Remembering

Do our minds work better in the morning?

I listened to this interesting "debate" the day before remembrance Day that I just recalled so clearly in my dozy morning state. The CBC was interviewing Mark Kurlansky author of Nonviolence: The History of a Dangerous Idea. I give them credit for raising this important concept at a time when we are almost glorifying war and violence. Is it just me or isn't the line "Never Again" part of Remembrance Day? You didn't see it once this year and that was deliberate.

Then the CBC brought in the celeb Canadian academic Margaret MacMillan to offer an alternative view to Kurlansky's. Unfortunately MacMillan doesn't really understand nonviolence. She claimed that the British were engaged in nonviolence when they were appeasing Hitler in the run-up to the war. Nonviolence is active not reactive and has nothing to do with appeasement.

She proceeded to claim that the Second World War, that trump card to nonviolence, was inevitable. You might have heard the familiar, incredulous refrain: "So you think nonviolence would have worked against Hitler?" Don't you know that the Allies had to make war on the Axis? There was no way to liberate the concentration camps and remove the Nazi regime without resorting to violence.

The major bone of contention between the debaters came down to the fates of the occupants of Nazi concentration camps, the majority of whom were Jews. MacMillan claimed that they could have done nothing but been marched slowly to their deaths. Kurlansky rightly pointed out several cases where nonviolent action slowed of prevented the murder of Jews. He wondered what might have happened had the Jews and the other victims of the concentration camps embraced nonviolent tactics.

I should say that I don't criticize the victims of Nazism for not standing up for themselves in this way. It was an impossible time, unbelievable. By going along with the Nazis they probably thought that they were saving themselves and their families. Until the very end. I would have probably done the same in their place. Much thought went into dividing and destroying the Jewish inhabitants of Europe.

I think that if the Germans really wanted their pure state they should have been forced by their victims to get blood on their hands. Refuse to go into ghettos, march and occupy symbolic locations. As difficult and scary as it would be: make them fight you and hurt you. Though difficult in a totalitarian state, every effort should have been made to make this resistance public and visible. Even dictators need, if not popular support, then popular indifference.

The success of the concentration camps was that they were far away from the public eye; is it any wonder that they were built in the middle of nowhere? This was industrial genocide, something that would have appalled most Germans had it been exposed. This is much like modern factory farms; if people knew what was happening to the animals there they would challenge it.

Humans, I firmly believe, are good at heart. And perhaps that's why nonviolence works. It recognizes this reality and gives emboldens it whereas violence dulls it and puts it to sleep.

Perhaps it's time for the morning philosopher to get some breakfast . . .