Dan White’s article on Admiral (retired) McRaven’s new job as Chancellor of the University of Texas system provides a warning that must be heeded. There is dangerous intent behind the appointment of military flag officers and national security operatives to leading public college and university leadership positions. The political elites, who usually appoint their like-minded allies to the governing boards of these institutions, see students in these public institutions of learning as potential activists against the status quo (as they were during the Vietnam War era). The governing boards usually vet the candidates for this office and thus want the candidate to mirror their own views of “national interests.” Those “interests” don’t include critical thinking or the idea of questioning authority.
Appointing a proven supporter (like McRaven) of the elites’ view of “national interest” in times like these, when their “interest” involves issues at variance with the common good, is looked at as a judicious decision. That means putting people into these offices who support the Patriot Act and its assault on citizens’ rights of free speech and assembly. It also means appointing people who support the government in its pursuit of perpetual war.
McRaven’s appointment to the University of Texas and the ridiculous appointment of Janet Napolitano, former head of the police state agency known as “Homeland Security,” as President of the university system of California are prime examples of this tendency. These selections show absolutely no interest in education but rather in administering and enforcing a sheep-like faculty and student body in these important institutions that otherwise could and should foster the serious questioning of our government and our oligarchical elites.
The elites know that stuffed shirts like McRaven and Napolitano can be counted on to foster bland conformity and blind compliance. That’s exactly why they’re hired for these offices. They work to ensure the subservience of higher education to the national security state. California and Texas are two of the biggest public university systems in the country. Is it any accident they are controlled by Napolitano and McRaven, both former operatives and enforcers in the national security state?
Not only does the national security state conspire to control higher education but national sports as well. Consider the recent revelation of Department of Defense payments to NFL teams for on-field ceremonies in honor of the troops. These ceremonies, used for recruitment and propaganda purposes, were meant to seem free and spontaneous on the part of the participating football teams, even as behind the scenes the Department of Defense was feeding the teams taxpayer money in the millions for these ceremonies. It’s all about extending the reach of the national security state into all realms of life, to include sports. That’s the real NFL scandal of today, not Tom Brady’s “Deflategate.”
Be afraid, America, as the national security state reaches out to control the message of higher education as well as professional sports. High culture, low culture, it doesn’t matter. The power elites want to control it all.
Awaken, patriotic American citizens, and resist. Don’t let the national security state’s tentacles reach into more and more aspects of your and your children’s lives.
The New Yankee Stadium: The House that Corporations Built
W.J. Astore
Back in 2010, I wrote the following article on American sports for Huffington Post. With the end of “March Madness” and the beginning of baseball season, the time seems right to revive it. I love watching my hometown teams and experiencing the vicarious thrill of victory (as well as the agony of defeat), and I’ll never give up sports and the fun of being a fan. But professional sports in America sure make me want to stop watching at times, as you’ll read below:
Been to a major American sporting event lately? If not, consider yourself fortunate. The NFL and NASCAR are already over-the-top when it comes to manufactured noise, exaggerated pyrotechnics, and wall-to-wall corporate advertisements. Even my beloved sport of baseball has fallen victim to sensory saturation and techniques of crowd control that would make a dictator proud. The grace and spontaneity of America’s pastime is increasingly lost in Jumbotrons, overly loud and canned music, and choreographed cheering.
With all the Jumbotrons and other video screens everywhere, people are no longer focused on the game as it takes place on the field, and perhaps turning to their neighbor for an explanation if they miss a play or nuance. Instead, people look to the screens to follow the game. Indeed, sight lines at some seats at Yankee Stadium are so poor that the only way you can watch the action on the field is on video screens posted at strategic locations.
Speaking of Yankee Stadium, last month a friend of mine went to a game there and found the experience “shocking.” In his words:
“The new stadium is flooded with noise from constant speakers as well as screens everywhere. It was so loud that there was really not much independent reaction from the crowd. I got a feeling like I was in a scene from Triumph of the Will. The noise would come out of the speakers and people would chant. When it stopped so did the people. The entire experience left me dying to get out of there!”
Mediocre seats are $110 each, and an $11 beer only compounds the pain. Attending a Yankees game “used to be something of a social leveler, where people of all classes would come and meet to support the team… Although the place was packed for a Red Sox game, it was a largely white crowd, looking nothing like the mix of people who actually inhabit New York,” my friend concluded.
