In Fear: The History of a Political Idea, Corey Robin writes about Hannah Arendt’s revelations about how Jews helped the Nazis rule over and control Jewish populations:
For many readers, Arendt’s discussion in Eichmann of collaborators and cooperators, particularly among the Jews, deflected attention from the Nazis themselves, and unfairly cast the Jews as the corrupt agents of their own demise.... But by focusing on collaborators, Arendt was not seeking to minimize the role of the Nazis. She was instead trying to show that terror did not entail the simple monopoly of power by the fear wielders and the total lack of power among the fear sufferers. [emphasis added]
This is a key issue which goes unnoticed by so many. It’s not a complete imbalance of total power on one side and total impotence on the other; instead, it’s a desire for power on one side and a willingness to cooperate on the other — cooperation in return for a few scraps and concessions.
Terror was an affair of collusion, with no “clear-cut division between persecutors and victims.” Like Hobbes, Arendt believed that nonresistance was useful to the powerful, that it inflated their power, inspiring an image of their grim irresistibility, which intimidated potential opponents. Obedience was the result of nonresistance, and “in politics,” Arendt wrote, “obedience and support are the same.” [emphasis added]
In other words, you can’t insist that you don’t support a regime while obeying and totally submitting to it. When you obey, you become part of the political order and partially responsible for its continued power. Some people may obey less happily and enthusiastically than others, but they still obey and for those in power, that’s all that really matters.
With terror, obedience and support were not quite the same, but neither were they antithetical: in the few cases where potential collaborators and cooperators resisted their assigned roles — in Denmark, for instance, the entire country, from king to commoner, mobilized to protect the Jews — the Nazis’ power eroded, their terror proved ineffective, and the genocidal project collapsed. “The Nazis, it turned out, possessed neither the manpower nor the will power to remain ‘tough’ when they met determined opposition.” It was for that reason that the Nazis, according to Eichmann, “regarded this cooperation [between the Jewish councils and the Nazis] as the very cornerstone of their Jewish policy.”
Imagine if other European populations simply refused to cooperate with and obey the Nazis. Imagine if the bulk of the German population had refused to cooperate with and obey Nazi leaders. Imagine if the Jews themselves had refused to cooperate with and obey the Nazis. The Nazis achieved what they did because others cooperated with and obeyed them. They didn’t have the power to enforce their will without the complicity of others.
The Jewish leadership, according to Arendt, chose to collaborate with the Nazis for several reasons. First, they lacked allies in the wider population. In the few cases, in fact, where the surrounding cities and countryside came to their aid, Jewish leaders were able to mount a challenge. Second, they subscribed to a belief in eternal Jewish victimhood, and viewed anti-Semitism as an intractable gentile animus. This belief induced a kind of fatalism, in which working with the Nazis seemed like the only course of action.
Finally, the Jewish leadership suffered from the illusions of realism. In the name of being realistic, they sometimes forsook genuine opportunities for rebellion or opposition. If nothing else, they failed to see that had they done something, the fate of the Jewish people could have been no worse, and might have been a good deal better. Their realism, in other words, was more than realism: it provided active support to the Nazis. [emphasis added]
I’m sure that the reasons for cooperating and submitting seemed entirely reasonable to the Jewish leaders. I have no trouble imagining that they saw the path of cooperation as being the easiest and most realistic one, not considering that resisting could achieve anything of value. As Arendt noted, however, being realistic may itself mean being caught in an illusion. Sometimes, the pragmatic and realistic approach merely serve as excuses to avoid taking responsibility for one’s situation and taking action against injustice.
Do you suppose that the same attitudes continue today? Do you see cases where people follow the “realistic” and pragmatic course of action because they don’t think it likely that resistance will be successful — and, as a consequence, these people simply end up furthering the interests of those whom they claim to oppose?
Such attitudes are not limited to extreme situations like living under the Nazis. Consider this discussion of power and cooperation with oppression among high school girls:
True Queen Bees are the epitome of toadies–excellent both at kissing the ass of their betters while pissing on their lessers like no one’s business. I remember being young and naive and truly shocked at how girls who were just harassing me with a tenacity that would get them promoted in the SS could turn around and demure and flutter around popular boys like they were born to toady. And you find yourself thinking, “Man, if those guys only knew…” And from that moment, you can see how sexism perpetuates itself. ...
Girls who show immense ruthlessness and power to the nerds and geeks and then toady to the jocks are reinforcing the power of the jocks. That they can expect their lessers to enforce the status quo for them is the jock privilege.
For a parallel example, you won’t usually find a king or dictator who actually saddles up and oppresses his own people himself, except on the super rare occasions that are especially important. He leans on his lessers to do it–real power is shown by one’s ability to command minions, something sci-fi writers know all about, probably in no small part from being on the receiving end of abusive high school power plays.
The power relationships and structures of cooperation in the above high schools are remarkably similar to those in Nazi Germany — especially since the Queen Bee being discussed was later turned on by the others. The reason isn’t that the high school students were proto-Nazis (at least, no more so than the rest of us are), but because they were living out in a microcosm something that is common to human beings everywhere: some want power and others are willing to help them maintain power in exchange for a few minor considerations.
Cooperation with and obedience to those trying to control other human beings appears to be part of a person’s standard repertoire of behavior patterns. Cooperation and obedience on the part of citizens is how oppressive regimes — either governments or cliques — maintain their power. Do you or have you ever participated in such cooperation or obedience?
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