religious rhetoric Archives - Patricia Roberts-Miller

Niemoller and the “atheists are bad because Nazis were atheist” argument

A lot of people love to quote Martin Niemoller, thinking he was a poet who wrote a poem that functions as a metaphor for complying with evil.

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

There are various versions of it, some of which begin with the Nazis coming for communists first, and some with the Nazis coming for the Jews first. But, it wasn’t actually a poem. It was something that Neimoller said in lectures, because it wasn’t metaphorical—it was his narrative of what actually happened to him, and how he actually responded. And his whole point was that he was okay with what the Nazis did as long as he thought their policies didn’t hurt him. It was only when he ended up in jail that the problem with Nazis wasn’t their outcomes (which he liked till they hurt him), but their way. Their process was one to which he should always have objected, but he didn’t because he liked the outcome. Till he didn’t, and then he realized the process had been wrong all along.

Those processes were ones that could be used to hurt him, and so he should have paid attention to them.

I think that’s where we are. I think a lot of people are okay with Trump’s processes because they like the outcomes and they don’t realize those processes could hurt them. Niemoller realized, once he was in jail, that the ends don’t justify the means—because the means remain.

Here’s what Hitler promised: I will protect the in-group. I will institute a government that is not about fairness across groups; my policies will be entirely about promoting and protecting the in-group. That is a way of determining policy: the government should protect and support people like me, and it’s not my business if official policy is something I would be outraged if applied to me.

Hitler said (and had always said), there are true Germans, and the German government should protect and promote their interests. That’s an argument (I will protect true Germans), and a way of arguing (laws should be applied differently depending on identity).

That second level is the one Neimoller bungled: he was fine with how the Nazis treated people until and unless it hit people like him (the Christian churches in Germany never objected to the treatment of Jews—they only mildly objected to the treatment of converted Jews; in other words, they only protected am in-group). Niemoller accepted the premised that, as long as your in-group is okay, the government is okay. Let’s think of that as the “argument from in-group/out-group” level. People might support Nazism because it seemed to support their in-group, and the hostile actions were against an out-group.[1] The way that Nazis operated—laws should be applied differently for in- versus out-group—was bad, but Niemoller was okay with it till he was a victim of that way.

This is what is important about Niemoller: his way of thinking was wrong. He was wrong because he was fine with a set of policies that applied to people that he didn’t want applied to him.

In other words, Niemoller was fine with other groups being treated in a way he would not want to be treated. It isn’t about what you’re doing; it’s about how you’re doing something. Are you treating others as you would think fair were you treated that way?

There’s a guy. He said in-group/out-group membership didn’t count. He said fairness across groups matters. Niemoller’s mistake was ignoring what that guy said, and that’s the point of his quote. People shouldn’t judge the actions of another (or a government) on the basis of whether we are harmed or benefitted at this moment, but whether we would think those actions just if applied across groups.

Hitler said (and all demagogues say), “I am you. You and I need to expel/exterminate this group that wants to exterminate us. Because they want to exterminate us, anything we do is justified.”

What Hitler did (and, to be blunt, all authoritarian demagogues do) is equivocate on the construction of that in-group. In-groups are often defined in the negative—we are this because we are not that. We take pride in not being that (to give a personal example, ELCA taking pride in not being Missouri Synod). In a culture of demagoguery, there is an out-group (Jews, communists) and any violence against that out-group is justified because they are toxic to the body politic. You demonstrate your commitment to the in-group by how much hate you express about the out-group.

When Hitler was coming to power, Niemoller was a conservative Lutheran pastor who thought the Nazis might be useful allies in regaining some of the ground lost under the socialist democrats, both in terms of the power of the church (especially Protestant) in material and cultural ways. He thought he was in Hitler’s in-group. And he thought that because there was so much rhetoric that said that there were only two sides: you could be an atheistic communist, or you could be Nazi. Hitler never argued against the many parties in the middle (including Democratic Socialists, who were not atheist, nor fascist, nor communist).

The socialists had been in favor of a separation of church and state, and so allowed secular public education, and Niemoller (and other religious figures) were worried about possibly additionally losing the substantial amount of money they got from the state. He believed, correctly, that the Nazis would not allow for the separation of church and state (whoops on how he read that belief), that they would insist on religion in the classroom, that they would have a government with an openly religious mission, and he thought he could work with them on the money issue. As far as cultural issues, Niemoller’s politics were far closer to the Nazis’ than to the socialists. He believed, correctly, that the Nazis would reinstate conservative policies regarding homosexuality, abortion, birth control, women’s rights, and religious intolerance. Niemoller was pretty typical in that regard. What that means, and this is important, is that Niemoller and people like him, because they weren’t willing to deal with a mild cutting back on their privileges, actively supported a regime that would eventually exterminate them.

And they did it because they were so obsessed with getting certain policy points–abolition of homosexuality, abortion, and birth control; a judicial system that (they thought) would promote their political agenda; financial benefits for the churches; protection of rabidly religious education—that they were willing to overlook how those policy goals would be attained.

But it’s the how that matters. Not just how policy was attained, but how people reasoned.

There is a talking point now that Nazis were atheists, and therefore atheists are bad, so, as long as we keep atheists out of office, we could never have a Holocaust. Hitler talked a lot about God, almost certainly sincerely, and, while he had some higher-level supporters who espoused atheism, most of the higher-ups were some kind of theist (even if neo-pagan), and, overwhelmingly, supporters of the regime were avowed Christian. Nazism was openly genocidal from 1939, and the genocides were not some kind of secret activity on the part of a few people. Genocide was the official and open policy of the Wehrmacht—the orders were to kill everyone who might be a political or ideological threat, and that “threat” was determined racially. People who identified as Christian stood by the side of a ditch and laughed as blood spurted from the layers of people they were killing. Had all the Christians refused to engage in genocide, the war would have ended in 1939. They didn’t. The Nazi regime was a Christian regime because most of the people enacting Nazi policies were Christian.

