Repentance and Nation
Recently, in a short exchange, the subject of national apology resurfaced, especially in the light of Australia’s move to apologize for its treatment of the aborigine population. However, on some reflection I think the idea of national apology is wrong and actually counter-productive. I was briefly looking for entertainment opportunities for my wife and I to take in in the upcoming weeks and this arose as a possibility. The remark embedded in the blurb:
This concise but wide-ranging documentary examines the subject through compelling stories from around the globe, including the families of six young men killed by the British Army in Northern Ireland, an Amish community overcoming the mass murder of five of its schoolchildren, Nobel Peace Prize winner Elie Wiesel seeking an official apology from Germany for the Holocaust, … [emphasis added]
Now let me suggest two events and consider of the following which do you think would mean more to the world-wide Jewish population:
- Angela Merkel reads an apology ratified by the Bundestag and Bundesrat offering regret for the Holocaust. A piece of modern art-work is commissioned to be executed by some marginally transgressive modernist artist.
- In a ground-swell movement of German people individually embark on a pilgrimage to visit Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka, and Auschwitz-Birkenau. Once there these pilgrims plant near or on the site a rue flower, read a poem selected by the movement, tour the site, and shed some tears. Imagine this movement sweeps over a significant percentage of the German people. Millions visit each year for decades or even for generations.
My point is to ask which of these is actually the more meaningful? A statement by a figurehead (or figureheads) or the actual feelings and demonstration of repentance by the people as individuals? I’d offer that the latter would hold far more meaning and that the former would be (should be, by comparison) almost meaningless.
Charity, when practiced by the state, tends to counter and diminish our individual impulse to charity. It is a common notion that personal participation in food kitchens, pantries, or shelters for the homeless is not required, as that is what taxes, in part, are paid to do for us. Similarly apology for evils done by the state replace or diminish the need or impulse for repentance by the individual. For the actual harm done by the state was not executed by any thing called a “state”, but by individuals. And it is individuals who must repent. Germany as Germany does not need to apologize for the Holocaust. Germans do, not Germany. Solzhenitsyn wrote that the line between good and evil is drawn through every human heart. And it is every human heart that needs to repent for things done, not those heartless state organs.
Filed under: Culture • Ethics & Morality • Government • Israel • Mark O. • Middle East
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This is an interesting post, particularly because it runs so drastically counter to the vast majority of post-Holocaust literature I’ve read which emphasizes the degree in which the Holocaust was a state atrocity in which the vast majority of German individuals maintained a studied indifference to. What did Eichmann do — he made some trains run on time. Individuals did their little parts as bureaucrats, police officers, train operators, and soldiers, but it was only within the state-structured ideology, worldview, and institutions that this turned into a Holocaust. It was the state as a state which nourished, propagated, and implemented the horrors of the Shoah, far more than any individual person — even Hitler. Indeed, the individual Germans alive today (rightly) feel they “as individuals” have nothing to apologize for. And why should they — there is no corruption of blood here. It is only in their capacity as Germans, as members of a state and nation, that they have to feel remorse.
Now, that being said, it still probably would be very nice if the German people spontaneously engaged in this repentance ceremony you so eloquently lay out. But I see no reason why this theoretically can’t happen in tandem with the “state” apology — and Germany, to its credit, has as a state done quite a bit to express its remorse and commemorate the evils of the Holocaust (far, far, far more than the US has done for slavery or Native American genocide). And speaking as a Jew, I find it a very meaningful. It’s meaning would supplement, not diminish, any alternative methods of commemoration that might swell from the grassroots.
Now, you say that practically, Germany’s “official” apology saps the impetus for private action. That would be compelling if there was the remotest bit of evidence that — absent any official action, there would be such a public outpouring of grief. And there’s none to speak of — any more than its remotely plausible that abandoning all public welfare programs would mean an outpouring of private “charity” that would mean nobody would go sick, hungry, naked or homeless. The US, which has never officially apologized for either slavery or our own genocide, certainly has never seen anything resembling spontaneous public atonement. Which is why leaders in these communities are, in fact, pushing for the official apology — it offers them closure they know they’ll never get anywhere else.
Ultimately, I think its up to the victimized community to decide would type of repentance and apology they desire to make themselves whole. It’s all too easy to be an idealist when the consequences don’t fall on your head. If Germany had withhold a formal apology on the grounds that might forestall some theoretical future public atonement, as a Jew I wouldn’t be pleased. I’d simply call BS.
David,
Charity (and the impulse to the same) on a personal level is lessened by institutional charity. That is the “remotest” evidence I tender to the notion that institutional repentance or apology would remove or lessen the individual impulse.