I share my friend’s concerns. I hate being coerced by screens and speakers telling me when to cheer and what to say. Even at my local Single-A baseball games, the post-game fireworks are set to music, usually of a patriotic tenor. I’ve got nothing against music, but why can’t I just enjoy the fireworks? I don’t need “Proud to be an American” blaring to make me proud to be an American.
But it seems like many fans are happy being told when to cheer, what to say, even what to feel. Or they’ve simply become accustomed to being controlled, which has the added benefit to owners of suppressing any inconvenient spontaneity.
More and more, our senses are saturated so we cannot pause to converse or even to think. If the game grows tiresome, people turn to cell phones, palm pilots, and other personal technologies for stimulation. And the phenomenon is hardly limited to sporting events. Today’s version of “Sesame Street” is an exercise in frenetic action and hyperkinetic stimulation; one wonders whether it’s designed for ADHD kids, or to create ADHD kids.
More and more, we’re surrounded by and immersed in near-total sensory saturation; the stifling effect such an environment has on individual spontaneity and thought can’t be disregarded (nor can it be accidental).
And it appears in the most unlikely of places. I used to watch air shows at the U.S. Air Force Academy. Few things are more viscerally thrilling (or chilling) than a formation of F-16s screaming overhead. But that effect apparently wasn’t enough. The powers-that-be “augmented” the air show with loud rock music (call it the “Top Gun” effect) along with an especially annoying (and superfluous) narrator. There was even a proposal to add huge video screens and even bigger speakers to the performance until it got shot down due to charges of contractual cronyism.
In a way, it’s sad to compare today’s thunderingly loud yet sterile air shows to their Depression-era counterparts. The latter, as another friend reminded me, had in his words:
“No concrete runways, no visitor stands, just grass in a field on the edge of town. I loved planes so much that as an eleven year old I would take the two streetcars … then walk a mile to the airport. There was always one or two old biplanes and the small crowd would wait expectantly for the pilots and the daredevils to appear. What excitement just to see those little planes taxing across the grass and getting into position to take off. Gunning their little engines and racing along into the wind. Loops, upside down and then the big thrill, the ‘wing walkers.’ Try that on a jet.”
Bigger, faster, louder doesn’t always mean “better.” Whether it’s an air show or ball game today, we seem saturated by noise, video images, and other sensory distractions, often advertised as “necessary” to broaden the appeal to non-fans or casual spectators who simply want to feel that they’ve witnessed a spectacle, whatever its meaning.
It’s hard to develop an inner life when you’re constantly plugged-in and distracted. It’s also hard to take independent political stances when you’re constantly bombarded by infotainment, not just in the mainstream media but in the sports world as well. I don’t care about off-field shenanigans or contract disputes or manufactured grudges between teams, nor do I want to watch pre-game and post-game shows that last longer than the games: I just want to watch the game and marvel at the accomplishments of world-class athletes while cheering for my home team.
Sports have always been a form of entertainment, of course, but today’s events are being packaged as life-consuming pursuits, e.g. fantasy football leagues. And if we’re spending most of our free time picking and tracking “our” players and teams, it leaves us a lot less time to criticize our leaders and political elites for their exploitation of the public treasury – and betrayal of the public trust. I wonder, at times, if we’re heading in the direction of “Rollerball” (the original movie version with James Caan), in which a few corporations dominate the world and keep the little people (you and me) distracted with ultra-violent sports and hedonistic consumption, so much so that people can’t recognize their own powerlessness and the empty misery of their lives.
Until our sporting events and air shows return to a time when players and fans and enthusiasts collectively showed up simply for the love of the game and the purity of it all (and I can hear my brother mischievously singing, “Until the twelfth of never”), count me out. I can be more spontaneous in my living room with friends — and the beer sure is cheaper.
Update (4/1/2015): Chicago’s Wrigley Field is a vintage ballpark with a lot of character. So how do you ruin some of that? By installing a massive Jumbotron.
Now this makes me proud to be an American
They still haven’t finished the bleachers, but they have the humongous TV glaring and dominating the skyline in left field. Error, Cubs.
I read old stuff. Heck, I’m a historian: that’s what I’m supposed to do. So I was reading an old pamphlet on “The Indiana World War Memorial” (circa 1940) and came across the Pledge of Allegiance as it was recited before McCarthyism reared its ugly head in the 1950s:
I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible with liberty and justice for all.