People who want to argue that being Christian makes someone a better person (really bad theology) and that, therefore, we should only have Christian judges and politicians, try to use Nazi Germany as an example as to why leaders should be Christian. The Nazi regime was atheist, they say, and it was bad, therefore regimes should be Christian. Not everyone in the Nazi regime was atheist, however, and most of the people who voted for, supported, and enacted Nazi policies were Christian. But, that argument is that Hitler’s entourage had a disproportionate number of atheists, and therefore atheists are dangerous. Or, Hitler’s entourage had a disproportionate number of non-Christians, and therefore this is proof that a predominantly Christian government is safe.

Here’s the problem with how people tend to argue (and it’s the problem Niemoller was trying to point to): it isn’t what you argue; it’s how you argue. For a long time, all he cared about was what people were arguing, and then he suddenly realized that what mattered was how they argued.

Milton Mayer’s troubling book They Thought They Were Free describes ten people who submitted to Nazism cheerfully, and who continued to believe that Hitler was good (but had bad advisors). It has a brilliant explanation as to why they continued to believe in Hitler, and one part of the explanation is that people tend to think in the short term as to whether they are, in this moment, better, and not whether the way they got the things they like is a good way. Mayer says that they believed “Adolf Hitler was good—in my friends’ view—up until 1943, 1941, or 1939, depending on the individual’s assessment of his strategy” (69-70). In other words, he was good for Germany until things started to go bad, but Hitler’s strategy was bad from the beginning—his was of deliberating, his plans for world domination, his racist policies. It’s as though they thought that drinking arsenic was great till the moment it killed someone—they didn’t acknowledge that the way Hitler ruled was always going to end up in an unwinnable war, racial extermination, and a devastated Germany.

There are a lot of ways to assess an argument; here I want to mention three. First, it’s a good argument because it’s made by someone you thinking is good. Second, it’s a good argument because it confirms your beliefs, and so it intuitively feels right. Third, it’s a good argument because the way it’s argued would be, you think, a good way to argue even if you didn’t like the outcome.[2] There is a similar division in terms of thinking about politics: you can decide that a policy is good because it’s advocated by someone you like; or it’s good because you’re benefitting from it here and now; or it’s good because the way it was argued and enacted and applied would be, you think, good even if you didn’t benefit from it.

The argument that Nazism was atheist fits into the first and second categories, but not the third. It is probably made by people you like, and it gets you a conclusion you like (Christians are good and Nazis are bad). But the way it’s argued—if you consistently applied that logic—would lead to your endorsing Nazi policies.

I say, “Kale is bad because I threw up after eating it.” If I sincerely believed that was a good way to argue, then I’d be willing to stop consuming anything that made me throw up. [In rhetorical terms, the enthymeme has a major premise I’ll support in other circumstances.] But, what if I threw up after drinking tequila? If I’m going to stick with the premise established in regard to kale, then I’d also conclude that tequila is bad (personally, I’d support that conclusion), in which case my argument about kale is logical. But, what if I ever want to drink tequila again (and, really, I’d say you should think about that), then my conclusion about tequila has a different premise from my argument about tequila.

In other words, the major premise of my stance about kale (things that make me throw up should be avoided) is not one I hold consistently, so it isn’t actually helping me make decisions about what to consume. It’s only helping me rationalize decisions I make for other reasons.

If I like tequila (really, why would you do that?), I’ll find lots of reasons to exempt it from the “it makes you throw up” argument I’m willing to make for kale. And that’s the important point, if I’m not willing to reason across kale and tequila, then I don’t have a logical argument. I’m just looking for reasons to hate kale and like tequila (don’t—don’t do that).

If my way of making decisions is to protect my commitments, then I will start with a premise (kale is bad), and I will just look for datapoints to support that premise. And here’s what’s important for thinking about how people reason—I will feel that I am logical in my feelings about kale since I can find lots of evidence to support my claim. You can find lots of evidence to support any claim, after all. What you can’t find (and this is where Infowars and conspiracy theories get it wrong), is evidence that you apply with consistent premises. But that’s a different pot. Here’s the point I’m making: if I’m not actually willing to apply my reasoning about kale to other things that make me throw up, then I’m not being logical; I’m just neck-deep in the swamp of confirmation bias.

It might be true that kale is bad, but kale being bad doesn’t confirm my way of reasoning. What I mean by that is that it might be true that Nazis are bad political leaders (they are), but that doesn’t mean that Christians are good political leaders. Nazis weren’t bad because some of the Nazi leaders were atheists; Nazis were bad because they were entitled authoritarian racist fascist militarist German exceptionalists who rejected any notions of universal human rights. The Nazi way of reasoning never changed, but its outcomes did—what Mayer shows is that, when that way got people what they wanted, it seemed good; when it didn’t it got bad. They didn’t see that the bad was the inevitable consequence of the apparently good. The Nazi way of reasoning initially seemed good to Niemoller, because it got him what he wanted. But it wasn’t a good way, because it got him in jail. And then he saw it was bad—it was bad all along, but he didn’t see it till he was in jail.[3]

What the Nazis should teach us is that our group succeeding is not a good reason to support a politician—we should support politicians who advocate policies we would support regardless of whether they benefit us personally. And we shouldn’t just judge an argument as to whether it gets a conclusion we like; we should think about whether we would consider it a good way of arguing for everyone.

And that’s where the “Atheists are bad because the Nazis were bad” gets awful. That argument assumes that you can and should take disproportionate representation of some group in a bad power structure as proof that the group as a whole is evil. Nazis were evil, you reason, and a disproportionate were atheist, and so all atheists are dangerous. So, if that’s a good way to argue, then if a disproportionate number of leaders of Pol Pot’s revolution were left-handed, we should consider left-handed people evil. Or, if a disproportionate number of people in Lenin’s group were Jews, then Jews are bad.

And that is exactly how Nazis did (and do) argue. So, if you think that the presence of atheists in the Nazi regime is proof that Nazism is essentially atheist (regardless of the religious affiliations of the people who enacted Nazi policies) then you’re a Nazi. Lenin’s group had a disproportionate number of Jews, so, your logic says the Nazis were logical to say all Jews are essentially bad. That’s how you reason.

