Doing justice

Maximilien-Marie-Isidore de Robespierre

Nowadays many people are highly indignant when people are prosecuted only because they use their right of freedom of expression; because they expose abuses by the state; or because they want to live their own lives without interference by higher authorities who consider them a threat for the state just because of this. In modern society, it is the individual that comes first and not the state. I became again aware of this, when I read Reflections on Violence by Georges Sorel, written more than a century ago; especially when I read chapter III-II, where Sorel explains why Robespierre used so much violence against his opponents. It made me clear that oppression by dictatorial regimes is not simply a matter of the exercise of power by tyrannical rulers in favour of themselves, but that it is a different way of thinking what is right. Since I think that it’s good to understand this other way thinking in order to be better able to fight against it, let me share with you what Sorel wrote.
Although in a democratic country, basically the state is subordinate to the individual, in France of the Old Régime, so in France before the Revolution of 1789, it was just the other way round: the individual was subordinate to the state. This meant that any action not supporting the state might be considered subversive and criminal. “One of the fundamental ideas of the Old Régime”, so Sorel, “had been the employment of the penal procedure to ruin any power which was an obstacle to the monarchy. … [P]enal law … was a protection granted to the chief and to a few privileged persons whom he honoured with special favour … and … the courts of justice [were] considered as instruments of royal greatness. … The king constantly demanded of his courts of justice that they should work for the enlargement of his territories. … Justice, which seems to us nowadays created to secure the prosperity of production, and to permit its free and constantly widening development, seemed created in former days to secure the greatness of the monarchy: its essential aim was not justice, hut the welfare of the State.” [italics by Sorel] And so it could happen that feudal manors were confiscated for arbitrary motives, or that individual acts were not judged from the point of view, whether the individual had the right to act so but whether they undermined the state. The State, not the individual, was central in law.
The French Revolution didn’t simply change this mentality. Such a mentality doesn’t simply change by a regime change. After the fall of the Old Régime the new leaders came from the same social layer of dignitaries that had applied the law before the Revolution. (also Robespierre was a lawyer) So, although the regime had changed, much remained the same. The ideas changed but the mentality didn’t. Following Sorel again: “The Revolution piously gathered up [the old] tradition that gave an importance to imaginary crimes …; it seemed quite natural to explain the defeats of generals by criminal intentions, and to guillotine people who had not been able to realise hopes fostered by a public opinion, that had returned to the superstitions of childhood. … [N]owadays it is not easy to understand how a citizen can be seriously accused of plotting or of keeping up a correspondence with foreign powers or their agents in order to induce them to begin hostilities, or to enter into war with France, or to furnish them with the means therefor. Such a crime supposes that the State can be imperilled by the act of one person; this appears scarcely credible to us. Actions against enemies of the king [before the Revolution] were always conducted in an exceptional manner; the procedure was simplified as much as possible; flimsy proofs which would not have sufficed for ordinary crimes were accepted; the endeavour was to make a terrible and profoundly intimidating example.” All this was also found in the new legislation after 1789, for example, as quoted by Sorel: “The proof necessary to condemn the enemies of the people is any kind of document, material, moral, verbal or written, which can naturally obtain the assent of any just and reasonable mind. Juries in giving their verdict should be guided solely by what love of their country indicates to their conscience; their aim is the triumph of the republic and, the ruin of its enemies.” [italics by Sorel]
So, although the Old Royal Regime had fallen and the citizens had taken power, this didn’t involve as yet a transition to a modern democratic state. Far from that. The regime had changed, but the personnel hadn’t. In a sense it was old wine in new bottles. After a promising start, soon the mentality of the Old Régime returned, leading to much chaos and bloodshed and to Napoleon’s restoration of the former autocratic France. It was a new “Cult of the State” (Sorel). The Old Régime had been replaced by a “democratic despotism”, in which “the Government would have been in theory the representative of everybody, controlled by an enlightened public opinion; practically it was an absolute master.” (Tocqueville)
Once I had read this section of Sorel’s Reflections on Violence, it was easy to see the similarities with present dictatorships. Then I think in the first place of Russia after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. You can see the same phenomena (less so, but they clearly are there) in several Eastern European countries. Also in countries like the Netherlands and modern France still relics of the old state mentality have been left. Comparing the Russian regime change in 1991 with the French Revolution: After the fall of the Soviet Union, first there was a period of (economic) chaos and then Putin’s Restoration followed. Look how there organisations that receive foreign money are considered “foreign agents”. Look how the press is curbed by the state. The structure of the country has changed after the fall of the Soviet Union, but the same personnel stayed and by that the Soviet mentality. Also in many other countries the state continuously tries to subject the individual. The Old Régime mentality keeps reigning everywhere. Often the law of the individual is still subordinate to the law of the state, while it should be the other way round. 

