Perusing today's
Telegraph, my attention was drawn to a
feature concerning the belated discovery of an 'Auschwitz Album' by Washington's
Holocaust Memorial Museum. The article details the historical detective work involved in identifying the SS officers depicted, mostly in informal settings, in the album's photographs, and also mentions the supposed discordance between the seemingly relaxed and pleasurable off-duty life of the SS officers and their 'helpers', as shown in the album, and the sordid reality that came about in their pursuit of a national socialist European superstate. That is, the
'banality of evil' phenomena discussed by
Hannah Arendt. So, what we see is a collection of
photographs of banal little men, and banal little functionaries, going about their banal little lives as they played their bit parts in a grandiose project of human perfection
Both Hitler and Stalin discovered in the camps the means to realize their belief in total power, a belief that meant not only that "everything is permitted" but implied the far more radical proposition that "everything is possible." The camps were designed as "laboratories" in which "experiments" were conducted to test that proposition, and what those experiments demonstrated was that "the omnipotence of man" is bought at the price "of the superfluity of men." Exploring further through the museum's photographic archives, another 'Auschwitz Album', the
Lili Jacob album (deposited at the
Yad Vashem) documents the reality of defeat, of passively awaiting what is to come. With the knowledge of history, it is difficult to view the Jacob album, with its record of the Auschwitz ramp selection procedure, and the passive faces and defeated body language of the national socialist Utopia's passed over. After all, the viewer knows what they, the newly arrived and yet to be sorted, do not know; that their enemies were prepared
to take any steps necessary to be rid of them. With that in mind, the viewer may wonder, would those passive, defeated Jews have behaved differently if they knew the magical fate the
horoscope consulting fantasists had in store for them? Would they, if they had had the means, dished out a 'disproportionate response' to protect themselves? Would they have realised, that when the shit hits the fan, the instinct to survive overrides notions of 'morality'?
Arendt claimed
that fewer than six million Jews would have died if the Jewish councils had not collaborated to various degrees with Nazis like Eichmann. Even anarchy and noncooperation would have been better, she stated, than the effort to act as though the occupiers were traditional anti-Semites who might somehow be bribed or appeased. thereby laying part of the blame for the Holocaust at the lairs of the '
Judenrats'.
Such matters are, of course, pertinent today, in fact that is the reason I'm discussing them. For instance, the nuclear weapon seeking, mohammedan death cultists in iran continue to feed themselves a diet of
propaganda that the banal little geek
Goebbels would have been proud of producing and the 'progressive' instinct is to
appease.
Just as the 'progressive' instinct is to offer no physical resistance to any knife wielding shite, the bastard children of social and economic liberalism, that pollute the streets of Londonistan, and elsewhere. Recent commentaries by
Jenny McCartney and
Rod Little add some background to 'progressive' thinking on matters relating to knife crime and criminality in general.
It is my contention that the failure of the 'progressive' agenda is its denial of 'original sin', or its delusion that the human primates' flaws can be fixed with good intentions. Perhaps, I surmise, as a means to deny the progressives' very own repressed inappropriate instincts.
As a reductionist Darwinist, and therefore, ironically enough, what could be described as a godless neo-Calvinist (ok, I've made that up, but it fits), I have no trouble at all getting in touch with my very own animal within. That is, I'm only too aware of my own capacity for aggression and I can read that capacity in my fellow creatures. When push comes to shove, I couldn't give a fuck about cheek turning and respecting the rights of others. Ironically enough, on the few occasions when I've been prepared to 'go nuclear', to use disproportionate force, my would be aggressors have backed down, because, instinctively, they could read the nurtured violence manifested by my 'body language'.
As an example, a few years ago, when I was a mature student at a nearby university, I was having a conversation outside of a fast food outlet with a younger student. That younger student fitted the stereotype of the weedy intellectual and the drunken young primates who were also outside the food hole instinctively picked up on that. Naturally, he was a target for some social hierarchy display. One of them approached him, making some muddled comment about 'having change'. I stepped in front of the street scum, blocking access to the student, but also positioning myself in an optional position to launch some shock and awe (the reptilian part of my brain was deciding upon whether to employ a Muay Thai knee blow to the liver, or an elbow strike to the temple). I barely glanced at the posturing primate and carried on the conversation. The student, sensing that I was unafraid, did not display any appeasement behaviour because he 'knew', on an animal level, that I could deal with the situation. The drunken young ape also realised that he was out of his depth but, not wanting to lose face with his fellow creatures, continued to stand near me. One of his friends intervened and led him away, excusing the youth, and displaying the necessary appeasement behaviour, with an explanation that the would be aggressor was drunk. In acknowledgement I said 'alright mate', in full regional accent, just to remind them that I wasn't a 'southern ponce' (the other student's accent betrayed his roots). That was it, nothing happened. And nothing happened because I was prepared, ruthlessly, for something to happen; something that the young primate would never have forgotten. However, because I knew that I was alpha male in that situation, and because I knew I had nothing to prove, I let the youth walk away unscathed.
The progressives, with their notions of innate human goodness and pliability, would, no doubt, balk at such a reductionist view of human interaction as the one I have described. But, I imagine, in horror, that the railway station's passively waiting, who had surrendered to the mercy of those who had dreams of a 'better world', may have been better served if their leaders had cast aside deluded notions of appeasement and wreaked havoc upon their enemies, whatever the cost.