Despite the title and timing, this post is not about who you think it’s about. The actual person in question will remain nameless as, ultimately, it’s not about him. (I am obfuscating several volatile words to protect both me and the people in question, just in case.)
A friend (associate? friend of a partner?) recently lost their father. This was not a surprise, it was not unexpected, and it was the merciful end to a long and grueling illness. After some weeks, the funeral was held, and I attended with my partner who has known the friend since grade school.
I myself only ever met or hung around the deceased man for a short time over ten years ago when he lost his long-time girlfriend in a horrible accident. I showed up at the time with compassion and ready-to-heat easy meals because dealing with the messy business of death can be mentally and emotionally exhausting. It’s in my DNA to automatically make food when someone has to put a loved one to rest.
One cannot “decide” that another human is “deserving” of compassion. Humans are humans, and all humans deserve compassion, and the way we express that during times of sudden loss is usually with a casserole.
However, compassion does not mean unconditional acceptance and support of the whole of a person’s being. It mainly means defaulting to being kind (not nice), or at least not actively being an asshole.
As we sat in the chapel and watched the video montage of photos from his life, I was horrified to find that I had never seen the deceased man without a shirt and was thus unaware of the massive sw@st1k@ tattoo on his belly, complete with a stylized era-referencing eagle. He also had another similar tattoo on his arm, and his photos showed him sporting necklaces with the same icon.
I was not necessarily shocked by this – it made sense given some of the crowd he was known to hang with – but the dichotomy of knowing his ideology in contrast to the image presented to him as a loving grandfather and supportive paternal figure being grieved in his community has given me some pause.
The Origin of Bigotry (Psychologically)
The first thought that I struck with was that “n@z!s are people, too,” but that’s not the tolerant flex that you might think it is. If anything, it makes the ability of someone to be a human – to have human experiences, to have a human family – and still espouse such hateful and dehumanizing ideology even more abhorrent.
Am I using inflammatory language? No, I’m using emotional language because bigotry comes from an emotional place – or, more directly, an irrational place. The labels and identities projected on others to dehumanize them in order to justify prejudice and bigotry are based in fear. More importantly, it’s the fear of the unknown and, worse (and more accurately), the fear of an assumed threat but rarely an actual threat.
NOTE: This is different from fearing something that has proven to be an actual threat. One is not a bigot if there is repeated proof of danger from a sector such as abuse at the hands of unmanaged narcissists, for instance, or threat of death by police force against minority populations. Also note that this acknowledgement of specific danger is not generalized to an entire population. (Police forces to do not count as a “population” because their participation is voluntary.)
In all of the history of civilization, growth and advancement in any significant way comes from cooperation and unity – and then is repurposed for war and violence to support real or imagined defensiveness. It is only after this phase that the careful application of fear creates the power structures that we take for granted.
History tells this story again and again. The earliest settlements developed from a need to support a growing community, to attempt to produce more food than was immediately needed, to preserve and conserve food and energy to get through lean times. Agriculture was born from need coupled with observation and cooperation, and likewise animal domestication similarly followed for the sake of the collective. Then, groups that wanted the resources without learning or doing the work tried to take those resources. Defenses were created,
I realized after much thought that this was the crux of the difference between rational beings and bigots – and, yes, I’m going to use that distinction because a bigot is someone who is prejudiced and not being prejudiced is the cultural default and thus does not have a separate title.
By All Means, Let’s Bring in Popper
If you’ve spent any time at all in a classroom that discusses social psychology, political science, or modern history, you will at least have heard the name Karl Popper. Most people who know about Karl Popper will probably be familiar with the Paradox of Tolerance that says that if a society extends tolerance to those who are intolerant, it risks enabling the eventual dominance of intolerance. (Yeah, that does sound topical and familiar, doesn’t it?)
I posit that the paradox exists mainly because of the misconception that I mentioned above:
Tolerance is a condition of the social contract that is only extended when one engages in society in good faith – which is anathema to n@z!sm specifically and bigotry in general. The argument that bigoted people will offer is something along the lines of “So much for the tolerant left!” The problem with this attempt is the assumption that the opposite of intolerance is tolerance, and it’s not.
The opposite of intolerance is inclusion.
Inclusion does not preclude that the attitudes and intentions of all of those included are going to be honored and supported. It just means that your presence is acknowledged as a human being.
In all of the history of civilization, growth and advancement in any significant way comes from cooperation and unity – and then is often repurposed for war and violence to support real or imagined defensiveness. Only then through the careful application of fear do the power structures that we take for granted emerge.
After Reflection
In the couple of months that have passed since I began writing this piece, other losses have occurred, and the forces of prejudice, bigotry, and racism have amplified their efforts to establish a culturally dominant foothold. Despite the best efforts of many authoritarian structures, it turns out that the “dominance” of the prejudiced attitude is an illusion and that the majority of citizenry are actually quite against exclusionary policies and actions.
And in the Information Age, such an illusion is bound to be found out.
The ultimate point that I keep coming back to is that the average German citizen in the n@z! era didn’t necessarily hate Jews or queers or the disabled, but they were still complicit in the destruction of those populations because their comfort – including the comfort of a convenient scapegoat for economic hardship – was more important than the lives of other (mainly anonymous) humans. Those who support authoritarian structures are as equally culpable to the crimes of those authoritarian structures as those who pull the triggers and flip the switches.
There are those who enabled the current administration, believing erroneously that their support would somehow render them immune from the bad policies, and they are finding out that the authoritarian powers that be are in no way motivated by doing the Greater Good; they are exclusively self-serving to the active exclusion of benevolence.
The wisp of hope that I see through this travesty is that the people who supported the authoritarian regime expected to be taken care of. They truly believed that the governing structure would fulfill the fundamental role of all functioning government: to support, protect, and advance the individuals as well as the group. Perhaps now that the real motivation of the regime is being revealed, those supporters who are actively getting screwed will capitulate.
As I said, it is only a wisp of a hope, and not one that I’m banking on in any way, but it would be nice to know that we could leave the door open a crack and allow the recalcitrant in to our side. We can at least promise that our cookies aren’t laced with cyanide and toxic waste.
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