Source
All quotations are from section III-II in Georges Sorel, Reflections on Violence.

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One must be very simple to suppose that the people who would profit by the demagogic dictatorship would willingly abandon its advantages.

Georges Sorel (1847-1922)

How to become a dictator

Everyone should read the newest book by the French neuropsychiatrist Boris Cyrulnik. Recently, I saw an interview on the French TV in which Cyrulnik talked about his book and although I had something else to do, I couldn’t stop watching till the program had ended. The book is basically about inner freedom and voluntary servitude. This duality and the way you develop into one direction or the other makes that the book is about how you become the person you are. However, it also helps understand the rise of new dictatorships in this world, after a period in which democracy had been spreading. And just this aspect makes that the book is not only important to understand yourself but that it is also politically relevant. In view of the present war in Ukraine, which is actually a fight between a new democracy and a new dictatorship – the latter is new after a short democratic intermezzo –, it is not surprising that just this aspect of the book has drawn my attention. It’s not mere chance that you can interpret the book this way, for Cyrulnik’s personal experience as a Jewish child that survived the Second World War is continuously in the background of this book, which can also be seen as Cyrulnik’s way to understand these experiences. The book is so rich in ideas and analyses that I cannot do justice to it in this blog. Therefore – with the Russia-Ukraine War in my mind – I’ll pick one aspect of it: How to become a dictator.
When talking of dictators, I think that now most people will think of the Russian president Putin, but the tricks I am going to present exist already since it has become possible to manipulate your public and followers with the help of modern media. So, maybe Hitler and Mussolini were the first dictators who used them, but here there is no need to discuss about this historical question. Modern dictators mentioned by Cyrulnik are the ayatollahs in Iran, Putin in Russia and the Turkish president Erdoğan, although, to my mind, the latter is not yet a fully-fledged dictator, for in Turkey there is yet so much democracy left that it is still possible to stop Erdoğan. I want to add to these names the Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán, although also in Hungary it is still possible to stop his dictatorial manipulations by democratic means; even more so than in Turkey.
Most modern dictators or semi-dictators like those just mentioned didn’t get their power by a kind of coup d’état. Hitler, Putin, Erdoğan and Orbán were all elected by normal democratic procedures. Only once in power they made the steps to a dictatorship by misusing their power or by manipulation. It’s also not so that statements by future or settled dictators are not true, like statements that, for example, they have “saved” the country. The point is that dictators use such true or false statement to pretend to have reasons to break the law, to suppress the freedom of the press, to manipulate the people, to form an inner circle of supporters in order to undermine the democratic rules and institutions, to establish their personal power, and to eliminate their political opponents (event by arresting or killing them), despite the presence of laws that protect democracy and especially legally protect their opponents.
What then must a politician do to try to become a dictator? Here is Cyrulnik’s recipe:
- Say “I will be your hero”.
- Say “I am prepared to die for you”.
- Use simple words and use often the word “people”.
- Make popular allusions and insinuations, but not too many. Just for rhetoric reasons and for showing that you don’t belong to the “arrogant elite”.
- Say that there is a domestic enemy (the traitor) or a foreign enemy (like immigrants or a foreign power), and when doing so sustain your words with much drama like an opera singer dying on the stage killed by another singer.
- Finish your speech with words like: “If you want that I liberate you, obey me, follow me, vote for me.”
Present yourself as the liberator, speak the language of the people, promise fantastic results, make the people enthusiast and say that you are going to free them from the humiliations by others and from the corruption of those in power. Then, once you have been elected, you can begin to undermine democracy in favour of yourself and your future dictatorship. How? There are many who can show you the way, like Orbán, Erdoğan and Putin. 