Is factually incorrect as noted by Ms Arendt in her book. He didn’t just “make the trains run on time”, he remitted his personal ethical moral decision making process to the state, i.e., Hitler. He personally made the ethical choice to deny the truth of Solzhenitsyn’s remark, which alas doesn’t make it any less true. It was not a “state” which created the Holocaust but thousands of individuals choosing not to be moral. Eichmann was executed, rightly so, for he was guilty … and that guilt was not something born by a phantasm called “the state.” as it never is. Furthermore the state which committed this act no longer exists. It was terminated in 1945 with extreme prejudice.
States sanction and legitimize behaviors that are considered to be impermissible outside a state context. A judge can send someone away to prison, and a police officer can keep them there for however long their sentence is. But I can’t do either, even with a make-shift courtroom and a backyard jail, no matter how snappy of a black robe or a blue uniform I buy. They’re agents of a state which carries authority and legitimacy — I’m just a schmoe. A Navy Pilot, under orders from the Admiral, can bomb a suspected safehouse in Iraq from his fighter jet. But even if I bomb the same house, in the same place, at the same time from my fighter jet (which for some inexplicable reason I don’t own), it’s not okay. You’re more likely to listen to a directive from a fireman than from a street peddler. States are apparatuses which play huge roles in the moral universe. To call them phantasms is simply not living in the world.
As for various charitable impulses: a) I’m not sure I buy the initial premise — it seems at least as possible that state commitment can serve as a spark plug to motivate people to fight against an injustice they’d hitherto been ignoring, b) under your aforementioned analysis about phantasmic states it’s unclear what the difference is between public and private charity is anyway — isn’t all just individuals (thousands, hundreds, millions) “choosing” to give? And c) even if its true that “private” giving is reduced by “public” giving, its also true that the tradeoff on a pure numerical level is easily worth it — the amount of folks fed, clothed, and otherwise aided through public assistance dwarfs even the most optimistic assumptions about what private giving would do (which is why poverty and other social ailments dropped dramatically as they became seen as public rather than private problems). Ditto with “apologies” — even if I were to assume that individuals are marginally more likely to repent in absence of a state declaration (and I don’t), the likelihood of it is still so remote as to still give the advantage to the public apology that I can get rather the private ones I never will.
Again, I refer to history: the absence of any public atonement for the Native American genocide has not resulted in any substantial private action. It’s just resulted in a gaping, deafening silence. The presence of public atonement for the Holocaust, however, has led to significant acts of atonement — both individually from Germans, as well as material restitution, public memorials, moral commitments (albeit poorly kept ones) to “never again” allow genocide, and the creation of a Jewish state. Public atonement was very meaningful tangibly and intangibly — and more importantly, it actually happened, which is more than what we can say for the strictly private route.
David,
I disagree with your interpretation of the following:
When acting as an agent of the state it is true that there are things you do that you are not morally permitted as an individual. However, it still remains that you are morally responsible for your actions. In the US Armed forces you are legally bound to not obey an illegal order. Therefore, even if the state asks you as its agent to herd Jews into cattle cars, you are morally bound to disobey. That is the point of Solzhenitsyn’s observation. No matter if you are acting for the state or not, that line is drawn through your heart. The point is that it is individual in that state who request, require, and act to perform evil when done on behalf of the state. Specifically those acts for which government might apologize is never a thing which an agent of the state could do without morally compromising themselves. That is the sense in which I mean the state is a phantasm.
On charity, I will freely admit that public charity is required at some level. However there is a trade off involved, which means that the effectiveness of gathering money at gunpoint (taxes) which is really good at effect redistribution of wealth must be counterbalanced with the morality of that taking in the first place and the fact that it reduces our individual virtue (personal impulses to charity).
Well, if you think that a handful of people at the top echelon of a state deciding to issue an apology (which is likely done in the first place to eke out a small tactical political advantage) is really truly meaningful to a community which has suffered harm, I’d offer that the community in question is marvelously naive. If, during the current Administration’s tenure, say before the 2004 election, the GOP led Congress and Administration had crafted a statement of apology for slavery and the treatment of the Blacks during the reconstruction period and the 20th century, you would likely (rightly perhaps) have called that a cynical play for votes and an empty statement worth not even the paper it was written upon. I’d view any such statement by a government in much the same light, absent a groundswell commitment to repentance. Which is my point, government apologies are worthless, repentance is a personal matter and needs to be done by individuals.
