original/file-20211214-13-1yaho8u.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/437442/original/file-20211214-13-1yaho8u.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=980&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/437442/original/file-20211214-13-1yaho8u.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=980&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/437442/original/file-20211214-13-1yaho8u.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=980&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/437442/original/file-20211214-13-1yaho8u.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1231&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/437442/original/file-20211214-13-1yaho8u.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1231&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/437442/original/file-20211214-13-1yaho8u.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1231&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">This beetle doesn’t deserve to be named after the most reviled figure of the 20th century.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Anophthalmus_hitleri_HabitusDors.jpg">Michael Munich/Wikimedia Commons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Just as Western Australia’s King Leopold Range <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-07-03/wa-king-leopold-ranges-renamed-wunaamin-miliwundi-ranges/12416254">was recently renamed</a> to remove the link to the atrocious <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leopold_II_of_Belgium">Leopold II of Belgium</a>, we would like <em>Hibbertia</em> to bear a more appropriate and less troubling name.</p>
<p>The same goes for the Great Barrier Reef coral <em><a href="http://www.edgeofexistence.org/species/elegance-coral/">Catalaphyllia jardinei</a></em>, named after Frank Jardine, a brutal dispossessor of Aboriginal people in North Queensland. And, perhaps most astoundingly, the rare Slovenian cave beetle <em><a href="https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/773804">Anophthalmus hitleri</a></em>, which was named in 1933 in honour of Adolf Hitler. </p>
<p>This name is unfortunate for several reasons: despite being a small, somewhat nondescript, blind beetle, in recent years it has been reportedly <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/fans-exterminate-hitler-beetle-6232054.html">pushed to the brink of extinction</a> by Nazi memorabilia enthusiasts. Specimens are even being stolen from museum collections for sale into this lucrative market.</p>
<h2>Aye, there’s the rub</h2>
<p>Unfortunately, the official rules don’t allow us to rename <em>Hibbertia</em> or any other species that has a troubling or inappropriate name.</p>
<p>To solve this, we propose a change to the international rules for naming species. Our <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/tax.12620">proposal</a>, if adopted, would establish an international expert committee to decide what do about scientific names that honour inappropriate people or are based on culturally offensive words. </p>
<p>An example of the latter is the <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/tax.12622">many names of plants</a> based on the Latin <em>caffra</em>, the origin of which is a word so offensive to Black Africans that its use is <a href="https://www.cfr.org/blog/k-word-south-africa-and-proposed-new-penalties-against-hate-speech">banned in South Africa</a>.</p>
<p>Some may argue the scholarly naming of species should remain aloof from social change, and that Hibbert’s views on slavery are irrelevant to the classification of Australian flowers. We counter that, just like <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statue_of_Edward_Colston">toppling statues in Bristol Harbour</a> or <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/mar/18/goodbye-cecil-rhodes-house-renamed-to-lose-link-to-british-empire-builder-in-africa">removing Cecil Rhodes’ name from public buildings</a>, renaming things is important and necessary if we are to right history’s wrongs.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/was-first-governor-james-stirling-had-links-to-slavery-as-well-as-directing-a-massacre-should-he-be-honoured-162078">WA's first governor James Stirling had links to slavery, as well as directing a massacre. Should he be honoured?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>We believe that science, including taxonomy, must be socially responsible and responsive. Science is embedded in culture rather than housed in ivory towers, and scientists should work for the common good rather than blindly follow tradition. Deeply problematic names pervade science just as they pervade our streets, cities and landscapes.</p>
<p><em>Hibbertia</em> may be just a name, but we believe a different name for this lovely genus of Australian flowers would smell much sweeter.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>This article was co-authored by Tim Hammer, a postdoctoral research fellow at the State Herbarium of South Australia.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/172602/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kevin Thiele does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>One of Australia’s largest groups of flower species is named after a wealthy British slave-trader. And Nazi memorabilia collectors have almost sent “Hitler’s beetle” extinct. It’s time for a change.Kevin Thiele, Adjunct Assoc. Professor, The University of Western AustraliaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1593542021-05-06T13:26:16Z2021-05-06T13:26:16ZA return to the archives sheds light on German spies in South Africa during WWII<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/398330/original/file-20210503-17-x1iouy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Members of the Ossewabrandwag on parade during WWII. The then political opposition collaborated with the Germans. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">OB Photo Collection/Records, Archives and Museum Division, North-West University</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The story of the intelligence war in South Africa during the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/World-War-II">Second World War</a> is one of suspense, drama and dogged persistence. South Africa officially joined the war on 6 September 1939 by siding with Britain and the Allies and declaring war on Nazi Germany.</p>
<p>South African historians have largely overlooked the intelligence war, partly because of the apparent paucity of reference sources on it. This lack of attention prompted me to investigate the matter further. The result was my <a href="https://www.takealot.com/hitler-s-spies-secret-agents-and-the-intelligence-war-in-south-a/PLID72152497">book</a> <em>Hitler’s Spies: Secret Agents and the Intelligence War in South Africa</em>.</p>
<p>The book offers a new perspective on this lesser known episode of South African history. </p>
<p>After six years of research at various archival depots in South Africa and the United Kingdom, I was able to provide a fresh account of the German intelligence networks that operated in wartime South Africa. My book also details the hunt in post-war Europe for witnesses to help the South African government bring charges of high treason against those who aided the German war effort. </p>
<p>My research shows how, during the war (1939 to 1945), the German government secretly reached out to the political opposition in South Africa, the <a href="https://omalley.nelsonmandela.org/omalley/index.php/site/q/03lv02424/04lv02730/05lv02996/06lv02997.htm">Ossewabrandwag</a> (oxwagon sentinels). This group was founded as an Afrikaner cultural organisation in Bloemfontein in 1939. During the war, the movement became decidedly anti-imperial and increasingly militaristic. The government regarded it as the proverbial “enemy within”.</p>
<p>The Germans were especially interested in naval and political intelligence. Accurate naval intelligence on ships from Europe and the Far East rounding the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/place/Cape-of-Good-Hope">Cape of Good Hope</a>, South Africa’s southernmost point, would allow German submarines to attack them. </p>
<p>Political intelligence could further help the Germans to spread sedition within the then <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/union-south-africa-1910">Union of South Africa</a>. At the time, this was a <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/dominion-British-Commonwealth">dominion</a> – a self-governing entity within the British Empire with English and Afrikaner populations. German agents were dispatched across the globe during the war to collect military and political intelligence. These agents undermined the overall Allied war effort to varying degrees of success.</p>
<h2>Hitler’s spies in South Africa</h2>
<p>A network of German agents was established in South Africa with the help of the Ossewabrandwag. These agents used a variety of channels to send coded messages to German diplomats in neighbouring Mozambique for onward transmission to Berlin. Due to the neutrality of Portugal during the war, Mozambique, then a <a href="https://www.britannica.com/place/Mozambique/Colonial-Mozambique">Portuguese colony</a>, was a safe haven for German agents and diplomats in southern Africa.</p>
<p>By mid-1942 a radio transmitter was built by the <a href="https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C11090242">Felix Organisation</a> with the help of the Ossewabrandwag and located near <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/place/vryburg-bophirima-region">Vryburg</a>, a large farming town in what is now South Africa’s North West province. The Felix Organisation was headed by the agent <a href="https://www.academia.edu/36804117/The_Felix_Affair_Lothar_Sittig_the_Ossewabrandwag_and_the_Trompke_Network">Lothar Sittig</a> and was the premier German intelligence organisation in wartime South Africa. This radio transmitter eventually allowed for direct, two-way radio contact between agents and Berlin. </p>
<p>But the cooperation between the Ossewabrandwag and the German agents did not go unnoticed. </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/396271/original/file-20210421-15-getttk.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/396271/original/file-20210421-15-getttk.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=906&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/396271/original/file-20210421-15-getttk.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=906&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/396271/original/file-20210421-15-getttk.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=906&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/396271/original/file-20210421-15-getttk.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1138&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/396271/original/file-20210421-15-getttk.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1138&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/396271/original/file-20210421-15-getttk.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1138&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Through the combined efforts of the South African authorities, all illicit wireless communications between South Africa, Mozambique and Germany were intercepted and decoded. </p>
<p>The British and South African authorities were thus aware of the full extent of contact and cooperation that existed between key members of the Ossewabrandwag and the German agents operational in South Africa. They planned several unsuccessful raids on the illicit radio transmitter near Vryburg. These largely failed due to the dubious loyalties of some of the members involved. </p>
<p>This is evidenced by the existence of several British Security Service (MI5) case files at <a href="https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/">the National Archives</a> of the United Kingdom. These are filled to the brim with documentary evidence detailing every minute aspect of this episode in South African history. </p>
<h2>Consequences</h2>
<p>Following the war, the South African authorities were anxious to charge known war criminals, traitors and collaborators. Missions headed by the state prosecutors Rudolph Rein and Lawrence Barrett were established to interview key suspects and collect evidence with the view of bringing criminal charges against known South African traitors and collaborators. </p>
<p>The Barrett Mission was particularly interested in the charismatic leader of the Ossewabrandwag, <a href="https://omalley.nelsonmandela.org/omalley/cis/omalley/OMalleyWeb/03lv02424/04lv02730/05lv02996/06lv03000.htm">Hans van Rensburg</a>. He, along with a trusted inner circle, acted as the nodal point for German agents operating in wartime South Africa. A case of high treason was built against Van Rensburg. </p>
<p>The case was terminated following the 1948 electoral victory of the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/national-party-np">National Party</a>, which would go on to formalise apartheid. Van Rensburg disappeared from the political scene in South Africa soon thereafter. The Ossewabrandwag movement was dissolved in 1952. </p>
<p>It seems the post-war drive towards greater Afrikaner unity proved more important than charging fellow Afrikaners with high treason, despite the overwhelming evidence against them. </p>
<p>After 1948 there was a determined move towards reconciliation within the Afrikaner community. This culminated in the formal establishment of the Republic of South Africa <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/dated-event/republic-south-africa-established">in 1961</a>. </p>
<p>With the passage of time these wartime events all but vanished from the South African collective memory. Gatekeeper mentality at archives, missing documents and the removal of key evidence from public circulation combined to stymie further research on this topic. The high treason docket against Van Rensburg, for instance, was deposited at the National Archive in Pretoria in 1948. It was placed under embargo for an undisclosed period. This document has since gone “missing”.</p>
<p>My book proves, however, that the missing narrative on the intelligence war in South Africa can be reconstructed.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/159354/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Evert Kleynhans does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Following the war, the South African authorities were anxious to charge known war criminals, traitors and collaborators. But nothing came of it.Evert Kleynhans, Senior Lecturer in Military History, Stellenbosch University, Stellenbosch UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1459952020-09-17T11:25:37Z2020-09-17T11:25:37ZFrom Washington to Trump, all presidents have told lies (but only some have told them for the right reasons)<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/358440/original/file-20200916-16-l9zkoa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C52%2C2176%2C1690&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">President Nixon at a White House news conference in March 1973.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/NixonsWatergateTestimony/d59d9c49c6164dbdafc4647310ca0c26/photo?Query=nixon&mediaType=photo&sortBy=&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=7400&currentItemNo=10">AP Photo/Charles Tasnadi, File</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Michael Cohen, in his recent <a href="https://www.skyhorsepublishing.com/9781510764699/disloyal-a-memoir/">book,</a> has called President Trump a <a href="https://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2020/09/08/Michael-Cohens-tell-all-book-out-Tuesday-calls-Trump-liar-bully/1041599562972/">“fraud,” a “bigot,” a “bully” – and, most emphatically, a “liar”</a>. The Trump administration’s response to this book simply reverses the accusation, calling Cohen someone <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/cohen-trump-book/2020/09/05/235aa10a-ef96-11ea-ab4e-581edb849379_story.html">who attempts to “profit off of lies”</a>. </p>
<p>Nonetheless, the media has often noted the frequency with which President Trump lies. The Washington Post, for instance, maintains a running database of what it terms the President’s “<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/politics/trump-claims-database/?utm_term=.27babcd5e58c&itid=lk_inline_manual_2&itid=lk_inline_manual_2">false or misleading claims</a>” – which now number over 20,000, or an average of 12 per day. </p>
<p>Media’s accounts of Trump’s lies would seem to indicate that most people are wholeheartedly opposed to lying – and, in particular, opposed to being lied to by presidents. And yet a recent <a href="https://progressive.org/dispatches/lies-more-lies-presidential-history-lueders-200810/">survey of presidential deception</a> found that all American presidents – from Washington to Trump – have told lies, knowingly, in their public statements.</p>
<p>As a <a href="https://phil.washington.edu/people/michael-blake">political philosopher</a>, with a focus on how people try to reason together through political disagreement, I argue that not all lies are the same. </p>
<p>History shows examples of presidents who have lied for a larger public purpose – and have been forgiven. </p>
<h2>The morality of deception</h2>
<p>Why, though, are lies thought so wrongful in the first instance?</p>
<p>Immanuel Kant, in the 18th century, provided one powerful account of <a href="https://oxford.universitypressscholarship.com/view/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199577415.001.0001/acprof-9780199577415-chapter-4">the wrongness of lying</a>. For Kant, lying was wrong in much the same way that threats and coercion are wrong. All of these override the autonomous will of another person, and treat that person as a mere tool. </p>
<p>For Kant, human beings were morally special precisely because they could use reason to decide what to do. When a gunman uses threats to coerce a person to do a particular act, he disrespects that person’s rational agency. Lies are a similar disrespect to rational agency: One’s decision has been manipulated, so that the act is no longer one’s own.</p>
<p>Kant defended these conclusions without exception. Kant regarded any lie as immoral – even one told to <a href="http://www.mesacc.edu/%7Edavpy35701/text/kant-sup-right-to-lie.pdf">a murderer at the door</a>. </p>
<p>Modern-day philosophers have often accepted Kant’s account, while seeking exceptions from its rigidness. In his book “Ethics for Adversaries,” philosopher <a href="https://www.hks.harvard.edu/faculty/arthur-applbaum">Arthur Applbaum</a> <a href="https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691057392/ethics-for-adversaries">explains</a> why citizens might sometimes consent to being deceived, which might be useful in understanding presidential deception. </p>
<p>For example, a political leader who gives honest answers about a forthcoming military operation would likely imperil that operation – and most people would not want that. The key, though, is that people might accept such deception, after the fact, because of what that deception made possible. </p>
<p>To take one example: The British government sought to deceive the Nazi command about its plans for invasion – which entailed <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/06/06/d-day-would-be-nearly-impossible-pull-off-today-heres-why/">lying even to British allies</a>. Applbaum argues that what might seem like simple deception might become justified, if those deceived could eventually consent – after the fact – to being so deceived.</p>
<h2>Honorable lies?</h2>
<p>History reveals examples of how presidents must sometimes lie, and how their lies might sometimes be morally defensible. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/358427/original/file-20200916-18-vkbj10.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=24%2C21%2C2019%2C1513&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/358427/original/file-20200916-18-vkbj10.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=464&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/358427/original/file-20200916-18-vkbj10.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=464&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/358427/original/file-20200916-18-vkbj10.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=464&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/358427/original/file-20200916-18-vkbj10.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=583&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/358427/original/file-20200916-18-vkbj10.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=583&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/358427/original/file-20200916-18-vkbj10.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=583&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Leaders could lie for many reasons, and some lies might be morally defensible.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/mobili/43673422552/in/photolist-29xgGY1-2hKoNBg-2j1pTjB-2hspAbt-2iQpJ3v-2jjMAs3-RstBMm-RfyVW8-2j4Sr86-2gQ51vv-NZZjP5-2iNirUn-2iUnp18-MG2Grz-2iyLLE3-2iWsiDV-2iPdXoT-5oZqVC-2ixpw1Y-2hKrrmT-2ipMPiT-2hKsymy-TBXjDU-2hx4j17-26maq25-PdLjs-2hKoTPA-2hiFkvJ-2hKoSTs-2hKsCuJ-P6wqKa-2iV4QKp-LqVmws-299JgzE-2iQpFM3-25pSpbv-2hHkLEC-2iJDa2u-QpuRP5-LMgAhE-2j8hpCk-Y6nwUN-2hKrr1h-2hXFKWP-2hHY2Cg-2iM55ri-2j7Yrs9-M96MPT-2iuTs8d-NhAJd8">Mobilus In Mobili</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>During the 1930s, President Franklin D. Roosevelt was convinced that Hitler’s expansionism in Europe was a threat to the liberal democratic project itself, but he faced an electorate without any will to intervene in a European war. Roosevelt chose to insist publicly that he was opposed to any intervention – while doing everything he could to prepare for war and to covertly help the <a href="https://warfarehistorynetwork.com/2017/01/04/how-franklin-d-roosevelt-prepared-us-for-wwii/">British cause</a>. </p>
<p>As early as 1948, historian Thomas Bailey noted that Roosevelt had made a calculated choice to both prepare for war and insist he was doing no such thing. To be open about his view of Hitler would have led to <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=CVqTXJjmtmUC&pg=PA298&lpg=PA298&dq=roosevelt+lying&source=bl&ots=0frUEvK02d&sig=ACfU3U3djJZzxplhbGcQwVXwPOAqWJaa2w&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiQ_cKC_evrAhUBip4KHUTjDqY4ChDoATAGegQICBAB#v=onepage&q=the%20man%20in%20the%20street&f=false">his defeat in the 1940 election.</a></p>
<p>Prior to Roosevelt, Abraham Lincoln made similar calculations. Lincoln’s lies regarding his negotiations with the Confederacy – described by <a href="https://www.marlboro.edu/live/profiles/32-meg-mott">Meg Mott</a>, a professor of political theory, as being “<a href="https://www.cnn.com/2013/11/24/politics/presidents-lie/index.html">devious</a>” – may have been instrumental in preserving the United States as a single country.</p>
<p>“Honest Abe” Lincoln was willing to open peace negotiations with the Confederacy – knowing that much of his own party thought that only unconditional surrender by the South would settle the question of slavery. At one point, Lincoln wrote a note to his own party asserting – falsely – that there were “<a href="https://quod.lib.umich.edu/j/jala/2629860.0021.104/--hampton-roads-peace-conference-a-final-test-of-lincolns?rgn=main;view=fulltext">no peace commissioners</a>” being sent to a conference with the Confederacy. </p>
<p>A member of the Congress later noted that, in the absence of that note, the 13th Amendment – which ended the practice of chattel slavery – <a href="https://quod.lib.umich.edu/j/jala/2629860.0021.104/--hampton-roads-peace-conference-a-final-test-of-lincolns?rgn=main;view=fulltext">would not have been passed</a>.</p>
<h2>Good lies and bad lies</h2>
<p>The problem, of course, is that a great many presidential lies cannot be so easily linked to important purposes. </p>
<p>President Bill Clinton’s lies about his sexual activities were either simply self-serving or told to <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=Fe88rwSW8ywC&pg=PT507&lpg=PT507&dq=bill+clinton+%22the+lie+saved+me%22&source=bl&ots=AJY7EQZHoq&sig=ACfU3U2uGl7_XXWvjxHXE5jYNH0XyzOZyA&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjFsPGE0enrAhWTvJ4KHY_WB5MQ6AEwC3oECAIQAQ#v=onepage&q=bill%20clinton%20%22the%20lie%20saved%20me%22&f=false">preserve his presidency</a>. </p>
<p>Similarly, President Richard Nixon’s insistence that he knew nothing about <a href="https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/nixon-insists-that-he-is-not-a-crook">the Watergate break-in</a> was most likely a lie. John Dean, Nixon’s legal counsel, confirmed years later that the president <a href="https://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2014/08/07/john-dean-uncovers-what-nixon-knew-about-watergate">knew about, and approved of</a>, the plan to rob the Democratic National Committee headquarters. This scandal eventually ended Nixon’s presidency. </p>
<p>In both cases, these presidents faced a significant threat to their presidencies - and chose deception to save not the nation, but their own power. </p>
<h2>President Trump and truth</h2>
<p>It is likely that President Trump has lied <a href="https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2020/06/podcast-glenn-kessler-david-corn-lies-washington-post-fact-checker/">more than previous presidents</a> in public – and, perhaps more significantly, he has also apparently lied about a wider variety of topics than his predecessors.</p>
<p>Soon after being elected he claimed, falsely, that <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jan/22/trump-inauguration-crowd-sean-spicers-claims-versus-the-evidence">his inaugural crowd</a> was the largest ever. More recently, he insisted that Hurricane Dorian was likely to affect the coast of <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2019/09/06/politics/trump-sharpie-hurricane-dorian-alabama/index.html">Alabama</a> – and he seems to have altered a map with a Sharpie to bolster his false claim. The pattern of deception has continued, most recently with his acknowledgment that he <a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-coronavirus-bob-woodward_n_5f58fd32c5b6b48507fabc99">deceived the public</a> about the coronavirus – and then his insistence <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/trump-is-lying-about-lying-1058436/">that he had done no such thing</a>. </p>
<p>[<em>Deep knowledge, daily.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/the-daily-3?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=deepknowledge">Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter</a>.]</p>
<p>What is striking about these lies, in contrast to the lies of previous presidents, is that they have generally been told in the absence of a particular and acute threat to either the president’s power or to the preservation of the United States. </p>
<p>Presidents have lied for good reasons and for bad ones, but very few have chosen to lie without a particularly unusual threat to themselves or their nation. If some presidential lies might be forgivable, it could be only because of the good to the nation those lies bring about; and President Trump’s lies seem unlikely to meet that test.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/145995/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michael Blake has received funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities.</span></em></p>Some presidents have lied for honorable reasons, while for others the lies have been simply self-serving.Michael Blake, Professor of Philosophy, Public Policy and Governance, University of WashingtonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1452202020-09-02T12:20:21Z2020-09-02T12:20:21ZWhy the ‘Protocols of the Elders of Zion’ is still pushed by anti-Semites more than a century after hoax first circulated<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/355897/original/file-20200901-18-10l8v6q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=24%2C24%2C5439%2C3612&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Mary Ann Mendoza was pulled as a speaker at the RNC after tweeting a link to an anti-Semitic thread.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Trump-Border-Security/be8fac2142cd450c97b99fd26eeb07eb/16/0">AP Photo/Evan Vucci</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>An anti-Semitic hoax more than a century old <a href="https://www.wgbh.org/news/commentary/2020/08/28/anti-semitism-trump-and-the-republican-convention">reared its ugly head again as the Republican National Convention was underway</a> last week.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.foxnews.com/politics/rnc-speakers-what-to-know-about-mary-ann-mendoza">Mary Ann Mendoza</a>, a member of the advisory board of President Trump’s reelection campaign, was due to speak on Aug. 25. But she was suddenly <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2020/08/25/politics/rnc-mary-ann-mendoza-anti-semitic-conspiracy-theory/index.html">pulled from the schedule</a> after she had retweeted a link to a conspiracy theory about Jewish elites plotting to take over the world.</p>
