Anti-Fascism 101

09-12-2024

“One is tempted to recommend the story as required reading in political science for all students who wish to learn something about the power inherent in nonviolent action and in resistance to an opponent possessing vastly superior means of violence.”
(Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem, p. 171)

The hidden heart of this quote, and of Arendt’s thought in my view, is thoughtlessness. And the pathetic paragon of thoughtlessness in her body of writings is of course Adolf Eichmann, whom she treats—with a surprising degree of humor—as a comical figure. Arendt describes the “horrible” phenomenon of Eichmann’s thoughtlessness as “outright funny.” For example, “officialese,” as she terms it, “became his language because he was genuinely incapable of uttering a single sentence that was not a cliché.” As such, Eichmann’s role as an actor in the theater of his trial, according to Arendt, is “not a ‘monster’,” but rather “a clown.” The reason for this clownishness, Arendt concludes, is that Eichmann was—shockingly—too completely “normal,” specifically in a horrific Nazi context in which “only ‘exceptions’ could be expected to act ‘normally’.”
           
Zooming in further on the problem, Arendt observes that Eichmann showed an “inability to ever look at things from the other fellow’s point of view.” In short, Eichmann dramatizes for Arendt the horrendous potential of the clownish thoughtlessness of the average modern person. As the above reference to “comedy” already hints, the dramatological as such is equally central for Arendt. In fact, she even goes so far as to compare political speech to a dance performance (in her essay, “What Is Freedom?”), while the opening pages of Eichmann in Jerusalem describe his trial as a theatrical performance.
           
Equally theatrical is the opposite of such thoughtlessness, which she describes in her Lectures on Kant’s Political Philosophy as a maximally “enlarged mentality.” Such a mentality, Arendt explains, “by the force of the imagination makes the others present.” By this, she means that the act of reimagining, when forming a political judgment, incorporates indefinitely many other peoples’ perspectives. Her analogy for this incorporation is the ideal theatrical spectator, who incorporates various figurative angles on a given performance to judge its merits. Getting back to Eichmann in Jerusalem, the primary example of this enlarged mentality there, contrasted with Eichman the thoughtless clown, is the equally theatrical heroism of the people of Denmark. Empowered by their thoughtful imagination of their Jewish countryfolk “others” as fully human—and “unique among the countries of Europe”—the Danish people openly defied the Nazis’ attempts to forcibly evacuate the Jewish people from Denmark. And this is where the opening quote for these remarks takes the stage.
           
I will now briefly summarize this maximally important story. First, Arendt notes that “only the Danes dared speak out on the subject [of “the Jewish question”] to their German masters,” whereas all the other European nations held their tongues, and resisted in secret (if at all). Second, when the Nazis proposed the infamous yellow badge be used to identify Jewish people, the Nazis “were simply told that the King would be the first to wear it.” Third, the Danes argued that, “because the stateless refugees [non-Danish Jewish people] were no longer German citizens, the Nazis could not claim them without Danish consent.” Fourth, as a consequence—and one that she describes as “truly amazing”—“everything went topsy-turvy.” For example, “riots broke out in Danish shipyards, where the dock workers refused to repair German ships and then went on strike,” which shows the power of everyday people to fight fascism. Fifth, when the Nazis came to kidnap the Jewish people and begin their deportation from Denmark (ultimately intended for the concentration camps), the Danish police allowed the Nazis to take only those Jewish people who were “at home and willing to let them in”—which figure ended up being merely 477 of the 7,800 Jewish people who were there. Sixth, the Jewish authorities in Denmark publicized the impending kidnappings openly in the synagogues, giving the people “just enough time to leave their apartments and go into hiding” among a Danish community in which every citizen welcomed them. Finally, with regard to the last phase of Denmark’s response, the secret evacuation of the hidden Jewish people to safety in Sweden, the extensive cost of this evacuation, Arendt notes, “was paid largely by wealthy Danish citizens.”
       
Even more surprising to Arendt than the actions of the Danish people is the fact that their imaginative thoughtfulness proved contagious, in that “the German officials who had been living in [Denmark] for years were no longer the same” as they had been back in Germany. In fact, even “the special S.S. units employed in Denmark frequently objected to ‘the measures they were ordered to carry out by the central agencies.’” In conclusion, Denmark was “the only case we know of in which the Nazis met with open native resistance,” and “the result seems to have been that those exposed to it changed their minds.” In other words, the Danish citizens imagined themselves in their Jewish neighbors’ place, and then acted politically on the basis of this reimagining, which managed to inspire even some of the Nazis, also, to reimagine the Jewish people as fully human.

Herein I find a powerful lesson for today, inspired by Arendt’s famously brave expressions of truth, undeterred by reigning prejudices and dogmas. As predicted by the Israeli architect Eyal Weizman in his 2012 book Hollow Land, the situation in Palestine has deteriorated precipitously since then, though at an even more rapid pace than he anticipated. From the perspectives of both scholarly foresight, and popular hindsight, these tragedies are a logical consequence of the inherently violent systems of Israeli occupation (for 16 years) and apartheid (for 75 years). Thus, I wish to close by echoing a growing chorus of international academics in demanding the dismantling of those systems, and for their replacement by either a (preferably) one-state or two-state solution. Under such a reconstruction, both the Israeli and Palestinian peoples of today can live as free and equal citizens before the law of a modern liberal democracy. In this spirit, the people of the world, protesting on streets across the globe, continue to chant, above all others, one central demand: “Free Palestine!”
 
About the author:
Joshua M. Hall’s research focuses varied historical and geographical lenses on philosophy’s boundaries, especially the intersection of aesthetics, psychology, and social justice. This includes seventy-seven peer-reviewed journal articles, five of which have recently appeared in Spanish translation. He is co-editor of Philosophy Imprisoned: The Love of Wisdom in the Age of Mass Incarceration. His related work in the arts includes a nomination by the editors of Verdad literary journal for the 16th annual Best of the Net Anthology, one mini-chapbook collection (Bachata Adobe), poems in numerous literary journals, and thirty years of experience in dance.