On the Holocaust and public involvement. You do realize that Germany did not act to found the state of Israel, it was, I think, the Allies post war who did that (not the defeated Germany which at that time was certainly in no state to act on the global stage being somewhat occupied with reconstruction and the Soviet/NATO division of their country). Of course how the history of atonement for that would have unfolded if the state had kept out of it. How you connect that public atonement has been the cause of private is something which you have not made (and I suspect cannot).
I agree that individuals remain morally responsible for their actions, but states do as well, because states create the contexts by which certain behaviors are ratified and legitimized. Both are moral “players” in the system, and thus both carry with them responsibility. In Nazi Germany, all the deportation orders were “legal” (they were the product of laws and ordinances passed by the legitimately established government), so the “illegal order” example does not apply at all. The individuals carry with them guilt, but also the state which ordered them (ultimately “at gunpoint”, as you note in your taxation argument) to do so. I fail to see why the state gains absolution simply because its agents could have resisted (but, predictably, didn’t because state orders are considered to be facially legitimate in our moral outlooks).
On the rest of it, I say it’s not for you to decide what’s meaningful and what isn’t to victimized communities. Had the GOP-led Congress authored a formal apology for slavery in 2004, I guarantee you it would have gotten an enormous positive reaction by the Black community — and I would have concurred in it. RNC Chair Ken Mehlman’s apology on behalf of the GOP to Black voters for the “southern strategy” is a parallel case, and got a good reception (albeit one limited by the fact that the GOP continues to racialize politics — whatever benefits Mehlman might have accrued were obliterated by the Bush administration’s gutting of the DOJ’s civil rights division. But presumably even the GOP isn’t going to try and reintroduce slavery any time soon.). So I disagree with you that it would be seen as a ploy, or meaningless, and I disagree with you that you are in any position to make such a determination. It’s remarkably hubristic of you to respond to a group requesting an apology that they don’t actually know what they want, that they’re simply naive, and that a different form of repentance (which, I can’t stress enough, likely won’t ever actually happen) is what they really want — so no apology. That takes arrogance to a new level.
And finally, on Israel, the prevailing sentiment in the Jewish community was that the establishment of Israel was a form of collective international atonement for eons of anti-Semitism — including the Holocaust. Germans, after all, aren’t the only ones who have to repent on that score — all nations have expressed more than their fair share of anti-Semitism, and most nations (including most of the allies) shoulder some of the blame for the Holocaust as well by not allowing fleeing Jewish refugees into their borders (the US and — via its territorial mandate over Palestine — the UK have particular blame here), or freely participating in the deportation of the Jews to the death camps (France, Poland — fun historical fact — on the question of the Holocaust at least, Japan is one of the major good guys). The Holocaust impressed upon them the fundamental evil they had been perpetuating for all these years, and the state of Israel was established as part of a wider sentiment that this no longer can be tolerated.
David,
It doesn’t matter if the deportation orders where “legal” because they are immoral (at a state or individual level) which means those who write those laws as well as the people enacting them are morally culpable. There is no “government” to blame, only individuals. It matters not whether it is a legal order to send troops into a village and rape and pillage, it does not exonerate the soldiers who do it. That’s the error Eichmann (and others) made, in deciding his moral authority would be Hitler. Moral blame lays on the people not on the “Nation”.
I disagree that you are in any better place than I to make such a determination regarding whether such an action is acceptable or not. How, by the way, does a “group” request anything like that anyhow? If you want to suggest that their “leaders” think that apologies by a few more governmental “leaders” is satisfactory, that’s likely because their all hanging out in the same circles anyhow. And I’ll attempt to preempt you on one matter, please don’t refer to any cricket race results, i.e., polls, as support.
I will however concede, based on discussion on this post at my site, that there is one good thing that the leaders can do in this matter. A leader, such as Merkel from the above, could suggest via a state apology that actions such as that suggested in item #2 might be taken. Leaders might lead, and in such leading a “state apology” might be part of that. That however, in my view, would have no real value unless that lead is followed.
However, I see no argument of yours regarding the validity of my opinion as to the value of government vs people an atonement besides your turning to ad hominem attacks (“arrogance to a new level” indeed). Ad hominem is, I think, not regarded as being among the “best” rhetorical techniques.
You had listed in your itemization of German government actions which were in the form of an apology, the formation of Israel. I don’t think Germany took part in that, which is why I thought it not correct to include it. I wouldn’t go so far as to call Japan a ethical good guy in the aftermath of WWII by any measure. The Bataan March, Nanking, and many other examples drawn from their occupation stand in the way of that. Arendt listed Italy and Denmark as good guys regarding Holocaust if I remember correctly.
