January 3, 2019
He who shall not be named tweeted something along the lines of ” there will ALWAYS be walls and ALWAYS be wheels” in recent days. The statement relies on the notion that there is something inevitable, like a law of nature or a law of history that will happen or will continue to happen regardless of our political aspirations.
The assumption of immutable forces were at the root of totalitarian movements, the law of history for Stalin, the law of nature for Hitler. As Hannah Arendt put it (and I paraphrase to my best ability) the ideology underlying totalitarianism assumes that there are inevitable necessities ruling the course of history. These can be laws of race or class, but they are immune to individual desires or political goals. You can either act in accordance with those necessities, or you’ll be swept aside by the forces of history.
In a truly totalitarian society that ideology is supplemented by terror which tries to eradicate any aspect of human freedom and divergent thought. We are certainly not at this point. But I think it is important to realize that people who have lost a sense of community, a sense of predictability in their world when threatened with a decline in status or loss of what’s familiar, are open to ideologies that relieve them of a sense of (failed) responsibility of their own fate. They are open to totalitarian organizations that make them feel part of inevitable history rather than superfluous human beings. What will be, will be, no use resisting. So, enjoy the ride (sounds like a familiar tweet as well, doesn’t it?)
State-organized terror might not be on for us right now, but it did happen in history, as we know. And being reminded of it helps us to be forearmed, or so one hopes. Usually museums and memorials do that for us. We visit them, however, only on occasion. Perhaps it’s better to make reminders of the consequences of terror more visible in our every day life. In Berlin, for example, a project, Places of Remembrance, by Renata Stih and Frieder Schnock put signs on street lamp posts which depict images of daily scenes and profession on one side and display condensed versions of anti-Jewish Nazi regulations passed between 1933 and 1945 on the reverse side. They remind us of shared human experiences before people were divided into those allowed to live and those violently put to death. All in keeping with an ideology that “necessitated” pure blood lines. I wonder what the equivalent might look like in this country.
Description and images from that art project are in the link above.
My photographs today are of Berlin and its Jewish memorials.
Music: Dies Irae from Verdi’s Requiem –
and a documentary/concert performance for those who have more time to watch, recalling the requiem being performed at Theresienstadt concentration camp.
alice meyer
It didn’t change anything for the better, but helped to focus the mind, when Jeff Merkley said at his Town Hall meeting yesterday, “We are on a path to tyranny.” Our response, he said, must be to take individual political responsibility and action. It is up to us, the citizens of this country, to change the trajectory we are on. It will be hard work but we CAN do it.
Sara Lee
Amazing – and wonderful – that your wise, eloquent post could emerge from that unbelievably stupid – even for Trump – comment about walls and wheels….