You’ll notice what’s missing: that whole idea of “under God.” Those words were added in the early 1950s as a way of contrasting God-fearing (and God-favored, if you’ll recall American exceptionalism) Americans to the godless Communists.
You’ll recall, of course, that our nation was founded in part on religious freedom. The idea you could worship any god or gods you wanted to, or none at all. We should return to the original “godless” pledge. It served us quite well in World War II; it would serve us quite well today.
After all, Americans have no monopoly on God. Furthermore, God does not uniquely bless us. To believe that is to violate the real Ten Commandments, for to believe you are uniquely blessed by God is tantamount to raising yourself to the level of God. No — as Abraham Lincoln wisely said, we must not assume that God is on our side; we must pray that we are on His side.
Speaking of the Ten Commandments, Tom Engelhardt at TomDispatch.com has a compelling list of his “ten commandments” in America’s ongoing war on terror. Like Lincoln, Engelhardt is wise enough not to assume that God is always chanting “USA! USA!”
Here are Engelhardt’s “ten commandments” for America and for a better world. I urge you to read the rest of his article at this link:
1. Thou shalt not torture: Torture of every horrific sort in these years seems to have been remarkably ineffective in producing useful information for the state. Even if it were proved effective in breaking up al-Qaeda plots, however, it would still have been both a desperately illegal (if unpunished) act and a foreign policy disaster of the first order.
2. Thou shalt not send drones to assassinate anyone, American or not: The ongoing U.S. drone assassination campaigns, while killing individual terrorists, have driven significant numbers of people in the backlands of the planet into the arms of terror outfits and so only increased their size and appeal. Without a doubt, such drone strikes represent a global war of, not on, terror. In the process, they have turned the president into our assassin-in-chief and us into an assassin nation.
3. Thou shalt not invade another country: D’oh!
4. Thou shalt not occupy another country: By the way, how did that work out the last two times the U.S. tried it?
5. Thou shalt not upgrade thy nuclear arsenal: The U.S. has now committed itself to a trillion-dollar, decades-long upgrade of its vast arsenal. If any significant portion of it were ever used, it would end human life as we know it on this planet and so should be considered a singular prospective crime against humanity. After years in which the only American nuclear focus was on a country — Iran — with no nuclear weapons, that this has happened without serious debate or discussion is in itself criminal.
6.Thou shalt not intercept the communications of thy citizens or others all over the world or pursue the elaboration of a global surveillance state based on criminal acts: There seems to be no place the NSA has been unwilling to break into in order to surveil the planet. For unimaginable reams of information that have seemingly been of next to no actual use, the NSA and the national security state have essentially outlawed privacy and cracked open various amendments to the Constitution. No information is worth such a price.
7. Thou shalt not be free of punishment for crimes of state: In these years of genuine criminality, official Washington has become a crime-free zone. No matter the seriousness of the act, none — not one committed in the name of the state in the post-9/11 era, no matter how heinous — has been brought into a courtroom.
8. Thou shalt not use a massive system of secret classification to deprive Americans of all real knowledge of acts of state: In 2011, the U.S. classified 92 million documents and the shroud of secrecy over the business of the “people’s” government has only grown worse in the years since. Increasingly, for our own “safety” we are only supposed to know what the government prefers us to know. This represents, of course, a crime against democracy.
9. Thou shalt not act punitively toward those who want to let Americans in on what the national security state is doing in their name: The fierce and draconian campaign the Obama administration has launched against leakers and whistleblowers is unprecedented in our history. It is a growing challenge to freedom of the press and to the citizen’s right to know.
10. Thou shalt not infringe on the rights of the citizenry to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness: Need I even explain?”
Why not make a pledge, America, to these “commandments”? For they will help us to ensure liberty and justice for all.
OK. I should know better. When you pay attention to what conservatives are saying at the Iowa Freedom Forum, attended as it is by religious activists, you’re going to hear kookiness and craziness. But what’s sad is how the “red meat” issues raised by the likes of Ted Cruz, Scott Walker, and Rick Santorum are so devoid of nutritional value. Empty calories, all of it.
