A Parable On Obsolete Ideologies

Reading this article is one of the things that caused me to become an atheist.

This is beautiful. My only problem with it is that I can't show it to anyone who'd be able to directly benefit from the cognitive dissonance, because they would be too offended about being compared to Nazis to glean anything useful.

As someone who grew up hearing countless sermons comparing the conquest of Canaan and other Old Testament battles to the spiritual victories we should have in our lives, I can really appreciate this. For example, when the walls of Jericho fall down, this means that the "walls" that keep us from spiritual blessings need to fall down. Of course, the actual writers meant the destruction of real, stone-and-mortar walls and the death of real, flesh-and-blood people. (1)

As a child the true implications of killing every man, woman, and child in a city were lost on me. Rethinking the Bible stories as an adult, especially after seeing real footage of the aftermath of war, has a very different effect. It is interesting to note the rationalizations people use to try to reconcile the cognitive dissonance: http://epsociety.org/library/articles.asp?pid=63&ap=1

(1) I think this is what the writers of the Old Testament had in mind, regardless of whether or not the specific battles actually took place.

Truth can be as strange as fiction. From Heisenberg and the Nazi Atomic Bomb Project: A Study in German Culture, Rose 1998:

What explains the strange violation of common sense so often encountered in the postwar recollections and excuses offered by major cultural figures of the Nazi period? To any Western European or American viewer, Leni Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will is a blatantly political film, both for its choice of a Nazi Nuremberg Rally as subject matter and for its treatment of the subject in a style glorifying Nazism, Hitler, and the German race. Yet Riefenstahl herself has always claimed that Triumph of the Will was an apolitical work of art, not propaganda but merely the artistic documentary filming of an event: "Work and peace are the only messages of Triumph of the Will ," she recently declared — not the glorification of Hitler.[4] Few Western critics — including modern German critics — have been convinced by these almost pro forma justifications, since the Western mind finds it hard to comprehend how politics and art can be separated in such a self-contradictory and indeed absurd way.

The same may be said of the notorious case of Heidegger. The philosopher claimed to be "apolitical," but to an outside observer he seems to have been mired in practical Nazi politics in 1933–34, seeking to Nazify the German university system, making rectorial speeches at Freiburg in favor of the Nazi revolution, and proclaiming Hitler as the embodiment of German history, past and future. Yet for Heidegger, who thought in German categories, his unshaken faith in the "inner truth and greatness" of Nazism was not a "political" attitude, but rather an unpolitical existential commitment. After the war, of course, even Heidegger recognized that these outspoken remarks needed some glossing if they were to pass the scrutiny of his Western readers, though some of these postwar justifications of his Nazi involvement in themselves must strike a Western reader as bizarre. His depiction of his conduct during the Nazi years as having even been a clear declaration of "spiritual resistance" to the regime — even though he remained a Nazi party member until 1945 — seems almost laughable when viewed in the crisp light of Western common sense. Nevertheless, even if Heidegger's various efforts at self-justification are permeated with the sort of half-truths and evasions that are so characteristic of German apologies, they still acquire a certain logic, reasonableness, and consistency when interpreted through the preconceptions of German mentality: Supporting Hitler and wearing a Nazi badge are not really expressions of political belief, but rather of a moral inner closeness to the deepest apolitical ideals of the Nazi regime — work, peace, authenticity, humanity.[5]

The same kind of puzzle is found when we turn to figures who were less tarred with Nazism than Riefenstahl and Heidegger. The conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler had held serious doubts about the Nazi regime, attempting (unsuccessfully) in 1933–34 to defend Jewish musicians and declining to conduct "officially" (though willing to do so in a "freelance" capacity) in occupied France. Yet how is one to close one's eyes to the active and uncritical collusion with Nazism so vividly to be seen in those famous photographs of Furtwängler conducting for a row of Nazi dignitaries

...But so profound was the conditioning of the apolitical that even [Thomas] Mann could slip back, in that same essay, into peculiar habits of German thinking (e.g., the idea of the "two Germanies," one artistic and innocent, the other political and evil), which outraged his American readers of the time. Even in his "liberal" period and despite his wife's being of Jewish ancestry, Mann could also evince — like Heisenberg — a peculiarly German antisemitism. After the war, of course, Mann was never forgiven in Germany by those literary colleagues who had stayed on to profit from the patronage of the Nazi regime. Their view, uttered without a tinge of shame, was that by becoming an "outer" political emigrant Mann had betrayed the Germany of art and inner freedom, whereas they, by staying on, had effectively emigrated "innerly," preserving the inner freedom of art and so actually "resisting" Nazi tyranny: Mann had spent his years abroad in comfort, while they had suffered the mental agony of being successful protégés of the Nazi regime! Faced with this incredibly immoral foolishness, Mann refused to live in Germany after the war.