I’m not saying that you think Jews are essentially bad. I’m saying you’re Niemoller. Niemoller didn’t think Protestants should be jailed. But he didn’t like communists or socialists or Jews. And he knew that the Nazis would violate laws and act in authoritarian ways to exterminate out-groups. For a long time, he was only concerned with the outcome of their policies, and not the way they enacted their policies. Hitler was a liar, and had always been a liar, but, when Hitler told a lie Niemoller liked, Hitler’s way of arguing or administering didn’t matter. It was only when Niemoller ended up in jail that he realized Hitler’s way was wrong, and it had always been wrong.

The way matters. If you think that atheists can’t be trusted because leading Nazis were disproportionately atheist, then you think the Nazis were right about the Jews. Or, in other words, you aren’t really thinking.

[1] And here I have to stop and explain that sociologists use the in-group/out-group distinction in a very specific and useful way. People often use “in-group” to mean people in power, but sociologists use it to mean the group you’re in. So, while pitbull owners is not a politically central group, it’s an in-group for people who believe that owning a pitbull is an important part of their identity.

[2] I am in an intermittent state of rage as to how scholars in rhetoric talk about Aristotle’s ethos/pathos/logos—it’s read in light of logical positivists logic/emotion binary. If you read what Aristotle says about politics and ethics, however, I think you end up with something much more like what I’m saying here.

[3] I’d also say it matters because all scams—ethical or monetary—rely on getting people to ignore major premises. If you want to scam someone, you get them to reason the wrong premises. Someone sells you a bad car on the grounds that he’s a nice guy; someone gets you to vote for her on the grounds that she is like you; someone persuades you to buy property on the grounds that he’s sold other property that made money. Those are all arguments that rely on major premises that are obviously invalid.

Why we should stop arguing about civility

Too often, when there is some controversial public action, we have an argument about civility—whether the action violated norms of civility, and whether there should be more or less civility. That whole argument is a red herring.

The civility/incivility binary is what people in rhetoric call ultimate terms (or, more precisely, binary paired terms). It’s fallacious all the way down, first by assuming that actions can be divided into that binary (even making it a continuum doesn’t help), and then pretending that there are objective measures of civility/incivility—that it isn’t a judgment strongly influenced by in-group/out-group thinking. The civility/incivility argument gets us nowhere, and we need to walk away from it. There are two other arguments worth having: one about fairness, and one about strategy.

1. Why the civility/incivility argument is a waste of time

In rhetoric, we talk about “ultimate terms” which are terms where arguments go to die. They are terms that are all connotation and no denotation (freedom, terrorism, rights, political correctness, fascism).[1] People think they know what those terms mean, but they get really mad if you ask them to define those terms. They’ll say, “You know what I mean.” Ultimate terms are generally defined by opposition to an equally imprecise term (civility is not incivility).

Ultimate terms are often loyalty terms (by using those terms you’re showing your membership in some group), and so asking for a precise definition shows you aren’t loyal to that group. (If you ask a certain kind of person to define terrorism precisely, they’ll get really mad; if you ask another kind of person to define neoliberal precisely, they’ll get really mad.) A lot of times, an ultimate term means “not loyal to in-group” (that’s what “politically correct” means, for instance). Ultimate terms are in some kind of binary, with a good ultimate term (what one scholar of rhetoric called God terms) associated with the in-group and the bad one (Devil terms) with the out-group (conservative v. liberal or progressive v. neoliberal). Again, people get really mad when you say they’re using something as an ultimate term.

Another sign that something is an ultimate term is that it is either only used for the in-group or only used for the out-group. So, for instance, no one says that their in-group engaged in incivility and that the out-group engaged in civility. They’re terrorists; we’re freedom fighters.

There is another problem with the concept of civility, and I wrote a long and pedantic book about it: people tend to assume that civility is an objective standard, but we think civility has been violated when we feel offended. (This is a version of complementary projection, when we project our own feelings and reaction on to someone else—I feel offended, so you were offensive.) When the in-group is hostile to the out-group, we don’t feel offended, so it isn’t incivility.

In other words, people in power always control the rules of civility. The rules of civility never apply equally to all groups.

As a side note, I will say that the ignorant nostalgia about civility really gets on my nerves. No, people did not used to be more civil. Charles Sumner was beaten into unconsciousness on the Senate floor. So, just stop clutching your pearls.

The civility/incivility argument is toxic at the base. Walk away from it.

2. The fairness argument

One characteristic of a rational argument (that is, a useful, not necessarily unemotional) argument is that people are willing to listen to one another, and that the rules of the argument apply equally to all parties.

Sarah Sanders has actively advocated allowing private businesses, such as restaurants, to refuse service on the grounds of ethics.[2]

That just happened to her. She has no right to complain about it.

That is the argument we should be making. Not the civility argument, but the fairness one. On what grounds is she saying that the Red Hen did anything wrong?

There are four.

People have tried arguing that the two cases aren’t comparable because discrimination on the basis of religion is prohibited but it’s okay to discriminate on the basis of politics–that’s exactly reversing what the ruling meant. A private business is allowed to serve or not serve anyone, unless their choices about serving are discriminating against a protected class. Anyone can throw someone out of their business if it isn’t discrimination on the basis of race, gender, religion (unless it’s done for religious reasons–at least that’s now the argument being made by people who lost this argument once before).

There is a second argument, which is that discriminating on the basis of religion is okay, but not on the basis of politics–and that’s a really interesting one. This is, in fact, the argument the neoconservatives and fundagelicals use a lot. They believe that they have sincere religious convictions for their actions, but other people don’t. It’s why they put “sincere” into the “religious convictions” criterion. They sincerely believe that they are right, and that everyone knows they are right, and some people pretend they aren’t. (I also wrote a really pedantic book about this.) One really important aspect of sloppy Calvinism (and there’s a lot of it around) is the assumption that the truth is obvious and so people who are acting on sincere religious belief will always be GOP. They think it’s a violation of their religious beliefs that they have to pay taxes to support abortion, while ignoring that it violates the religious beliefs of Friends, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and various others to pay for war, and a violation of many Christians’ beliefs to pay for the death penalty. The people who cheered the cake ruling don’t actually want religious freedom for everyone; they want the freedom to force their religion on others.