You hear the usual talk about lower taxes and less governmental regulation, even though Republicans under Reagan and the Bushes (along with the Democrats as well) oversaw expansions in government. George H.W. Bush famously said, “Read my lips — no new taxes,” before proceeding to raise taxes once he became president. Along with lower taxes and smaller government, Republicans also claim to support “family values,” a vapid phrase that basically means whatever you want to read into it. I’m not a fan of Obama’s priorities and policies, but one thing I can say for the man is that his life, his wife, and his teenage girls have exuded family values, Thanksgiving controversy or no.
So we know Republicans are supposedly for lower taxes, smaller government, and family values. What else are they for? Abortion, of course, as in restricting it further or even eliminating it. Voter ID laws, because we all know how the “wrong” kind of people are being bussed in en masse to skew voting results in favor of socialism (talk about an urban myth!). And more gun rights, like open carry laws and easier approval for concealed permits to carry.
Egads! These are the issues that sway the activist base of the Republican Party? Fetuses, the specter of more disadvantaged people of color voting, and guns.
Wow. Our country faces serious issues. A crumbling infrastructure. An unsustainable prison system. Perpetual wars. Climate change (even Republicans admit it’s real, though they won’t blame humans for it). Ever widening gaps between rich and poor. Student loan and credit card debt that threaten a fragile economic recovery. Mediocre education. Ever rising health care costs (still the number one cause for personal bankruptcies in America). But forget all that: let’s talk about fetuses, non-existent voter fraud, and guns.
And Republicans like Santorum wonder why “too many people don’t think we care about them.” Gee… I wonder why, Rick.
(A personal note: In 1976, though too young to vote, I supported Gerald Ford rather than Jimmy Carter. In 1984, I voted for Ronald Reagan because I believed Walter Mondale lacked the gravitas to be president at a crucial moment in US-Soviet affairs. Ever since then, the Republican Party has lost me with its cynical culture wars and active suppression of democracy, among other reasons.)
Former Army Ranger Rory Fanning has a thoughtful article at TomDispatch.com on why young men should not join the Army to fight the war on terror in distant lands.
Here’s an excerpt:
Believe me, it [the Afghan War] was ugly. We were often enough targeting innocent people based on bad intelligence and in some cases even seizing Afghans who had actually pledged allegiance to the U.S. mission… I know now that if our country’s leadership had truly had peace on its mind, it could have all been over in Afghanistan in early 2002.
If you are shipped off to Iraq for our latest war there, remember that the Sunni population you will be targeting is reacting to a U.S.-backed Shia regime in Baghdad that’s done them dirty for years. ISIS exists to a significant degree because the largely secular members of Saddam Hussein’s Ba’ath party were labeled the enemy as they tried to surrender after the U.S. invasion of 2003 … Given the reign of terror that followed, it’s hardly surprising to find former Baathist army officers in key positions in ISIS and the Sunnis choosing that grim outfit as the lesser of the two evils in its world. Again, the enemy you are being shipped off to fight is, at least in part, a product of your chain-of-command’s meddling in a sovereign country. And remember that, whatever its grim acts, this enemy presents no existential threat to American security, at least so says Vice President Joe Biden. Let that sink in for a while and then ask yourself whether you really can take your marching orders seriously.
Fanning makes persuasive points here: How the U.S. military bungled its wars of choice in Iraq and Afghanistan; how often Iraqi and Afghan innocents were killed due to bad intelligence and the usual deadly mistakes associated with war; how the wars fed, and continue to feed, a cycle of violence that is perpetuated by new U.S. troop deployments and weapons sales (with respect to weapons sales, see this excellent article by Peter Van Buren, which details how the U.S. is hawking M1 Abrams main battle tanks to the Iraqis).
Yet persuading young American men against joining the military, let alone convincing them not to strive to be elite Rangers, is not, sadly, an exercise in logic. In American society today, young men, especially from the working classes, seek an identity and a status that affirms masculinity. They want to earn the respect of their peers, parents, and prospective dates (and mates). American society provides few options for such men, especially if they’re living in straitened circumstances in dead-end jobs. Consider that many physical jobs, such as working in a warehouse, pay only slightly better than minimum wage, with weekly hours curtailed so that employers don’t have to provide health care.
Military service, which exudes masculinity while conveying societal respect (and free health care, among other benefits), is in many ways the most viable option for working-class men (and more than a few women, obviously). Like it or not, young men often aspire to being “the biggest and baddest,” or at least serving with a unit of such men. They seek community and a sense of belonging within unapologetically masculine settings. They may also have dreams of being heroes, or at least of proving themselves as capable within a community of likeminded tough guys.