<p>In her now-deleted tweet, Mendoza urged her <a href="https://twitter.com/mamendoza480">roughly 40,000 followers</a> to <a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/rnc-speaker-boosts-qanon-conspiracy-theory-about-jewish-plot-to-enslave-the-world-1">read a lengthy thread</a> that warned of a plan to enslave the “goyim,” or non-Jews. It included fevered denunciations of the historically wealthy Jewish family, the Rothschilds, as well as the top target of right-wing extremism today, the liberal Jewish philanthropist George Soros.</p>
<p>The thread also made reference to one of the most notorious hoaxes in modern history: “The <a href="https://www.adl.org/resources/backgrounders/a-hoax-of-hate-the-protocols-of-the-learned-elders-of-zion">Protocols of the Elders of Zion</a>.” As a <a href="https://www.brandeis.edu/facultyguide/person.html?emplid=75bc9c2ec86c38e50322aba8d0c9175ea621dbbf">scholar of American Jewish history</a>, I know how durable this document has been as a source of the belief in Jewish conspiracies. The fact that it is still making the rounds within the fringe precincts of the political right today is testament to the longevity of this fabrication.</p>
<h2>Fake news</h2>
<p>Surely no outright forgery in modern history has ever proved itself more durable. In the early 20th century, the Protocols were concocted by Tsarist police known as the Okhrana, drawing upon an <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1987/08/07/opinion/l-protocols-of-zion-originated-in-novel-774887.html">obscure 1868 German novel</a>, “Biarritz,” in which mysterious Jewish leaders meet in a Prague cemetery.</p>
<p>This fictional cabal aspires for power over entire nations through currency manipulation and seeks ideological domination by disseminating fake news. In the novel, the Devil listens sympathetically to the reports that representatives of the tribes of Israel present, describing the havoc and subversion that they have wrought, and the destruction that is yet to come.</p>
<p>The Okhrana – “protection” in Russian – worked for what was then the <a href="https://www.newstatesman.com/culture/books/2018/05/long-roots-russian-anti-semitism">most powerful anti-Semitic regime in Europe</a> and wanted to use the hoax to discredit revolutionary forces hostile to the reactionary policies and religious mysticism of Tsarist rule.</p>
<p>The document became a global phenomenon only about two decades after the Okhrana’s fabrication. Widespread publication and republication coincided with both the <a href="https://nypost.com/2020/05/05/influenza-pandemic-fueled-rise-of-nazi-party-research/">influenza pandemic</a> of 1918-20 and the <a href="https://www.jacobinmag.com/2020/06/antisemitism-russian-revolution-bolsheviks-pogroms">aftermath of the Bolshevik Revolution</a> in 1917 – both of which stirred fears of obscure forces that menaced social control. </p>
<p>Scapegoating Jews for disease and political unrest was nothing new. Medieval Jews had been <a href="https://www.bh.org.il/blog-items/700-years-before-coronavirus-jewish-life-during-the-black-death-plague/">massacred in the wake of accusations</a> of having poisoned wells and spreading plagues. </p>
<p>But a century ago, the crisis in public health probably mattered less than the Communists’ seizure of power in Russia, which, if unchecked, might overwhelm the political order that the Great War had destabilized. That some of the revolutionary leaders were of Jewish birth seemed to reinforce the predictions of the Protocols. </p>
<p>Tsar Nicholas II, the last of the Romanovs, was known to have read the Protocols before being executed by the Bolsheviks in 1918. In the following year, Hitler delivered his first recorded speech, in which he depicted an international conspiracy of Jews – of all Jews – to weaken and poison the Aryan race and to extinguish German culture. </p>
<p>Hitler himself was unsure of the authenticity of the Protocols – a question of verification that may not have mattered all that much to the Nazis. The Führer <a href="https://www.abebooks.com/book-search/title/the-psychopathic-god-adolf-hitler/author/waite-robert-g-l/">told one of his early associates</a> that the Protocols were “immensely instructive” in exposing what the Jews could accomplish in terms of “political intrigue,” and in demonstrating their skill at “deception [and] organization.” </p>
<h2>‘Americanized’ conspiracy</h2>
<p>In the U.S., the hoax was given a wide distribution by the most admired businessman of his time: Henry Ford. By 1920, <a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/henryford-antisemitism/">Ford had “Americanized” the forged document</a> as “The International Jew: The World’s Foremost Problem.” It ran as excerpts in his newspaper, the Dearborn Independent, for 91 straight weeks. “The International Jew” was translated into 16 languages. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/355915/original/file-20200901-16-1nrqpd3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/355915/original/file-20200901-16-1nrqpd3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=867&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/355915/original/file-20200901-16-1nrqpd3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=867&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/355915/original/file-20200901-16-1nrqpd3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=867&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/355915/original/file-20200901-16-1nrqpd3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1089&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/355915/original/file-20200901-16-1nrqpd3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1089&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/355915/original/file-20200901-16-1nrqpd3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1089&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Henry Ford published anti-Semitic conspiracies.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/haventohome/haven-challenges.html">Library of Congress</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Though Jewish communal leadership mounted a <a href="https://www.thehenryford.org/collections-and-research/digital-resources/popular-topics/henry-ford-and-anti-semitism-a-complex-story">lawsuit that forced the auto magnate to issue a retraction</a> in 1927, the malignant hatred behind the Protocols continued to seep into the public conversation.</p>
<p>In the 1930s, the popular anti-New Deal “radio priest” <a href="https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/charles-e-coughlin">Charles E. Coughlin</a> excerpted the Protocols in his newspaper, Social Justice. But Father Coughlin was wary about endorsing its accuracy, and merely stated that it might be of “interest” to his readers. </p>
<h2>History as conspiracy</h2>
<p>Why is it that this demonstrably false document continues to hold sway today? </p>
<p>Perhaps the simplest explanation is human irrationality, which neither education nor enlightenment has ever managed to defeat.</p>
<p>The willingness to believe in the fantasy of a surreptitious Jewish stranglehold on the international economy and on mass media also validates the insight of the Columbia University historian <a href="http://c250.columbia.edu/c250_celebrates/remarkable_columbians/richard_hofstadter.html">Richard Hofstadter</a>. He traced in political extremism of both right and left an apocalyptic strain and a belief in an imminent confrontation between good and absolute evil.</p>
<p>Hofstadter was well aware that conspiracies punctuate the annals of the past. But especially for those Americans who hanker for the security of a settled way of life, political paranoia is tempting, such as the belief – as Hofstadter wrote – that “history <em>is</em> a conspiracy,” in which unseen forces are the shadowy driving mechanisms of human destiny.</p>
<p>Because anti-Semitism has survived nearly a couple of millennia, no form of prejudice has yet found a more vivid place in the imagination. And the fact that no international Jewish conspiracy was ever located has never depleted the power of the Protocols to tap into subterranean currents of demonization.</p>
<h2>From the Rothschilds to Soros</h2>
<p>What sustains the influence of the Protocols among cranks and extremists is not the language of the text itself – which few of them are likely to have fully read in its various versions – but what this forgery purports to underscore, which is the astonishingly cunning influence of Jews in modern history.</p>
<p>The Protocols thus have no importance in themselves; they are spurious. But they do bestow precision upon apocalyptic fears, which could not survive without some ingredient of plausibility – however wildly far-fetched.</p>
<p>[<em>Get our best science, health and technology stories.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/science-editors-picks-71/?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=science-best">Sign up for The Conversation’s science newsletter</a>.]</p>
<p>The Rothschild family was <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/the-early-rothschilds-built-a-fortune-2012-12">pivotal to the emergence of finance capitalism</a> in 19th-century Europe. The family firm had branches in Germany, France, Austria, Italy and England, which lent credence to the charge of “cosmopolitanism” during an era of rising nationalism. The boom-and-bust oscillations of the economy generated not only misery but also grievances against financiers who seemed to benefit from such uncertainties. </p>
<p>Today, Soros, a Hungarian-born, British-educated American Jew, has become an especially hated figure for the far-right. Among the world’s canniest investors, he has spent <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/capitalbusiness/billionaire-financier-george-soros-shifts-18-billion-to-his-charitable-foundation/2017/10/17/d62d69b8-b374-11e7-a908-a3470754bbb9_story.html">billions of dollars promoting</a> progressive causes. He seems to personify what Ford called “the international Jew.”</p>
<p>Venom against minorities other than Jews has not resulted in any equivalent to the Protocols. Judeophobia produced a specious documentation that bigotry against no other minority has ever elicited. Perhaps the very explicitness of the Protocols helps strengthen the suspicion that majority beliefs and interests are under attack, and keeps this dangerous form of anti-Semitism alive.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/145220/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Stephen Whitfield does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A would-be speaker at the Republican National Convention was yanked for encouraging people to read up on a hoax that has long been discredited but refuses to die.Stephen Whitfield, Professor of American Civilization, Brandeis UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1297462020-07-27T18:16:20Z2020-07-27T18:16:20ZWhen a winner becomes a loser: Winston Churchill was kicked out of office in the British election of 1945<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/349182/original/file-20200723-21-1tjmaln.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=54%2C18%2C2324%2C1710&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Winston Churchill giving his final address, during the 1945 election campaign, at Walthamstow Stadium, East London.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:British_Political_Personalities_1936-1945_HU59722.jpg#/media/File:British_Political_Personalities_1936-1945_HU59722.jpg">Wikipedia, the collections of the Imperial War Museums</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The end of World War II in Europe and the <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-ww2-anniversary-germany-idUSKBN22C1Y7">defeat of Hitler and Nazi Germany</a> in early May 1945 turned British Prime Minister Winston Churchill into the world’s most eminent statesman. He was feted and celebrated everywhere he went and had an <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/wwtwo/election_01.shtml">approval rating of 83%</a>.</p>
<p>Yet he suffered a humiliating election defeat in 1945.</p>
<p>Churchill’s electoral fate shows, I believe, that democratic elections are not won due to past achievements, personal glory and celebrity status, but because of a persuasive and realizable program for the next four or five years. Winning parties or candidates need a vision that addresses the genuine concerns and deep anxieties of the voters. </p>
<p>In 1945, it seemed a foregone conclusion that Churchill and his Conservative Party would win the next general election. <a href="https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/a-brief-political-history-of-the-united-kingdom/#:%7E:text=In%20all%20eight%20elections%20from%201945%20to%201970%2C,this%20two-party%20dominance%20gradually%20began%20to%20break%20down.">No election had taken place</a> during the war. The members of the British Parliament, the House of Commons, had been elected as far back as 1935. </p>
<p>While Churchill wanted to delay a general election until the end of the war in Asia, the Labour Party decided to leave Britain’s national unity government soon after victory in Europe was achieved, which sparked an election that took place on <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/special/politics97/background/pastelec/ge45.shtml">July 5, 1945</a>.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/oBnbXgl-_pU?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">A newsreel about the Labour Party landslide.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Ballots weren’t <a href="https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/_/xCImAAAAMAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=0">counted until July 26</a>, to allow votes from soldiers and residents of Britain’s far-flung overseas empire to arrive by mail.</p>
<p>Labour won a landslide victory. As soon as the election result was announced, Churchill went to Buckingham Palace to <a href="https://www.politico.com/story/2019/04/05/winston-churchill-resigns-1955-1250726">submit his resignation</a> to King George VI. Labour leader <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/attlee_clement.shtml">Clement Attlee</a> arrived at the palace within minutes of Churchill’s departure and was appointed new prime minister. </p>
<p>But at first he was greeted by an uncomfortable silence. Attlee finally told the king, “I’ve won the election.” The king, greatly displeased by the socialist Labour Party’s victory, said, “I know. I heard it on the six o'clock news.” </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/349194/original/file-20200723-33-1i2oq9s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Incoming Prime Minister Clement Attlee meeting after his election win with King George VI at Buckingham Palace." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/349194/original/file-20200723-33-1i2oq9s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/349194/original/file-20200723-33-1i2oq9s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=799&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349194/original/file-20200723-33-1i2oq9s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=799&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349194/original/file-20200723-33-1i2oq9s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=799&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349194/original/file-20200723-33-1i2oq9s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1004&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349194/original/file-20200723-33-1i2oq9s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1004&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349194/original/file-20200723-33-1i2oq9s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1004&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Clement Attlee meeting with King George VI at Buckingham Palace, following the Labour victory in the 1945 general election.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Attlee_with_GeorgeVI_HU_59486.jpg#/media/File:Attlee_with_GeorgeVI_HU_59486.jpg">Wikimedia from the collections of the Imperial War Museums</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Watershed election</h2>
<p>The magnitude of the loss was historic. </p>
<p>The Labour Party <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2001/mar/14/past.education">received 47.7% of the vote</a>, compared to the Conservatives’ 36.2% and the Liberal party’s 9%. </p>
<p>This was a crushing blow for the Tories. Due to Churchill’s immense personal popularity, he was easily <a href="https://winstonchurchill.org/resources/reference/churchills-elections/">reelected in his Woodford constituency</a> in Essex, but his party was decimated. Labour had a massive majority of 146 seats in the new Parliament.</p>
<p>The Labour government of 1945 would radically change British society by embarking on decolonization, which quickly led to the dissolution of the British Empire, and the creation of a new, progressive social and economic consensus that would last until Margaret Thatcher’s election victory in 1979. </p>
<p>Churchill took the defeat very badly. </p>
<p>He was just short of his 71st birthday, exhausted, in ill health and demoralized. He fell into a deep depression (his “black dog,” as he called it) and spent much time in the <a href="https://www.inquirer.com/philly/health/medical-mystery-winston-churchills-most-secret-battle-20171124.html">south of France</a> to pursue his hobbies of painting and bricklaying. </p>
<p>When the king later offered him the country’s highest honor, <a href="https://www.nationalchurchillmuseum.org/winston-churchill-knight-of-the-garter.html#:%7E:text=Winston%20Churchill-%20Knight%20of%20the%20Garter.%20The%20Order,life%20or%20who%20have%20served%20the%20Sovereign%20personally.">The Order of the Garter</a>, Churchill declined, saying that he couldn’t possibly accept such an honor, as the British voters had given him the “<a href="https://winstonchurchill.org/resources/quotes/order-of-the-boot/">order of the boot</a>.” </p>
<p>Churchill now was the official leader of the opposition, but it took him more than a year to overcome his apathy and reengage with politics. It was only U.S. President Harry S. Truman’s invitation to give a speech at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri, in March 1946 – this was the <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/07075332.2017.1298531">“Iron Curtain speech”</a> – that revived his political instincts and made him become politically active again.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/349207/original/file-20200723-37-qp29bl.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/349207/original/file-20200723-37-qp29bl.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/349207/original/file-20200723-37-qp29bl.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=417&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349207/original/file-20200723-37-qp29bl.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=417&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349207/original/file-20200723-37-qp29bl.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=417&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349207/original/file-20200723-37-qp29bl.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=524&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349207/original/file-20200723-37-qp29bl.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=524&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349207/original/file-20200723-37-qp29bl.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=524&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Churchill charged that the Labour Party would fundamentally change Britain for the worse.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://spartacus-educational.com/GE1945.htm">Spartacus Educational</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>How to lose an election</h2>
<p>Until the last few days before the vote was held, Churchill and much of the country had been firmly convinced that he and his party would be returned to power with a large majority. </p>
<p>On occasion, however, Churchill realized that he had little to contribute to the raging debate about the future of British society. </p>
<p><a href="https://winstonchurchill.org/publications/finest-hour/finest-hour-131/watching-churchill-take-command-of-history/">“I have no message for them,” he said</a>.</p>
<p>As a scholar who has written a book on Churchill’s politics, “<a href="https://academic.oup.com/ahr/article-abstract/108/3/918/25600?redirectedFrom=fulltext">Churchill’s Cold War: The Politics of Personal Diplomacy</a>,” I see several reasons for the loss he and his party experienced.</p>
<p>The six-week election campaign in June and July 1945 sought to sway voters exhausted by six devastating years of war. They wanted a view of a bright future. </p>
<p>Soldiers in the field, too, were fed up with fighting and looked forward to a new age of prosperity and peace. Labour proposed a progressive social reform program that would transform the future of British society. The Conservative program was much more vague and focused on <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/wwtwo/election_01.shtml">Churchill’s leadership</a>. </p>
<p>Churchill and his party also conducted a poor election campaign. Symbolic of this was Churchill’s first campaign broadcast on <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7TY7oUNobsY#:%7E:text=On%204%20June%201945%2C%20during%20the%20general%20election,which%20he%20warned%20that%20a%20socialist%20Labour%20gove">June 4, 1945</a>, in which he accused Attlee of harboring socialist dictatorial ambitions and even compared him to the Nazis. Outrageously, Churchill declared that Labour “would have to fall back on some sort of a Gestapo” to push through its reforms. </p>
<p>Attlee pointed out that the speech showed Churchill to be ill-suited to being a leader in peaceful times. </p>
<p>Labour had more attractive and persuasive ideas, such as government-supported full employment, the introduction of a free national health service and the nationalization of many key industries such as steel, coal and railways. </p>
<p>And Labour seemed to know how to implement these policies: Churchill had put senior Labour leaders in charge of running the country’s economic ministries during the war. </p>
<p>Housing, full employment, social welfare and the health system stood <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/historical-journal/article/what-did-the-people-want-the-meaning-of-the-1945-general-election/D7C8A5FD82EA1AF3678B1BB9A9556457">at the top of the list of most voters’ needs</a>. Foreign affairs and national security policy, which Churchill emphasized, ranked much lower. </p>
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<p>Another problem for the Conservatives was their poor image, which Churchill was not immune from. Despite the tremendous esteem he was held in, the elderly Churchill, with his <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/history/past-prime-ministers/winston-churchill">elite background</a> and paternalistic Victorian habits, was seen by many as out of touch with the modern world. </p>
<p>He also had outdated views about race and empire that for many – even back in 1945 – sounded not quite right for the new postwar era. <a href="https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/becoming-a-victorian">Canadian Prime Minister MacKenzie King, who knew him well, concluded that maintaining “the British Empire and Commonwealth is a religion to him.” </a></p>
<h2>Running on a bad record</h2>
<p>Except for the years 1924 and 1929-31, Britain had been led by Conservative governments for more than two decades. The Tories could hardly avoid being seen as responsible for the high unemployment and miserable social and economic conditions of these years, especially because the conditions continued well into the 1950s. </p>
<p>The Conservatives were also viewed as the party of the appeasers who had, in the runup to the war, downplayed the Nazi threat, with Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain even having <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=cjqEAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA2&dq=conservatives+seen+as+party+of+appeasers&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjkuLiu--HqAhVKRRUIHZS7CAsQ6AEwBXoECAkQAg#v=onepage&q=conservatives%20seen%20as%20party%20of%20appeasers&f=false">weakly given in to Hitler’s territorial demands</a>.</p>
<p>Taking all these elements into account, it was little wonder that Churchill and the Tories lost the 1945 election. </p>
<p>But Churchill did not give up. In 1950 Churchill also narrowly lost the next general election. Just over a year later, with the Labour government in deep internal crisis and running out of steam, yet another election was called. </p>
<p>This time Churchill was victorious. In October 1951, he <a href="https://winstonchurchill.org/tag/elections/">became prime minister again and felt greatly vindicated</a>. He used his remaining four years as peacetime prime minister to reengage with the Soviet Union and attempt to negotiate an early end to the Cold War. Churchill retired in 1955 at the age of 80.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/129746/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Klaus W. Larres does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Even a highly popular and respected leader can lose an election, writes a historian – especially if they don’t have a plan for the future. Churchill was one of them.Klaus W. Larres, Richard M. Krasno Distinguished Professor; Adjunct Professor of the Curriculum in Peace, War and Defense, University of North Carolina at Chapel HillLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1317442020-05-28T12:16:39Z2020-05-28T12:16:39ZWhy do people die by suicide? Mental illness isn’t the only cause – social factors like loneliness, financial ruin and shame can be triggers<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/323069/original/file-20200325-168922-gv61is.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C2%2C1920%2C1267&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Suicide is on the rise for multiple reasons.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://pixabay.com/photos/death-funeral-coffin-mourning-2421820/">carolynabooth/Pixabay</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The U.S. suicide rate has been increasing for decades. In 1999, the rate was about <a href="https://www.apa.org/monitor/2019/03/trends-suicide">10 suicides per 100,000</a> people. In 2017, the most recent year for which complete statistics are available, it was just over <a href="https://www.apa.org/monitor/2019/03/trends-suicide">14 per 100,000</a> – a rise of 40% in only 18 years. </p>
<p>And the problem is not evenly distributed across the country. The increase has been especially severe in rural areas, some of which have seen their suicide <a href="https://doi.org/10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2019.10936">rates jump by over 30%</a> in just the past decade. </p>
<p>That rates can change from one decade to another, and vary so much across regions, suggests that suicide is shaped by social conditions. </p>
<p>Perhaps the most obvious of these is access to mental health services – psychiatrists, therapists and prescription antidepressants. Indeed, the most conventional way of talking about suicide in the modern world is in terms of mental health. </p>
<p>This view is not incorrect: Clinical depression increases the risk of suicide, and so therapies that treat depression can help prevent it. But as a <a href="https://www.upress.virginia.edu/title/5253">sociologist who studies suicide</a>, I think the medical model of suicide is incomplete. My <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=bTcdNKAAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=sra">research</a> shows there are additional causes.</p>
<h2>Suicide in response to an event</h2>
<p>Not all who kill themselves do so after a long struggle with depression – from Cato to Hitler, many famous figures of history have taken their own lives after sudden reversals, such as military defeats. </p>
<p>Those who already suffer depression can be pushed over the edge by “the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.” It is likely no coincidence that poet Sylvia Plath, with her long history of depression, killed herself shortly after being abandoned by her husband. The human mind does not exist in a vacuum. </p>
<p>Thanks to the current pandemic, the National Suicide Prevention Hotline is reporting a <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2020/05/04/mental-health-coronavirus/">nine-fold increase in calls</a> compared to this time last year.</p>
<h2>Financial causes</h2>
<p>Loss of material wealth – reduced income, mounting debts and other financial disasters – can certainly provoke suicide. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1027/0227-5910.28.2.95">Numerous</a> <a href="https://doi.org/10.1017/S0033291799002925">studies</a> <a href="https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.301.6749.407">document</a> that the unemployed have higher suicide rates than the employed. <a href="https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2010.300010">Others show</a> that rates rise during economic downturns. </p>
<p><a href="https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0904491106">Suicide rates spiked</a> during the Great Depression of the 1930s and were more prevalent in areas where <a href="http://doi.org/10.1136/jech.2010.121376">banks folded</a>, taking their customers’ savings with them. </p>