The third argument is the consequence of inoculation. A lot of conservatives believe that “liberals” believe that we should be entirely tolerant and never judge anyone. The neocon propaganda machine has been really effective at spreading three messages: 1) “liberals” have contempt for anyone who does manual labor; 2) Democratic candidates promote abortion; 3) “liberals” advocate complete tolerance and therefore are total hypocrites when they criticize anyone. All three of those are wrong, and rely on a lot of false equivalencies–no, calling someone racist is not just as bad as being a racist.

The fourth one is important for understanding why so many people are repeating the argument that Sanders is a victim of incivility (which is all part of the snowflake right whingeing about being victims of everything). It enables a kind of preemptive hostility and discrimination. The narrative is that “liberals” (a devil term) promote total tolerance of anyone, and so something like the Red Hen incident show that liberals are just as intolerant as the right AND don’t have God on their side. Any and all incivility on the side of the in-group is wiped off the slate because we just did it too. (This is another red herring, but it’s one we need to point out, and that’s tricky.)

If the argument is civility/incivility then the neoconservatives can dodge the fairness argument. The “you’re not tolerant” is also a red herring. The fairness argument is where we need to keep the debate.

3. Effectiveness

Are lefties justified in shouting neoconservatives out of restaurants? Yes. Absolutely.

Is it rhetorically savvy? No. This article explains why, and the books in the links are really good and worth reading.

Whenever someone makes this argument—that it’s rhetorically unwise to shout people out of restaurants–, there tend to be three responses. First, a lot of people respond with “But it’s justified to respond with deliberately outraging protests.” It is. I agree. That isn’t the argument.

Second, a lot of people respond by saying that doing nothing or trying to please the extremists on the other side doesn’t work. I agree. But that’s an instance of trying to think about this issue from within the civility/incivility binary, linked to a binary of “us” and “them,” and we need to get away from both of those binaries. I don’t think we can persuade Sanders, or die-hard Trump supporters. But there are others who are open to persuasion—not immediately, and not easily, but it’s possible. And there isn’t a binary between being “nice” to Trump administration members and shouting at them in restaurants. Both of those are bad choices, and they aren’t our only ones. We have more choices.

Third, a lot of people present deductive arguments as to why deliberately outrageous arguments should work. I don’t care whether they should work; I care whether they do. I’d love for them to work; a part of me cheers every time someone shouts a homophobe out of a business, and I’ll admit to enjoying seeing Nazis punched. But I honestly can’t think of any times that it’s worked well for the left. It can sometimes work for the right, in that it gets what is inaccurately called “the middle” (not really the middle, but the intermittently authoritarian) to want more law and order because they fall easily into the “both sides are just as at fault” narrative and increased order would seem to be a solution to that problem. We should do what has worked.

Neoconservatism has made an unholy alliance with fundagelicals to promote unrestrained capitalism and authoritarian neo-Christian policies in the US, and to support an openly apocalyptic foreign policy (that is, one explicitly oriented toward nuclear war in the Middle East). That’s bad. And as long as we argue about civility, they’ll win the argument.

They’ll lose the argument if it’s about fairness, and that’s the argument we need to have.

[The image is from MLK’s debate with Kilpatrick on NBC, available here.]

[1] In some circumstances, the terms can be used precisely. “Fascism” and “neoliberal” are, among political theorists, very precise terms, for instance. If the term is not being used as an ultimate term, then the person using it can define it without getting mad.

Peter declared, “Even if everyone else deserts you, I will never desert you.”

Listening to the exchange with Peter in “Matthaus Passion,” and the exchange with Peter makes me a little weepy.

This is the script (from here)

	Recitative [Tenor. Bass I. Bass II]
	Violino I/II, Viola, Continuo Evangelist (T), Peter (B.I), Jesus (B.II)
	*Evangelist:* Petrus aber antwortete und sprach zu ihm: But Peter answered and said to him:
	*Peter: Wenn sie auch alle sich an dir ärgerten, Even if everybody else is offended because of you,`* so will ich doch mich nimmermehr ärgern. yet I shall never be offended.
	*Evangelist:* Jesus sprach zu ihm: Jesus said to him:
	*Jesus:* Wahrlich, ich sage dir: In dieser Nacht, Truly, I say to you: this night, ehe der Hahn krähet, wirst du mich dreimal verleugnen. before the cock crows, you will deny me three times.
	*Evangelist:* Petrus sprach zu ihm: Peter said to him:
	*Peter: Und wenn ich mit dir sterben müßte, Even if I had to die with you,* so will ich dich nicht verleugnen. I shall not deny you.
	*Evangelist:* Desgleichen sagten auch alle Jünger. The same said all his disciples.

Other translations are here.

As many of you know, I’ve been reading a lot about the Holocaust, and especially the era when Hitler was able to put into place the culture, processes, and propaganda that would enable the Holocaust. Hitler’s serial genocides didn’t begin in 1941, but in 1933, when the people who could have stopped the processes being put in place chose not to because they liked the short-term outcome they were getting (triumphing over socialists, a conservative political agenda, a rhetoric that openly promoted nationalism and ethnocentrism, and rabidly anti-immigration rhetoric, as well as the open equation of the national identity with one ethnic/political group). The military liked the new open militarism, and lots of people liked the rhetoric that said that Germany had never been wrong in its previous invasion that had had disastrous outcomes in terms of economics and prestige.

And I see so many people now condemn Hitler as though they would have resisted. And, of course, I like to think I would have resisted. Timothy Snyder’s powerful Black Earth ends with a moving description of various people who resisted, and we want to see ourselves as someone like that.

And so did Peter.

I think we’re all Peter. Peter did eventually resist, of course—he got a second chance. I think he resisted later because he knew that resistance was hard, because he hadn’t resisted before. Peter’s problem when Jesus first told him that Peter would not resist was that he thought resistance was easy. We underestimate what resistance means, and we overestimate our ability to resist because we forget how oppression happens.

Hitler didn’t start out saying that he intended to expel and/or exterminate all the inferior races/identities (Jews, Romas, Sintis, homosexuals, Jehovah’s Witnesses, leftists), nor that he intended to restrict the churches, start another world war, and engage in serial genocides, but he did. He claimed he intended the opposite, that he would respect all religions, work for economic stability, and maintain peace. He would, he said, never start a war. (And, as it happens, he continued to insist on that–he never admitted that his aggressions were aggressions, always insisting he was forced into military action by other countries refusing to go along with his plans or that they were about to attack.) Hitler’s rhetoric was one of national entitlement, and he was clear in Mein Kampf what that meant—Germany was entitled to military domination, European hegemony, its own way of narrating history, the expulsion of Judaism and Bolshevism (which he saw as the same) from Europe, and a kind of Aryan colonialism in Europe. When 1933 rolled around, he continued to argue for the same policies, but, through a careful use of dog whistles, made it seem as though he had become more reasonable.