Source
Boris Cyrulnik, Le laboureur et les mangeurs de vent. Liberté intérieure et confortable servitude. Paris: Odile Jacob, 2022; esp. pp. 96-99.

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Repression itself produces the counter-forces that will eventually defeat its instigators.

Willem Frederik Wertheim (1907-1998) 

1914

1914 *)

War broke: and now the Winter of the world

With perishing great darkness closes in.

The foul tornado, centred at Berlin**),

Is over all the width of Europe whirled,

Rending the sails of progress. Rent or furled

Are all Art's ensigns. Verse wails. Now begin

Famines of thought and feeling. Love's wine's thin.

The grain of human Autumn rots, down-hurled.

For after Spring had bloomed in early Greece,

And Summer blazed her glory out with Rome,

An Autumn softly fell, a harvest home,

A slow grand age, and rich with all increase.

But now, for us, wild Winter, and the need

Of sowings for new Spring, and blood for seed.

Wilfred Owen

*)   Read: 2022
**) Read: Moscow

Source: https://mypoeticside.com/show-classic-poem-21179

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If he is of an exalted temperament, and if, unfortunately, he finds himself armed with a great power, allowing him to realize an ideal he has forged, the optimist can lead his country to the worst catastrophes.

Georges Sorel (1847-1922)

War rhetoric

Peace Palais in The Hague, Netherlands, the seat of one of the
international courts of justice in this town that tries to combat
 war and its excrescences. 

Gradually the words of the politicians of the parties involved in the Russia-Ukraine War become harder. For instance, some time ago the American president Biden called the Russian president Putin a killer and recently he called him a war criminal. Now it is so that pres. Biden is a free citizen and like any citizen of the USA he is free to express his opinion. However, pres. Biden is not just a citizen of his country, but he is a political leader who has responsibilities towards his country, especially bringing welfare and peace there. Is it therefore right to call his political opponent a war criminal, even though and even if there are good reason to think so?
Let me first say something about the term “war criminal”. “War criminal”, or rather “war crime”, is a legal term. I’ll not go into detail here, but what a war crime is, has been determined by international treaties and law, like the Geneva Conventions. In short, it is a superfluous injury or unnecessary suffering inflicted upon an enemy like wilful killing, extensive destruction and appropriation of property not justified by military necessity, deliberately targeting civilians, deliberately killing innocent civilians, etc. If there is a suspicion that a war crime has been committed, the International Criminal Court in The Hague can start an investigation and prosecute the suspected offender. Recently, the Court has started such an investigation in Ukraine in order to find out whether war crimes have been committed there (by both sides). So, at the moment the case is, what we call, sub judice. However, judicially it still has to be proven that war crimes have been committed in Ukraine and who the offenders are. When a case is sub judice, it is common practice that politicians refrain from making statements about it in order not to influence the investigation and the verdict. Therefore, politicians like pres. Biden should not say whether pres. Putin is a war criminal or isn’t.
So far the juridical side. However, there are also practical reasons not to call pres. Putin a war criminal. Some people may not think so, but we need politicians for many reasons. Restricting myself to the present Russia-Ukraine War, it is their task to bring this war to a decent end. As president Zelensky of Ukraine stresses again and again, this war can end only with negotiations. But who wants to negotiate with a war criminal? Can you make it to negotiate with a war criminal? Of course not. You talk only with a war criminal, if it is the easiest way to get the person in prison. In other words, calling Putin a war criminal makes negotiations to end this war impossible. That’s why you shouldn’t do so, even if you think he is. That’s why, for example, neither pres. Zelensky nor pres. Macron of France does so.
In addition, calling Putin a war criminal can also backfire on the war and even prolong fighting and atrocities. There is a psychological effect that people accused of bad behaviour may shield themselves off from the accusations instead of getting the insight that they are on the wrong way. They can even become proud of what they are doing. Accusations of bad behaviour can also make that they are just supported in their behaviour by their inner circles (who often also are implicated in the crimes). This can make that war criminals not only continue their crimes but even increase them, because they don’t give a damn about what others say. So, war crime accusations can lead to more war crimes.
Calling Putin a war criminal, and, sadly enough, also the investigations, whether war crimes have been committed by the Russian army, can also backfire in another way. As Joseph Wright and Abel Escribà-Folch write in The Conversation: “Leaders who face the prospect of punishment once a conflict ends have an incentive to prolong the fighting. And a leader who presides over atrocities has a strong incentive to avoid leaving office, even if that means using increasingly brutal methods – and committing more atrocities – to remain in power. When losing power is costly, leaders may be more likely to fight to the death”, like when they risk to be prosecuted for war crimes.
In view of all this, it is important that politicians should moderate their words when involved in a war, certainly in a war like the Russia-Ukraine War that will be difficult to end, as it seems now. Hard words, like calling Putin a war criminal, will make this war last longer and will make it difficult to solve the conflict. But what we see is that the rhetoric becomes harsher and harsher. Now pres. Biden and others say that Russia must be weakened, but an analysis like the one just given will make clear that also this statement probably will make that the war will last longer. Do I want to say then that Western politicians must keep their mouth shut? Of course not. They must say what their limits are, and I think they have said so already clear enough: Western democracy, for short, and the internationally accepted borders, like the borders of Ukraine and the other European countries with Russia. This plus real support to Ukraine is a clear sign. To my mind, by starting this war, Russia has weakened itself already so much that it will need a long time to recover. Why then spend words on it that only will make the problem bigger? Politicians must solve problems, not make them. They must bring problems to a good end and find decent solutions, once problems are there.