<p>Suicide rates – in the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(12)61910-2">U.S.</a> and many <a href="https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.f5239">other</a> countries – also rose during the Great Recession of 2008. Some argue, in many parts of the U.S., the <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/12/the-neverending-foreclosure/547181/">recession</a> never ended, which may help explain the rise in rural suicide. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/323023/original/file-20200325-168918-tpwr6d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/323023/original/file-20200325-168918-tpwr6d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/323023/original/file-20200325-168918-tpwr6d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/323023/original/file-20200325-168918-tpwr6d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/323023/original/file-20200325-168918-tpwr6d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/323023/original/file-20200325-168918-tpwr6d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/323023/original/file-20200325-168918-tpwr6d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/323023/original/file-20200325-168918-tpwr6d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Amber Dykshorn holds a photo of her late husband, Chris, who died by suicide in 2019 – leaving her with three kids and over $300,000 worth of debt.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/photos/chris-dykshorn?family=editorial&phrase=Chris%20Dykshorn&sort=mostpopular#license">Ricky Carioti/The Washington Post via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2019/11/09/im-gonna-lose-everything/">South Dakota farmer Chris Dykshorn</a> texted, “I seriously don’t know how we r gonna make it. I am failing and feel like I’m gonna lose everything I’ve worked for,” before killing himself in 2019. His case is <a href="https://www.dispatch.com/news/20200305/farmer-suicide-deaths-alarm-rural-communities">hardly unique</a>. </p>
<p>Along with high rates of suicide go high rates of drug overdose. It’s sometimes hard to distinguish an intentional overdose from an accidental one, and some researchers lump them together as “<a href="https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/casetextsp17bpea.pdf">deaths of despair</a>.”</p>
<h2>Shame</h2>
<p>Reputation and good name are extremely important to most people, so all manner of shame and humiliation can cause suicide. For instance, in South Korea, a <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/asiapcf/05/23/roh.dead/">former president killed himself</a> after a corruption investigation in 2009. In 2017, a Kentucky <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2017/12/14/kentucky-lawmaker-dan-johnson-autopsy/951377001/">state legislator killed himself</a> after allegations of sexual misconduct. </p>
<p><a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-102801-5.50016-9">Gossip and scandal</a> are powerful sanctions in small towns and villages. The growth of social media has made people vulnerable to public shaming on a mass scale. Not surprisingly, <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/internet-shaming-when-mob-justice-goes-virtual/">social media shaming</a> also provokes suicide.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/323032/original/file-20200325-168907-1yxvpmf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/323032/original/file-20200325-168907-1yxvpmf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/323032/original/file-20200325-168907-1yxvpmf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/323032/original/file-20200325-168907-1yxvpmf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/323032/original/file-20200325-168907-1yxvpmf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/323032/original/file-20200325-168907-1yxvpmf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=425&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/323032/original/file-20200325-168907-1yxvpmf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=425&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/323032/original/file-20200325-168907-1yxvpmf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=425&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Cyberbullying can cause severe emotional distress.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://pixabay.com/photos/woman-desperate-sad-tears-cry-1006100/">Ulrike Mai /Pixabay</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Broken relationships</h2>
<p>In addition to the loss of stature, people also might kill themselves over the loss of social ties. Sociologists have known for over a century that people with more and stronger social connections have <a href="https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-soc-081309-150058">lower rates of suicide</a>. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2004.11.033">Marriage</a>, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1017/S0033291704002600">parenthood</a> and other <a href="https://doi.org/10.1086/228544">sources</a> of <a href="https://doi.org/10.7326/M13-1291">social integration</a> provide a protective effect. </p>
<p>Suicide victims are <a href="https://doi.org/10.7326/M13-1291">more likely than others to live alone</a>, tend to have fewer friends and are less involved in organizations. America’s <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-62965-7_12">long-term decline in civic and religious organizations</a> – or even voluntary groups such as bowling leagues – likely exacerbates other issues that might encourage suicide.</p>
<p>If lacking social ties is bad, the sudden shock of losing them is worse. Breakups and divorces are a common reason for suicide: One study of over 400,000 Americans found that <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/jech.54.4.254">being divorced more than doubled the risk</a> of suicide. The same is true in <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2012.03.009">other countries</a>, and the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0192513X13494824">risk is greatest</a> immediately <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jad.2008.11.007">after the loss</a>.</p>
<h2>Strife</h2>
<p>People also kill themselves in reaction to <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/moral-time-9780199737147?q=Moral%20time&lang=en&cc=us">social conflict</a>. Depending on the nature of the conflict, suicide might be a kind of <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1573-7861.2011.01308.x">protest, punishment or escape</a>. </p>
<p>Hundreds of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-immolation_protests_by_Tibetans_in_China">Tibetans</a>, for instance, have burned themselves in protest of Chinese rule. </p>
<p>In places such as rural <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/1077801208330434">Iran</a> and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/07399330490503159">Afghanistan</a>, large numbers of women burn themselves to protest and escape from domestic abuse. </p>
<p>In modern America, people sometimes kill themselves to <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijlcj.2015.05.002">inflict guilt</a> on someone who has hurt them. In other cases, suicide can be a response to <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/13811118.2010.494133">bullying and abuse</a> by one or more people. </p>
<h2>Rethinking suicide prevention</h2>
<p>These realities suggest that suicide prevention involves much more than increasing the availability of therapists and prescriptions. It requires providing economic development and <a href="https://www.newsday.com/business/for-suicidal-japanese-help-is-finally-at-hand-1.1660342">financial assistance</a> to those in distress. People can help by strengthening communities and building social ties. Additionally, they can provide moral support, alternative means of conflict resolution and escape routes from abusive relationships. </p>
<p>To combat suicide, it’s important to account for all its causes.</p>
<p>[<em>Insight, in your inbox each day.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=insight">You can get it with The Conversation’s email newsletter</a>.]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/131744/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jason Manning does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The U.S. suicide rate has been increasing for decades. According to a sociologist who studies suicide, depression is just one factor among many implicated social conditions.Jason Manning, Associate Professor of Sociology, West Virginia UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1337542020-03-26T17:17:58Z2020-03-26T17:17:58ZDuring the Second World War, BBC listeners kept calm and listened to an unlikely star<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/322949/original/file-20200325-168903-1gxfxv7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=11%2C12%2C613%2C337&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">An image of the popular Sandy Macpherson from circa 1958. Macpherson played soothing music for BBC listeners during Second World War.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p009y7yh">(BBC Programming)</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In Britain, during the first weeks of the Second World War, public entertainment venues closed down. The blackout darkened the streets, and people stuck at home turned to radio as never before. They were seeking news but also diversion — a difficult balance for the BBC to achieve. Many hated what they heard. But the BBC had a seemingly unlikely star: Canadian-born Sandy Macpherson, the BBC’s resident theatre organist. </p>
<p>In September 1939, a listener wrote, “We should like to know if you keep Sandy Macpherson chained up in the dungeons of the BBC.” Indeed, at the end of the first month, Macpherson reported that he had been “on duty more or less continuously,” <a href="https://books.google.ca/books/about/Victory_Through_Harmony.html?id=5XgxJJ4OnwYC&redir_esc=y">having broadcast at least 50 times.</a> </p>
<p>But why? After Britain declared war on Germany on Sept. 1, 1939, the BBC, like the rest of the country, was in emergency mode. It sent its music and entertainment departments outside of London and had to get government clearance for any non-staff entertainers. It shut down its nascent television service and <a href="https://books.google.ca/books?id=6mOotAEACAAJ&dq=briggs+bbc+war+of+words&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwikntbisLPoAhUlUt8KHVLdB34Q6AEIJzAA">reduced radio to a single wavelength</a>. It stopped broadcasting sporting events. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/IKkMNQ21eSQ?wmode=transparent&start=77" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">A clip of Sandy Macpherson from 1939.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>What listeners got was news, announcements, lots of gramophone records and live music <a href="https://books.google.ca/books/about/Victory_Through_Harmony.html?id=5XgxJJ4OnwYC&redir_esc=y">played by a limited pool of staff musicians, including Macpherson</a>. </p>
<p>Had German <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/the-Blitz">air raids</a> begun immediately, everyone would have understood that it was unrealistic to expect lavish entertainment in an emergency. But instead, listeners at home were anxious and bored and unimpressed by the BBC. Both MPs and critics condemned its lacklustre programming. For some critics, like W.R. Anderson of the <em>Musical Times</em>, Macpherson was part of the problem.</p>
<p>But not everyone agreed. This was not the sort of “fine music” that highbrows like Anderson wanted, but it was extremely popular. Listeners sent thousands of appreciative letters to Macpherson and defended him in the <em>Radio Times</em>, the BBC’s program guide. When one listener complained that he always played the same tunes, another urged him to “continue to fire away with Handel’s ‘Largo,’ ‘the Holy City,’ and ‘The Lost Chord.’” </p>
<h2>History of theatre organists</h2>
<p>Today, we usually associate theatre organs with silent films, but in the United Kingdom they remained popular well into the 1940s — in cinemas, at dance halls and especially on the radio. Starting in the 1920s, the BBC featured theatre organists from cinemas around the country. By the mid-1930s, the broadcasts <a href="https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk">became an almost daily feature.</a> In 1936, the BBC <a href="http://www.iupress.indiana.edu/product_info.php?products_id=810593">purchased a £8,000 Compton organ and hired its first resident theatre organist, Reginald Foort</a> — chosen from a pool of <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2633579-behold-the-mighty-wurlitzer">350 applicants</a>. The <em>London Times</em> reported that theatre organs were the <a href="https://www.thetimes.co.uk/archive/article/1936-02-12/12/5.html?region=global#start%3D1785-01-01%26end%3D1985-12-31%26terms%3Dtheatre%20organ%20for%20b.b.c%26back%3D/tto/archive/find/theatre+organ+for+b.b.c/w:1785-01-01%7E1985-12-31/1%26next%3D/tto/archive/frame/goto/theatre+organ+for+b.b.c/w:1785-01-01%7E1985-12-31/2">most popular form of entertainment on the BBC.</a> </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/qsq1UFHoAbQ?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Reginald Foort, the BBC’s first resident theatre organist in 1936.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Theatre organs were spectacular technological marvels, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsq1UFHoAbQ">loaded with special effects</a>. The people who played them became stars. Many theatre organists were virtuosi and arranged their own music. When they played on the BBC, theatre organists went from local celebrities with their names on cinema marquees to national stars. Fans collected their autographs and they sold millions of records. </p>
<p>A theatre organist became popular, not just through musicianship, but through their personality. The goal was to sound friendly and conversational. When the BBC hired Macpherson in November 1938, head of BBC Variety <a href="http://www.iupress.indiana.edu/product_info.php?products_id=810593">John Watt wrote</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“He has a good personality, simple and straightforward … if he turns out right, we shall have a very good personality there.” </p>
</blockquote>
<h2>A reassuring, relatable friend: liked a pint of beer</h2>
<p>Macpherson came into his own during the early months of the war, a period — called the “Bore War” — of intense anxiety when nothing seemed to happen.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/322658/original/file-20200324-155640-18f25xj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/322658/original/file-20200324-155640-18f25xj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/322658/original/file-20200324-155640-18f25xj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=872&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/322658/original/file-20200324-155640-18f25xj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=872&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/322658/original/file-20200324-155640-18f25xj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=872&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/322658/original/file-20200324-155640-18f25xj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1096&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/322658/original/file-20200324-155640-18f25xj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1096&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/322658/original/file-20200324-155640-18f25xj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1096&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Keep Calm And Carry On motivational poster created by the British government in 1939 was not widely used until the original copy was found in 2000.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Barter Books)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Sandy, as listeners called him, spoke like a reassuring, relatable friend. “Sandy Macpherson’s quiet voice is very reassuring at a time when our ears are on the alert for warning sirens,” one family wrote in September 1939. At Christmas, fans showered him with “flowers, mufflers, handkerchiefs, cigarettes, fruit and pots of jam.” </p>
<p>Building on his role, Macpherson started hosting “Sandy Calling” in February 1940. It was a series designed to connect military forces with their families at home. Listeners could write in with a song request and a message for a loved one — and they did so by the thousands. Macpherson even invited senders into the studio to speak for themselves. Eventually, there would be a “Sandy Calling” for Canada, the Middle East and India. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/322962/original/file-20200325-168912-1s0cotp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/322962/original/file-20200325-168912-1s0cotp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/322962/original/file-20200325-168912-1s0cotp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=905&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/322962/original/file-20200325-168912-1s0cotp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=905&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/322962/original/file-20200325-168912-1s0cotp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=905&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/322962/original/file-20200325-168912-1s0cotp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1138&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/322962/original/file-20200325-168912-1s0cotp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1138&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/322962/original/file-20200325-168912-1s0cotp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1138&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Victory through Harmony: The BBC and Popular Music in the Second World War by Christina L. Baade.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Oxford University Press)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Macpherson was at home when a bomb hit the BBC’s St. George’s Hall, destroying the organ and much of his music in September 1940, during the height of the London Blitz. The BBC moved his broadcasting operations to Wales in semi-secrecy, waiting several months to announce the loss.</p>
<p>Throughout the war, the press highlighted Macpherson’s kindness and ordinariness, helped by Canadian stereotypes. He was a “lanky, genial Canadian,” who had “once worked in a lumber camp” and liked “a pint of beer,” wrote the <em>Empire News.</em> The <em>Sunday Pictorial</em> called him “radio’s most human personality” and “probably the BBC’s best contribution to the war so far.” </p>
<h2>During pandemic, listeners searching for comfort</h2>
<p>With social distancing and concern about COVID-19, we are turning to the media for news, but also entertainment and comfort. Musicians, arts organisations, public libraries and media corporations <a href="https://slate.com/culture/2020/03/coronavirus-free-scholastic-met-opera-pbs-ken-burns-baseball-frozen-skywalker-disney-discwoman-dropkick-murphys.html">are responding with creativity and generosity</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/322664/original/file-20200324-155666-1bln60s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/322664/original/file-20200324-155666-1bln60s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=257&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/322664/original/file-20200324-155666-1bln60s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=257&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/322664/original/file-20200324-155666-1bln60s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=257&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/322664/original/file-20200324-155666-1bln60s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=323&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/322664/original/file-20200324-155666-1bln60s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=323&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/322664/original/file-20200324-155666-1bln60s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=323&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A scene from Carmen. The Metropolitan Opera House is streaming their shows nightly.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.metopera.org/user-information/nightly-met-opera-streams/">(Metropolitan Opera)</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>We have so many more choices than Macpherson’s Second World War listeners, but the question of what homebound listeners need and want remains.</p>
<p>The Metropolitan Opera is now <a href="https://slate.com/culture/2020/03/coronavirus-spikes-demand-for-the-mets-streaming-opera-broadcasts.html">streaming for free</a>, as are orchestras, chamber groups and <a href="https://www.wkar.org/post/list-live-streaming-concerts#stream/0">soloists around the world</a>. Classical music lovers and newbies have an exciting opportunity to explore the genre in new ways. </p>
<p>But many people may find themselves turning to familiar pop and lighter entertainment that brings comfort and escape, just as Sandy Macpherson’s listeners did during the Second World War.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/133754/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Christina Baade receives funding from the Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. </span></em></p>During the Second World War, anxious but also bored BBC listeners found comfort in the soothing sounds of Sandy Macpherson, Canadian-born organist.Christina Baade, Professor in Communication Studies, McMaster UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1273142019-11-20T19:16:46Z2019-11-20T19:16:46ZHow Hitler memes made their way around the world and into the Fair Work Commission courtroom<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/302590/original/file-20191120-474-2oun6b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C99%2C1121%2C792&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Some argue that a parody of a fictional scene is not the same thing as comparing someone to the real historical figure. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0363163/mediaviewer/rm1906358272">IMDB</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In September, the Fair Work commission <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/sep/05/oil-refinery-worker-fired-over-downfall-parody-video-loses-unfair-dismissal-claim">rejected</a> an unfair dismissal claim by a BP worker who made a Downfall video meme about his boss. Fair Work called it “inappropriate and offensive”.</p>
<p>Last week, the worker <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/nov/15/bp-worker-fired-over-downfall-video-appeals-saying-fair-work-did-not-understand-meme">appealed</a> Fair Work’s decision, saying the commission did not understand “the broader genre of Downfall video”. </p>
<p><a href="https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/hitlers-downfall-parodies">Downfall video memes</a> are online parodies of a bunker scene from a 2004 German film where a furious Hitler learns that his generals have let him down and the war is lost. Hitler loses it. He calls his soldiers “cowards, traitors and failures”, his veins popping with rage and spittle flying. </p>
<p>In the 15 years since the film’s release, the scene has taken on a life of its own. Downfall memes show “Hitler” raging about everything from cancelled exams to Twitter outages to election results, thanks to doctored subtitles. </p>
<p>In a robust online video culture that always hungers for the next <a href="https://mashable.com/2010/06/03/star-wars-kid/">Star Wars Kid</a> how did an angry Hitler and this scene go viral – and stay viral – for so long? </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/qM5f_gZT06c?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Hitler finds out he didn’t get into Hogwarts.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The bunker</h2>
<p>The original <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0363163/">Downfall</a> (2004; <em>Der Untergang</em> in German) is a historical war film about Hitler’s final days, directed by Oliver Hirschbiegel. </p>
<p>When it was released, a good number of German film critics and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/News_Story/Critic_Review/Guardian_Film_of_the_week/0,4267,1449213,00.html">reviewers</a> thought the humanising of Hitler’s sieg-heiling rants in a bunker filled with SS rank-and-file goons was tasteless. </p>
<p>Some dismissed the bunker scene in particular as unnecessary in a film premiering 60 years after WWII ended. After all, <a href="https://www.spiegel.de/kultur/kino/der-untergang-die-unerzaehlbare-geschichte-a-318031.html">they said</a>: we already knew Hitler was a madman and that humans can be monsters.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/htvYfe6wz_8?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>This is where the internet went to work. A legion of keyboard warriors around the globe lifted the scene from the original film at the time studios and film festivals were using it widely to promote Downfall.</p>
<p>The parodies – and our reactions – show what happens when cultural items move from one context to another. It’s a tricky leap when it comes to a figure like Hitler. When you add the move from drama to comedy , it gets a whole lot trickier. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-what-are-memes-20789">Explainer: what are memes?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Generation phenomenon</h2>
<p>Creative minds adapted Hitler’s German outrage. They copied and pasted, cut and inserted, and most importantly, they re-subtitled. </p>
<p>This readaptation is what makes video memes such a <a href="https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/hitlers-downfall-parodies">generative phenomenon</a>. </p>
<p>A YouTube search for “Hitler Finds Out” or “Hitler Reacts To” yields thousands of videos. You’ll see how Hitler freaks out <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cTGLpqFGyYM">over global warming</a>. He erupts when he hears about Donald Trump’s <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vK-I_LYbOcY">presidential bid</a> and complains about the popularity of <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YXYplIafjrE">Pokemon Go</a>. In one favourite he expresses fury that Christians are sending <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sdPNT5he1rs">solar-powered bibles</a> to Haiti. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/KSD0Mjt64LQ?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">‘Where the hell is my pizza?!’</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The Downfall video meme has turned into a productive avenue for sociocultural commentary in each country and language it appears in, whether Chinese, Japanese or Spanish. Mostly, it gives voice to <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gtA5YZ-cOKs">youth trends</a> and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WgvpJHGnodc">blue-collar</a> issues such as industrial action.</p>
<p>In the Fair Work unfair dismissal case, the scene was the medium via which an employee and his wife vented about his <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/sep/05/oil-refinery-worker-fired-over-downfall-parody-video-loses-unfair-dismissal-claim">BP bosses</a> during a drawn-out pay dispute. </p>
<p>Some international versions have packed political bite. One <a href="http://youtu.be/_7XCRpRwz1s">Malaysian parody</a> refers to Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, who served as the Malaysian prime minister from 2003-2009. It has Hitler question Badawi’s turn to martial law and suppression of press freedom. </p>
<p>All this goes straight to the heart of the genre of Downfall video memes. Some are highly political while the vast majority turn on regional events, local slang and very limited in-group jokes. Taken together, they make a larger point about pop culture fads and stick-it-to-the-man sentiments. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/WHkxp4cxRjU?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Hitler wants a PS3 for Christmas but gets a Wii instead.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>A meme that stuck</h2>
<p>Some might argue that because the Downfall video memes appropriate a representation of a filmmaker’s Hitler instead of authentic archival footage, it’s acceptable to reuse the scene for comedy. </p>
<p>Others feel it is highly problematic to hide the real Nazi monster who orchestrated the systematic death of millions under layers of pixels and captions for laughs. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/ZrHmcpRAZNs?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">‘I’ll tell you what Chuck Norris is! If Chuck Norris gets shot today, tomorrow will be the bullet’s funeral!’</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>We need to have more conversations about what happens when cultures get adapted and sensitive topics in a nation’s history go viral.</p>