In other words, Hitler said to people, “I am a completely different person from who I have always been,” and people accepted it.

They accepted it because they had a conversion narrative about how a person who has always been and behaved a certain way would suddenly behave a new way. Thus, they said, you can ignore everything he has always been and said. Because they were getting the political agenda they had always wanted.

So, even though they had every reason to think his intentions weren’t good, they didn’t worry about the processes he was putting in place—they liked the short-term outcome. They liked the political agenda. They ignored the process.

People often quote Martin Niemoller.

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

When I first came across this quote, I thought it was metaphorical. But it wasn’t. It’s exactly what Niemoller did. Neimoller, a Lutheran pastor, really didn’t object when socialists, unionists, and Jews were arrested. He continued to try to work with the Nazis. The Nazis, whose religious beliefs are complicated (since Hitler lied like a rug, it’s hard to say what his beliefs were, other than that he genuinely believed himself to be chosen by the Almighty to cleanse the world), clearly wanted something along the lines of a state church (in an odd way, they were theocrats), and therefore intended to undermine the power of other sources of power, but they did so slowly. Just as Hitler made a pact with the USSR that he fully intended to abrogate, so he made promises to the Catholic and Lutheran churches he fully intended to violate. And, so, those churches chose to ignore his history of being a liar in favor of believing that he wasn’t lying to them, and they did so because, at first, he came through with his promises to them.

When liars lie in ways that benefit the in-group, we think they are on our side, and can therefore be trusted. That Hitler also delivered a passionate and loyal group of voters, and that his base would enable others to get their policy agenda passed (such as restricting birth control, banning homosexuality, enhancing the military) just simply meant that people were willing to overlook how he was getting those policies through—his demonizing of democracy in favor of some kind of authoritarian understanding of “true” people, his insistence that the judiciary follow his policy agenda (rather than worry about whether judges were fair, deeply knowledgeable, or respected), his equation of dissent with disloyalty, his throttling of the Reichstag.

Niemoller was a conservative anti-Semite who genuinely didn’t care when groups he disliked were silenced and imprisoned. He didn’t mind that they were silenced because he was okay with the outcome, and didn’t pay attention to the process. He only realized he should have cared when the same processes and logic were used to silence and then imprison him.

We are told that Jesus’ disciples wanted to fight when he was arrested, so perhaps, like many people, Peter was willing to engage in a big, public battle. But his courage failed in the little moments—in the moment that would have meant he would have been arrested without drama, without spectacle. No one would have known. Bravery isn’t about the big moments; it’s about the little ones.

Niemoller, a conservative anti-Semite, later realized that he should have been brave on behalf of people he found dangerous and very other. Peter realized he should have been brave in the private moment, when there was danger to him and no public display of his bravery.

When we imagine a movie moment in which we are brave, and there is an audience approving of us, we are not imagining how people enable tragedy.

American Christianity, tribalism, and refusing to “do unto others…”

It’s really troubling to me the extent to which American Christianity is now a kind of tribalism that argues for special treatment of their kind of Christian. People who want businesses to be able to opt out of offering birth control don’t want businesses to be able to opt out of paying for war–even though being pacifist is just as much a “sincere religious belief” as being opposed to birth control. Businesses owned by Jehovah’s Witnesses have health plans that allow blood transfusions. If we’re going to allow a doctor to refuse to perform life-saving abortion, are we going to allow a Jehovah’s Witness doctor to refuse to perform a blood transfusion?

What are “sincere” religious beliefs? Current political discourse (and media coverage) suggests that only right-wing, pro-war, anti-abortion people are sincerely religious. Supporting a particular political agenda makes you a real Christian, as far as they’re concerned. When pro-war Christians talk about Christian arguments for pacifism, suddenly it isn’t whether a belief is sincerely held, but whether they think pacifism is really authorized by Scripture. James Dobson argues that sharia law requires terrorism, yet he doesn’t argue that their terrorism should be permitted, even though he thinks Muslims have sincerely held religious beliefs requiring them to be violent, and he argues that the law should not require that people violate sincerely held religious beliefs.

It would be interesting to know what kind of crossover there is among people who insist that people should be allowed to exempt themselves from laws on the basis of “sincerely held religious beliefs” AND who are engaged in fear-mongering about Muslims and sharia law. I suspect it’s pretty large.

My point is simply that this isn’t an argument for allowing exceptions for sincerely held religious beliefs–it’s an argument for treating members of some religious groups better than others. So, this is an argument that “we” are entitled to better treatment by the government than “they” are.

And that argument usually comes down to a no-true Scotsman argument. All real Christians have this political agenda (which is, I think, how they think they’re avoiding the antinomianism problem). If you don’t have that agenda, you aren’t a real Christian. Suddenly, sincerity isn’t a measure–anyone who disagrees with them isn’t sincere. And, so, since they read the Hebrew Bible as advocating all political power being invested in people of the correct religion, they think that the Christian way to behave politically is to ensure that people with their religious beliefs (the in-group) should be held to different standards, given more power, and have their religious beliefs preferred, even centralized. They advocate a system in which people like them are treated differently from others. They think the laws should favor them.

Jesus also faced an issue of laws. He was in a tradition with an emphasis on certain behaviors, and he said he wasn’t saying those laws should be rejected (although he also said certain ones should) but/and he said that intention mattered. Breaking the rule about the Sabbath was fine if you were part of doing something good, for instance. Breaking laws about touching blood was possibly good. Appearing to follow the law could be bad if your heart was in the wrong place.