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The fame of great men ought always to be estimated by the means used to acquire it.

François Duc De La Rochefoucauld (1613-1680)

Killing in war

Malinowski on Trobiand Isles, 1917/1918 (Source)

Hundred years ago the First World War (1914-1918) had just ended. Then it was called the Great War. It was one of the cruellest wars ever in number of victims. How many people died because of this war is not known and figures vary from about 10 till 20 million people dead. Let’s say that 15 million people died because of this war, half of them being soldiers, half of them being civilians. In those days – it was in 1917 or 1918 – the anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski had a conversation with a cannibal on the Trobriand Islands. This is what Malinowski tell us about it:

“I remember talking to an old cannibal who from missionary and administrator had heard news of the Great War raging then in Europe. What he was most curious to know was how we Europeans managed to eat such enormous quantities of human flesh, as the casualties of a battle seemed to imply. When I told him indignantly that Europeans do not eat their slain foes, he looked at me with real horror and asked me what sort of barbarians we were to kill without any real object.” (Source)

I think that the cannibal was right.

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Socratic wisdom can be best reached by sympathetic insight into the lives and viewpoints of others.

Bronislaw Malinowski (1884-1942)

Terror in war

Hiroshima, Japan, Atomic Bomb Dome

Terror is an often-happening phenomenon both in daily life and in war, but what actually is terror? I’ll try to explain this with the help of Peter Sloterdijk’s Luftbeben (especially pp. 7-28) plus my own ideas (without separating which ideas are his and which are mine).
The word “terror” goes back to the France Revolution. It’s used to indicate the period of extreme violence and massacres of the first years of the revolution, between 1789 and 1794. The attempts and murders by anarchists at the end of the 19th century and during the first years of the 20th were a second period of terror in Europe. The best-known case is the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria on 28 June 1914. However, following Sloterdijk, the present idea of terror goes back to an event in the First World War (WW1) on 22 April 1915. On that day, near Ypres in Belgium, the German army launched the first large-scale gas attack in war against the French and Canadian troops on the other side of the front line. The front line broke, but the Germans didn’t succeed to take advantage of this local victory. However, by this attack the Germans introduced a new phenomenon in war: terror; a phenomenon that would not be limited to acts of war against enemy soldiers, but soon it would be directed also against civilians, and soon it would be practiced also by those who were no regular soldiers.
The new gas weapon was not a new weapon as any other new weapon, such as, for instance, the tank, which appeared in 1916 in WW1 on the battlefield. No, it was substantially different, for while till then (see note 1) fighting in war was directed against the person of the enemy soldier, now a weapon had been developed that attacked the environment of the soldier. Killing the enemy became indirect. Moreover, there was another effect: fear. Often, a gas weapon didn’t kill the soldier, but it made him suffer for a long time (some soldiers died many years after the war from a gas attack during WW1); or it could make him blind. Moreover, you often didn’t know whether the gas was there; it could be invisible or you could hardly smell it, if you could. It was quite abstract compared with a gun. You never knew where it was and whether it was there. The fear of the fear became bigger than the fear of the weapon itself, so to speak. Also the French and British forces developed gas weapons during WW1 and also Hitler became a gas victim and he was blind for some time. Was it why he refused to use chemical weapons in World War 2, fearing that he, too, could be hit again, if the enemy would use them, too? Was it why he used gas to murder the Jews?