<p>The Downfall parodies have maintained cultural relevance for more than a decade, enduring far longer than most fleeting memes like <a href="https://www.eonline.com/au/news/794328/the-oral-history-of-memes-where-did-hey-girl-come-from">Hey Girl</a> or <a href="https://barkpost.com/humor/ultimate-dogshaming/">Dog Shaming</a> posts. This is because they have become a fill-in form of sorts – an empty vessel for rageful rants. One may also argue that the original film was a dark-humoured parody of Hitler to begin with. </p>
<p>Lawyers for the sacked BP worker are not just <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/business/workplace/sacked-bp-worker-argues-fair-work-failed-to-get-his-hitler-downfall-joke-20191113-p53acu.html">arguing</a> his bosses didn’t get the joke. They are saying Downfall memes do more than simply equate someone with Hitler. Rather, they connect to the hundreds of memes which came before to poke fun at something or to vent. </p>
<p>Whether it was appropriate for him to share the joke with colleagues will be up to the full bench that hears his appeal. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/QSYk8ofhYFY?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">A very meta parody: Hitler finds out about the Downfall parodies.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The original film’s director approves of the meme by the way. Hirschbiegel said in a <a href="https://www.vulture.com/2010/01/the_director_of_downfall_on_al.html">2010 interview</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>I think I’ve seen about 145 of them! Of course, I have to put the sound down when I watch. Many times the lines are so funny, I laugh out loud, and I’m laughing about the scene that I staged myself! You couldn’t get a better compliment as a director.</p>
</blockquote><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/127314/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Benjamin Nickl does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Online videos of Hitler getting angry at things, based on a 2004 film scene, have found enduring appeal and recently featured in a Fair Work Commission case. Why the furor?Benjamin Nickl, Lecturer in International Comparative Literature and Translation Studies, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1265722019-11-08T19:08:02Z2019-11-08T19:08:02ZKristallnacht of 1938 shattered glass – and unleashed a brutal fascist masculinity<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/300921/original/file-20191108-194637-icb5di.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=5%2C0%2C3981%2C2630&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A photo from Nov. 10, 1938, showing Jewish shops in Berlin destroyed by Nazis is placed at the same location 80 years later. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Markus Schreiber)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Many people are familiar with the archival photographs depicting the brutality that swept across Germany and its annexed territories during the nights of Nov. 9 and 10, 1938. They depict the aftermath of the destructive forces that descended upon Jewish businesses, homes and places of worship by the men of the SA (<em>Sturmabteilung</em>) and the Hitler Youth. </p>
<p>Their unbridled hatred is illustrated by mounds of shattered glass that littered sidewalks and streets of German cities and towns, inspiring the name “<a href="https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/kristallnacht?utm_source=mkto&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=1911MKTEM4899-three-col-link-1&mkt_tok=eyJpIjoiWXpSak1EUmlaakl6WVdReiIsInQiOiJkQVlsdG1MeWlhNE1aS2c5ampQRFk0bmp5OW5uSHZmbmtrd3NFXC9BekcyaGlPejZ6VkpZWjFSSXkySGNTTkVaQzJzS1wvb3g2T1ErS1Uzb0YyY0RNVitic0tDMDNOUlVzMUl3Rll4MkJDNUpyTlwvK1l6NXk0bmI4ZXZ4aHFrbTJlViJ9">Kristallnacht” or Night of Broken Glass</a>. Such photographs provide important visual evidence of the attacks and the physical damage that occurred.</p>
<p>The men who carried out the attacks, and those on the receiving end of the Nazi violence, may be less familiar to us. Grappling with the human dimension of the Kristallnacht pogrom removes it from the realm of a long-passed historical event and <a href="https://www.holocaustcentre.com/HEW">transforms it into an action of contemporary relevance</a>. </p>
<h2>Hypermilitarized masculinity</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.routledge.com/Remembering-the-Holocaust-in-Educational-Settings-1st-%20Edition/Pearce/p/book/9781138301535">Confronting such events</a> illuminates how human behaviour always carries far-reaching consequences.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/300886/original/file-20191108-194665-1yboxuz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/300886/original/file-20191108-194665-1yboxuz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=1138&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300886/original/file-20191108-194665-1yboxuz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=1138&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300886/original/file-20191108-194665-1yboxuz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=1138&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300886/original/file-20191108-194665-1yboxuz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1431&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300886/original/file-20191108-194665-1yboxuz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1431&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300886/original/file-20191108-194665-1yboxuz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1431&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Firefighters at the Fasanenstrasse synagogue, Berlin’s biggest house of Jewish worship, after Nazis set fire to it on Nov. 9, 1938.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>As a scholar who has studied <a href="https://yorkspace.library.yorku.ca/xmlui/handle/10315/31964">post-Holocaust conceptualizations of masculinity</a> and explored the <a href="https://www.academia.edu/25455123/Auguststrasse_25_An_Experiential_Memorial_Teaching_About_Jewish_Family_Life_in_Pre-Holocaust_Germany">Jewish family in pre-Holocaust Germany</a>, I think about how gendered responses and behaviours instruct and integrate individuals into a wider society.</p>
<p>During the Kristallnacht pogrom, fascist masculinity — brutal, hypermilitarized and unrestrained — caused physical destruction of Jewish-owned business, homes and <a href="https://museeholocauste.ca/en/activities/night-broken-glass-kristallnacht/">276 synagogues</a>. Yet it also operated in opposition to the German, bourgeois model of masculinity and it attacked the very foundation of Jewish life: the family. </p>
<p>The attack on Jewish public, religious and private spaces, followed by rounding up and arresting Jewish men, left Jewish families were even more vulnerable than they already were and <a href="https://www.palgrave.com/us/book/9780333997451">forebode the destruction that followed</a>. This came firstly as an unprecedented assault on Jewish masculinity and a conscious effort to destabilize the familial and societal roles of Jewish men.</p>
<h2>‘Tough as leather’</h2>
<p>It should not come as a surprise that the Hitler Youth were active protagonists in the Kristallnacht pogrom. Although the Hitler Youth movement was primarily aimed at boys between the ages of 14 and 18, they were envisioned as the generation that would inherit the accomplishments of the Nazi Reich and as such were emboldened to demonstrate their physical prowess. </p>
<p>When Hitler spoke to youth at the Nazi Party rally in 1935, he challenged them to become “<a href="https://www.dw.com/en/hitlers-odd-appeal-to-german-youth/a-16410476">as swift as a greyhound, as tough as leather and as hard as Krupp’s steel</a>.” </p>
<p>The analogy is laden with military implications that reminds us that leather is resilient to wear and tear, yet supple enough to be molded to the wearer’s physique. Krupp’s steel invokes an ideological overtone that is analogous with death and destruction: <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/the-krupp-dynasty-glorified-and-vilified/a-15867835">Krupp produced armaments for the German army during the First World War.</a> Boys in the Hitler Youth movement were encouraged to become the tough, resilient soldiers who were prototypes of German fascist masculinity.</p>
<p>By contrast the SA, or Brownshirts as they were commonly called, was a paramilitary movement that often engaged in street fights and brawls. They were essential to the early rise of Hitler and his fascist party and developed into an organization of over one million members. The SA promoted a masculinity that was at times unpredictable and promised young German men its own egalitarian and homosocial community. </p>
<h2>Seeped in anti-Semitism</h2>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/300923/original/file-20191108-194641-140ij3f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/300923/original/file-20191108-194641-140ij3f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=914&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300923/original/file-20191108-194641-140ij3f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=914&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300923/original/file-20191108-194641-140ij3f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=914&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300923/original/file-20191108-194641-140ij3f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1148&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300923/original/file-20191108-194641-140ij3f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1148&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300923/original/file-20191108-194641-140ij3f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1148&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Stormtroopers: A New History of Hitler’s Brownshirts, by Daniel Siemens.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Yale University Press)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This camaraderie extended only to non-Jewish German men and was seeped in anti-Semitism and violence. Historian Daniel Siemens has written that the SAs tendency of violence <a href="https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300246599/stormtroopers">acted as a valve for the Brownshirts’ pent-up aggression and was a consequence of their ideological convictions</a>. If violence served as a valve, then the Kristallnacht pogrom provided them with an almost unfettered opportunity to reign terror upon the fascists’ favourite scapegoats, the Jews.</p>
<p>While the street fights and physical defacement was primarily the purview of the Hitler Youth and the SA, units of the SS (Schutzstaffel) and the Gestapo co-ordinated the <a href="https://www.history.com/topics/holocaust/kristallnacht">arrests of some 30,000 Jewish men</a>. As the pogrom that we now call Kristallnacht spread, the men were deported to <a href="https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/dachau">Dachau</a>, <a href="https://www.buchenwald.de/en/69/">Buchenwald</a>, <a href="https://www.sachsenhausen-sbg.de/en/history/1936-1945-sachsenhausen-concentration-camp/">Sachsenhausen</a> and other concentration camps in the German Reich.</p>
<p>Photographs depicting these arrests are haunting in the order and precision with which they were carried out. The arrested <a href="https://www.zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/kristallnacht-night/">Jewish men look orderly and sombre, dressed in business attire</a> — as befitted their roles as bourgeois, German citizens. </p>
<h2>Men first to be taken</h2>
<p>As loyal citizens of Germany, many of whom had familial roots extending back generations or had fought in the First World War for Germany, these men could not have imagined what awaited them in the Nazi concentration camps. Nor could they understand why, as law-biding loyal citizens, they were targeted. </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/300924/original/file-20191108-194656-4c8tty.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/300924/original/file-20191108-194656-4c8tty.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=964&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300924/original/file-20191108-194656-4c8tty.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=964&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300924/original/file-20191108-194656-4c8tty.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=964&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300924/original/file-20191108-194656-4c8tty.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1212&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300924/original/file-20191108-194656-4c8tty.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1212&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300924/original/file-20191108-194656-4c8tty.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1212&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A young man with a broom prepares to clear up the broken window glass from a Jewish shop in Berlin on Nov. 10, 1938, the day after the Kristallnacht pogrom.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Regardless of whether the attackers were Hitler Youth, SA or SS, when Nazi perpetrators attacked Jewish-owned business, or beat and humiliated Jews in the streets, they sent a clear message that traditional societal norms no longer prevailed. </p>
<p>Until this time, Jewish men and women in Western and Central Europe had adapted themselves to the prevailing model of bourgeois family life. This model conferred responsibility for the financial and physical survival of the family upon men as heads of households, but placed its psychological and spiritual well-being in the hands of the women. </p>
<p>The events of Kristallnacht demonstrated that Jewish men could no longer protect their families, nor guarantee their safety during the National Socialist regime. Jewish men, women and children were thrust into situations that they were ill-prepared to meet and were increasingly difficult to navigate. </p>
<p>In the days and months that followed Kristallnacht, Jewish women, wives, sisters and daughters were thrust into new roles as providers and defenders of the family. They sought ways to secure the release of men arrested and to rise beyond the expectations of their bourgeois gender roles.</p>
<p>Although fascist masculinity may have been an affront to some of the German bourgeoisie and the elite, it nevertheless dominated civil society, foreshadowing in 1938 that <a href="https://rowman.com/isbn/9781442242289/war-and-genocide-a-concise-history-of-the-holocaust-third-edition">the worst was still to come</a>.</p>
<p>[ <em>Deep knowledge, daily.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/ca/newsletters?utm_source=TCCA&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=deepknowledge">Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter</a>. ]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/126572/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Carson Phillips does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>About 30,000 Jewish men were arrested and deported to concentration camps in the German Reich in the immediate aftermath after Kristallnacht, the night of the Broken Glass, in November 1938.Carson Phillips, Adjunct faculty, Department of History, University of New BrunswickLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1231182019-09-19T11:24:42Z2019-09-19T11:24:42ZPathological power: the danger of governments led by narcissists and psychopaths<p>After spending his early life suffering under the Nazis and then Stalin, the Polish psychologist <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Political-Ponerology-Science-Adjusted-Purposes/dp/1897244258">Andrew Lobaczewski</a> devoted his career to studying the relationship between psychological disorders and politics. He wanted to understand why psychopaths and narcissists are so strongly attracted to power as well as the processes by which they take over governments and countries. </p>
<p>He eventually came up with the term “pathocracy” to describe governments made up of people with these disorders – and the concept is by no means confined to regimes of the past. </p>
<p>In the US, for example, despite a convention that psychologists shouldn’t unofficially diagnose public figures they haven’t examined (known as the “<a href="https://www.psychiatry.org/newsroom/goldwater-rule">Goldwater Rule</a>” after psychiatrists questioned the mental fitness of Senator Barry Goldwater in 1964), many have <a href="https://www.euronews.com/2019/08/14/unpicking-donald-trump-s-psychopathology-helps-explain-the-toxic-reality-facing-america-vi">publicly stated</a> that Donald Trump displays all the signs of narcissistic personality disorder. </p>
<p>Similar cases have been made by psychologists for other “strongman” politicians around the world, such as <a href="https://www.politurco.com/erdogan-is-mentally-stable.html">Recep Tayyip Erdoğan of Turkey</a> and <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/philippines-president-rodrigo-duterte-mental-health-psychological-condition-a7355891.html">Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines</a>. </p>
<p>It’s not really surprising that people with personality disorders are drawn to political power – narcissists crave attention and affirmation, and feel that they are superior to others and have the right to dominate them. They also lack empathy, which means that they are able to ruthlessly exploit and abuse people for the sake of power. Psychopaths feel a similar sense of superiority and lack of empathy, but without the same impulse for attention and adoration. </p>
<p>But pathocracy isn’t just about individuals. As Lobaczewski <a href="http://www.ponerology.com/">pointed out</a>, pathological leaders tend to attract other people with psychological disorders. At the same time, empathetic and fair-minded people gradually fall away. They are either ostracised or step aside voluntarily, appalled by the growing pathology around them. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/narcissists-and-psychopaths-how-some-societies-ensure-these-dangerous-people-never-wield-power-118854">Narcissists and psychopaths: how some societies ensure these dangerous people never wield power</a>
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<p>As a result, over time pathocracies become more entrenched and extreme. You can see this process in the <a href="https://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/nazi-germany/nazi-germany-dictatorship/">Nazi takeover of the German government</a> in the 1930s, when Germany moved from democracy to pathocracy in less than two years. </p>
<p>Democracy is an essential way of protecting people from pathological politicians, with principles and institutions that limit their power (the <a href="https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/bill-of-rights-transcript">Bill of Rights</a> in the US, which guarantees certain rights to citizens is a good example).</p>
<p>This is why pathocrats hate democracy. Once they attain power they do their best to dismantle and discredit democratic institutions, including the freedom and legitimacy of the press. This is the first thing that <a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/the-ways-to-destroy-democracy/">Hitler did</a> when he became German chancellor, and it is what autocrats such as Trump, Vladimir Putin and Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán have been <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-the-world-should-be-worried-about-the-rise-of-strongman-politics-100165">attempting to do</a>.</p>
<p>In the US, there has clearly been a movement towards pathocracy under Trump. As Lobaczewski’s theory predicts, the old guard of more moderate White House officials – the “adults in the room” – <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/dec/20/jim-mattis-resign-trump-administration">has fallen away</a>. The president is now <a href="https://thinkprogress.org/trumps-adults-in-the-room-are-gone-6f35580d75c8/">surrounded by individuals</a> who share his authoritarian tendencies and lack of empathy and morality. Fortunately, to some extent, the democratic institutions of the US have managed to provide some push back. </p>
<p>Britain too has been fairly fortunate, compared to other countries. Certainly there have been some pathocratic tendencies in some of our recent prime ministers (and other prominent ministers), including a lack of empathy and a narcissistic sense of self importance. But the UK’s parliamentary and electoral systems – and perhaps a cultural disposition towards fairness and social responsibility – have protected the UK from some of the worst excesses of pathocracy. </p>
<h2>Pathocratic politics today</h2>
<p>This is why recent political events seem so alarming. It seems as if the UK is closer to pathocracy than ever before. The recent <a href="https://uk.news.yahoo.com/amber-rudd-warns-pm-moderate-103525718.html">exodus of moderate Conservatives</a> is characteristic of the purges which occur as a democracy transitions into pathocracy. </p>
<p>The distrust and disregard for democratic processes shown by the UK prime minister, Boris Johnson, and his ministers and advisers – the <a href="https://www.theweek.co.uk/63099/parliament-prorogued-what-does-it-mean-and-can-it-be-used-to-push-through-brexit">prorogation of parliament</a>, the insinuation that they may not follow <a href="https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/boris-johnson-could-ignore-mps-bid-to-block-no-deal-brexit-michael-gove-suggests_uk_5d6b8685e4b09bbc9ef05e63?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly91ay5zZWFyY2gueWFob28uY29tLw&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAD5p9wKGX9JcVly41bSY69-X75l46o04CGGcuWA-hBCbMMgnkBSr3FcSKovRPyW8rjYVsH6WYOATiZfojB7PTR2MJN4uhSxLjgVFxVTO2x8gBI2dI3YoFxMyuL_drXMfQg4QKbOUm3gw0Gr6M_Ex3Yseo2LEHG6e0KO0QKDgvUxf**">laws they disagree with</a> – is also characteristic of pathocracy. </p>
<p>As a psychologist, I would certainly not attempt to assess Johnson, having never met him. But in my view he is certainly surrounding himself with the most ruthless and unprincipled – and so most pathocratic – elements of his party. The former prime minister David Cameron even referred to Johnson’s chief adviser Dominic Cummings as a “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/jun/18/david-cameron-dominic-cummings-career-psychopath">career psychopath</a>”.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/292981/original/file-20190918-187974-16wv9wu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/292981/original/file-20190918-187974-16wv9wu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/292981/original/file-20190918-187974-16wv9wu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/292981/original/file-20190918-187974-16wv9wu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/292981/original/file-20190918-187974-16wv9wu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/292981/original/file-20190918-187974-16wv9wu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/292981/original/file-20190918-187974-16wv9wu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Prorogation protests in London.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/london-england-united-kingdom-august-31-1492714883?src=bUG8MmfZI7uQHvXlc-_94Q-2-55">Shutterstock/4-life-2-b</a></span>
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</figure>
<p>At the same time, it is important to point out that not everyone who becomes part of a pathocratic government has a psychological disorder. Some people may simply be callous and non-empathic without a fully fledged psychological disorder. </p>
<p>Others may simply possess the kind of narcissism (based on a sense of superiority and entitlement) which arises from a certain style of upbringing. Some politicians may simply follow the party line through loyalty or in the belief that they will be able to rein in the pathocratic impulses of the people around them. </p>
<p>So far, thanks to the actions of parliament and the bravery of a small number of principled Conservative MPs, the potential pathocracy of Johnson’s government has been kept at bay. </p>
<p>But the danger of democracy transitioning into pathocracy is always real. It is always closer to us than we think, and once it has a foothold, will crush every obstacle in its way.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/123118/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Steve Taylor does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The risk of “pathocracy” is always close. And once entrenched, difficult to dislodge.Steve Taylor, Senior Lecturer in Psychology, Leeds Beckett UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1118072019-04-02T10:41:13Z2019-04-02T10:41:13Z3 times political conflict reshaped American mathematics<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/262256/original/file-20190305-48423-h2dtmi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">International forces advancing toward Boxer soldiers outside the Imperial Palace in Beijing, China, during the Boxer Rebellion.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Boxer-Rebellion/media/76364/189665">Library of Congress</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Wars. Politics. Dynasties. Nationalism. </p>
<p>Although mathematics isn’t typically associated with these ideas, they have combined to yield a tremendous impact on its development in the U.S. Political conflicts have led to new study abroad initiatives, the creation or downfall of world-class universities, the migration of mathematicians and the stimulus for educational reforms.</p>
<p>In February, my University of Richmond students and I launched <a href="http://americanmathematics.org">americanmathematics.org</a>, a new website on the history of American mathematics. It showcases the people who create, the institutions that support and the cultures that influence mathematics. </p>
<p>This rich history shows that mathematics is much more than equations or multiplication facts. It’s a living, breathing discipline shaped, in part, by the political forces around it. </p>
<h2>Boxer Scholars</h2>
<p>In the late 19th century, a growing anti-foreign sentiment in China led to the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Boxer-Rebellion">Boxer uprising</a>, acquiring its name from the rebels, known as “Boxers,” who practiced physical movements that they believed made them immune to bullets. </p>
<p>A coalition army of soldiers from eight western countries suppressed the rebellion in August 1900. In 1901, China was <a href="http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Boxer_Rebellion">forced to pay war reparations</a> valued at about US$333 million to the eight foreign governments over the course of 39 years. </p>
<p>The U.S. received about $24 million to $25 million. Many American government officials found this amount excessive, particularly since it exceeded the actual expenses for losses incurred. </p>
<p>Edmund James, then president of the University of Illinois, helped persuade President Theodore Roosevelt to return some of these funds and create educational opportunities for Chinese students to study in the U.S. These <a href="https://earlychinesemit.mit.edu/three-waves/boxer-indemnity-scholarship-program">Boxer Indemnity Scholarships</a> brought more than 900 Chinese students to America from 1911 to 1929. </p>
<p>Wang Renfu was the first Boxer Scholar to study mathematics in America. After earning his degree from Harvard in 1913, he returned to China and joined the Department of Mathematics at Beijing University. He later served on the Board of the Chinese Mathematical Society. </p>
<p>To prepare students for study in the U.S., the Chinese government also used the Boxer Indemnity Funds to create a college preparatory school in 1911. This preparatory school, known as Tsinghua School, ultimately grew into Tsinghua University.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/262528/original/file-20190306-100787-1iehb14.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/262528/original/file-20190306-100787-1iehb14.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/262528/original/file-20190306-100787-1iehb14.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262528/original/file-20190306-100787-1iehb14.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262528/original/file-20190306-100787-1iehb14.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262528/original/file-20190306-100787-1iehb14.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262528/original/file-20190306-100787-1iehb14.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262528/original/file-20190306-100787-1iehb14.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Tsinghua University campus in Beijing, China.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:TsinghuaUniversitypic2.jpg">Tsinghua/Wikimedia</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The four faculty members of the initial Department of Mathematics at Tsinghua University included three Boxer Scholars, including Ko-Chuen Yang, whose number theory dissertation improved existing bounds for certain cases of what is known as <a href="http://people.maths.ox.ac.uk/neale/Waring_longer.html">Waring’s Problem</a>. Waring’s Problem considers the possibility of writing every number as a sum of squares, cubes and higher powers. The school continues to enjoy a strong reputation today.</p>
<p>That rebellion created the opportunity for Chinese students to study in the U.S. and return home to establish strong mathematics programs in China. Later, Chinese mathematicians would receive their training in China and make contributions to American mathematics. </p>