Paul, similarly, advocated breaking various laws, and insisted on abiding by others that fundagelicals don’t follow (assuming you read Timothy as a genuinely Pauline text), such as women teaching in church. Very few Christian churches follow what Paul said about sex. He advocated celibacy as the best practice, after all. And he doesn’t advocate non-procreative sex, so were all Christians to follow all of Paul’s rules on sexual behavior, they would try to be celibate, and, if that wasn’t possible marry, and not engage in any birth control. And, really, even the Catholic church has given up on that–they allow birth control, just not effective birth control–which they call “artificial contraception.”

Everyone agrees that you need to take the major messages of Scripture, and stick with passages that reinforce those, and reject the ones that are just “cultural.” You would be hard-pressed to find a Christian, even one citing Leviticus on men lying with men, who doesn’t have a garden with mixed seeds. And let’s talk about cattle breeds.

So, how do we choose what laws to follow?

You could do it numerically, by what themes are most common. Bible verses that insist you honor God are pretty common, perhaps dominant; ones that ask you have a personal relationship (whatever that means) with Jesus are a much rarer than current Christian discourse might lead you to think. (Ones about Hell as a place of eternal punishment are up there with fig trees being bad, by the way.) Verses that ask that God smite your enemies are pretty common (along with killing babies, usually of the enemy), but I’d like to emphasize the large number that have to do with God asking that we take care of the marginalized—the poor, the widows, and orphans (who would have had no method of support in that economy). So, it seems to me, there are an awful lot of verses asking that we take care of those whom the market would ignore. The Hebrew Bible demands ethical treatment regardless of economic situation, and insists that the rich care for the poor.

The Hebrew Bible could be read (if you turn your head this way and kind of look at it that way) as only insisting on ethical treatment of in-group members. That’s how various Christian thinkers justified slavery—some argued that the rules regarding slavery only applied to fellow Hebrews, so enslaving Christians was wrong. Then, when one argument for slavery was that it made heathens in Christians, the argument shifted to those rules meaning that … argle bargle…they don’t apply to US slavery. Jesus explicitly (and, probably, deliberately) rejected that interpretation. Jesus said, quite clearly, ethics means treating all people the same, regardless of group membership. That’s the whole point of the good Samaritan story—you care for the people not of your religion, just as you would people of your religion.

And that was, and is, radical.[1]

When Jesus said “do unto others as you would have them do unto you” he didn’t say, “unless they’re out-group.” He didn’t say, “Look out for your tribe first.” He didn’t say, “Do unto others, except like really really others…” He said ethical behavior transcends group membership. Jesus calls us to treat Muslims as we would want to be treated. And, certainly, people who can call themselves Christian can find things in the Hebrew Bible to justify treating Muslims badly, and I could dispute those readings, but I don’t need to, because they can’t find any way to get past what Jesus said: “do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”

People who want their kind of Christianity to get special treatment can find texts in the Hebrew Bible that they can work to support their claim (I’d say they’re misreading, but that’s a different point), but they can’t get past what Jesus said.

[1] But it wasn’t necessarily new, and Christ was not establishing the only tradition to follow the rule that an ethical behavior means treating in- and out-groups the same way—look at the long tradition of Jewish activism on behalf of other groups.

Demagoguery and scapegoating

I want to start with an interesting puzzle:

Republicans control Congress, the Supreme Court, now the Presidency; Republicans have a trifecta in 26 states, and the most popular cable news show is a tried-and-true propaganda outfit for Republican candidates and agenda. Fifty-six percent of America’s richest families are GOP donors. By any reasonable measure, the GOP is the establishment.

The puzzle is that the rhetoric surrounding voting Republican is one of resistance to the establishment—the GOP has successfully framed itself as the anti-establishment party. And they have managed to blame all problems on Democrats (even in absurd cases and in the face of all reasonable evidence). —the out-of-power party.[1] Now that they have complete control of the Federal government, and still can’t come through on their promises, they have a new narrative, the Deep State conspiracy —so that it’s still liberals who are the source of all of our problems. That’s interesting. How are they managing that rhetorical sleight of hand?

There are various reasons, with three I want to mention here. The first is the one I won’t talk about at any length now, and it’s lay political theory. The dominant lay political theory is that the solutions to all political problems are obvious to any reasonable person—no political disagreement involves two or more people of intelligence and good faith. The government doesn’t pursue those obvious solutions for various nefarious reasons—they know what they should do, but they don’t follow that course of action because of “special interests” (special interests being “anyone other than my in-group”).

The second is informational enclaves—that large swaths of Americans inhabit worlds impervious to accurate representations of out-group arguments (not just people on the right, and not just restricted to “political” issues). It isn’t just that these worlds involve the chanting of various assertions; it’s also that these enclaves engage in inoculation (a concept that really should be more prominent in rhetoric and comp). Inoculation works by giving people a weak form of an out-group ideology or political agenda—people sincerely believe they don’t need to listen to people who disagree because they think they already know the argument. Inoculation works because so many people believe that the first goal in listening to someone (or reading) is finding cues of identity group membership—if the rhetor can be identified as out-group, then everything they say can be rejected as “biased.” (I think this is worsened by how we teach “bias” in fyc classes, since we teach it as social group membership.)

Not all instances of inoculation are demagoguery, but demagoguery always involves inoculation. And the dominant form of discourse in those worlds is demagoguery, and that’s the third factor I want to talk about.

My argument about demagoguery is fairly straightforward—demagoguery is most effectively thought of as a way of arguing, not a rhetoric produced by a kind of person. It isn’t necessarily a cancer on the body politic, or a political evil. Thinking about demagogues and not demagoguery and thinking about demagoguery as a growth to be excised unintentionally ends up endorsing the very view of public discourse that is so problematically at the center of demagoguery: that political issues can be reduced to identity, and that they are solved through elimination. And that’s demagoguery.

Demagoguery is a polarizing discourse that promises stability, certainty, and escape from the responsibilities of rhetoric through framing public policy in terms of the degree to which and means by which (not whether) the outgroup should be punished/scapegoated for the current problems of the ingroup. Public debate largely concerns three stases: group identity (who is in the ingroup, what signifies outgroup membership, and how loyal rhetors are to the ingroup); need (usually framed in terms of how evil the outgroup is); what level of punishment to enact against the outgroup (restriction of rights to extermination).

Demagoguery depoliticizes political discourse by making all issues questions of identity (which amounts to in-group loyalty), it insists that all of our problems are caused by this group—the only failing of the in-group is insufficient will in pursuing a policy of purity.

