In 1995 the German publishing house Aufbau-Verlag printed two volumes of diaries, covering the years 1933 to 1945. They were written by Victor Klemperer, a German Jewish professor of Roman languages, who had survived the Holocaust. The diaries won great acclaim both in Germany and later in English translation in the US – Peter Gay, in his review for the New York Times, declared them a collective masterpiece and referred to Klemperer as “one of the greatest diarists—perhaps the greatest—in the German language.” Klemperer had been dead for over 30 years by the time of publication, having spent his post-Holocaust years in his hometown of Dresden, chronicling life in East Germany as well.
Immediately after the war, Klemperer published a small book, a lexicon of what he called Lingua tertii imperii (“the language of the Third Reich”), in which he noted and analyzed the rhetorical giveaways of the regime in painstaking detail. Equal part linguistic analysis and survivor’s memoir, the book describes many of the rhetorical tools that we see in abominal revival in our current political landscape. (It is a hard read, on many levels.)
Some contemporary authors, Timothy Snyder’s On Tyranny comes to mind, pick up on Klemperer’s analysis of the language of fascism and pre-facism and draw out the parallels to our time in more accessible form. Tools of supremacist language range from distorting the meaning of words, lulling people into a collective trance, erasing boundaries between fact and fiction, making it impossible to hold on to truth. Importantly, the rhetoric establishes an infinite repeat of an “us vs them,” uniting your followers against a common enemy.
Klemperer describes numerous ways in which truth is thrown out of the window. For one, leaders ignore it and supplant it with numerous small lies. Secondly, they do so by relentlessly repeating phrases and ideas, making the concepts or slogans familiar, familiarity that builds an emotional connection between them and their followers. Thirdly, they consciously use contradictory logic, forcing us to abandon rational reasoning. And lastly, they demand unlimited faith and loyalty, establishing faith over reason. When you put loyalty and emotion before reason, you will not be able to be persuaded by rational argument, becoming a true follower buying into any lie delivered by the leader.
All this came to mind when I was confronted with anti-Semitic language and symbols displayed in the media images of the people storming the Capitol last week. The rioters came from many different backgrounds, but were fused by shared “enemies,” using language (displayed on t-shirts and sweatshirts, or symbolized by hand gestures or types of flags and banners) that identified the enemy as “the Jew.”
Some of the language is easily (and horridly) accessible, like Camp Auschwitz printed on a sweatshirt. Other parts are more available to the initiated – or do you know what “6MWE” on a t-shirt means? It is an acronym common among white supremacists standing for “6 Million Wasn’t Enough.” Or have you noticed how certain names appear in triple parentheses? They stand for “the Jew,” or Jewish, a linguistic marker that fascist Germans used to employ: Forced to repeat “the Jew Klemperer” enough times, one thinks of that person not as Victor Klemperer but as “The Jew.” The Jews were in effect deprived of their name, and in turn of their humanity.
The Anti-Defamation League has a website that compiles and explains these various hate symbols, a great educational tool. Here are some examples.
I have been unable to stop thinking about the rhetoric used by the GOP and these words found in The American Interest, (not exactly a hotbed of progressivism, but I do try to read all sides…) by the very smart Elisabeth Draw:
“Demagogues and authoritarians need enemies. They use language to distort, manipulate, and corrupt discourse; to direct, control, and oppress…..In Hitler’s Germany linguistic habits shaped attitude and culture, and eventually acquiescence to a system of segregation and dehumanization. The language of the Third Reich was corrosive, and contagious.”
Someone here, and now, surely has learned and re-implemented that lesson. We saw the consequences on January 6th.
Photographs are from Dresden, Klemperer’s hometown.
Music is presenting Victor Klemperer’s cousin, Otto Klemperer, a world-renowned conductor. I chose Egmont because it is a tragedy, written by the quintessential German poet Goethe, about the downfall of a man who trusts in the goodness of those around him.