<h2>Jewish refugees</h2>
<p>World War II and the events leading up to it influenced mathematics in an entirely different way. </p>
<p>In April 1933, Hitler introduced the <a href="https://www.ushmm.org/learn/timeline-of-events/1933-1938/law-for-the-restoration-of-the-professional-civil-service">Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service</a>, which excluded Jews and others from employment, including involvement in organizations and professorships. Many Jewish scholars or scholars with Jewish families began to seek refuge in the U.S. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/262498/original/file-20190306-100784-wlof7n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/262498/original/file-20190306-100784-wlof7n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/262498/original/file-20190306-100784-wlof7n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=420&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262498/original/file-20190306-100784-wlof7n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=420&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262498/original/file-20190306-100784-wlof7n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=420&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262498/original/file-20190306-100784-wlof7n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=528&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262498/original/file-20190306-100784-wlof7n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=528&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262498/original/file-20190306-100784-wlof7n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=528&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Hermann and Helene Weyl.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Hermann_Weyl#/media/File:Hermann_and_Helene_Weyl.jpg">Konrad Jacobs/Wikimedia</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><a href="https://www.ias.edu/hermann-weyl-life">Hermann</a> <a href="http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Weyl.html">Weyl</a> and his family, for example, had moved from Zürich to <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-one-german-city-developed-and-then-lost-generations-of-math-geniuses-106750">Göttingen, Germany</a>, for him to assume the chair of mathematics in 1930. By 1933, however, with his wife and children identified as Jewish, Weyl accepted one of the first faculty positions at the newly founded Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey.</p>
<p>Once there, Weyl worked with colleagues to help other mathematicians find a home in America. This influx of talented European mathematicians included <a href="http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Courant.html">Richard Courant</a>, <a href="http://www.ams.org/journals/bull/2013-50-02/S0273-0979-2012-01398-8/S0273-0979-2012-01398-8.pdf">Emil Artin</a> and <a href="https://www.sciencenews.org/article/emmy-noether-theorem-legacy-physics-math">Emmy Noether</a>. Their arrival catapulted American mathematics to a new level of international acclaim. </p>
<p>This advancement of American mathematics came at the expense of German mathematics. In 1934, the Nazi minister of culture asked the great Göttingen Professor of Mathematics David Hilbert whether the mathematics institute at Göttingen had suffered since the removal of the Jews. “Suffered?” <a href="https://faculty.math.illinois.edu/%7Ereznick/davidrowe.pdf">Hilbert responded</a>. “It hasn’t suffered, Herr Minister. It just doesn’t exist anymore.” </p>
<h2>New Math</h2>
<p>The launch of Sputnik, the Soviet Union’s first satellite, in October 1957 led to another shift in American mathematics, this time at the K-12 level. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/262493/original/file-20190306-100796-wjm084.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/262493/original/file-20190306-100796-wjm084.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/262493/original/file-20190306-100796-wjm084.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262493/original/file-20190306-100796-wjm084.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262493/original/file-20190306-100796-wjm084.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262493/original/file-20190306-100796-wjm084.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262493/original/file-20190306-100796-wjm084.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262493/original/file-20190306-100796-wjm084.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">An artist’s illustration of Sputnik.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-illustration/illustration-first-artificial-satellite-sputnik-launched-383756191">AuntSpray/shutterstock.com</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>During World War II, the U.S. government realized that many Americans were deficient in <a href="https://www.csun.edu/%7Evcmth00m/AHistory.html">arithmetic, geometry and trigonometry</a>. A <a href="https://www.americanheritage.com/whatever-happened-new-math-0">national shortage of mathematics teachers</a> didn’t help matters. Still, very little reform took place immediately after the war. </p>
<p>Sputnik changed all of that. The U.S. now considered how to build a strong sense of scientific prowess and national security within the American populace. The <a href="http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/history/Biographies/Begle.html">School Mathematics Study Group</a>, the National Science Foundation-funded group that included research mathematicians and schoolteachers, aimed to produce textbooks for every grade of K-12 that explained the “why” of mathematics along with the “how.” Their approach became infamously known as <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Math">New Math</a>. </p>
<p>The School Mathematics Study Group worked within an American culture that began to rethink its view of mathematics. Suddenly, mathematics was linked with national security. Politicians endorsed this new approach to math. Parents attended classes to learn how to help their children with the New Math. Teachers attended training sessions. </p>
<p>In the end, however, the introduction of the program occurred so swiftly that educators could not keep up with the materials, when they simply did not understand. Meanwhile, the approach proved uneven for students. For example, students might understand the commutative law that allows multiplication of integers in any order, but not the multiplication table it relies on for the computation. </p>
<p>Nationalism and political agendas were not enough to make the program successful. Taken together, these three historical events show how political conflict can help or harm the advancement of mathematics.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/111807/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Della Dumbaugh does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>When is math not just math? Political conflicts have led to new study-abroad initiatives, the creation of a world-class university, the migration of mathematicians and serious educational reforms.Della Dumbaugh, Professor of Mathematics, University of RichmondLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1132352019-03-25T10:42:37Z2019-03-25T10:42:37ZWhy the Vatican needs to open its archives on Pope Pius XII<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/264939/original/file-20190320-93044-1sntoty.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Pope Pius XII.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/AP-I-ITA-POPE-PIUS-XII/5b5ee0d6abe0da11af9f0014c2589dfb/1/0">AP Photo</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Pope Francis announced recently that, in 2020, the Vatican will open to researchers <a href="https://www.vaticannews.va/en/pope/news/2019-03/pope-francis-vatican-secret-archives-pius-xii.html">its archival materials related to Pius XII</a>, who served as pope from 1939 to 1958. </p>
<p>The Vatican generally <a href="https://www.catholicregister.org/columns/item/29176-editorial-the-truth-is-near">waits roughly 70 years</a> after the end of a papacy before making archival materials available. In this case, the Vatican has decided to allow access earlier, possibly due to the controversy surrounding Pius XII’s wartime papacy. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/mar/04/vatican-to-open-archives-on-controversial-wwii-pope-pius-xii">Many have criticized Pius XII</a> for failing to condemn the Holocaust. Instead, he spoke out against the general loss of life in wartime.</p>
<p>Others believe <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/feb/09/hitlers-pope-pius-xii-holocaust">he worked behind the scenes</a> to combat the Nazis and save Jewish lives. The Vatican archives might soon shed <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/vatican-will-unseal-archives-pius-xii-controversial-holocaust-era-pope-180971620/">some light</a> on these questions. </p>
<p>In the meantime, what do we know about his papacy and the environment in which he was working? </p>
<h2>Fear of communism</h2>
<p>As a scholar who has been <a href="https://www.holycross.edu/academics/programs/religious-studies/faculty/alan-avery-peck">teaching Holocaust history</a> primarily to students who grew up in the Christian faith, the question of the attitudes of Christians, and especially of the Church, comes up frequently in my classes. </p>
<p>There is strong evidence that Pius XII <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Chief_Rabbi_the_Pope_and_the_Holocau.html?id=3wA8CPPjNCgC">knew of the Nazis’ “Final Solution”</a> – their intention to annihilate the Jews. Information came to him from various sources. For example, the Polish ambassador to the Vatican brought the pope updates and entreaties for action. </p>
<p>Additionally, the World Jewish Congress begged the pope openly to proclaim his revulsion for Nazism. Even the <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Chief_Rabbi_the_Pope_and_the_Holocau.html?id=3wA8CPPjNCgC">U.S. informed the Vatican</a> in September 1942 that residents of the Warsaw Ghetto were being slaughtered. </p>
<p>This was prior to the Nazi deportation of some 265,000 Jews from the ghetto to Treblinka death camp and months before the final Nazi liquidation of the ghetto, in which the Jews themselves fought for their own lives in the <a href="https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/warsaw">Warsaw Ghetto Uprising</a> beginning in April 1943.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/264940/original/file-20190320-93036-1qf3hz9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/264940/original/file-20190320-93036-1qf3hz9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=425&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/264940/original/file-20190320-93036-1qf3hz9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=425&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/264940/original/file-20190320-93036-1qf3hz9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=425&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/264940/original/file-20190320-93036-1qf3hz9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=534&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/264940/original/file-20190320-93036-1qf3hz9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=534&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/264940/original/file-20190320-93036-1qf3hz9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=534&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Exhibits from the Warsaw Ghetto at POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw, Poland.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Poland-Israel-Holocaust-Law/13b4de4a7af742868dbf8384a3d421ef/62/0">AP Photo/Czarek Sokolowski</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Despite this knowledge, scholars believe that several factors likely led to <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Papacy_the_Jews_and_the_Holocaust.html?id=2sCVX56PwocC">Pius XII’s extreme care in public statements and actions</a>. </p>
<p>The Church had a <a href="https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/church-anti-semitism%C2%A0">long history of antipathy to the Jews</a>. The Jews, beginning from Jesus’ day, were understood by the Church to deserve condemnation for Christ’s suffering and death. Church theology and social policy through the centuries reflected that negative attitude.</p>
<p>Even as matters improved in the 19th and early 20th century, this history of anti-Judaism was reflected in the <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Papacy_the_Jews_and_the_Holocaust.html?id=2sCVX56PwocC">Vatican’s continued ambivalence toward the Jews</a>. </p>
<p>While the Church spoke openly against a <a href="https://jhupbooks.press.jhu.edu/title/cleansing-fatherland">Nazi euthanasia program</a> that during World War II murdered more than 300,000 mentally and physically disabled Christians, acting on behalf of Jews was a much lesser concern. </p>
<p>Additionally, in the Vatican’s view, however reprehensible Nazism was, it did not pose as great or immediate a threat <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Papacy_the_Jews_and_the_Holocaust.html?id=2sCVX56PwocC">as communism</a>. </p>
<p>Even prior to this period, communism had been of considerable concern to the Catholic Church. Pope Pius IX’s 1846 encyclical, <a href="http://www.papalencyclicals.net/pius09/p9quiplu.htm">“Qui Pluribus,”</a> a response to the nationalistic philosophies that sought to unify Italy in that day, deemed communism contrary to natural law. He described it as a doctrine that stood to destroy all existing laws, governments, property and human society itself. </p>
<p>During World War II, the Soviet Union, allied with the Western democracies, and not Germany, was the Church’s greatest enemy.</p>
<h2>Role of Pope Pius XII</h2>
<p>In this context, and fearing that the Nazis might win the war, the Vatican was reluctant to cause a crisis of conscience for Catholics fighting for Germany’s Nazi regime against communist Russia. </p>
<p>Indeed, in 1933, in his role as the Vatican ambassador to Germany, Eugenio Pacelli negotiated a treaty – called a concordat – between the Vatican and the Nazi regime. Five years later, Pacelli would become Pope Pius XII.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.americamagazine.org/faith/2003/09/01/vatican-concordat-hitlers-reich-concordat-1933-was-ambiguous-its-day-and-remain">concordat</a> promised that, in exchange for the Nazis’ guarantee of the preservation of the Church’s and Catholics’ rights in Germany, the Vatican would remain neutral and not denounce Nazism. </p>
<p>The Vatican saw this as its best path towards safeguarding the Church’s interests and those of some 20 million German Catholics. It assured the Vatican that German churches would remain open and that priests, bishops, and <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Chief_Rabbi_the_Pope_and_the_Holocau.html?id=3wA8CPPjNCgC">even the pope himself would remain safe</a> from Nazi harassment and possible arrest. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/264941/original/file-20190320-93051-1mut04r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/264941/original/file-20190320-93051-1mut04r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=719&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/264941/original/file-20190320-93051-1mut04r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=719&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/264941/original/file-20190320-93051-1mut04r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=719&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/264941/original/file-20190320-93051-1mut04r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=903&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/264941/original/file-20190320-93051-1mut04r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=903&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/264941/original/file-20190320-93051-1mut04r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=903&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Pope Pius XI.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/POPE-PIUS-XI/5e360291d8e4da11af9f0014c2589dfb/27/0">AP Photo</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It bears noting that Pius XII’s predecessor, Pius XI, had spoken out against the Nazis more openly than his successor would do. He had <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=nd91DwAAQBAJ&pg=PA126&lpg=PA126&dq=pius+Xi+unsigned+encyclical&source=bl&ots=2phRF7ByWH&sig=ACfU3U2boxS21aF-RFB0gZznykPDbBVUgg&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiqt-Wb45DhAhXHJt8KHeNPCzQQ6AEwDnoECAoQAQ#v=onepage&q=pius%20Xi%20unsigned%20encyclical&f=false">commissioned an encyclical</a> specifically directed against racism and anti-Semitism. </p>
<p>However, this encyclical was never signed. It is believed that <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Chief_Rabbi_the_Pope_and_the_Holocau.html?id=3wA8CPPjNCgC">his aides kept it from Pius XI</a> while he was on his death bed in 1938. </p>
<p>Scholarship on the unsigned encyclical suggests that it was viewed by many in the Church hierarchy as too dangerous. The Vatican was afraid that, in response to what the Nazis would have seen as a serious provocation, <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Chief_Rabbi_the_Pope_and_the_Holocau.html?id=3wA8CPPjNCgC">they might have gone so far as to arrest every bishop in Germany</a>. </p>
<h2>Reluctance to confront Nazism</h2>
<p>Pius XII was much less willing than his predecessor to confront Nazism. </p>
<p>When he did speak out, he made only brief and veiled references. In his <a href="http://www.ewtn.com/library/papaldoc/p12ch42.htm">1942 Christmas radio broadcast</a>, for example, which lasted three and a half hours, he mentioned only an unnamed group that might be understood to be the Jews. </p>
<p>The pope referred to “humanity’s obligation to the hundreds of thousands of persons who without any fault on their own part, sometimes only because of their nationality or race, have been consigned to death or to a slow decline.” </p>
<p>In the <a href="http://www.ewtn.com/library/papaldoc/p12ch42.htm">same broadcast</a>, he said that “the Church would be untrue to herself, ceasing to be a mother, if she turned a deaf ear to her children’s anguished cries, which reach her from every class of the human family.” </p>
<p>Pius XII did not specifically identify the Jews as victims or the Nazis as the victimizers. Nonetheless, reporting on the pope’s message, <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=XmD8CwAAQBAJ&pg=PT186&lpg=PT186&dq=condemns+the+worship+of+force+and+its+concrete+manifestation+in+the+suppression+of+national+liberties+and+in+the+persecution+of+the+Jewish+race&source=bl&ots=VgnP2nRPo3&sig=ACfU3U0VT5Gjku609a8vY3Qy-jGXeH69Cw&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjV_MXiqo_hAhVKnOAKHRhkDT8Q6AEwDHoECAgQAQ#v=onepage&q=condemns%20the%20worship%20of%20force%20and%20its%20concrete%20manifestation%20in%20the%20suppression%20of%20national%20liberties%20and%20in%20the%20persecution%20of%20the%20Jewish%20race&f=false">the Times of London said</a> that he clearly, “condemns the worship of force and its concrete manifestation in the suppression of national liberties and in the persecution of the Jewish race.” </p>
<p>A top Nazi official, Heinrich Himmler, stated that the pope had clearly repudiated their movement – even though he had not refer to it by name. <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=XmD8CwAAQBAJ&pg=PT186&lpg=PT186&dq=condemns+the+worship+of+force+and+its+concrete+manifestation+in+the+suppression+of+national+liberties+and+in+the+persecution+of+the+Jewish+race&source=bl&ots=VgnP2nRPo3&sig=ACfU3U0VT5Gjku609a8vY3Qy-jGXeH69Cw&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjV_MXiqo_hAhVKnOAKHRhkDT8Q6AEwDHoECAgQAQ#v=onepage&q=condemns%20the%20worship%20of%20force%20and%20its%20concrete%20manifestation%20in%20the%20suppression%20of%20national%20liberties%20and%20in%20the%20persecution%20of%20the%20Jewish%20race&f=false">He noted</a> that the pope was “virtually accusing the German people of injustice toward the Jews, and making himself the mouthpiece of the Jewish war criminals.” </p>
<h2>The questions that will remain</h2>
<p>Those who support Pius XII argue that negative assessments of his wartime actions ignore statements such as these and devalue all the pope may have done in secret to help the Jews. </p>
<p>These supporters, including Pope Francis, look forward to the opening of the archives, which they hope <a href="http://www.worldjewishcongress.org/en/news/francis-wants-to-open-holocaust-era-vatican-archives-as-quickly-as-possible">will prove</a> that the wartime pope did everything that they believe he could. </p>
<p>Proof of actions Pius XII took in support of Jews might also allow the Church to move forward towards his <a href="https://www.bostonglobe.com/news/world/2014/06/14/sainthood-only-way-end-row-between-jews-catholics-over-pius-xii/Opre4I7SdZd878iOrQHGLJ/story.html">canonization</a>, which has been stalled since 2009. <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/pope-francis-to-open-world-war-ii-era-vatican-archives-to-scrutiny/2019/03/04/2908ff80-3e75-11e9-9361-301ffb5bd5e6_story.html?utm_term=.20efaae601f4">Three of the four popes</a> since Pius XII have already been declared saints. </p>
<p>Findings of heretofore unknown actions of Pius XII may <a href="https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2019/03/04/pope-pius-xii-his-tiara-turned-into-a-crown-of-thorns-says-historian/">redeem his tarnished papacy</a> and, with it, the Church more generally. But, for many, it might not resolve deeper questions about what Pope Pius XII did, or did not do, publicly.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/113235/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alan Avery-Peck does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The Vatican will open its archives on Pope Pius XII next year. An expert explains the papacy of Pope Pius XII and the fear of communism confronting much of the Western world at the time.Alan Avery-Peck, Kraft-Hiatt Professor in Judaic Studies, College of the Holy CrossLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1100152019-03-12T10:45:32Z2019-03-12T10:45:32ZAfter 100 years, Mussolini’s fascist party is a reminder of the fragility of freedom<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/263188/original/file-20190311-86682-1ui6sga.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Italian dictator Benito Mussolini and Nazi leader Adolf Hitler before attending a conference in Munich, Germany.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/ITALY-SECRET-MUSSOLINI/0eae050912cc469a9b5f8023605009cd/264/0">AP Photo/File</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>One hundred years ago, in March 1919, Benito Mussolini created the <a href="https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/mussolini-founds-the-fascist-party">fascist party</a> in Italy. </p>
<p>For more than two decades, when he came to be known as “Il Duce,” or “the leader,” Mussolini wielded broad powers. At the end of World War II, he was shot by a <a href="https://www.history.com/news/mussolinis-final-hours-70-years-ago">firing squad</a> for his crimes. His body was publicly hung upside down. </p>
<p>In my <a href="https://liberalarts.iupui.edu/about/directory/gunderman-richard.html">political philosophy course</a> at Indiana University, my students and I study Mussolini’s rise to power and his dishonorable end. His life offers deep, cautionary insights for contemporary politics. </p>
<h2>The early years</h2>
<p><a href="https://biographics.org/benito-mussolini-biography-italian-dictator-and-journalist-who-was-the-leader-of-the-national-fascist-party/">Mussolini</a> was born in the small Italian town of Predappio in 1883. After qualifying as a teacher, he joined the socialists, who believed in public ownership of property.</p>
<p>He was arrested and jailed by the government for promoting strikes. His advocacy in support of World War I brought him into conflict with the socialist party, which expelled him. In response, he founded a new political movement, <a href="http://www.auburn.edu/%7Ejohnspm/gloss/fascism">Fascism</a>, from the Italian word for “bundle,” which symbolized government authority in ancient Rome.</p>
<p>Wounded while serving in the Italian military, he was discharged and began working as a journalist. Thereafter, Mussolini received funding from the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/oct/13/benito-mussolini-recruited-mi5-italy">British secret service</a> to publish pro-war propaganda in his newspaper. He developed the idea of “vital space,” calling on Italy to reclaim from other Mediterranean nations much of the land that once belonged to the Roman Empire. In 1919, he announced that the fascist movement was becoming a political party.</p>
<h2>The fascists</h2>
<p>As the leader of fascism, Mussolini pushed for the growth of the Italian population. He believed a larger population was necessary for the nation to function as a world-class military power. He also regarded <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/contemporary-european-history/article/mussolinis-follies-fascism-in-its-imperial-and-racist-phase-19351940/B385EFFE31E9B62F76BF40886F1388AB">Africans and Asians</a> as inherently inferior. Again and again, he called on white Italian women to produce more children. </p>
<p>Mussolini’s fascists formed squads of war veterans known as “<a href="https://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/modern-world-history-1918-to-1980/italy-1900-to-1939/life-in-fascist-italy/">Black Shirts</a>,” who would clash with the members of other political parties, particularly communists and socialists. The government harbored deep fears of a communist revolution and rarely interfered, giving Mussolini’s forces relatively free rein. </p>
<p>In 1922, <a href="https://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/modern-world-history-1918-to-1980/italy-1900-to-1939/the-march-on-rome/">tens of thousands of Black Shirts</a> gathered in Rome to demand political change. The liberal government sought to declare martial law, but the king of Italy, <a href="https://wwi.lib.byu.edu/index.php/Victor_Emmanuel_III">Victor Emmanuel III</a>, fearing civil war, instead asked Mussolini to form a new government.</p>
<p>While the Fascists constituted only a small percentage of Prime Minister Mussolini’s original government, he pressured the legislature to grant him dictatorial powers over what citizens could do and not do, seeking to meld the state with the Fascist party. </p>
<p>By 1924, his national alliance won nearly two-thirds of the vote. A <a href="https://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/modern-world-history-1918-to-1980/italy-1900-to-1939/the-murder-of-matteotti/">socialist deputy</a> who decried ballot irregularities was murdered. </p>
<h2>Life under fascism</h2>
<p>Mussolini quickly built a cult of personality around himself. Those who sought to oppose him were held in check by governmental and extra-governmental means, including intimidation. Multiple <a href="https://scholar.valpo.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1241&context=jvbl">assassination attempts</a> against him were unsuccessful.</p>
<p>Mussolini selected the editors of news outlets, required all teachers to take an oath of allegiance to the Fascist regime, and invested large sums of money in projects designed to enhance his own standing <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/40257305?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents">domestically and around the world</a>. In “<a href="http://www.worldfuturefund.org/wffmaster/Reading/Germany/mussolini.htm">The Doctrine of Fascism</a>,” published in 1932, Mussolini and a fellow Fascist described the state as “all embracing,” declaring that outside of it “no human or spiritual values can exist.”</p>
<h2>Fascism’s fall</h2>
<p>As seeds of World War II began to germinate in the 1930s, Mussolini believed that Britain and France were doomed by low birth rates and the relatively high age of their populations, and he determined that Italy should ally itself with rapidly growing Germany. </p>
<p>When the Germans under Hitler easily invaded Poland in 1939, Mussolini <a href="https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/axis-alliance-in-world-war-ii">concluded</a> that Germany would quickly prevail and entered the war on its side.</p>
