Hannah Arendt, in the year the Nazis came to power

From Eichmann in Jerusalem:

Now and then, the comedy breaks into the horror itself, and results in stories, presumably true
enough, whose macabre humor easily surpasses that of any Surrealist invention. Such was the
story told by Eichmann during the police examination about the unlucky Kommerzialrat Storfer of
Vienna, one of the representatives of the Jewish community. Eichmann had received a telegram
from Rudolf Höss, Commandant of Auschwitz, telling him that Storfer had arrived and hadurgently requested to see Eichmann. “I said to myself: O.K., this man has always behaved well,that is worth my while . . . I’ll go there myself and see what is the matter with him. And I go toEbner [chief of the Gestapo in Vienna], and Ebner says – I remember it only vaguely – If only hehad not been so clumsy; he went into hiding and tried to escape,’ something of the sort. And thepolice arrested him and sent him to the concentration camp, and, according to the orders of the Reichsführer (Himmler], no one could get out once he was in. Nothing could be done, neither Dr.Ebner nor I nor anybody else could do anything about it. I went to Auschwitz and asked Höss tosee Storfer. Yes, yes [Höss said], he is in one of the labor gangs.' With Storfer afterward, well, it was normal and human, we had a normal, human encounter. He told me all his grief and sorrow: I said:Well, my dear old friend [Ja, mein lieber guter Storfer], we certainly got it! What rotten luck!’

And I also said: Look, I really cannot help you, because according to orders from the Reichsführer nobody can get out. I can't get you out. Dr. Ebner can't get you out. I hear you made a mistake, that you went into hiding or wanted to bolt, which, after all, you did not need to do.' [Eichmann meant that Storfer, as a Jewish functionary, had immunity from deportation.] I forget what his reply to this was. And then I asked him how he was. And he said, yes, he wondered if he couldn't be let off work, it was heavy work. And then I said to Höss: 'Work-Storfer won't have to work!' But Höss said:Everyone works here.’ So I said: ‘O.K.,’ I said, I'll make out a chit to the effect that Storfer has to keep the gravel paths in order with a broom,' there were little gravel paths there,and that he has the right to sit down with his broom on one of the benches.’ [To Storfer] I said: `Will that be all right, Mr. Storfer? Will that suit you?’ Whereupon he was very pleased, and we shook hands, and then he was given the broom and sat down on his bench. It was a great inner joy to me that I could at least see the man with whom I had worked for so manylong years, and that we could speak with each other.” Six weeks after this normal human encounter, Storfer was dead – not gassed, apparently, but shot.

Is this a textbook case of bad faith, of lying self-deception combined with outrageous stupidity? Or is it simply the case of the eternally unrepentant criminal (Dostoevski once mentions in his diaries that in Siberia, among scores of murderers, rapists, and burglars, he never met a single man whowould admit that he had done wrong) who cannot afford to face reality because his crime hasbecome part and parcel of it? Yet Eichmann’s case is different from that of the ordinary criminal, who can shield himself effectively against the reality of a non-criminal world only within the narrow limits of his gang. Eichmann needed only to recall the past in order to feel assured that he was not lying and that he was not deceiving himself, for he and the world he lived in had once been inperfect harmony. And that German society of eighty million people had been shielded against reality and factuality by exactly the same means, the same self-deception, lies, and stupidity that had now become ingrained in Eichmann’s mentality. These lies changed from year to year, and they frequently contradicted each other; moreover, they were not necessarily the same for the various branches of the. Party hierarchy or the people at large. But the practice of self deception had become so common, almost a moral prerequisite for survival, that even now, eighteen years after the collapse of the Nazi regime, when most of the specific content of its lies has been forgotten, it is sometimes difficult not to believe that mendacity has become an integral part of the German national character. During the war, the lie most effective with the whole of the German people was the slogan of “the battle of destiny for the German people” [der Schicksalskampf des deutschen Volkes], coined either by Hitler or by Goebbels, which made self-deception easier on three counts: it suggested, first, that the war was no war; second, that it was started by destiny and not by Germany; and, third, that it’ was a matter of life and death for the Germans, who must annihilate their enemies or be annihilated. Eichmann’s astounding willingness, in Argentina as well as in, Jerusalem, to admit his crimes was due less to his own criminal capacity for self-deception than to the aura of systematic mendacity that had constituted the general, and generally accepted, atmosphere of the Third Reich.

***

From The Triumph of Stupidity:

In the first quarter of the 21^st century, it is still easy for us to forget that the idea of universal basic education – the commitment to the idea that the average person should, at a minimum, be able to read and write – remains a practically a brand new concept in historical terms. 