...But to believe that terror alone forced the German people to support Hitler is historically naive. The Gestapo was statistically only a small force; Hitler counted instead on his appeal to profoundly respectable elements of German mentality and tradition to attract the German people and win their consent, if not enthusiasm; the traditional elements that Hitler invoked were military and civic obedience, self-sacrifice, respectability, dignity, and so forth — all virtues in a liberal system, but debased when they served an evil system. As to the excuse that one was not "political," this is persuasive because a Western listener has grown up in a system that actually assumes that everyone is political, in the sense that all have a civic duty that obliges them to act politically whenever moral standards are violated. But in the German context, this is not so. Of Zivilcourage , as one German pastor who did resist Hitler put it, "we Germans have no concept, and indeed no authentic German word for it," only a Germanized French term. ...This explains the frequently encountered circular sequence of passing the buck of "conscience" in the Nazi period: The Church passes the duty of resistance on to the politicians, who then pass it on to the military, who return it to the Church, and so on.

...The mundane liberal-democratic ideals of the Weimar Republic lacked appeal — and legitimacy. It was hardly more than a dispensable interregnum between the German past and the German future, an imposition of victor's justice after the unmerited defeat of 1918, something lacking truly German roots and reality, and as such destined to pass away. To Westerners, of course, this inclination for an old authoritarian empire or a new revolutionary one, and the associated aversion to Weimar democracy, appear as political points of view. But to Heisenberg and many others, their support of such illiberal states remained distinctly "apolitical": Their support was spiritual, patriotic, social, national, cultural, moral, natural—indeed, anything but the detested "political" behavior that defense of the Weimar Republic represented. "Politics" was participation in Weimar and illicit, whereas sympathy for anti-Weimar sentiments was defended as a decently "apolitical" stance....Already in 1922 Heisenberg had been so converted to the ideal of German salvation through the spread of German culture that he was simply unable to understand why his patronizing visits as an emissary of victorious Nazi Germany twenty years later should give offense to Dutch or Danish scientists (any more than Martin Heidegger could understand why wearing a Nazi badge during his visit to Rome in 1936 should injure the feelings of an exiled former student he met there). [16]

...Another comforting self-deception that paralyzed any meaningful reaction to Hitler was the notion of the "good side of Nazism." This "good side" was spring-cleaning the tired and decadent life of Germany and restoring a sense of dignity and honor to it. In October 1933 Heisenberg sagely observed that "much that is good is now also being tried and one should recognize good intentions."[4]

It's a fine parable but if I might request - give the Colonels different names, albeit perhaps names beginning with 'F' and 'Y'? I do generally prefer to have only me speaking for myself, and Frank may well feel the same way. That's why while I sometimes use similar names in my dialogues, I don't go so far as to use directly identical names.

Your point feels right, but situations close to Colonel F's approach actually happened in history, so we should probably look at such evidence. For example, it isn't a million miles away from the approach taken in postwar Japan, which actually involved a religion.

Excellent. You might also look at the historical discussion over what to do with the Japanese emperor after WW2.

Shouldn't we, of all people, be most respectful of Godwin's Law, knowing as we do the dangers of affective analogy in human argument? I know you're trying to shock people out of their Cached Deep Thoughts, but that doesn't justify Dark Side Epistemology.

Generalized Godwin's Law: You should not score points simply by drawing analogies between the topic under consideration and a topic that everyone present feels morally obligated to applaud/boo when mentioned.

ETA: I understand that the point is a reductio ad absurdam of Frank's argument, but placing it in this context has a side effect of affective analogy which we ought to strongly avoid.

In our reality Americans built military bases in Germany to prevent Soviets from taking over. As of 2009 those bases are still there and operational. A lot of American personnel live there: varying accounts say from 50000 to 100000 doing duty, and their families. Germany pays America about 1 billion dollars each year for base maintenance.

If you think Germans today are strongly patriotic and have invented new symbols, I encourage you to go to Berlin and try finding indications of that.

Original Naziism was very tied to a historical milieu. The conditions of Weimar Germany won't exactly recur. But by interpreting it as a suite of metaphors, it becomes somewhat immune to context, more able to bridge the centuries - while continually enticing its adherents to drag the world back to 1935, which is the era in which the metaphors make sense.

I realize that you're not very concerned with the details of the situation here and that this is a metaphor and whatnot, but I'm a stickler for factual accuracy.

"You are General Eisenhower. It is 1945. You have just triumphantly liberated Berlin. As the remaining leaders of the old regime are tried and executed,"

General Eisenhower did not liberate Berlin; it was liberated by the Russians per inter-Allied agreement, as it was east of the Elbe River and thus fell into the Soviet zone of occupation. The Nuremberg defendants were not executed until late 1946.