<p>Yet Italy was a much weaker war power than Germany, and by 1943, a series of defeats had left the Italian army in desperate shape. Italy’s factories were idled, and food shortages were the rule. The people <a href="https://www.historians.org/about-aha-and-membership/aha-history-and-archives/gi-roundtable-series/pamphlets/em-18-what-is-the-future-of-italy-(1945)/the-rise-and-fall-of-fascism">turned against</a> “Il Duce.”</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/263196/original/file-20190311-86710-de4dex.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/263196/original/file-20190311-86710-de4dex.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=444&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/263196/original/file-20190311-86710-de4dex.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=444&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/263196/original/file-20190311-86710-de4dex.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=444&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/263196/original/file-20190311-86710-de4dex.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=558&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/263196/original/file-20190311-86710-de4dex.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=558&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/263196/original/file-20190311-86710-de4dex.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=558&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Allied soldiers walk through the entrance to a fascist youth camp and school in 1943. The gate is designed as a giant letter ‘M,’ in reference to Italy’s dictator Mussolini.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Associated-Press-International-News-Italy-WWII-/5030e0209ae5da11af9f0014c2589dfb/675/0">AP Photo</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Soon U.S. and Allied forces were bombing Rome. When Allied troops swept into Italy in 1945, Mussolini was apprehended by communists and <a href="https://www.theweek.co.uk/93151/how-did-italy-s-fascist-dictator-benito-mussolini-die">executed</a>.</p>
<h2>Lessons of fascism</h2>
<p>As outlined by historian <a href="https://www.martingilbert.com/">Martin Gilbert</a>, the Italian and German experiments with fascism <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/23005773?seq=2#metadata_info_tab_contents">offer urgent lessons</a> for our own day. </p>
<p>First, the strongest protection against one-man rule is deep and widespread respect for democracy. Mussolini undermined free speech and freedom of the press. He weakened the legislative and judicial branches of government. He tried to control what people saw, heard and read.</p>
<p>A second lesson from fascism is to prevent the manufacture of emergencies. By creating a widespread sense that times were desperate, Mussolini, like Hitler, was able to suppress democratic institutions and tyrannize the population. </p>
<p>Another lesson is the danger of <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/cambridge-history-of-twentiethcentury-political-thought/fascism-and-racism/CFB19146B5E63D20089DF0AAC5CD84D9">racism</a>. In arguing that whites are superior to Africans and Asians, Mussolini laid the groundwork for exploitation, oppression and even extermination. </p>
<p>Ironically, it is quite possible that had Italy’s military and economy prospered during the 1940s, Mussolini would not have fallen.</p>
<h2>Fragility of freedom</h2>
<p>People all over the world need to remember that the price of liberty is eternal vigilance. Fascism and the hatred it breeds can undermine goodness and inflame evil. Democratic convictions that required centuries to build up can be demolished within months. </p>
<p>This cautionary tale of Mussolini’s rise to power serves as an enduring reminder of the fragility of freedom.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/110015/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Richard Gunderman does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>It was 100 years ago this month that Benito Mussolini created the fascist party in Italy. Today, his life offers cautionary lessons for contemporary politics.Richard Gunderman, Chancellor's Professor of Medicine, Liberal Arts, and Philanthropy, Indiana UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1096262019-01-11T11:46:53Z2019-01-11T11:46:53ZThe politics of fear: How fear goes tribal, allowing us to be manipulated<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/253352/original/file-20190111-43544-1ual97q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">White nationalists clash with protesters at the Aug. 12, 2017 Charlottesville, Va. rally that turned deadly violent.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Confederate-Monument-Protest/cb2c01c626884390be207fa9b7975ada/335/0">Steve Helber/AP Photo</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Fear is arguably as old as life. It is <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-science-of-fright-why-we-love-to-be-scared-85885">deeply ingrained in the living organisms</a> that have survived extinction through billions of years of evolution. Its roots are deep in our core psychological and biological being, and it is one of our most intimate feelings. Danger and war are as old as human history, and so are politics and religion.</p>
<p>Demagogues have always used fear for intimidation of the subordinates or enemies, and shepherding the tribe by the leaders. Fear is a very strong tool that can blur humans’ logic and change their behavior.</p>
<p>I am a <a href="https://www.starclab.org/members/arash-javanbakht">psychiatrist and neuroscientist</a> specializing in fear and trauma, and I have some evidence-based thoughts on how fear is abused in politics.</p>
<h2>We learn fear from tribe mates</h2>
<p>Like other animals, we humans can learn fear from <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/nn1968">experience</a>, such as being attacked by a predator. We also learn from observation, such as witnessing a predator attacking another human. And, we learn by instructions, such as being told there is a predator nearby. </p>
<p>Learning from our conspecifics – members of the same species – is an evolutionary advantage that has prevented us from repeating dangerous experiences of other humans. We have a tendency to trust our tribe mates and authorities, especially when it comes to danger. It is adaptive: Parents and wise old men told us not to eat a special plant, or not to go to an area in the woods, or we would be hurt. By trusting them, we would not die like a great-grandfather who died eating that plant. This way we accumulated knowledge.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/evolution-explains-why-politics-tribal/">Tribalism has been an inherent</a> part of the human history. There has always been competition between groups of humans in different ways and with different faces, from brutal wartime nationalism to a strong loyalty to a football team. <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/1745691617707317">Evidence from cultural neuroscience</a> shows that our brains even respond differently at an unconscious level simply to the view of faces from other races or cultures. </p>
<p>At a tribal level, people are more emotional and consequently less logical: Fans of both teams pray for their team to win, hoping God will take sides in a game. On the other hand, <a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/how-risky-is-it-really/201012/fear-makes-us-tribal-and-stupid-case-in-point-rush-limbaugh">we regress to tribalism when afraid</a>. This is an evolutionary advantage that would lead to the group cohesion and help us fight the other tribes to survive.</p>
<p>Tribalism is the biological loophole that many politicians have banked on for a long time: tapping into our fears and tribal instincts. Some examples are Nazism, the Ku Klux Klan, religious wars and the Dark Ages. The typical pattern is to give the other humans a different label than us, and say they are going to harm us or our resources, and to turn the other group into a concept. It does not have to necessarily be race or nationality, which are used very often. It can be any real or imaginary difference: liberals, conservatives, Middle Easterners, white men, the right, the left, Muslims, Jews, Christians, Sikhs. The list goes on and on. </p>
<p>When building tribal boundaries between “us” and “them,” some politicians have managed very well to create virtual groups of people that do not communicate and hate without even knowing each other: This is the human animal in action!</p>
<h2>Fear is uninformed</h2>
<p>During the first year after my arrival in the U.S., one night I entered a public parking lot to turn around. People were leaving a building in Orthodox Jewish dress; it was a temple. For a short second, I noticed a subtle, weird but familiar feeling: fear!</p>
<p>I tried to trace the source of this fear, and here it was: My hometown was almost all Muslims, and I never met a Jew growing up. One day when I was a little child and we were visiting a village, an old lady was telling a crazy story about how Orthodox Jews steal Muslim kids and drink their blood!</p>
<p>Having come from a well-educated family that respects all religions, being an educated doctor and having so many great Jewish friends, I felt embarrassed that still the child within had taken that stupid and obviously false story a bit seriously, only because that child had never met a Jew.</p>
<p>This human tendency is meat to the politicians who want to exploit fear: If you grew up only around people who look like you, only listened to one media outlet and heard from the old uncle that those who look or think differently hate you and are dangerous, the inherent fear and hatred toward those unseen people is an understandable (but flawed) result.</p>
<p>To win us, politicians, sometimes with the media’s help, do their best to keep us separated, to keep the real or imaginary “others” just a “concept.” Because if we spend time with others, talk to them and eat with them, we will learn that they are like us: humans with all the strengths and weaknesses that we possess. Some are strong, some are weak, some are funny, some are dumb, some are nice and some not too nice.</p>
<h2>Fear is illogical and often dumb</h2>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/253263/original/file-20190110-43544-1059i67.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/253263/original/file-20190110-43544-1059i67.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=356&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/253263/original/file-20190110-43544-1059i67.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=356&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/253263/original/file-20190110-43544-1059i67.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=356&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/253263/original/file-20190110-43544-1059i67.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=448&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/253263/original/file-20190110-43544-1059i67.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=448&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/253263/original/file-20190110-43544-1059i67.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=448&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Some people are afraid of spiders, others of snakes or even cats and dogs.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/spider-web-1132571987?src=1VkcpXiqrlz0y3i11NXUwg-3-90">Aris Suwanmalee/Shutterstock.com</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Very often my patients with phobias start with: “I know it is stupid, but I am afraid of spiders.” Or it may be dogs or cats, or something else. And I always reply: “It is not stupid, it is illogical.” We humans have different functions in the brain, and fear oftentimes bypasses logic. There are several reasons. One is that logic is slow; fear is fast. In situations of danger, we ought to be fast: First run or kill, then think.</p>
<p>Politicians and the media very often use fear to circumvent our logic. I always say the U.S. media are disaster pornographers – they work too much on triggering their audiences’ emotions. They are kind of political reality shows, surprising to anyone from outside the U.S.</p>
<p>When one person kills a few others in a city of millions, which is of course a tragedy, major networks’ coverage could lead one to perceive the whole city is under siege and unsafe. If one undocumented illegal immigrant murders a U.S. citizen, some politicians use fear with the hope that few will ask: “This is terrible, but how many people were murdered in this country by U.S. citizens just today?” Or: “I know several murders happen every week in this town, but <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-mass-shootings-do-to-those-not-shot-social-consequences-of-mass-gun-violence-106677">why am I so scared now</a> that this one is being showcased by the media?”</p>
<p>We do not ask these questions, because fear bypasses logic.</p>
<h2>Fear can turn violent</h2>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/253356/original/file-20190111-43514-1aejyi8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/253356/original/file-20190111-43514-1aejyi8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=443&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/253356/original/file-20190111-43514-1aejyi8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=443&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/253356/original/file-20190111-43514-1aejyi8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=443&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/253356/original/file-20190111-43514-1aejyi8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=557&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/253356/original/file-20190111-43514-1aejyi8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=557&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/253356/original/file-20190111-43514-1aejyi8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=557&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Toppled headstones at Mount Carmel Cemetery in Philadelphia Feb. 27, 2017. A report on the vandalism cited an increase in anti-Semitic bias since the 2016 election.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Anti-Semitism-Report/18e12f63b62c43eb95c3afc0247fa326/1/0">Jaqueline Larma/AP Photo</a></span>
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</figure>
<p>There is a reason that the response to fear is called the “fight or flight” response. That response has helped us survive the predators and other tribes that have wanted to kill us. But again, it is another loophole in our biology to be abused. By scaring us, the demagogues turn on our aggression toward “the others,” whether in the form of vandalizing their temples or harassing them on the social media.</p>
<p>When demagogues manage to get hold of our fear circuitry, we often regress to illogical, tribal and aggressive human animals, becoming weapons ourselves – weapons that politicians use for their own agenda.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/109626/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Arash Javanbakht does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Fear is very much a part of humans’ survival. Demagogues and others who want to manipulate have learned that this human trait can be exploited, often with disastrous consequences.Arash Javanbakht, Assistant Professor of Psychiatry, Wayne State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1081722019-01-02T21:05:18Z2019-01-02T21:05:18ZMark Zuckerberg’s admiration for Emperor Augustus is misplaced. Here’s why<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/249589/original/file-20181210-76968-oa9pdp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Augustus was Rome's first emperor.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">from shutterstock.com</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>On his 2012 honeymoon to Rome, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/sep/12/what-attracts-mark-zuckerberg-roman-hardman-augustus">took so many photos of the Roman Emperor Augustus’s</a> sculptures that his wife joked it was like there were three people on the honeymoon. The couple even named their second daughter August.</p>
<p>Explaining his fascination for Rome’s first emperor, Zuckerberg recently <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/09/17/can-mark-zuckerberg-fix-facebook-before-it-breaks-democracy">told The New Yorker</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>basically, through a really harsh approach, he established two hundred years of world peace (…) What are the trade-offs in that? On the one hand, world peace is a long-term goal that people talk about today (but) that didn’t come for free, and he had to do certain things.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Augustus (27 BCE to 14 CE) was Rome’s first Emperor, who established an enduring monarchy following some 20 years of civil war in the aftermath of the assassination of his adoptive father, Julius Caesar, on the Ides of March 44 BCE.</p>
<p>Augustus has a long line of high-profile admirers. They see him as a great statesman who brought peace to a Roman Republic long afflicted by civil wars. But what “certain things” did he do and how admirable were they?</p>
<p>A prominent contemporary admirer of Augustus is Dr David Engels, a distinguished Belgian Professor of Roman history. He <a href="http://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2014/2014-01-13.html">makes a chilling case</a> for an authoritarian, conservative and imperial European New Order, inspired by Augustus, who effectively converted the Roman Republic to an autocracy.</p>
<p>Dr Engels argues Augustan-style authoritarianism would be the best practicable solution to Europe’s current woes as he sees them – mass immigration, low national fertility rates, the decline of the family and traditional values, materialism, egoism, globalisation, insecurity, and a growing democratic deficit caused by spiralling inequality and technocratic tendencies.</p>
<p>This modern day appeal of Augustus is perhaps being echoed in the increasing attractiveness of strongman politics in countries like the US, Russia, Turkey, Italy, Hungary, the Philippines, and Brazil.</p>
<h2>Bloody and cynical methods</h2>
<p>But the idea of Augustus as one of history’s greatest statesmen warrants a closer look at his statecraft, particularly how he handled truth and the often bloody and cynical methods he used to establish an autocracy that would endure for centuries.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/249594/original/file-20181210-76956-1tkj5lc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/249594/original/file-20181210-76956-1tkj5lc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=784&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/249594/original/file-20181210-76956-1tkj5lc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=784&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/249594/original/file-20181210-76956-1tkj5lc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=784&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/249594/original/file-20181210-76956-1tkj5lc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=986&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/249594/original/file-20181210-76956-1tkj5lc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=986&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/249594/original/file-20181210-76956-1tkj5lc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=986&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Julius Casar, Augustus’s grand uncle.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>Augustus’s <a href="http://classics.mit.edu/Augustus/deeds.html">own autobiography</a> is a towering example of “alternative truth”. It’s a boastful retrospective, but other evidence suggests this masterly piece of propaganda closely reproduces the artful politics he adopted after his grand uncle, the dictator Julius Caesar, was stabbed to death in the Senate in 44 BCE.</p>
<p>In the first chapter, Augustus boldly claims that, roughly one year after Caesar’s assassination, he raised a private army at the age of 19 “to restore liberty to the Republic when it was oppressed by the tyranny of a faction”.</p>
<p>Hammering home his point, Augustus goes on to assert that:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>when I had extinguished the flames of civil war, being in absolute control of affairs by universal consent, I transferred the Republic from my own control to the will of the <a href="http://www.livius.org/se-sg/senate/senator.html">Senate</a> and the Roman people.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>However, the reality, couldn’t have been more different.</p>
<p>Apart from the fact that it was a criminal offence under Roman law to raise private militias for factional subversion of the state, he didn’t come out of the blue as a selfless saviour in that fateful spring of 44 BCE.</p>
<p>Augustus, or Octavius as he was then known, was already poised to be second-in-command in Caesar’s New Order. Styling himself as the Young Caesar, he made a brazen bid to reclaim rank and stature by ruthlessly rekindling the flames of civil war. This shattered the compromise peace made between Mark Antony, Caesar’s foremost lieutenant, and Caesar’s leading assassins, Brutus and Cassius.</p>
<p>His claims he took control by universal consent and subsequently restored the traditional republican polity after his military victory over Antony and Cleopatra 30 BCE are equally mendacious.</p>
<h2>Repressing opposition</h2>
<p>Augustus repeatedly conducted murderous as well as bloodless purges of the aristocracy from November 43 through to 29 BCE, repressing all political opposition. Late in 43, he and his then allies Mark Antony and Lepidus ruthlessly proscribed over 300 senators and 2,000 equestrians (the lower aristocracy and business elite). Many were hunted down and butchered in plain view, including the great orator and republican Marcus Cicero. </p>
<p>In 28 BCE, after his final civil war victories and shortly before his much vaunted “restoration” of the Republic, he removed another 40% of the Senate, reducing their numbers to 600.</p>
<p>In 27 BCE, when he finally laid down his official emergency powers – powers he had alleged were needed to confront real or imaginary crises he and his henchmen had engineered – a compliant Senate promptly reinvested him with a vast, 10-year military command. This command was the cornerstone of his autocracy, and was suitably renewed every 10 years, invariably justified on the grounds of ongoing military exigencies in the provinces.</p>
<p>One major consequence of this charade was unprecedented imperialist expansion and warfare. At enormous human and material cost, Augustus would more than double the size of the Empire and add more territory to Rome’s provincial dominion than any Roman before or after him – so much for his much-vaunted peace, the <em>Pax Augusta</em>.</p>
<p>At the same time as he consolidated his power, Augustus was careful to ensure that Rome’s ancestral republican institutions and political bodies were scrupulously upheld. This created a powerful, if hollow, semblance of normality and traditionalism. He studiously avoided the odious title of dictator, no doubt mindful of the fate of Julius Caesar.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/mythbusting-ancient-rome-the-truth-about-the-vomitorium-71068">Mythbusting Ancient Rome – the truth about the vomitorium</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>By his ruthless and cynical actions, Augustus arguably wrote the script for some of the most notorious tyrants of the 20th century – Stalin and Hitler.</p>
<p>The <a href="http://soviethistory.msu.edu/1936-2/stalin-constitution/">Soviet Constitution of 1936</a>, duly adopted by popular vote and put into effect by Stalin, demonstrably enshrined a number of democratic and liberal rights. For example, Article 125 declared: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>In conformity with the interests of the working people, and in order to strengthen the socialist system, the citizens of the USSR are guaranteed by law: freedom of speech; freedom of the press; freedom of assembly, including the holding of mass meetings; freedom of street processions and demonstrations.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>But in true Augustan style, Stalin’s Constitution was marked by a staggering divide between theory and practice.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/249595/original/file-20181210-76971-kmyzf6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/249595/original/file-20181210-76971-kmyzf6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=373&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/249595/original/file-20181210-76971-kmyzf6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=373&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/249595/original/file-20181210-76971-kmyzf6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=373&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/249595/original/file-20181210-76971-kmyzf6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=468&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/249595/original/file-20181210-76971-kmyzf6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=468&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/249595/original/file-20181210-76971-kmyzf6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=468&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Did Stalin draw on Augustus’s example in drafting the Soviet Constitution of 1936?</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Similarly, Hitler’s power grab in Germany in 1933 was right out of the Augustan playbook. Blaming an arson attack on the German Reichstag (parliament) on the Communist opposition, Hitler was able to pressure an ailing President Hindenburg to decree him emergency powers. This nullified many civil liberties and transferred key state powers to his Nazi-led government.</p>
<p>Hitler then ruthlessly exploited these powers to repress and imprison anyone deemed inimical to the Nazi regime. A month later, with his opponents purged, he passed a law allowing him to directly enact laws, bypassing the Reichstag.</p>
<p>By virtue of these laws, Hitler secured a legal dictatorship in the best Augustan tradition, allowing him to rule by decree while the democratic Weimar Constitution technically remained in force until the Allied Occupation.</p>
<p>Given the actual history of Rome’s first emperor and his subsequent imitators, anyone looking to Augustus and his methods as a source of inspiration and a role model for crisis management should be very careful what they wish for.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/108172/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Frederik Juliaan Vervaet does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Augustus’s long line of high-profile admirers see him as a great statesman who brought peace to a Roman Republic long afflicted by civil wars. But how admirable was he, really?Frederik Juliaan Vervaet, Associate Professor of Ancient History, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1089732018-12-19T16:01:09Z2018-12-19T16:01:09ZYour deeply held beliefs may just be wrong – 5 essential reads<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/251370/original/file-20181218-27749-1gz2sla.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Maybe it's time to reconsider those long-held ideas?</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/senior-confused-man-shrugging-his-shoulders-629472239">Shutterstock/pathdoc</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Editor’s note: As we come to the end of the year, Conversation editors take a look back at the stories that - for them - exemplified 2018.</em></p>
<p>Our job at The Conversation is to work with scholars to publish analysis that helps readers make sense of the world. And if we demolish a few popularly held – but erroneous or misplaced – ideas and assumptions in the process, that makes me especially happy.</p>
<p>Hence my list, here, of stories from 2018 that use facts to interrogate popular wisdom – and the ideas they proved wrong:</p>
<h2>1. Women can’t possibly vote for Republicans</h2>
<p>In an era when leading Republican political figures – from the president to a Supreme Court nominee – are accused of sexual assault, can women “both be Republican and insist upon women’s rights,” ask Rochester Institute of Technology scholars <a href="https://www.rit.edu/cla/socanthro/christine-kray">Christine A. Kray</a>, <a href="https://www.rit.edu/cla/communication/faculty-staff/hinda-mandell">Hinda Mandell</a> and <a href="https://www.rit.edu/cla/history/faculty/tamar-w-carroll">Tamar Carroll</a>. </p>
<p>Yes, the scholars write. “<a href="https://theconversation.com/republican-women-are-just-fine-thank-you-with-being-republican-104762">Republicanism encompasses different visions of womanhood that allow women to feel that they can be Republican and also strong women</a>.”</p>
<h2>2. Kavanaugh will yank the Supreme Court far to the right</h2>
<p>Brett Kavanaugh’s appointment to the Supreme Court was widely predicted to plunge the court – and American law with it – into a new conservative era. But, writes University of Oregon law professor <a href="https://law.uoregon.edu/explore/ofer-raban">Ofer Raban</a>, “<a href="https://theconversation.com/kavanaughs-impact-on-the-supreme-court-and-the-country-may-not-be-as-profound-as-predicted-106304">these prognoses fail to heed some fundamental distinctions among the decisions of the Supreme Court</a>, and may create a mistaken impression of the court’s power and the inevitable trajectory of American law.” </p>
<p>Simply put, Raban wrote, “Supreme Court rulings are often not the last word on a matter.”</p>
<h2>3. Campaign spending is ruining democracy in the US</h2>