American society bombards such impressionable young men with images of soldiers, often deified in movies like “Act of Valor” or “Lone Survivor.” Consider the popular success of “American Sniper,” with its depiction of the resolute sniper as avenger and punisher. Movies like this are powerful in persuading impressionable youth to sign on the dotted line as volunteers for military service.
Military service, which conveys personal dignity, adds a dash of grandeur. By joining the military, you become part of something much larger than yourself. A sense of masculine challenge, especially in elite units like the Army Rangers or Navy SEALs, combined with societal respectability prove alluring to young men. Sadly, no amount of logic about the lack of wisdom and efficacy of America’s war on terror will convince them otherwise.
Some will say there’s nothing wrong with this. Why not encourage young men to join the military and to fight in foreign lands? Yet if those fights serve fallacious causes that amount to strategic folly, our troops’ sacrifices amount to little.
One thing we can do: American society should provide more jobs for young men that convey respect within masculine codes but which don’t require donning a uniform and killing an enemy overseas.
For nearly a decade, I taught working-class students, mostly young men, in rural Pennsylvania. My students came to class wearing camo fatigues. Many looked like they had just climbed down from a tree stand in the woods (a big holiday for my students was the first day of rifle deer season). They drove pickup trucks, listened to country music, dipped Skoal or smoked Marlboros. They’re not guys who aspire to be metrosexuals sipping lattes at Starbucks. They’re looking for a job that screams “man,” and sometimes they find it: in welding, as a heavy equipment operator, in residential construction, and so on.
But for those who can’t find such “masculine” vocations that provide decent pay and benefits, military service is powerfully alluring, and almost impossible to resist, especially when there are so few alternatives.
In September 2008, I called for a revival of the Civilian Conservation Corps, national service that is dedicated to rebuilding America. We need to instill an ethic of national service that goes beyond war and killing. An ethic that inspires young men with patriotic pride and that conveys societal identities that appeal to them as men.
What we need, in short, are fewer “American snipers” and more American workers and builders.
On April 4, 1967, Martin Luther King Jr. gave a powerful speech (“Beyond Vietnam – A Time to Break Silence”) that condemned America’s war in Vietnam. Exactly one year later, he was assassinated in Memphis.
What follows are excerpts from MLK’s speech. I urge you to read it in its entirety, but I’d like to highlight this line:
A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.
MLK called for a revolution of values in America. In his address, he noted that:
There is nothing except a tragic death wish to prevent us from reordering our priorities so that the pursuit of peace will take precedence over the pursuit of war.
MLK didn’t just have a dream of racial equality. He had a dream for justice around the world, a dream of a world committed to peace, a world in which America would lead a reordering of values in the direction of universal brotherhood.
Both of MLK’s dreams remain elusive. Racial inequalities and biases remain, though America is better now than it was in the 1960s in regards to racial equity. And what of a commitment to peace? Sadly, America remains dedicated to war, spending nearly a trillion dollars yearly on defense, Homeland Security, nuclear weapons, and “overseas contingency operations,” i.e. wars.
America has failed to dream the dreams of Martin Luther King, Jr., and we are the worse for it. W.J. Astore
Excerpts from MLK’s Speech on Vietnam, April 4, 1967
At this point I should make it clear that while I have tried in these last few minutes to give a voice to the voiceless in Vietnam and to understand the arguments of those who are called “enemy,” I am as deeply concerned about our own troops there as anything else. For it occurs to me that what we are submitting them to in Vietnam is not simply the brutalizing process that goes on in any war where armies face each other and seek to destroy. We are adding cynicism to the process of death, for they must know after a short period there that none of the things we claim to be fighting for are really involved. Before long they must know that their government has sent them into a struggle among Vietnamese, and the more sophisticated surely realize that we are on the side of the wealthy, and the secure, while we create a hell for the poor.
