How Today's Anti-Trump Left and European Jews of the 1930's Both Sparked Fascism
An application of Hannah Arendt’s theories of anti Semitism to the failures of the American Left
By
David Gottfried
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(The image is not loading. Please forget the pretty pictures. I am here for ideas, not cutesy or dramatic images.)
Hannah Arendt, a brilliant Jewish emigree from Nazi Germany, graced us with intelligence plus something more than intelligence. She was the sort of person who could answer a multiple-choice test question correctly, and then tell you why although choice C was correct, in a certain subtle way it was not completely correct. It’s as if she was able to enrich the logic of the syllogism by arriving at a conclusion that although correct glimpsed something that was not embedded in either the major premise or the minor premise of the syllogism.
She was able see what ordinary, boring scholastics could not see because of their stunted minds or their stunted courage. And she managed to antagonize hordes of people who never understood her. For example, in “Eichmann in Jerusalem,” she covered the trial of one of the most wicked Nazi’s, Adolf Eichmann. She said, among other things, that he represented the “banality of evil.” She said that he was, essentially, a very boring, drab little slab of a man whose life work was the mutilation and murder of millions of people (Footnote 1).
Her fellow Jews were enraged. They were enraged because they did not understand her. She was not saying, “Evil, it’s just a bore.” Rather she was telling us to beware of the evil that resides in the most common of places. True evil does not wear Dracula’s capes and speak like Rimbaud spoke when he said, “I expect to become a very vicious madman.” True evil is in the coward who looks the other way while a murderer is killing the innocents. True evil is in the conformist who readily joins a bigoted lynch mob because he learned “to play well with others.” True evil is staring at you in the mirror. The lesson of the Holocaust was not that Germans were the most Anti-Semitic people on earth. (Arguably, anti-Jewish sentiments were much fiercer and more commonplace in Poland, Lithuania and Ukraine) Rather, the lesson was that anyone has the potential to be murderous and cruel.
In her opus, “The Origins of Totalitarianism,” her attempt to understand how Germany, a land steeped in “Kultur” and refinement, could have become a nation fueled by what I would call “sadistic libido” (Footnote 2), she tried to explain why Europeans hated the Jews.
She said the same thing about every thirty pages. I struggled to understand exactly what she meant. Whereas some people might say that group A hated group B because of their wealth, or their cowardice, or their theft or their racism, her reasoning was steeped in a sort of psychology that most psychologists haven’t dared to delineate.
THIS IS WHAT SHE SAID:
She said that Europeans had come to hate the Jews because their wealth – or their presumed wealth – was ultimately ineffectual. She said that the Jews were believed to have had money but could not do anything with their money. They could not turn their wealth into power. They could not use their wealth to stand erect and proud. This made Europeans have contempt for Jews, made them think that Jews were a paper tiger, and sparked the desire to first humiliate, and then hound and then finally kill the Jews.
I think that Americans are coming to hate Democrats for the very same reason. Democrats have, on their side, the constitution and the bedrock beliefs of democratic government. And the Democrats, in a world in which the winner is neither logic nor morals but snarky one liners uttered by Sean Hannity, lose. Just as the Jews could not carry the day with the Torah, the Democrats can’t get anywhere with the Constitution, the Declaration of the Rights of Man or the Magna Carta. Just as the Jews were seen as the intellectual fuddy duddies of Europe as they still believed in being “civilized,” the Democrats are seen as mushy, confused beta men who haven’t appreciated the barbarous joy of Nascar racing.
Of course, to some extent, the Democrats really do seem utterly befuddled and impotent. See my immediately preceding substack article which discussed how the Democrat’s investigation of Trump, which began as a very important expose of Trump’s numerous and deleterious dealings with Russia, has degenerated into a tawdry daytime soap opera scandal about prostitutes and hush money.
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Footnote 1: Interestingly enough, several people said that upon meeting Hitler they were struck by how boring and insipid he was.
Footnote 2: Libido is the energy which fuels our need for sexual pleasure. When I look at pictures of Viennese making Jews scrub the streets with toothbrushes, I find myself drawn to the ineluctable conclusion that a Nazi’s desire to kill a Jew was fueled by a sort of sexual sadism. He seems to get too much pleasure from his evil for it not to be sexual.
Excellent piece. There are many fine points to discuss here but first I might ask, What makes you say the Democrats are a flop, wet noodles, nothing doing, 'befuddled and impotent' ? They're in charge, dearie. Maybe you noticed ? To engage with the dialectic, read my piece, My Trouble with the Progrès (that's Progressives to you) https://continentalriffs.substack.com/p/mulling-over-the-progres. C u @!