"Soon, "Nazi" comes to just be a synonym for "good person". If anyone's not a member of the Nazi Party, everyone immediately becomes suspicious."

Germany was already like this in 1940. The main exception was the military (hence the July 20 plot), although even they were expected to be loyal to a much higher degree than is common nowadays.

"Good Nazis love real, physical Jews! Some Jews even choose to join the Party, inspired by their principled stand against spiritual evil."

This would never, ever, ever actually happen. Germans were already anti-Semitic before Hitler, and had been subjected to more than a decade of relentless propaganda (Der Sturmer and the like). Needless to say, no Jew would ever associate themselves in any manner whatsoever with an organization that had just killed most of the Jewish population. Nazi symbols (the swastika and the like) are still illegal in Germany, sixty-five years later, largely for this reason.

"Today, in 1945, mixed race marriage is still considered taboo by most liberal societies, including the United States."

There was definitely stigma against it, but it was legal in many states (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-miscegenation_laws#Anti-miscegenation_laws_repealed_until_1887); many more states than gay marriage is legal in today, actually.

"even in that universe, Germans would keep a strong cultural identity and find new symbols of their patriotism."

Germans today seem to be generally antagonistic to overt nationalism largely because of their history (Germany didn't even have a national anthem until 1952, despite the obvious difficulties that caused).

To promote rational rather than emotional discussion, one should avoid argumentum ad Hitlerum. The general point seems to be unrelated to Nazism, so I propose rewriting the post using a more neutral background story. Something like

“You are General Grant. It is 1865. Colonel Y proposes to outlaw Democratic Party for its support of slavery...”

The Wikiquote link should point to a specific revision, in case the page layout there is changed.

An excellent parable! The argument against the Nazism meme is quite well laid out, though Colonel Frank comes off a bit like a straw man.

Unfortunately, I think this argument misses the main difficulty the General faces. It's easy to see that it would be better to replace the movement with something more sound. But policy makers cannot simply decide whether to preserve the Nazism meme. Actually changing dominant cultural ideas is a tremendously difficult problem, especially when the belief framework includes a sense of persecution. You cannot simply make it disappear by banning swastikas and slapping pro-democracy slogans on public transit vehicles.

The demise of the Nazi ideology may hold important lessons about effecting cultural change. There is still tremendous guilt about the Nazi movement in the German psyche - they even avoid the word, preferring the abbreviation NS. What happened to cause such a rapid and thorough reversal? Was it simply the revelation of the massive atrocities? I don't know, but I don't think this cause is by itself sufficient. Clearly many factors influenced the fall of Fascism; I would be curious to see this reversal studied in depth.

On a related note, all discussions of religion are now over, and we have lost. Does it make it better that Yvain knew it going in?

Oh - this is a veiled critique of conciliatory attitudes toward religion? I though it was a direct critique of conciliatory attitudes toward political ideologies - and I was going to disagree with it. I think I detect a dark side to lumping all political ideologies together under the category of "poltitical ideology" and ignoring the specific reasons why political ideologies can become harmful or anti-rational.

Now that I see that this was a veiled critique of religion (or a specific religious grouping?) I think my reservations still stand.

What would it look like if we neglected the fundamental differences between religions - or even between sects of a "single" religion, such as Christianity? How would that distort our view of sects that never adopted doctrines like Biblical inerrancy and instead focused on an altruistic message embedded in an ancient narrative? Would we make the simplistic assumption that these sects viewed the Bible in the same way as the more reactionary sects except that certain passages were to be taken as "metaphorical"?

Would we have any hope of coping constructively with the bewildering array of beliefs, epistemologies, ethics, meta-ethics, values, emotional responses and activities that can loosely be regarded as "religious"?

Worse yet, would we fail to notice the mechanisms by which some religious (or political ideologies) become especially prone to bad belief and bad behavior? Will we believe that something magical about the name "church" or the activity of counting a rosary has some sort of harmful essence of itself? Will we be unable to constructively suggest to people who find value in religion that they are better served to divorce religion from dubious orthodoxies and to reconsider any rules they may be following which limit the freedom to inquire critically?

"Germany should completely lose all the baggage of Nazism and replace it with a completely democratic society that has no causal linkage whatsoever to its bloody past."

General Y is advocating for an absolute bastardization of history as much as General F. You cannot deny the past, because the past shaped your country and what your country did. There is a difference between interpreting the "real" meaning of Nazism, and actually erasing Nazism from history, as General Y wants.