That, perhaps, is one reason why the social ubiquity of stupidity remains relatively unappreciated and under-analyzed, although it would seem that the Trumpist era is rapidly doing its best to remedy this situation.  Indeed, Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s brief essay on the subject, now more than 80 years old, remains one of the few notable exceptions to this rule.  Bonhoeffer was murdered by the Nazis in the year before Donald Trump’s birth, but at this historical moment his words resonate perhaps more powerfully than ever:

“In conversation with him, one virtually feels that one is dealing not at all with a person, but with slogans, catchwords and the like that have taken possession of him. He is under a spell, blinded, misused, and abused in his very being. Having thus become a mindless tool, the stupid person will also be capable of any evil and at the same time incapable of seeing that it is evil. This is where the danger of diabolical misuse lurks, for it is this that can once and for all destroy human beings.”

This is, given Bonhoeffer’s fate, eerily similar to the conclusion Hannah Arendt reaches about one of the chief architects of the Nazi mass murder, in her book Eichmann in Jerusalem.  Adolf Eichmann’s crime, per Arendt, is at its core “the inability to think.”  Eichmann is guilty of genocide and stupidity; or more precisely he is guilty of genocide because of his stupidity.  His malevolence is a product of his stupidity, and vice versa.  History may well reach a similar judgment about the man who is even now leading America into catastrophe.

In a prescient essay entitled “The Triumph of Stupidity,” published in the year the Nazis came to power in Germany, the philosopher Bertrand Russell noted:

“Given a few years of Nazi rule, Germany will sink to the level of a horde of Goths.  What has happened?  What has happened is quite simple.  Those elements of the population which are both brutal and stupid (and these two qualities usually go together) have combined against the rest. . . .  The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt.”

Russell’s thoughts – now more than 90 years old – on the contrast between the intellectuals of the 18^th and 19^th centuries and those of his day, are quite gloomy.  It is, he says, true that the most able thinkers of his day have a more intellectually sophisticated and more accurate outlook than their predecessors.  Yet Enlightenment and Victorian thinkers had influence on public affairs, while today’s most gifted intellectuals “are impotent spectators.”

He suggests that “if intelligence is to be effective, it will have to be combined with a moral fervor which it usually possessed in the past but now usually lacks.”

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grecoromanyaoi:

see one of my problems w movies n tv shows is that they often show a character of like a scientist or a historian and try and make them extremely boring but that shit just doesnt work on me. theyll b like ‘well in 13th century turkey…’ n everyone will b like ughhh shut up professor dinglebarry no one cares and like. well excuse me. stop the movie. id like to hear more about 13th century turkey.

1931 saw the publication of a remarkable detective novel. The Floating Admiral had been written by 12 members of the Detection Club, London’s society of mystery writers:

1. Victor Whitechurch
2. G.D.H. Cole and Margaret Cole
3. Henry Wade
4. Agatha Christie
5. John Rhode
6. Milward Kennedy
7. Dorothy L. Sayers
8. Ronald Knox
9. Freeman Wills Crofts
10. Edgar Jepson
11. Clemence Dane
12. Anthony Berkeley

They had written a chapter apiece, serially, without communicating. Each inherited the manuscript from the last and had to make some private sense of the story, including their own complications, before passing it on to the next contributor. To ensure fair play, each writer had to supply a satisfactory solution to the snowballing mystery when they turned in their own chapter.

Amazingly, it worked. Jacques Barzun wrote, “These members of the (London) Detection Club collaborate with skill in a piece of detection rather more tight-knit than one had a right to expect. There is enough to amuse and to stimulate detection; and the Introduction by Dorothy Sayers and supplements by critics and solvers give an insight into the writers’ thoughts and modes of work.”

Here it is.

The Supreme Court striking down Trump’s IEEPA tariffs is certainly a better outcome than the alternative. But its importance is also going to be exaggerated by people anxious to see the Court as a much more potent check on Trump (and a much less partisan institution) than it is actually going to be. As Josh Marshall observes, there are two central facts to be kept in mind. First, this was a case of the Court being ideologically cross-pressured (siding with Leonard Leo isn’t exactly a new dawn at One First Street.) And second, the fact that the tariffs were allowed to remain in place for so long in spite of the Court’s generally aggressive use of the shadow docket shows Trump still getting special treatment from his friends:

Indeed, today’s decision is actually an indictment of the Court. These tariffs have been in effect for almost a year. They have upended whole sectors of the U.S. and global economies. The fact that a president can illegally exercise such powers for so long and with such great consequences for almost a year means we’re not living in a functional constitutional system. If the Constitution allows untrammeled and dictatorial powers for almost one year, massive dictator mulligans, then there is no Constitution.

Part of the delay of this ruling is the fact that most major corporations were afraid to bring litigation because they didn’t want to go to war with the president. But that’s also an indictment of the Supreme Court’s corruption. Because they made clear early on that there was little, if any, limit they would impose on Trump’s criminality or use of government power to impose retribution on constitutionally protected speech or litigation. So that’s on the Court too. But it’s only part of the equation. The Court also allowed the tariffs to remain in place while the government appealed the appellate decision striking down the tariffs back in August. Let me repeat that: back in August, almost six months ago.