I began with a description of something odd about Republican rhetoric—and I want to be clear, I’m not saying that the disingenuousness of Republican rhetoric (“we’re the victims here”) means Republicans are bad people, or the Republican political agenda should be dismissed on the grounds that they have disingenuous rhetoric. Republican policies should be debated on their merits and demerits as policies. I’m saying that advocates of the Republican political agenda need to defend that agenda with policy rhetoric. So should every other advocate of a political agenda. Political argument should be arguments about policies.

If we say the problem is that Republicans are demagogues, the implied solution is to purify our community of Republicans—and that’s demagoguery. If we say their rhetoric is demagogic, we are asking them to argue differently.

Saying that Republican policies are bad because Republican media engage in demagoguery is still not deliberating about policies; it’s arguing about who is the disease of the body politic. Jeremy Engels, who has identified a similar (but not identical) phenomenon with what he calls a “politics of resentment” points out that “Nixon argued that war protestors, and not the war itself, was the problem” (96) and that this “rhetoric was brilliant because [Nixon] subverted the democratic possibilities of resentment by redefining the conflict at the heart of democracy” (101).

As Kenneth Burke famously said in his prescient analysis of Hitler’s rhetoric, nothing unifies as much as a common enemy, and a common enemy is useful for enhancing nationalism. Anthony Marx’s recent book persuasively argues that nationalism—that is, a centralized allegiance—can’t be dictated top-down, but elites can employ “an indirect method for channeling popular loyalty, bringing religious passions and identities thus consolidated into the service of absolutism” (74). Marx says, “To consolidate their power and make governance possible and effective, elites embraced rising mass passions by encoding discriminatory laws enforcing those passions and cohering their supporters” (74). So, it’s Burke’s unification through division.

Marx’s narrative of the pre-Enlightenment founding of nationalism emphasizes the crucial role of religious passion in this foundation, which he argues fits the characteristics of what is now often inaccurately called “ethnic nationalism” (what the clash of cultures people present as an impaired and non-Western kind of nationalism). Thus, the “ethnic” versus “civic” nationalism operates by occluding Western nationalism’s reliance on religious/ethnic exclusion.

And I’d suggest that’s what we’re seeing now. I think it can be invisible to a lot of people the way that the policy arguments of the United States have been refit into an eschatological narrative. It is simply a given in some informational enclaves (including Fox News) that being Christian means being Republican, a sloppy and entirely false equation that enables the mobilizing of religious passion (and there are few passions stronger) in service of disenfranchising, excluding, or exterminating the scapegoated out-group. (And, as with the muddled way “Muslim” is troped as a race, in this enclave “Christian” is “white” thus non-Christians must not be white.)

Anthony Marx points out that groups that have relied on this process of cohesion through exclusion don’t recognize their reliance on exclusion because they renarrate their own history as one of inclusion (168). That ahistoric narrative of inclusion enables a useful amnesia about the violent and exclusive bases of nationalism. This narrative of inclusion is strengthened in several ways, including the faux diversity of seeing oneself as inclusive because one’s in-group doesn’t exclude as much as it could– having a Jew lawyer, a gay “friend,” a Catholic colleague. Because the initial violence is hidden, the current violence is framed as a new and necessary exception, and not a continuation of practice.

The violence is often legitimated through hyperbole, and there is a paradox in demagogic rhetoric created by its reliance on hyperbole. Demagoguery is about performing in-group loyalty—to persuade voters that I am the most passionate embodiment of our group, it’s useful if I’m impractical, irrational, and hyperbolic. My willingness to make absurd claims and commit myself to policies that probably won’t work shows just how loyal I am. Initially, when a rhetor does this, they want someone else to stand up and stop the community from enacting that impractical policy. But that isn’t generally what happens. If I say that the in-group needs to go to war with squirrels, then the people on whom I’ve dumped the rhetorical responsibility of actually deliberating pragmatically now have to argue that we aren’t capable of going to war with the squirrels (or of winning, or paying for the war, or something else that suggests we are flawed as a group). They look disloyal and less passionate about the in-group than I do. If Chester Burnette is running against me, he needs to match my hyperbole, so he’ll have to advocate either my policy or something even more impractical. In cultures of demagoguery, communities end up pursuing policies that were initially advocated just as performance of in-group loyalty.

There’s another paradox, and it’s a concerning one. The paradox of social control through demagoguery is that if it’s effective there is no longer a scapegoat to blame—proslavery scapegoating of abolitionists ensured that there was no antislavery discourse in slave state political deliberations. So, on whom could they blame slave resistance? They couldn’t acknowledge that it was the consequence of slavery, and then you get a rhetoric of conspiracy. [2] Conspiracy rhetoric, when it’s successful, leads to (or legitimates) policies of extraordinary surveillance—since the ability of the out-group to cause so many problems although they’ve been silenced and excluded shows a degree of nefariousness that requires extraordinary policies.

And that’s why this “deep state” rhetoric worries me. The ineffectiveness of an interventionist bullying foreign policy, neoliberal economic policies, and climate change denial should be up for argument—we should be having policy arguments about those policies. Their failure should be the moment for reconsideration. If their failures are instead blamed on a nonfalsifiable narrative about a deep conspiracy, then the next step will be debating the degree of surveillance and exclusion of the scapegoated group.

When a culture’s normal rhetorical practice is demagoguery, then there are demagogues in power—because there are demagogues everywhere, because demagoguery becomes the most profitable and cunning choice. When demagoguery is normalized, then demagogues arise.

So, instead of talking about who is or is not a demagogue, I think we should worry about when and how demagoguery gets normalized.

[1] I’m not puzzled or outraged that they blame all their problems on Democrats—all political parties do that. I’m intrigued that it’s effective.

[2] Another good example of this maneuver is what Stalin did when his agricultural policies were disastrous. Since the whole argument for the Soviet system was that central planning was more rational, he couldn’t admit that they had screwed up—so he invented (and probably sincerely believed) a conspiracy on the part of counter-revolutionaries.