General Y also want to place all blame on the the Nazi regime, thereby excusing the rest of the German population for actually supporting the National Socialists to begin with! You aren't dealing with "militant nationalism" here at all. You're dealing with HUMAN BEINGS.

Finally, General F could argue that de-Nazification could get out of control, leading to the rise of left wing terrorist groups who argued you haven't done enough de-Nazification and the only way to remove the "Nazi taint" is to destroy capitalism entirely and surrender to the Soviet Union.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denazification#The_radical_left_in_Germany_during_the_1960s.E2.80.9370s_and_Nazi_allegations

So, General, what is your decision?

My decision is, do not mess with a Planeswalker unless you are, at the very minimum, a Planeswalker yourself, and probably not even then. Heh.

Anyway, Colonel Y's policies are far less harmful, but still suboptimal (assuming I understand him correctly). Suppressing ideas by force -- even harmful ideas -- never works out well in the wrong run. It is far better (though, admittedly, harder) to discredit them.

Replies to the comment you are now reading accurately describe my ideas so the original post has been replaced by this disclaimer to spare your time :)

You have noticed, he says, that the new German society also has a lot of normal, "full-strength" Nazis around. The "reformed" Nazis occasionally denounce these people, and accuse them of misinterpreting Hitler's words, but they don't seem nearly as offended by the "full-strength" Nazis as they are by the idea of people who reject Nazism completely.

This part of the metaphor doesn't work.

Religious people generally condemn heretics even more strongly than nonbelievers. Liberal Christians, specifically, are generally more opposed to fundamentalist Christians' policies than liberal atheists' policies - for a variety of reasons, including the fact that they're wildly misinterpreting key passages and it's really really obvious, and the fact that there's a readily-available blue/green divide between them.

Colonel F suggests the worst kind of compromise between the optimal and the real. Political actors must not overlook reality, as many of the great revolutionaries of history did, but neither should they bend their agendas to it, as Chamberlain, Kerensky, and so many tepid liberals and social democrats did. To do so is to surrender without even fighting. This is especially true for political actors with a true upper hand, like Eisenhower or MacArthur after World War II. They must control the conversation, they must push the Overton window away from competing ideologies and towards their own, because all advantages are tentative. There is no sense compromising with a broken enemy.

That said, it is clearly unwise to be overtly punitive after a victory because punishment suggests weakness on the part of the victor, it suggests an order that can only be maintained by retaliation and fear. This is why the Emperor remained on the throne in Japan and initiatives like the Morgenthau Plan were discarded. The Emperor was not the enemy, Germany was not the enemy: the ideologies of militant nationalism were the enemy.

To me, Colonel Y is obviously correct. I guess this is because I don't buy the analogy. Religion is emergent, pervasive, and broadly well-intentioned. Nobody ever defeated it in the field of battle, because it never waged open war against civilization. On the contrary, it has cemented itself as part of civilization. Nazism, however, was transient, antagonistic to civilization, and destructive. Even if it were rendered metaphorical, it would make more problems than it would ever solve. There was a German identity before the Nazis and, as we've seen, there is one afterward.

Because of whatever parts I have read of an English translation of the Islamic scripture Quran, it seemed like 'Mein Kampf' means Quran and Nazi means 'Muslim'.

Certain self-consistent metaphysics and epistemologies lead you to belief in God. And a lot of human emotions do too. If you eliminated all the religions in the world, you would soon have new religions with 1) smart people accepting some form of philosophy that leads them to theism 2) lots of less smart people forming into mutually supporting congregations. Hopefully you get all the "religion of love" stuff from Christianity (historically a rarity) and the congregations produce public goods and charity.

thank you for this great article.

Interesting. Part way through this switches to a narrower focus but the general concept applies to obsolete philosophy or discarded theories or anything else that has essentially been "overruled" by later works. One could even make the case that Newtonian physics is an obsolete ideology.

Philosophy in particular has great deal of old stuff that sticks around because it was first, even though large parts of it are now irrelevant. While it makes an interesting historical study, it now borders on bad philosophy. I have no specific examples to share, however, this is just an impression.

I hope when you guys get done beating up on theism, you'll take on a real challenge and go up against the SWPL bloc. That religion is far more dangerous and far more powerful than poor old Judeo-Christianity, which isn't even able to order scientists around anymore. Maybe Eliezer can debate Nancy Hopkins?

My decision is to invoke Godwin's law and go back to reading about the universal wave function.

When ideological systems or positions are defined to be true, the battle is completely lost. Based on long experience, I have concluded that anyone espousing such a system or position is utterly beyond my ability to help, and that such a person only rarely happens to break out of their self-reinforcing delusion (seemingly by random noise).

Can I shoot them both for engaging in such an overextended and arbitrary metaphor?