Somehow this madness must cease. We must stop now. I speak as a child of God and brother to the suffering poor of Vietnam. I speak for those whose land is being laid waste, whose homes are being destroyed, whose culture is being subverted. I speak of the — for the poor of America who are paying the double price of smashed hopes at home, and death and corruption in Vietnam. I speak as a citizen of the world, for the world as it stands aghast at the path we have taken. I speak as one who loves America, to the leaders of our own nation: The great initiative in this war is ours; the initiative to stop it must be ours…
If we continue, there will be no doubt in my mind and in the mind of the world that we have no honorable intentions in Vietnam. If we do not stop our war against the people of Vietnam immediately, the world will be left with no other alternative than to see this as some horrible, clumsy, and deadly game we have decided to play. The world now demands a maturity of America that we may not be able to achieve. It demands that we admit that we have been wrong from the beginning of our adventure in Vietnam, that we have been detrimental to the life of the Vietnamese people. The situation is one in which we must be ready to turn sharply from our present ways. In order to atone for our sins and errors in Vietnam, we should take the initiative in bringing a halt to this tragic war…
It is with such activity in mind that the words of the late John F. Kennedy come back to haunt us. Five years ago he said, “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.” Increasingly, by choice or by accident, this is the role our nation has taken, the role of those who make peaceful revolution impossible by refusing to give up the privileges and the pleasures that come from the immense profits of overseas investments. I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin…we must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.
A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. On the one hand, we are called to play the Good Samaritan on life’s roadside, but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho Road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life’s highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.
A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa, and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say, “This is not just.” It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of South America and say, “This is not just.” The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just.
A true revolution of values will lay hand on the world order and say of war, “This way of settling differences is not just.” This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation’s homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice, and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.
America, the richest and most powerful nation in the world, can well lead the way in this revolution of values. There is nothing except a tragic death wish to prevent us from reordering our priorities so that the pursuit of peace will take precedence over the pursuit of war. There is nothing to keep us from molding a recalcitrant status quo with bruised hands until we have fashioned it into a brotherhood.
“Defiance” is one of the few mainstream movies that depict Jewish resistance to the Holocaust. Another good movie is “Escape from Sobibor”
W.J. Astore
In 2006, I presented the following talk on Jewish resistance to the Holocaust. It’s a dangerous myth, and sadly a common one, that Jewish people did not resist the Nazis in meaningful or effective ways. From this myth stems a far more insidious one: that Jewish people were somehow complicit in the murderous campaigns against them. I gave this paper to counter these dangerous myths.
The Nazis exterminated nearly six million Jews during World War II. Those who claim that Jews went meekly like sheep to the slaughter ignore the many instances of remarkable courage in the face of this staggering crime against humanity. In reality, Jewish resistance took many forms. That it often proved futile reflects the poignant vulnerability of Jews rather than any lack of bravery or courage.
Resistance can be divided into two general categories: passive and active. Passive resistance took the form of cultural and spiritual endurance and assertiveness. Jews confined to ghettos like Warsaw continued to practice their culture and religion despite prohibitions; they organized symphonies, drama clubs, schools, and other voluntary and educational associations; they also risked their lives by trading across ghetto walls despite threats of torture and execution.
Passive resistance drew on a long and esteemed Jewish tradition of outlasting the persecutor. Initially believing that the Nazis and their various European sympathizers and lackeys wanted to put Jews in their place, not in their graves, Jewish leaders sought to endure discriminatory laws, pogroms, and deportations, hoping for an eventual relaxation of anti-Semitic policies or perhaps even the defeat of their oppressors on the battlefield.
Thus Jewish resistance remained largely non-violent until 1943, in part because the Germans succeeded in deceiving the Jews. They were helped in this by the fact that their predecessors—the German soldiers of World War I—had generally behaved decently, treating Jewish non-combatants humanely. Jews in Poland and the East initially expected similar behavior from Nazi invaders. Even after it became apparent to Jews that Nazi soldiers and especially police were intent on human butchery on a scale previously unimaginable, Jewish cultures that embraced sanctity and sheer joy of life found it difficult to comprehend a Nazi culture built on hate and murderous brutality, especially one that continued to worship civilized icons like Goethe and Beethoven. Many Jews put their faith in God, hoping for the best, preparing for the worst, yet daring not at first to think the unthinkable.
When Jewish communities and individuals recognized the unthinkable—that the Nazis and their various European fellow travelers wanted to exterminate systematically all Jews in Europe—active and armed resistance increased. Active resistance included acts of industrial sabotage in munitions factories or isolated bombings of known gathering spots of Nazis. One must recognize, however, the near utter futility of Jews “winning” pitched battles against their killers. The Nazis had machine guns, dogs, usually superior numbers, and could call on tanks, artillery, and similar weapons of industrialized modern warfare. Facing them were Jewish resisters, often unarmed, some at best having pistols or rifles with limited ammunition, perhaps supplemented by a few precious hand grenades. Such unequal odds often made the final result tragically predictable, yet many Jews decided it was better to die fighting than to face extermination in a death camp.