<p>Seventy percent of Americans believe there’s too much money in politics and that spending in elections should be limited. That includes both Democrats and Republicans, according to a recent Pew survey.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/251562/original/file-20181219-45419-1muzzry.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/251562/original/file-20181219-45419-1muzzry.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/251562/original/file-20181219-45419-1muzzry.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=329&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/251562/original/file-20181219-45419-1muzzry.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=329&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/251562/original/file-20181219-45419-1muzzry.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=329&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/251562/original/file-20181219-45419-1muzzry.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=414&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/251562/original/file-20181219-45419-1muzzry.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=414&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/251562/original/file-20181219-45419-1muzzry.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=414&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Campaign spending isn’t the problem.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/download/confirm/717654034?src=olbTDy8fqcDJY_e_6q3V4Q-1-18&size=huge_jpg">Shutterstock</a></span>
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<p>But campaign spending plays an important role in democracy, helping get candidates’ messages out and educating the public. Columbia Law School scholar <a href="https://www.law.columbia.edu/faculty/richard-briffault">Richard Briffault</a> writes that “<a href="https://theconversation.com/campaign-spending-isnt-the-problem-where-the-money-comes-from-is-104093">the volume of campaign spending is not the main problem with our campaign finance system.</a> The real challenge for our democracy is where so much of this money comes from.” </p>
<p>“The private dollars that drive the system come from a tiny fraction of our society,” writes Briffault, from a donor class that is not “representative of the broader community whose interests are all at stake in an election.”</p>
<h2>4. Trump is another Hitler</h2>
<p>Scholar <a href="https://clasprofiles.wayne.edu/profile/at3369">Sylvia Taschka</a> of Wayne State tackled the countless references to President Donald Trump as this era’s Hitler. </p>
<p>Taschka acknowledges that some historians have made legitimate comparisons of the “few striking similarities between the rise of fascism in Germany then and the current political climate in the United States.” </p>
<p>But, such comparisons are false equivalencies that “<a href="https://theconversation.com/trump-hitler-comparisons-too-easy-and-ignore-the-murderous-history-92394">not only risk trivializing Hitler and the horrors he unleashed</a>,” she writes, but “also prevent people from engaging with the actual issues at hand.”</p>
<h2>5. Gun owners are crazy people</h2>
<p>On “an ordinary day” in 2011, writes criminal justice scholar <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/connie-hassett-walker-447646">Connie Hassett-Walker</a>, she found her husband watching a firearms video. She sat down with him, and that moment was the beginning of five years of research into videos made by gun owners that culminated in a book. </p>
<p>“For all the noise around gun control versus gun rights, there was a story that was missed by non-gun owners like me: how much these guns mean to those who own them,” writes Hassett-Walker.</p>
<p>Americans live in a time of political polarization on a variety of social issues, she writes. “<a href="https://theconversation.com/want-to-understand-gun-owners-watch-their-videos-94694">Both gun control and gun rights supporters would benefit from understanding how those with opposing political and social views see their identity and their culture</a>.”</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/108973/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
Popular wisdom may be popular, but sometimes it’s downright wrong. Five stories from The Conversation’s 2018 politics coverage interrogate popular wisdom – and find it lacking.Naomi Schalit, Senior Editor, Politics + Democracy, The Conversation USLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1062922018-11-29T11:38:34Z2018-11-29T11:38:34ZAmerica’s dark history of organized anti-Semitism re-emerges in today’s far-right groups<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/247822/original/file-20181128-32185-10asigc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A memorial outside Pittsburgh's Tree of Life Synagogue on Oct. 29, 2018, erected after a gunman killed 11 worshippers at the temple.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Shooting-Synagogue/fe959b47270c4213b8dc41e18b8c6daa/19/0">AP/Gene J. Puskar)</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Hours after Robert Bowers allegedly walked into a Pittsburgh synagogue and killed 11 people, investigators told the media that Bowers appeared to have acted alone and fit what experts call the “<a href="https://abcnews.go.com/US/lonely-lone-shooter-pittsburgh-synagogue-suspects-apparently-isolated/story?id=58872568">lone mass shooter profile</a>.” </p>
<p>Weeks later, FBI agents arrested a Washington D.C. man who followed Bowers on social media. He had told relatives he wanted to pursue the same path and <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/religion/man-tied-to-synagogue-shooting-suspect-arrested/2018/11/14/56bc3c62-e821-11e8-8449-1ff263609a31_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.b626a0c8cf5d">start “a race revolution</a>.” </p>
<p>Bowers may well have lived a solitary life, beyond his frequent presence on social media. Yet the fact that his violent act triggered a would-be emulator highlights an essential facet of prejudice – especially anti-Semitism. </p>
<p>As I show in my book, <a href="https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250148957">“Hitler’s American Friends: The Third Reich’s Supporters in the United States,”</a> anti-Semitic violence is never solely the product of a single deluded mind, as the United States’ dark history of organized prejudice reveals. Instead, it is the product of a unique culture of hatred that originated in the mid-20th century and persists to this day. </p>
<p>This aspect of history is rarely found in textbooks. Yet it is critical to understand the continuing influence that homegrown, modern American anti-Semitism has had on the country’s history and continues to exert today.</p>
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<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/pDJzAAicPfs?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">In 1939, Fritz Kuhn addressed 20,000 people at a Madison Square Garden rally celebrating Nazism.</span></figcaption>
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<h2>Local discrimination</h2>
<p>Some forms of American anti-Semitism have been examined and confronted. Many existed at the local level and had a major impact on Jewish communities all over the U.S. </p>
<p>For decades, restrictive covenants in home deeds <a href="https://www.mappingprejudice.org/what-are-covenants/">forbade Jews from buying homes in certain neighborhoods</a>. Some country clubs <a href="http://articles.latimes.com/1990-08-12/news/vw-646_1_country-club">excluded Jews from membership</a> or <a href="https://www.newstatesman.com/node/149688">even playing their courses as guests</a>. Some Ivy League universities set quotas <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/the-ivy-leagues-history-of-discriminating-against-jews-2014-12">limiting the number of Jewish students they would admit</a>.</p>
<p>These forms of personal, localized discrimination date back to the <a href="http://www.post-gazette.com/opinion/Op-Ed/2012/07/01/The-Jews-of-early-America/stories/201207010164">earliest days of the American Republic</a> and persisted until relatively recently. Their decline can largely be traced to the passage and enforcement of anti-discrimination laws such as the <a href="https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/civil-rights-act/civil-rights-act-of-1964.html">Civil Rights Act of 1964</a> and the <a href="https://www.hud.gov/program_offices/fair_housing_equal_opp/aboutfheo/history">Fair Housing Act of 1968</a>. </p>
<p>Other forms of anti-Semitism, however, have not disappeared as rapidly or completely. This is where the dark American history of organized anti-Semitism has particular relevance to the present day. </p>
<h2>Group prejudice</h2>
<p>A good starting point for understanding this past can be found in Donald S. Strong’s 1941 book <a href="https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/000007962">“Organized Anti-Semitism in America: The Rise of Group Prejudice During the Decade 1930-40.”</a></p>
<p>Strong demonstrated that both anti-Semitic sentiment and the number of explicitly anti-Semitic groups increased rapidly during the Depression. Organized anti-Semitism, Strong argued, appeared in the U.S. only after World War I. Previous forms of the prejudice, he claimed, “had expressed itself primarily in terms of social discrimination” rather than through the creation of specifically anti-Semitic groups. </p>
<p>In other words, organized anti-Semitism in the United States was a purely 20th-century phenomenon. Strong claimed that between 1933 and 1941, a dozen new anti-Semitic organizations had been founded each year. </p>
<p>“The anti-semitic movement in the United States,” he presciently concluded, “can no longer be treated as if it were a transient phenomenon.” </p>
<p>The two most important groups Strong examined were the <a href="https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/german-american-bund">German American Bund</a> and the <a href="http://www.ajcarchives.org/AJC_DATA/Files/THR-SS1.PDF">Silver Legion, also known as the Silver Shirts</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/247824/original/file-20181128-32230-1aisrl2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/247824/original/file-20181128-32230-1aisrl2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/247824/original/file-20181128-32230-1aisrl2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=473&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/247824/original/file-20181128-32230-1aisrl2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=473&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/247824/original/file-20181128-32230-1aisrl2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=473&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/247824/original/file-20181128-32230-1aisrl2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=594&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/247824/original/file-20181128-32230-1aisrl2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=594&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/247824/original/file-20181128-32230-1aisrl2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=594&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">German-American Bund parade in New York City in 1939.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.loc.gov/item/96520973/">New York World-Telegram and the Sun Newspaper Photograph Collection (Library of Congress)</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Symbol was the swastika</h2>
<p>The Bund, founded in 1936, was theoretically a German-American heritage organization. In reality, its leader – a German immigrant and naturalized American named <a href="https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/2018/jan/12/fritz-kuhn-fbi/">Fritz Kuhn</a> – chose the swastika as its symbol and insisted members, <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2017/06/american-nazis-in-the-1930sthe-german-american-bund/529185/">including children in summer camps</a>, wear Nazi-style uniforms. </p>
<p>The group’s motto <a href="https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/08/23/nazi-german-american-bund-rally-madison-square-garden-215522">was “Free America,”</a> which its followers understood to be an America freed from supposed Jewish oppression. The Bund had dozens of local chapters and a following that Kuhn claimed <a href="http://www.thehistoryreader.com/modern-history/6-things-may-known-nazis-america/">exceeded 200,000</a> nationwide. Other contemporary estimates put it considerably lower.</p>
<p>Kuhn’s time as an aspiring American Hitler ended after a raucous mass <a href="https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/08/23/nazi-german-american-bund-rally-madison-square-garden-215522">rally in Madison Square Garden</a> in February 1939.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.albany.edu/talkinghistory/archivalaudio/nara-rg131-71-parts33-36-bund-fritz-kuhn-2-20-1939-(selection).mp3">Addressing the rally</a>, Kuhn declared that if George Washington had still been alive, he would be a Nazi. </p>
<p>Outraged at what he was hearing, a Jewish hotel worker, Isadore Greenbaum, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/politics/wp/2017/10/17/when-american-nazis-rallied-in-manhattan-one-working-class-jewish-man-from-brooklyn-took-them-on/">rushed the stage</a> during Kuhn’s address and was badly beaten by Kuhn’s bodyguards. Outside the Garden, <a href="https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/08/23/nazi-german-american-bund-rally-madison-square-garden-215522">Bund supporters clashed</a> with anti-Nazi demonstrators and police officers. </p>
<p>A post-rally investigation revealed that Kuhn’s interests lay beyond emulating Hitler. He had been skimming money from the Bund’s accounts for personal use. Kuhn was <a href="http://www.wfmz.com/features/historys-headlines/american-fuhrer-arrested-in-lehigh-valley-76-years-ago_2016053005443130/20862210">subsequently prosecuted, convicted</a> and <a href="https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=L48LAAAAIBAJ&sjid=GVUDAAAAIBAJ&pg=5799,1832986&dq=fritz+kuhn&hl=en">eventually deported to West Germany</a> after the war. </p>
<h2>From screenwriter to anti-Semite</h2>
<p>Kuhn was not the only leader of organized anti-Semitism in this era. The Silver Legion was similar to the Bund and commanded a nationwide following. Its “Chief,” <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/meet-screenwriting-mystic-who-wanted-be-american-fuhrer-180970449/">William Dudley Pelley</a>, was a former screenwriter who shared Kuhn’s dictatorial aspirations. </p>
<p>Like the Bund, the Legion was explicitly anti-Semitic and called for the <a href="http://www.ajcarchives.org/AJC_DATA/Files/THR-SS2.PDF">segregation of Jews into ghettos</a>. Silver Shirts across the country armed themselves, <a href="http://oddculture.com/silver-shirts-murphy-ranch-and-william-dudley-pelley/">trained for a race war</a> and encouraged Americans to “Buy Gentile.” </p>
<p>Also like Kuhn, Pelley was brought down by his own corruption. He had defrauded investors in a previous business venture to help fund the Legion. He was later indicted for sedition and would spend World War II <a href="http://digital-library.csun.edu/Backyard/sedition1.html">fighting a series of legal cases from behind bars</a>. </p>
<p>The movements both men built did not disappear with their incarceration, as <a href="https://vault.fbi.gov/fritz-julius-kuhn">declassified FBI files show</a>. Certainly, their members did not simply cease to hold anti-Semitic views when their leaders were imprisoned. </p>
<h2>Where did they go?</h2>
<p>Historians know little about what happened to former Bund members and Silver Shirts after World War II. But <a href="https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/charles-e-coughlin">media figures of the Depression era like Father Charles Coughlin</a> – who had a radio audience in the tens of millions – also did much to popularize anti-Semitism. Recordings of Coughlin’s anti-Semitic radio broadcasts, along with Pelley’s writings, remain popular on far-right social media today.</p>
<p>As Strong recognized, the 20th century saw the emergence of a new and potentially violent anti-Semitism fundamentally based in Nazi-esque ideas and, in the 1930s, Hitler worship. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/247831/original/file-20181128-32233-b8fu1f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/247831/original/file-20181128-32233-b8fu1f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/247831/original/file-20181128-32233-b8fu1f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=474&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/247831/original/file-20181128-32233-b8fu1f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=474&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/247831/original/file-20181128-32233-b8fu1f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=474&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/247831/original/file-20181128-32233-b8fu1f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=595&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/247831/original/file-20181128-32233-b8fu1f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=595&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/247831/original/file-20181128-32233-b8fu1f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=595&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">William Dudley Pelley and members of the Silver Legion of America.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Public domain</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The only recorded instance of the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1983/12/20/leo-frank-and-the-winds-of-hate/cd999778-f44f-4f40-a483-8fbea9ec84c6/?utm_term=.1deb1fac6db3">Ku Klux Klan lynching a Jewish person – Leo Frank</a> – took place in 1915, as World War I raged in Europe. While the Klan had previously focused its ire on African-Americans and Catholics, the move to anti-Semitism updated its appeal to racists facing the changing world of the 20th century. </p>
<p>Frank’s lynching is generally considered <a href="https://timeline.com/when-a-jewish-man-was-lynched-for-murdering-a-little-girl-the-klan-was-reborn-a48d30374942">to have galvanized support for the previously declining group</a>. In other words, violent and organized anti-Semitism became one of the ideological underpinnings of this leading American radical right group. </p>
<p>It continues to underpin the ideology of radical right groups today. Like Robert Bowers, the anti-Semites of the 21st century prepare for racial warfare and rant about Jews “<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2018/10/28/victims-expected-be-named-after-killed-deadliest-attack-jews-us-history/?utm_term=.5aee0b4dc907">committing genocide to my people</a>.” They are following directly in the footsteps of America’s 20th-century leaders of organized anti-Semitism. </p>
<h2>Past as prologue</h2>
<p>American anti-Semitism doesn’t just hurt Jews. Racial and religious prejudice of various sorts have proven corrosive to the American social fabric in the past, for instance, in the Jim Crow-era South, where racist laws denied African-Americans their civil rights. And the United States’s geopolitical rivals – Russia, for instance – view the inflammation of these tensions on social media as a means to <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-the-russian-government-used-disinformation-and-cyber-warfare-in-2016-election-an-ethical-hacker-explains-99989">undermine the American political system</a>.</p>
<p>Historians and educators can ensure that this dark aspect of U.S. history is included in textbooks and wider cultural memory. By confronting America’s dark past of organized anti-Semitism, it may be possible to recognize it in the present and see it as a more common part of our culture than most Americans would like to acknowledge.</p>
<p>That recognition can lead, possibly, to escaping the shadow that the 1930s still cast over the country today.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/106292/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Bradley W. Hart does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>American anti-Semitism took an organized form in the 20th century. The German American Bund and the Silver Legion developed a unique culture of hatred for Jews that persists today in alt-right groups.Bradley W. Hart, Assistant Professor of Media, Communications and Journalism, California State University, FresnoLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1063732018-11-07T08:28:25Z2018-11-07T08:28:25ZWorld War I: is it right to blame the Treaty of Versailles for the rise of Hitler?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/243893/original/file-20181105-83638-yoy7kc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The delegations signing the Treaty of Versailles in the Hall of Mirrors.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Helen Johns Kirtland (1890-1979) and Lucian Swift Kirtland (died 1965), US National Archives</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Just over a week after the beginning of World War II in September 1939, a letter appeared in the Richmond Herald – a locally produced newspaper in Surrey in England’s Home Counties – whose author posed the thorny question: “Who was responsible for the 1914 war?” As far as the letter writer was concerned, time had “proved” that no single nation was responsible for the 1914-18 war. Moreover, regarding the latest European conflict, the letter also asserted boldly:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>It is far too easy to say that Germany’s aggression against Poland is the sole cause of this war. This war is the effect of the vindictive Treaty of Versailles, the continual failure to treat Germany as an equal, and the other blunders of French and British diplomacy.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Although there were no clues as to the education or social status of the letter’s author, his words revealed a fairly sophisticated approach to the understanding of history – a readiness to point to multiple explanations of the origins of the world wars. But what is especially interesting is how the letter writer referred to the “vindictive” Treaty of Versailles. </p>
<p>In a considerable number of other letters I have come across in local newspapers during the interwar period, while multi-factor explanations of the wars were rare, what is striking is that there was a consensus among active letter writers that Versailles was the main “villain” or factor that “inevitably” led to the outbreak of conflict in 1939.</p>
<h2>Tough settlement</h2>
<p>What was it about the treaty, which was officially signed on June 28 1919, that – in the eyes of its critics – sowed the seeds of a new war? While we must be careful not to overuse hindsight, many historians now agree that the Treaty of Versailles <a href="http://www.markedbyteachers.com/gcse/history/the-treaty-of-versailles-created-more-problems-than-it-solved-discuss.html">created more problems than it solved</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/243898/original/file-20181105-83635-1jdtq0h.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/243898/original/file-20181105-83635-1jdtq0h.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/243898/original/file-20181105-83635-1jdtq0h.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/243898/original/file-20181105-83635-1jdtq0h.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/243898/original/file-20181105-83635-1jdtq0h.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/243898/original/file-20181105-83635-1jdtq0h.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/243898/original/file-20181105-83635-1jdtq0h.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">How the conference was reported: New York’s Evening World Newspaper.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Kallen2021</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>On the positive side it should be acknowledged that much was achieved at Versailles. As the historian Margaret MacMillan pointed out in her incisive 2001 study, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/01/books/we-ll-always-have-paris.html">Peacemakers: Six Months that Changed the World</a>, between January and June 1919, the participating delegations at the main peace conference accomplished an enormous amount. A new <a href="https://www.unog.ch/80256EDD006B8954/(httpAssets)/36BC4F83BD9E4443C1257AF3004FC0AE/$file/Historical_overview_of_the_League_of_Nations.pdf">League of Nations</a> and <a href="https://www.ilo.org/global/about-the-ilo/history/lang--en/index.htm">International Labour Organisation</a> were created, mandates were handed out, the Versailles treaty with Germany was completed. Separate treaties with Austria, Hungary, Bulgaria and Ottoman Turkey were also near the finishing line.</p>
<p>On the other hand, some of the other great problems that had faced the peacemakers at the start of the peace conference had only been shelved. In particular, what Britain, France and other Allied governments referred to as the “German question” had, in retrospect, not been solved. German militarism, arguably one of the chief causes of World War I, had <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/wwone/war_end_01.shtml">dominated the proceedings</a> at the 1919 conference. The peacemakers were determined to prevent any revival of German military power so they forced the German representatives to accept <a href="https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/naval-arms-control-1919.htm">very strict limits</a> on all branches of the country’s armed forces. </p>
<p>In addition, in a clumsy rearrangement of the map of Europe by the main peacemakers, it is estimated that <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/wwone/versailles_01.shtml">Germany lost 13% of its territory</a>, something that came to be a source of bitter resentment to German nationalists in the 1920s. This, of course, was later “weaponised” by extreme nationalists such as Adolf Hitler and his National Socialist party. The Nazi leader became determined to dismantle Versailles piece by piece, using whatever means he deemed necessary - persuasion, lies, blackmail or military force. The Germans were also required by the Versailles Treaty to pay substantial financial penalties.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/243899/original/file-20181105-83657-eods4x.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/243899/original/file-20181105-83657-eods4x.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=621&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/243899/original/file-20181105-83657-eods4x.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=621&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/243899/original/file-20181105-83657-eods4x.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=621&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/243899/original/file-20181105-83657-eods4x.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=780&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/243899/original/file-20181105-83657-eods4x.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=780&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/243899/original/file-20181105-83657-eods4x.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=780&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The war reparations payment demanded of Germany was enormous.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">New York World, 1921.</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>‘War guilt’ clause.</h2>
<p>Many Germans came to the conclusion that the Treaty of Versailles was indeed punitive and “vindictive”, a view increasingly shared by opinion makers and politicians in Britain during the course of the interwar period and echoed by various post-1945 historians. According to <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/1845254">A.J.P. Taylor</a>, for example, the Versailles Treaty lacked “moral validity”. </p>
<p>One of the British delegates at Versailles itself, the economist John Maynard Keynes, helped spread the growing interwar perception that Germany had been treated unfairly. Indeed, his now-famous 1919 tome, <a href="http://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/keynes-the-economic-consequences-of-the-peace">The Economic Consequences of the Peace</a>, became a regular topic for debate in interwar book clubs and discussion circles. Significantly, 80 years later, in a special millennium issue, The <a href="https://www.economist.com/europe/1999/12/23/attempted-suicide">Economist magazine in 1999</a> referred to the “final crime” of the peace conference as being “the Treaty of Versailles, whose harsh terms would ensure a second war”.</p>
<p>Today, as we reflect on the end of the Great War and the subsequent peace conference, it is still common to hear commentators voice such views. Yet, is history that simple? While Versailles was certainly an important factor in creating the conditions for a new conflict just 20 years later, it is open to question whether it was the most important factor. </p>
<p>A multiplicity of other elements were also involved during that 20-year period, such as the inability of the League of Nations to create sufficient collective cooperation and bring stability to international relations and errors made by diplomats in their misreading of the foreign policies of other nations. The hugely negative impact of the “Great Depression” on the international economy also undermined people’s faith in liberal democracy. Most notable among those causes, though, was Hitler’s intransigent <a href="https://www.csustan.edu/sites/default/files/History/Faculty/Weikart/Darwinism-in-Nazi-Racial-Thought.pdf">Social Darwinian conviction</a> that war is the great test of a nation, an unyielding belief that he had developed during his time in the trenches in World War I.</p>