Let’s reinvigorate the charge of religious bigotry

In the US, the term “bigot” is used interchangeably with “racist,” but its use for a long time involved religious, not racial, bigotry. At a certain point, it became more broadly used for someone who could not be persuaded out of a belief, religious or political. The OED gives the first three definitions as:

A religious hypocrite; (also) a superstitious adherent of religion; A person considered to adhere unreasonably or obstinately to a particular religious belief, practice, etc.; In extended use: a fanatical adherent or believer; a person characterized by obstinate, intolerant, or strongly partisan beliefs. (OED, Third Edition, December 2008)

The OED notes that Smollet in 1751 condemned the political discourse of his era by referring to “The crazed tory, the bigot whig.”

And that’s what’s wrong with our political discourse. It isn’t whether people are “civil” or “hostile” or even “racist.” Our problem is that our political discourse is dominated by bigoted discourse. And a lot of those bigots pretend that their views are reasonable ones related to Scripture.

Democracy works when most people are open to persuasion, and it doesn’t work when too many of us are bigots. Being open to persuasion doesn’t mean that you’ll change your mind every time someone gives you new information (the test apparently used by some studies about persuasion), but it does mean that you can imagine changing your mind, and, ideally, you can identify the conditions under which you would change your mind.

A.J. Ayer famously argued that some beliefs are falsifiable (which he described as scientific) and some aren’t (which he defined as religious). I think he was wrong in the notion that science is always falsifiable and religious never is, and there are other quibbles with his claim, but, having spent a lot time arguing with people in academic, nonacademic, fringe, and just fucking loony realms, I have come to think, while there are lots of good criticisms of the specifics of his argument, his general point–that we have beliefs we open to change and we have beliefs we will not change—is a useful and accurate description. (In fact, a lot of descriptions about whether an argument is useful or not begin with exactly that determination—are you open to changing your mind about the argument? Are you arguing with someone who is?)

A bigot is someone who cannot imagine circumstances under which she might change her mind. Or, more aptly, a bigot is someone who imagines himself as never wrong, and always able to summon evidence to support his position. What he can’t imagine (and this is what makes him irrational) is the evidence that would prove him wrong, and she condemns everyone who disagrees as so completely and obviously wrong that they should be silenced without ever having carefully listened to their argument.

I do believe that Jesus is my savior, and in a God who is omniscient and omnipotent. That belief is not open to disproof. And I am comfortable with calling that a religious belief. And, so, in that regard, I am a bigot. On the other hand, I’ve read the arguments for atheism, and various other religions, and I don’t think advocates of those beliefs should be silenced.

In addition I don’t believe that those two claims necessarily attach me to beliefs about slavery or segregation—and it’s important to remember that, for much of American history, there were entire regions in which it was insisted that being Christian necessarily meant supporting slavery and segregation. When Christian scholars of Scripture pointed out that the Scriptural based defenses of slavery and segregation were problematic, they were condemned as having a prejudiced and politicized reading of Scripture by people who insisted the Scripture endorsed US slavery practices. The notion that Scripture justified slavery as practice in the US South, especially after 1830 or so, was a bigoted reading of Scripture—not because I think it was wrong, but because its proponents refused to think carefully or critically about their own reasons and positions. They could “defend” slavery in that they could come up with (cherry-picked) proof texts, but they couldn’t (or wouldn’t) argue fairly with their critics, and they couldn’t (or wouldn’t) articulate the conditions under which they would change their minds. There were none. It isn’t what they argued, but how they argued, that earns them the title of bigot.

Furthermore, they banned criticisms of slavery, enforcing that ban with violence. So, they had both parts of the bigot definition—their views weren’t open to disproof, and they advocated refusing to listen to criticism of their views. They were bigots on steroids, in that they advocated violence against their critics.

Right now, we’re in a situation in which a lot of very powerful people are insisting you shouldn’t listen to criticisms of the current GOP political agenda, and they’re claiming that their views are grounded in Scripture, and they are implicitly and explicitly advocating violence against their critics. You should read them. (You can start with American Family Association, or Family Research Institute, or any expert cited on Fox News. Really—go read them.)

They call themselves conservative Christians. But being theologically conservative in Christianity does not necessarily involve the current GOP political agenda. For instance, there are conservative Christian arguments for gay marriage, for women working outside the home, against patriarchy, against the argument that charity should be entirely voluntary, and even the connection between conservative Christianity and abortion is fairly new. I’m not saying that true conservative Christians have this or that view–I’m saying that being conservative theologically doesn’t necessarily lead you to the GOP political agenda. After all, it was, for a long time, argued that being a conservative Christian necessarily led to endorsing slavery and segregation, and conservative Christians don’t make those connections anymore–why assume that current “necessary” connections (made with the same exegetical method as the “necessary” connections to slavery and segregation) are any better than those? And even many conservative Christians who argue for positions more or less in line with the current GOP political agenda don’t do so in a bigoted way. So, there’s nothing about being a conservative Christian that requires religious bigotry.

So, let’s stop using the term “conservative Christian” for people who insist that being a true Christian so necessarily means believing that the GOP agenda is right that everyone who disagrees should be threatened with violence till they shut up. “Conservative Christian” for what is actually authoritarian bigotry is strategic misnaming. Whether the Founders imagined a Christian nation is open to argument; whether they imagined a nation without disagreement is not. They valued disagreement; they valued reconsideration, deliberation, and pluralist argument.

People who pant for a one-party state, who tell their audience not to listen to anyone who disagrees, and who threaten (or justify threatening) their critics with violence are not only violating what the Founders said our country means may or may not be Christian (since they’re explicitly violating the “do unto others rule” I think that’s open to argument) but they are showing themselves to be anti-democratic authoritarian bigots.

And here is one last odd point about people like this (since I spend a lot of time arguing with them). They have a tendency to equate calling them authoritarian bigots with calling for silencing them, and that’s an interesting and important instance of projection. They believe that people who disagree with them should be silenced, so they really seem to hear all criticism of their views as an argument for silencing them. But that’s just projection.

We shouldn’t silence them. We should ask them to argue, not just engage in sloppy Jeremiads. I think our country is better if there are people who are participating in public discourse from the perspective of conservative Christianity. I think that’s a view that should be heard, and it can be heard without insisting all other views should be threatened into silence.

[The image at the top of the post is from a series of stained glass celebrating the massacre of Jews.]