When it became apparent that they were being deported to Treblinka to be gassed, Warsaw Jews at first refused to assemble, then led a ghetto uprising in April 1943 whose ferocity surprised the Germans. More than 2000 German soldiers supported by armored cars, machine guns, flamethrowers, and unlimited ammunition faced approximately 750 Jews with little to no military training. The SS General in command, Jürgen Stroop, had estimated he would need two days to suppress the uprising. In fact, he needed a full month as Jews armed mainly with pistols, homemade grenades, and Molotov cocktails fought franticly and ferociously from street to street, bunker to bunker. The Warsaw ghetto uprising was only the most famous example of nearly 60 other armed uprisings in Jewish ghettos.
Resistance was less common in death camps like Chelmno, Sobibor, and Treblinka, mainly because there was not enough time for networks of resistance to form. Resistance requires leaders, organization, and weapons. These elements cannot be improvised and acted upon in a few hours or even days: they require months of planning and training. Despite nearly insurmountable difficulties, however, Jews did lead revolts at all three of these death camps as well as at Auschwitz-Birkenau and 18 forced-labor camps.
Jews also participated actively in resistance networks in Poland, the Soviet Union, France, and other countries. Their plight was difficult in the extreme, since anti-Semitism within these networks often required Jews to hide their ethnicity. In some cells of the Polish resistance, Jews were killed outright. Many Soviet partisans distrusted and exploited Jews; nevertheless, between 20,000 and 30,000 Jews fought as partisans in the USSR against Nazi invaders. In France, Jews made up less than one percent of the population yet 15 to 20 percent of the French underground. In 1944, nearly 2000 Jewish resisters in France united to form the Organisation Juive de Combat (Jewish Fighting Organization), which supported Allied military operations by attacking railway lines and German military installations and factories.
Impressive as it was, Jewish resistance was always hamstrung for several reasons. In general, Jews lacked combat experience since many countries forbade Jewish citizens from serving in the military. Like Soviet prisoners-of-war (POWs) captured by the Nazis, many Jews, especially those confined in ghettos, were weakened by disease and deliberate starvation. Under these conditions, trained Soviet soldiers died with hardly a murmur of protest, so it is hardly surprising that Jewish families who had never been exposed to the hardships of war would similarly succumb.
The Nazis succeeded in creating a Hobbesian state of nature in which people were so focused on surviving from hour to hour that their struggles consumed virtually all their energy and attention. Dissension within Jewish communities also inhibited resistance, with older Jews and members of Judenräte (Jewish councils) tending to support a policy of limited cooperation with the Nazis, hoping that by contributing to the German war effort, they might thereby preserve the so-called productive elements of Jewish communities.
More controversially, Jewish resistance was hampered by weak and irresolute international support. Fearing that Nazi propaganda would exploit pro-Jewish statements as proof that a Jewish-Bolshevist conspiracy was behind the war, Western leaders refrained from condemning Nazi actions. Official Catholic and Protestant statements were equally tentative and tepid. Irresolute and sporadic support unintentionally played into the hands of Nazi plans for Jewish extermination.
Observant Jews were people of God’s law, the Torah, who put their faith in God, with Jewish culture in general tending to disavow militant actions. Confronted by murderous killing squads possessing all the tools of industrialized mass warfare, Jews nevertheless resisted courageously, both passively and actively. That their resistance often ended tragically does not mean that it failed.
James Madison warned that perpetual war is the worst enemy of personal liberty
W.J. Astore
So, Republicans now control the Senate as well as the House. As we the people endure the forced march to 2016 and the next presidential election, our new political landscape is sure to produce more military escalations.
The reason is as obvious as it is sad. De-escalation of military conflicts is defined, especially by Republicans, as “losing” whereas escalation is defined as “doing something,” as being “decisive,” even when decision is nowhere in sight. Even when military action just makes matters worse.
Once again, as we approach 2016, the Republicans will bash the Democrats as appeaseniks. And the Republicans will be right. The Democrats are appeaseniks — to the national security state.