May I jump in here to make one point? David said:
6 or 7 years ago, one of the big pushes in the Promise Keepers movement was racial reconciliation. Apologies for slavery by whites on behalf of our race were offered in stadium events all around the country. Our pastor then brought that idea home, and partnered with a local black church to do the same thing. You probably never heard of the Promise Keepers effort since the only press they’d get is when feminists protested them.
I’d argue that this more personal sort of atonement, in smaller groups and below the media radar, is more effective than a national petition, where a simple “Me, too” is all that is required.
My ancestors never owned African slaves (most were recent immigrants to the US) and so I, personally, had nothing to repent for. But I understood the purpose of such an act of contrition in bringing people together. As part of a church congregation which was repenting, there was a much more personal effect on me than if some large organization, even a grass-roots one, spoke for me.
Basically I’m saying this: just because you don’t think it would happen doesn’t mean it wouldn’t, and just because you haven’t seen it happen doesn’t mean it hasn’t.
Sorry for the gap, I was traveling (the grad school hunt begins!).
Doug, let’s start with your comment. First, let me say that I’m very glad that the PKs decided to hold such an event. Such things are meaningful, and even if they’re rare, there is beauty and meaning in them. That’s valuable.
At the same time, I think that there’s other reasons why the PKs atonement is not widely considered to be important or sufficient, beyond just that they’re considered somewhat marginal. The victim class does not consider itself to have victimized by the promise keepers. The apology is nice, but as you say in large part both the group and its membership has nothing to personally atone for. But Black Americans do see themselves as victimized by the US government. Substitution doesn’t work — you can’t take the sins of others onto your head.
Mark: Quickies first: Japan is not a good guy in WWII, but it is a good guy on the narrower subject of the Holocaust (separate questions). Polls are flawed instruments, but not useless ones, and I see no warrant for facially delegitimizing them accept to short-circuit the ability of us to measure group preferences. I’m also not sure that Black leaders (local and national) do run in the same circles as White leaders — are Kwesi Mfume and GWB really drinking buddies? The “public atonement” for the Holocaust, as I indicated, was not just from Germany but from many many international actors, including the United States, and is seen as a motivator for establishing Israel. I agree that a positive role of states would be to try and urge “grass-roots” or local level atonement measures, and hopefully we can at least agree to push for that in America.
But I will say that I’m going to stand by my “arrogance” claim, because I have no idea what else to call the idea that you have some sort of epistemic authority to tell me what I find meaningful. I didn’t know that anybody but me had the authority to say what I find meaningful, but apparently I’m supposed to defer to you on the mechanics of my own psyche, so I “shouldn’t” find official state acts of atonement for the Holocaust meaningful, but I “should” find other potential types of atonement meaningful (and if I do find the former meaningful, I am…what? A mental defect?). Insofar as Black Americans say they’d find meaning in a state apology, I say we defer to their own analysis of their own minds. To do otherwise — I have no idea what else to call that but arrogance.
David,
And you accuse me(!) of arrogance. Here Doug informs you that a large group of Promise Keepers apologized and are working to atone for slavery. You’ve decided that this is meaningless (because) in your opinion White Males are not blamed for slavery, the US government is. Compounded with this, Doug notes that coming home, this movement brought one community of Black’s who apparently recognized and appreciated the gesture, but you prefer to term it as “insignificant”. It is in fact interesting that you’d remark that “white males” are not to blame for some sins from the point of view of the progressive left.
Mr Mfume, if not a drinking buddy of Mr Bush, certainly does likely run in the same circles, the beltway, pundit, media, and other clubs of the same faces appearing over and over as talking heads in that debating club surrounding the power vortex that is Washington DC.
My claim is that the only positive role that states can take is to push for local level or national atonement by people. The government qua government cannot atone for anything.
On the subject of my arrogance, I’m sure you’ve seen the movie by Mr Eastwood, The Outlaw Josie Wales, in it Mr Wales Indian companion notes on his peoples trip to visit the “great white leader” in Washington and the result. His people had a flawed view of the role of state and the particular role regarding moral and spiritual leadership. He had assigned them roles that is not one that is given by the American people to the role of the Executive by Constitution and practice in the American civil union. If the Black American’s make a similar error, it is not arrogant to call it an error.
However, I would find it unusual, in this day an age, for anyone (but perhaps you, painted into a corner and debating) to insist that the Executive is ascribed moral or spiritual leadership in this country. Since neither he, nor Congress, posses that role, why assign it to them in this matter alone? Why is that not illogical and erroneous?