In other words, most of the time in which these illegal tariffs were in effect was because of that needless stay. The logic of the stay was that deference to President’s claim of illegal powers was more important than the harm created by hundreds of billions in unconstitutional taxes being imposed on American citizens. It’s a good example of what law professor Leah Litman — one of the most important voices on the Court’s corruption — earlier this morning called the Court’s corruption via “passivity,” empowering anti-constitutional actions through deciding not to act at all or encouraging endless delays it could easily put a stop to in the interests of the constitutional order.

As Marshall says, this is a case where the balance of equities pretty clearly favored a stay, given how difficult it’s going to be for people and entities who paid the illegal taxes to be made whole:

Officials across the Trump administration are scrambling to devise legal strategies that would allow the government to keep billions of dollars in tariff revenue the Supreme Court said was illegally collected.

Early ideas include policies to discourage companies from claiming their refunds, prevent the government from paying the money back or otherwise preserve at least some of the tariff revenue, according to five people familiar with the conversations, granted anonymity to discuss them.

And needless to say, even if some companies are able to get the money back the consumers the costs were largely or entirely passed on to are permanently screwed. There’s no chance that the tariffs would have been in place for six extra months under a Democratic president, and the costs of this differential treatment are far from minor.

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ofmindandheart:

fabiansociety:

man, fuck the gop. fuck transphobia, fuck fascism, i’m so tired

New law puts Kansas at vanguard of denying trans identities on drivers licenses, birth certificates

Kansas has sent a letter to each of their trans residents saying they are suspending their drivers licenses, effective today (February 26th), with no grace period for updating credentials. It directs trans people to go to a DMV to surrender their old license and be issued a new one that shows their sex as the one assigned at birth. (Though they can’t drive themselves to the DMV because, y’know, their drivers licenses are suspended.)

Text of the full letter available here.

They are doing this the extra cruel way on purpose. If they knew which people to send this letter to, then they could have just as easily just automatically mailed them replacement licenses. But forcing them to make arrangements to travel to a DMV, present themselves in person (to be potentially humiliated/deadnamed by the DMV employees to their faces), and to be unable to drive themselves to their work/school in the interim, are all just ways of making this process even harder. And because there’s a National Driver Register database that lists individual drivers’ status and history information, it’s not necessarily even as simple as just moving to a different state and get a new license issued there, because it will presumably show their previous license as being suspended.

Someone has been comparing this to the day in 1938 when the German government invalidated all German passports held by Jewish people, forcing them to surrender their old passports and instead have passports stamped with a “J” for Jewish on them.

For trans people, carrying an ID that misgenders them opens them to intrusive questions, harassment, and even violence.

There’s a nonprofit in Colorado, the Trans Continental Pipeline, that helps queer people relocate from unaccepting/unsafe states to Colorado. Colorado shares a border with Kansas, and is the closest blue state. Apparently they are getting overwhelmed with requests. If you have spare money to donate, now seems like a good time. If you’re in Colorado and have time to volunteer, their volunteer form is here.

It’s far from the first time crazy Cuban exiles have united with crazy Americans and tried to invade Cuba, but we should probably talk about the newest time since you never know when Donald the Dove will use it as an excuse to take the island over.

The brother of one of the men who was killed after taking a U.S.-registered speedboat into Cuban waters and allegedly opening fire on the country’s border patrol said his sibling was fixated on overthrowing Cuba’s government.   

Misael Ortega Casanova, brother of Michael Ortega Casanova, told The Associated Press that his brother had fallen into an “obsessive and diabolical” quest to free Cuba from its communist government. Cubans in the United States and Cuban Americans have long protested the current Cuban government, and accused the island’s leadership of human rights violations. 

“They became so obsessed that they didn’t think about the consequences nor their own lives,” Casanova said of his brother and the nine other men who were aboard the boat.  

The Cuban government said Wednesday afternoon that a speedboat registered in Florida had entered Cuban waters carrying weapons and 10 Cuban nationals who lived in the U.S. However, the White House confirmed to CBS News on Thursday that at least one American was one of four people killed by Cuba’s coast guard after the occupants of the boat allegedly opened fire on the Cuban military. The news was first reported by Axios.

Four people were killed and six others aboard the boat, which came from Florida, were wounded and arrested, according to Cuba’s Interior Ministry. 

In addition to the American citizen who was killed, a U.S. official confirmed to CBS News that at least one U.S. citizen was also among those arrested. At least one of the boat’s occupants had a K-1 visa, the official said, which allows a citizen’s fiancé to travel to the U.S. to get married, and others are believed to be legal permanent residents of the U.S., although it was not clear how many.

Cuba is, of course, a mess. But nothing does more to allow the current government to remain in power more than it being able to repeatedly point to the United States and its imperialism as the major cause of their problems. It’s of course far from the only reason. But it is part of the reason.

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