Each act, each occasion, is worse than the last, but only a little worse. You wait for the next and the next. You wait for one great shocking occasion, thinking that others, when such a shock comes, will join with you in resisting somehow. You don’t want to act, or even talk alone; you don’t want to “go out of your way to make trouble.” Why not?—Well, you are not in the habit of doing it. And it is not just fear, fear of standing alone, that restrains you; it is also genuine uncertainty.
Uncertainty is a very important factor, and, instead of decreasing as time goes on, it grows. Outside, in the streets, in the general community, “everyone” is happy. One hears no protest, and certainly sees none. You speak privately to your colleagues, some of whom certainly feel as you do; but what do they say? They say, “It’s not so bad” or “You’re seeing things” or “You’re an alarmist.”
And you are an alarmist. You are saying that this must lead to this, and you can’t prove it. These are the beginnings, yes; but how do you know for sure when you don’t know the end, and how do you know, or even surmise, the end? On the one hand, your enemies, the law, the regime, the Party, intimidate you. On the other, your colleagues pooh-pooh you as pessimistic or even neurotic. You are left with your close friends, who are, naturally, people who have always thought as you have.
But your friends are fewer now. Some have drifted off somewhere or submerged themselves in their work. You no longer see as many as you did at meetings or gatherings. Now, in small gatherings of your oldest friends, you feel that you are talking to yourselves, that you are isolated from the reality of things. This weakens your confidence still further and serves as a further deterrent to—to what? It is clearer all the time that, if you are going to do anything, you must make an occasion to do it, and then are obviously a troublemaker. So you wait, and you wait.
But the one great shocking occasion, when tens or hundreds of thousands will join with you, never comes. That’s the difficulty. If the last and worst act of the whole regime had come immediately after the first and smallest, thousands, yes, millions, would have been sufficiently shocked—if, let us say, the gassing of the Jews in ’43 had come immediately after the “German Firm” stickers on the windows of non-Jewish shops in ’33. But of course this isn’t the way it happens. In between come all of the hundreds of little steps, some of them imperceptible, each of them preparing you not to be shocked by the next. Step C is not so much worse than Step B, and, if you did not make a stand at Step B, why should you at Step C? And so on to Step D.
And one day, too late, your principles, if you were ever sensible of them, all rush in upon you. The burden of self-deception has grown too heavy, and some minor incident, in my case my little boy, hardly more than a baby, saying “Jewish swine,” collapses it all at once, and you see that everything has changed and changed completely under your nose. The world you live in—your nation, your people—is not the world you were born in at all. The forms are all there, all untouched, all reassuring, the houses, the shops, the jobs, the mealtimes, the visits, the concerts, the cinema, the holidays. But the spirit, which you never noticed because you made the lifelong mistake of identifying it with the forms, is changed. Now you live in a world of hate and fear, and the people who hate and fear do not even know it themselves; when everyone is transformed, no one is transformed. Now you live in a system which rules without responsibility even to God. The system itself could not have intended this in the beginning, but in order to sustain itself it was compelled to go all the way.
Suddenly it all comes down, all at once. You see what you are, what you have done, or, more accurately, what you haven’t done (for that was all that was required of most of us: that we do nothing). You remember those early morning meetings of your department in the university when, if one had stood, others would have stood, perhaps, but no one stood. A small matter, a matter of hiring this man or that, and you hired this one rather than that. You remember everything now, and your heart breaks. Too late. You are compromised beyond repair.
When I was a kid, I was taught never to hit someone unless they hit me first. There were, of course, exceptions. Is someone hitting your brother? You’d better bust his nose. I did that too. I did it and I faced the consequences, whatever they were.
Do we still have the ability to act without violence? We shouldn’t be violent if the answer is still yes. But, we’re animals who were born from the chaos of a violent and terrifying world. Our ancestors had to outrun predators and enemies at least long enough to reproduce or we wouldn’t be here, and that is written in our blood as far back as we can see in time.
It is in every one of us to take things to extremes. Our ancestors done it over and over again, and under the right circumstances any one of us would stand over our enemy, covered in blood, breathing and smiling like a chimpanzee with the bloodied corpse of his former foraging mate at his feet.
It is in our nature to identify with one group or another, and as we become more connected, all of the splintered groups that the world had before are forming into two large consolidated groups. What really makes me sad is that I don’t think there is a permanent solution. That makes me wonder if violence is even worth it, again, when there are still ways to solve problems without violence.
If we colonized another planet right now with likeminded people and built a perfect system of government, it wouldn’t take very long for our humanity to get in the way of it. Someone would always be convinced, and then convince others, that they could do it better. Their identity would get lost in the group and then war would be inevitable.
Violence is a temporary solution. You kill your enemy and then wait for your new enemy to come. That is what I see in history, and I’m very thankful that I live in a time and place where violence doesn’t have to be a part of my life. I spent the first 17 years of my life in violence, and ultimately violence was what brought it all to an end. I don’t miss it. I don’t miss seeing that wild look in the eyes of men. I don’t like seeing people become animals.
I believe that we can still solve it without becoming monsters.
Of course, I didn’t forget what I just read. I have seen the incrementalism here and I realize that things that would have seemed absurd 10 years ago are just par for the course now. We still have good people in the right places. I’m not a religious man, but as a father of small children, I pray that they succeed over the next four years and that things will ultimately go back to normal.
COVID threw a lot of people off. It made a lot of things excusable that wouldn’t have been in any other time. We’re still not really past all of that.
I just hope that people don’t turn to violence. I have lived in that world and it is very, very, very ugly.
If it does ever come to that, I hope that the people who push for it with words have the balls to get out there and crawl around in it. I hope that they aren’t just sitting around inspiring that in other people.
I don’t know. I’ve got a lot more to say but I have a lot to do today.
Let’s be good people while we can and pray that we don’t have to be anything else. Too many people have been pecked to the bone by vultures and crows throughout our history. If we don’t have to litter the world with corpses, let’s not. Please.
Nazis are going to commit multiple genocides and start world war 3 if they get the chance. Choosing nonviolence against Nazis means permitting violence against everyone. Choosing violence against Nazis means preventing violence against everyone. True pacifism is active.
Well, if you really believe that then organize and get your hands dirty. I wish you luck.
I believe we can win without violence.