<p><em>More <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/armistice-61797?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=TCUKengagement&utm_content=Armistice">Armistice</a> articles, written by academic experts:</em></p>
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<p><em>For more evidence-based articles by academics, subscribe to our <a href="https://confirmsubscription.com/h/r/6F561B763B91E4C7?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=TCUKengagement&utm_content=%20Armistice">newsletter</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/106373/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Steven Woodbridge does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The Treaty of Versailles is often named as the main cause of World War II. But this is an overly simple explanation.Steven Woodbridge, Senior Lecturer in History, Kingston UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/923942018-03-12T10:49:31Z2018-03-12T10:49:31ZTrump-Hitler comparisons too easy and ignore the murderous history<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/209819/original/file-20180311-30972-nijb7c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A sign comparing Trump to Hitler at the Women's March in Seattle, in January 2018. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>“Everyone seems to have become Hitler.” </p>
<p>Historian Gavriel D. Rosenfeld wrote these words in his <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/hi-hitler/04A662624D1A27393AC46D522A241C6C">study</a> of how the Nazi past has become a recurring theme in contemporary culture – to the point of almost becoming trivial. What is especially interesting is that he had already reached that conclusion a year before Donald Trump was elected to be the 45th president of the United States. </p>
<p>Since then, comparisons between Trump and Hitler – and even between current developments in the United States and the waning days of <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/687038/pdf">Germany’s ill-fated Weimar Republic</a> — have become almost daily fare. This is perhaps no surprise, given his unbridled <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2016/08/06/trump-in-series-of-scathing-personal-attacks-questions-clintons-mental-health/">attacks</a> against his political opponents and the mainstream <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/1/17/16900824/john-mccain-trump-press">press</a>, his singling out of minority groups as <a href="https://www.npr.org/2016/06/05/480861394/muslims-are-just-the-latest-in-history-of-scapegoats-author-says">scapegoats</a> for the challenges that American society faces, and his populist, demagogic style more generally. </p>
<p><a href="https://clasprofiles.wayne.edu/profile/at3369">As a historian</a> of modern Germany, I have spent many years exploring the crimes that Hitler and his followers committed. When people make facile comparisons to Hitler and the Nazis, they are trying, usually in good faith, to warn us about the dangers of ignoring history and its supposed lessons. </p>
<p>But it is my very familiarity with that history that makes me highly skeptical about the inflationary use of such comparisons. They do more to confuse than clarify the urgent issues at stake. </p>
<h2>Long history of Nazi comparisons</h2>
<p><a href="http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/godwins-law">Godwin’s Law</a> holds that the longer an online discussion progresses, the likelier someone will eventually be compared to Hitler. By now, this seems to apply not just to the virtual world of chat rooms, but also to living rooms across America. </p>
<p>Comparing politicians to Hitler is nothing new, of course. We live in an age where <a href="http://dissidentvoice.org/Articles3/Jayne_Hitler-Bush.htm">George W. Bush</a>, <a href="https://www.hoover.org/sites/default/files/uploads/documents/0817945121_83.pdf">Saddam Hussein</a>, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2017/may/22/enes-kanter-airport-detainment-romania-turkey-passport-nba">Recep Tayyip Erdoğan</a>, <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/currentevents/2014/04/16/is-vladimir-putin-another-adolf-hitler/#302356ee237a">Vladimir Putin</a>, <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/maduro-calls-trump-hitler-after-u-s-president-slams-venezuela-n802766">Donald Trump</a>, <a href="https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/703986/Angela-Merkel-German-leader-compared-Hitler-anti-migrant-protest-Prague-refugees">Angela Merkel</a>, <a href="https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=hitlery">Hillary Clinton</a> (“Hitlery”) and <a href="https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/09/stephen-schwarzman-trump-nazis">Barack Obama</a> have all seamlessly been compared to Hitler. That’s just a few of the more recent examples, but they clearly show just how little value such glib analogies have. </p>
<p>The Trump presidency has made use of the Hitler card even more pronounced. Such comparisons have not just increased in frequency and intensity, however. Serious ones are now even being made by leading experts on Nazi Germany. </p>
<p>The British historian Jane Caplan, for example, wrote an <a href="http://www.historyworkshop.org.uk/trump-and-fascism-a-view-from-the-past/">analysis</a> in November 2016 directly addressing the question of whether or not Trump was a fascist. </p>
<p>Caplan didn’t reach any definite conclusions, but she did point out quite a few striking similarities between the rise of fascism in Germany then and the current political climate in the United States now. In short, she feels that America is in a vulnerable position right now – one that radical forces can use to their advantage.</p>
<p>A few months later, Yale historian Timothy Snyder published <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/558051/on-tyranny-by-timothy-snyder/9780804190114/">“On Tyranny.”</a> His book similarly concludes that America under Trump bears striking similarities to Germany in the interwar period and reads like something of a how-to manual for resisting the rise of authoritarianism in today’s America.</p>
<p>Respectable warning voices like these, engaging in historical analysis grounded in empirical scholarship, give the lie to any fears that Hitler is somehow being trivialized. </p>
<p>In fact, such experts are well equipped to communicate to a broader public the potential value of historical analogies. When paying close attention to historical context, analogies can become useful tools – ones that help us understand our present, and perhaps even shape it for the better. </p>
<p>Unfortunately, considered analysis on par with that of Caplan or Snyder is the exception, not the rule. That’s no surprise given the frenzied, often nasty character of current political discourse. </p>
<h2>False equivalency risks trivializing evil</h2>
<p>The Hitler comparison has, for many, become nothing more than a cudgel for branding someone or something as morally wrong or evil, for making what the Germans call a <a href="http://www.dw.com/en/word-of-the-week-totschlagargument/a-17808809">Totschlagargument</a>: a “knock-out” or “killer” argument intended to end all discussion. </p>
<p>I believe there are several reasons why conversations tend to end at this point. For one, few people wish to trivialize Hitler. Just as important: When such accusations are made, those on the receiving end are understandably upset about the comparison. </p>
<p>While it seems that many people in the U.S. no longer feel that they’re able to agree on anything – including sometimes even facts – they still seem able to agree on one point: <a href="https://www.vox.com/the-big-idea/2017/5/4/15538798/holocaust-american-memory-trump-history-anne-frank">Hitler epitomizes evil</a>. </p>
<p>Take, for example, a recent <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XtGOQFf9VCE">ad campaign</a> by the NRA featuring their spokesperson, Dana Loesch. Loesch describes the current state of American society in almost apocalyptic terms, with ominous background music and blurry pictures of street fighting helping her to make her point. </p>
<p>The United States is presented in the ad as a country coming apart at the seams because of liberal protesters. What is especially interesting here is how Loesch begins her rant: “They use their media to assassinate real news. They use schools to teach children that their president is another Hitler!” </p>
<p>Loesch clearly finds Trump comparisons to Hitler outrageous – just as Obama supporters <a href="https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/09/stephen-schwarzman-trump-nazis">found it outrageous</a> when Hitler comparisons were being made about Obama. </p>
<p>Let us be clear: Hitler unleashed a war aimed at achieving global domination that resulted in the deaths of tens of millions. This included the industrialized murder of <a href="https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/media_nm.php?ModuleId=0&MediaId=7827">6 million men, women and children</a> whose only “crime” was being born Jewish. This is not to diminish the horrors wrought by tyrants like former Iraqi President <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/26/weekinreview/the-world-how-many-people-has-hussein-killed.html">Saddam Hussein</a> or <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/24/world/a-full-charge-of-genocide-for-milosevic.html">Slobodan Milošević</a>, former president of Serbia. But the magnitude of their crimes still pales in comparison. And whatever one may think of Donald Trump, he has – although the jury is still out on this one – remained within the bounds of constitutional legality. And clearly he has not been responsible for mass death. </p>
<p>Another aspect of our shared cultural knowledge of Hitler is that negotiating with him was futile. In hindsight, <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-triumph-of-the-dark-9780199212002?cc=us&lang=en&">historians agree</a> that the appeasement policies of the 1930s were a failure and that forceful means were the only way to have stopped Hitler. No matter how many concessions were made to the German dictator over the course of the 1930s, he wanted more – and <a href="http://www.steiner-verlag.de/titel/55246.html">he wanted war</a>.</p>
<p>This is why, as a historian of the Nazi period, I find inflated contemporary comparisons and analogies problematic. </p>
<p>False equivalencies not only risk trivializing Hitler and the horrors he unleashed. They also prevent people from engaging with the actual issues at hand – ones that urgently require our attention: immigration reform, rampant xenophobia, social and economic restructuring in a globalized world, and a loss of faith in government’s ability to solve pressing problems. </p>
<p>There is an ultimate reason why the Hitler comparison should not be used as lightly as it often is nowadays. </p>
<p>Whenever we apply that political or moral comparison, we set the bar for inhumanity as high as possible. Should the abyss of World War II and the Holocaust really be the main measure for all things political? </p>
<p>The danger here is that policies only become worthy of moral outrage if they lead to genocidal violence. One would hope that in the 21st century, our society would have developed higher – or perhaps lower – standards than these.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/92394/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>I'm not a member of the Democratic party, but I sometimes volunteer for them during election periods. I also support the ACLU, Greenpeace and the National Resources Defense Council.</span></em></p>Whenever we apply that political or moral comparison, we set the bar for inhumanity as high as possible. Should the abyss of World War II really be the main measure for all things political?Sylvia Taschka, Senior Lecturer of History, Wayne State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/888672017-12-13T23:53:44Z2017-12-13T23:53:44ZFascism’s return and Trump’s war on youth<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/199076/original/file-20171213-27568-1p6ih1d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Donald Trump’s policies represent a particular attack on American youth and children, particularly those who are disadvantaged</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Fascism is all too often relegated to the history books.</p>
<p>The word conjures up a period in which civilized societies treated democracy with contempt, engaged in acts of systemic violence, practised extermination and elimination, supported an “apocalyptic populism,” suppressed dissent, promoted a hyper-nationalism, displayed contempt for women, embraced militarism as an absolute ideal and insisted on obedience to a self-proclaimed prophet.</p>
<p>But the seeds that produced such fascist horrors have once again sprung to life, returning in new social and political forms. </p>
<p>Today, a culture of fear dominates American society, one marked by <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/12/06/the-richest-1-percent-now-owns-more-of-the-countrys-wealth-than-at-any-time-in-the-past-50-years/?utm_term=.b950ceeb70fd">massive inequities in wealth and power</a> that not only uphold structures of domination, but also view differences as threats, compassion as weakness and shared responsibilities —if not the common good itself — as pathology.</p>
<p>Fascist thought is on the rise all over the world, but its most blatant and dangerous manifestation has emerged in the Trump administration. </p>
<p>Fear and the ethos of mass consumerism —coupled with widespread insecurity and ignorance —now drive people into a malignant notion of security, self-inflicted cynicism and into the arms of demagogues like Trump. For too many Americans, critical thinking and hope have given way to emotional bonding and the revival of the discourse of ultra-nationalism and bigotry. </p>
<h2>Trump: Not Hitler, but dangerous nonetheless</h2>
<p>Trump is not Hitler in that he has not created concentration camps, shut down the critical media or rounded up dissidents; moreover, the United States at the current historical moment is not the Weimar Republic.</p>
<p>But in the Trump era, remnants of fascism exist in different shapes and forms and include a celebration of the cult of the leader, systemic racism, the embrace of a toxic macho-populism and state support for ultra-nationalism, racism and <a href="https://theconversation.com/donald-trumps-passion-for-cruelty-84819">the threat of violence against critics.</a> </p>
<p>All of these elements are evident in Trump’s rhetoric and policy initiatives. </p>
<p>Trump’s corporate brand of neoliberal fascism is highly visible in right-wing policies that <a href="https://www.aei.org/publication/taking-a-look-at-the-state-of-trumps-deregulation-efforts/">favour deregulation</a>, corporate power and the interests of the ultra-rich. </p>
<p>Instead of draining the corporate swamp, Trump has embraced the merging of corporate and political power, and in doing so has turned the state into a battering ram designed to serve the most powerful and wealthiest members of society.</p>
<p>Trump’s mode of fascism is a unique product of our times, our commercial culture, and a corporate controlled media, all of which saps the foundations of a viable democracy.</p>
<p>American culture is advertising-saturated and celebrity-based, and has permitted a rich self-promoter to abandon any pretense of civility, accountability or integrity in order to hype, scam and market his way to power.</p>
<p>Call it <em>Fascism, American-Style</em>. It’s returned in the <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-exactly-is-neoliberalism-84755">shadow of neoliberalism</a>, with its celebration of the market as the template for governing all of society and its concentration of economic and political power in relatively few hands.</p>
<h2>Friendly with dictators</h2>
<p>How else to explain Trump’s unapologetic support and friendly attitude toward right-wing dictators such as the self-confessed killer, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/03/world/asia/philippines-rodrigo-duterte-donald-trump.html">Rodrigo Duterte,</a> president of the Philippines, Russia’s Vladimir Putin and China’s Xi Jinping, all of whom have a fawning attraction to Trump given he exhibits little interest in their massive human rights violations.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/198866/original/file-20171212-9404-wut9xs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/198866/original/file-20171212-9404-wut9xs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/198866/original/file-20171212-9404-wut9xs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/198866/original/file-20171212-9404-wut9xs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/198866/original/file-20171212-9404-wut9xs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/198866/original/file-20171212-9404-wut9xs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/198866/original/file-20171212-9404-wut9xs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Trump and Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte speak during a bilateral meeting at the ASEAN Summit in Manila in November 2017.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Trump’s fascism is also on full display in his ramping up of the police state, his relentless <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/the-racial-demagoguery-of-trumps-assaults-on-colin-kaepernick-and-steph-curry">racist rhetoric</a>, taunts and policies that cast Blacks, immigrants and Muslims as people unworthy of respect, compassion and dignity, and in his support for a war culture. </p>
<p>The latter is marked by his expansion of the U.S. military budget, his provocations aimed at North Korea and reckless policies such as recognizing Jerusalem the capital of Israel —<a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-12-06/world-leaders-warn-trump-may-spark-violence-with-jerusalem-shift">widely condemned by almost all world leaders</a> — that destabilize the Middle East, Asia and other parts of the world.</p>
<p>But there are more subtle, if not under-examined, indicators that point to resurgence of fascist principles in the United States. </p>
<p>One of the most powerful is Trump’s war on youth.</p>
<p>Finance capitalism now drives politics, governance and policy in unprecedented ways. And it’s more than willing to sacrifice the future of young people for short-term political and economic gains, if not democracy itself. </p>
<p>In an apparent war on children, the Trump administration provides a disturbing index of a society in the midst of a deep moral and political crisis — not the least of which was the president’s support and defence of an accused serial pedophile, Roy Moore, in his unsuccessful attempt to win an Alabama Senate seat.</p>
<h2>‘Foreclosed hope’</h2>
<p>Too many young people today live in an era of foreclosed hope, an era in which it is difficult either to imagine a life beyond the tenets of a savage form of <a href="http://www.encyclopedia.com/social-sciences/applied-and-social-sciences-magazines/casino-capitalism">casino capitalism</a> or to transcend the fear that any attempt to do so can only result in a more dreadful nightmare.</p>
<p>Youth today are not only plagued by the fragility and uncertainty of the present, they are, as the late Polish philosopher <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/may/31/downward-mobility-europe-young-people">Zygmunt Bauman has argued</a>, “the first post-war generation facing the prospect of downward mobility [in which the] plight of the outcast stretches to embrace a generation as a whole.” </p>
<p>American youth, especially <a href="https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/race/news/2017/12/08/443972/preschool-prison-criminalization-black-girls/">those marginalized by race and class</a>, are subject to the dictates of the punishing state. Not only is <a href="https://www.aclu.org/blog/racial-justice/race-and-criminal-justice/police-assault-black-students-kentucky-sparks-calls">their behaviour being criminalized in schools</a> and on the streets, they are also subject to repressive forms of legislation.</p>
<p>Several states <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2017/04/24/politics/states-anti-protest-legislation/index.html">are sponsoring legislation that would make perfectly legal forms of protest a crime</a> that carries a huge fine, or subjects young people to possible felony charges? Increasingly, young people are viewed as a public disorder, a dream now turned into a nightmare.</p>
<p>The most recent example is evident in <a href="http://www.newsweek.com/trump-tax-plan-another-battle-class-war-745236">budget and tax reform bills</a> that shift millions of dollars away from social programs vital to the health of poor youth to the pockets of the ultra-rich, who hardly need tax deductions.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/why-america-may-go-to-hell_us_5a0f4dd4e4b023121e0e9281">As U.S. children’s rights activist Marian Wright Edelman points out</a>, such actions are particularly alarming and cruel at a time when “millions of America’s children today are suffering from hunger, homelessness and hopelessness.”</p>
<p>She adds: “Nearly 13.2 million children are poor – almost one in five. About 70 per cent of them are children of colour, who will be a majority of our children by 2020. More than 1.2 million are homeless. About 14.8 million children struggle against hunger in food insecure households.”</p>
<h2>Cruel mindset</h2>
<p>The Trump administration is more than willing to pass massive tax cuts for the rich while at the same time refusing to fund the <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2017/12/12/569953391/parents-worry-congress-wont-fund-the-childrens-health-insurance-program">Children’s Health Insurance Program,</a> which supports over nine million children. </p>
<p>Republican Senator Chuck Grassley, meantime, has argued that tax cuts shouldn’t benefit the poor because they will just <a href="https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/12/chuck-grassley-women-booze-movies">waste the money on booze and women.</a></p>
<p>So if you’re not rich, it’s because you’re lazy. Really? Tell that to <a href="http://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/363152-larry-summers-10000-people-will-die-annually-from-gop-tax-bill">the 10,000 people</a>, some of them children, who may die each year as a result of losing their health insurance due to the proposed Senate tax bill.</p>
<p>Such a mindset, and statements like Grassley’s, are more than cruel, they represent a political and economic system that has abandoned any sense of moral and social responsibility. </p>
<p>In this view, children are undeserving of aid because offering such government support flies in the face of a ruthless neoliberal ideology that insists that the only responsibility of government is to aid the rich and powerful corporations. </p>
<p>If the poor are suffering and subject to harsh conditions, according to Grassley’s logic, it is because of a lack of character. </p>
<p>Another under-analyzed example of Trump’s war on youth can be seen his cancellation of the <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2017/12/11/politics/daca-options/index.html">DACA program</a> (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals), instituted in 2012 by former president Barack Obama. </p>
<p>Under the program, over 800,000 undocumented immigrants brought to the country as children or teens before 2007 were allowed to live, study and work in the United States without fear of deportation.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/199073/original/file-20171213-27597-1wyn6x4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/199073/original/file-20171213-27597-1wyn6x4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=432&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199073/original/file-20171213-27597-1wyn6x4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=432&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199073/original/file-20171213-27597-1wyn6x4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=432&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199073/original/file-20171213-27597-1wyn6x4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=543&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199073/original/file-20171213-27597-1wyn6x4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=543&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199073/original/file-20171213-27597-1wyn6x4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=543&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Loyola Marymount University student and dreamer Maria Carolina Gomez joins a rally in support of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA program, in California in September 2017.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In revoking the program, Trump enacted a policy that is both cruel and racist, given that 78 per cent of DACA residents are from Mexico. These are the same immigrants Trump once labelled <a href="http://time.com/4473972/donald-trump-mexico-meeting-insult/">rapists, drug addicts and criminals.</a></p>
<p>Trump’s contempt for the lives of young people, his support for a culture of cruelty and his appetite for destruction and civic catastrophe are more than a symptom of a society ruled almost exclusively by a market-driven survival of the fittest ethos. </p>
<h2>‘Systemic derangement’</h2>
<p>It is about the systemic derangement of democracy and emergence of fascist politics that celebrates the toxic pleasures of the authoritarian state with no regard for its children. </p>
<p>Trump is the apostle of moral blindness and unchecked corruption, and he revels in a mode of governance that merges his never-ending theatrics of self-promotion with deeply authoritarian politics.</p>
<p>One of the most disturbing features of Trump’s fascism is his disregard for the truth and <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/bernie-sanders-president-donald-trump-pathological-liar-undermine-democracy-a7624661.html">his embrace of an infantilism</a> that demonstrates, for young people, a lack of any viable sense of critical thought, agency and commitment to social and economic justice.</p>
<p>What’s more, Trump has unleashed a rancid populism and racist-fuelled ultra-nationalism that mimics older forms of fascism and creates a culture of cruelty that both disparages its children and cancels out a future that makes democracy possible for them — and therefore all of us.</p>
<p>At the same time, Trump has embraced a merging of corporate power and politics that is characteristic of all fascist regimes, and in doing so, he has shifted wealth and resources away from vital social programs for young people into the hands of the financial elite. </p>
<p>There is more at work here than regressive tax policies, there is also an attempt to disable the welfare state by eliminating its funding. </p>
<h2>Domestic terrorism</h2>
<p>One result is what might be called the unleashing of a form of domestic terrorism — terrorism practised in one’s own country against one’s own people —in which young people are subject to state violence and relegated to forms of terminal exclusion, spheres of social abandonment and set adrift in a state of disorientation and despair. </p>
<p>Under this new resurgence of fascism, thinking is dangerous, public spheres that promote critical thought are considered pathological and youth are viewed as a threatening disoriented class, especially those marginalized by race, sexual orientation and class. </p>
<p>And so under Trump, the winds of fascism have accelerated into a hurricane and pose a haunting crisis for youth, the future and democracy itself. </p>
<p>That crisis of youth under the Trump regime is a political disaster of the first order and threatens every vital cultural and political ideal, principle, social formation and public sphere that makes a democracy possible. It’s best illustrated by Trump’s support for Moore, a homophobe, unabashed racist and an accused child predator, sexual harasser and sexual abuser. </p>
<p>Yes, fascism us making a comeback and is with us once again — yet Moore’s defeat in the deep-red state of Alabama to his Democratic challenger gives us reason to hope. <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2017/12/13/politics/black-women-alabama-election/index.html">Black voters, particularly black women, and young voters</a> stood up to say “no more.” </p>
<p>Fascism requires those among us who value equity, fairness, justice and morality to defeat it. To stop fascism, it is crucial that we show that democracy is the only alternative, and that the grotesque elements of fascism will be challenged. Here’s hoping Alabama is just the beginning of such a struggle.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/88867/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Henry Giroux does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Call it Fascism, American-Style. Donald Trump’s embrace of authoritarian ideals has extended to a veritable war on America’s youth.Henry Giroux, Chaired professor for Scholarship in the Public Interest in the Department of English and Cultural Studies, McMaster UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.