You can almost guarantee that the hawkish Hillary Clinton — doing her best imitation of Margaret Thatcher — will be the Democratic candidate. Meanwhile, Republican candidates will run to the right of Attila the Hun as they blame Obama for having “lost” both Iraq and Afghanistan (even though both of those countries were never ours to “win”). Dishonest (or disingenuous) the Republicans may be, but they know how to win elections via the Big Lie.
As Tom Engelhardt noted this week, the national security state has built a militarized escalation machine that will execute its function of perpetual war regardless of whom is sworn in as the next commander-in-chief.
As my wife said to me today, our country is in big trouble. Yes, we are, because as James Madison pointed out, perpetual war is the enemy of democracy and freedom.
As for me, I’ll vote for any candidate who has the spine to stand up for an end to perpetual war. Show me a candidate who’s willing to abandon fear-mongering about overseas threats while telling the truth about the threats we face right here at home from America’s power brokers and I’ll show you a candidate worthy of being elected. Either that, or show me a candidate who’s so worried about those overseas threats that he or she takes up arms (I mean literally) in the trenches against the enemy, and I’ll show you a candidate who at least is not a hypocrite.
But I fear 2016 will be the year of Benghazi! Benghazi! and who lost Iraq/Afghanistan/and similar countries we never “found” to begin with.
Did I mention my smarter wife said our country is in trouble?
Out shopping today at my local used bookstore and came across an early paperback copy (from 1952) of George Orwell’s 1984. A little overpriced at $15.00, but the cover called to me. What a classic!
My “new” old copy of Orwell’s 1984
If you click on the picture, you can just make out, if you look closely, the slogans on the Ministry of Truth in the upper left: War Is Peace, Freedom Is Slavery, Ignorance Is Strength.
The reverse of the cover is also quite well done:
Which one will you be in 2014?
That tag line haunts me: “in a world many of us may live to see!” Hype, reader? Or prophecy?
I haven’t read Orwell since college, circa 1984 in fact. Time to get crackin’ before my old copy is confiscated and sent down the memory hole.
Columbus Day Parade, a celebration of Italian heritage
W.J. Astore
In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue. And he discovered a new world. New to him, of course, and his fellow Europeans, not to the indigenous peoples already living there. Yes, Columbus gets too much credit for that “discovery.” Yes, he and his fellow Europeans were incredibly ambitious, often vicious, and not overly interested in the fate of indigenous people. The three Gs of overseas exploration usually applied — God, Glory, and Gold, often with greed for gold and other valuables taking first priority over spreading the Gospel or winning a reputation (titles and other personal honors).
But are we truly showing sensitivity to Native Americans by changing the name of Columbus Day to Indigenous Peoples’ Day, as the Seattle city council did earlier this week?
For many years, I taught world history. The key event that touched off the modern world was the Columbian Exchange, the reconnection of the Old and New Worlds and the transfer/diffusion of peoples, animals and plants, products, ideas, and so on between those two worlds. Of course, this transfer greatly favored Europeans and utterly devastated indigenous people, especially since Europeans brought all of their “old world” diseases with them, such as smallpox, which ripped through Native American populations that lacked immunity to those diseases. As indigenous people experienced mass death, mainly due to these diseases, Europeans sought another labor source they could exploit for their plantations and mines and farms in the New World, tapping into a preexisting trade in African peoples. The rapid expansion in exportation of African slaves (more than 12 million being shipped to the New World between Columbus’s voyage and the end of the slave trade in the 19th century) is another ghastly and haunting feature of the Columbian Exchange.
Columbus’s voyage changed the world, usually for the worse for the indigenous peoples of America as well as the peoples of Africa. But are we truly showing cultural sensitivity and enlightenment by renaming Columbus Day in honor of indigenous people? By rectifying a name, are we really doing anything to rectify a wrong?
Long ago in the United States, Columbus Day ceased being connected in any solid way to Columbus. It morphed into a celebration by Italian-Americans of their heritage while much of the rest of America went shopping (at least that’s what we’re told to do by incessant ads and by the media). Dismissing the celebratory traditions of Italian-Americans in the name of cultural sensitivity for indigenous peoples seems more than a little contradictory.
Want to show sensitivity to indigenous peoples? Give them back their land. Treat them with dignity and respect — you know, like they’re human beings just like you and me.
Vigorously patting yourself on the back for your sensitivity in inaugurating an “indigenous peoples’ day” — well, it just seems like another flabby exercise in cheap grace that requires no real sacrifice — and no real penance as well.