So the essence of terror is not so much that it kills people but that it kills their environment; literally, as chemical weapons do, or psychologically, in the sense that people become afraid of places where an invisible enemy or weapon might kill you. The weapon is invisible for you, and you cannot notice that it is there. You have no idea from which direction an attack can come and in extreme cases you even don’t know whether there is a weapon or whether there isn’t. Terror is invisible like a ghost: it’s not there and it’s there.
Since 22 April 1915 the weapon of terror has been further developed and increasingly used. It has been used against soldiers but even more against civilians. During WW1, the Germans bombed London and other cities in England and the French and English bombed German towns. The same happened during the Second World War. Also legal military objects like weapon factories were then attacked, but not only. Rather the civilian population was the target of the bombardments. A main idea behind these bombardments was: Surrender, for if you don’t, we’ll destroy your life world. Even if you survive, we’ll make life for you impossible. Also the A-bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were of that kind. Modern attacks by Islamic extremists on the Twin Towers, on cartoonists and so on are also terrorist attacks in the sense just described. They are not only meant as “punishments” of the persons killed or of the USA or of whoever else, but these attacks contain a message: We are everywhere, but you don’t know where we are or where we are not and we’ll kill you if you don’t stop to draw those cartoons that we don’t like or when you don’t accept our interpretation of the Islam. We’ll make your life impossible if you don’t accept our world view.
And that’s what we see now also in the Russian-Ukrainian war. Often civilian objects like houses, flats and residential quarters are hit by Russian missiles, bombs and grenades. There can be all kinds of reasons for that. The Russian army may think that there are military objects at the site targeted; the missile missed the target; it was a case of collateral damage; it was a mistake; etc. But often in this war hitting a civilian target is intentional. The message sent is: Surrender, for nowhere you are safe. Give in to our demands, for if you don’t, we’ll make your life impossible. When this happens, it’s pure terror. 

Note
(1) Also before WW1, even in Antiquity, sometimes it has been tried to contaminate the environment, for instance by means of dead animal bodies, which was also a kind of terrorism. But the modern idea of terror goes back to WW1.

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When a scheme simplifies a situation to better explain it, a slogan gives a certainty that stops the thought.

Boris Cyrulnik (1937-)

Preventing war crimes

Oradour-sur-Glane (F)

At the moment there is much to do about mass killings of civilians by Russian soldiers in the Russian-Ukrainian war. Soldiers who had retreated from the Kyiv region apparently have killed many innocent civilians during the weeks that they occupied the area. In other regions the Russian army has attacked apparently intentionally places where civilians live or where these had gathered in order to leave the war zone. Also this has made that many innocent civilians have been killed. In future, Bucha will be named in one line with Oradour-sur-Glane and Lidice. Also the Ukrainian army is not free from atrocities (see here), albeit it on a much smaller scale and albeit it that in this case the persons intentionally wounded or killed are not civilians but prisoners of war, so soldiers (which doesn’t make it less objectionable). There is great indignation at these facts (supposing that they are facts, and most likely they are), especially at the killing of civilians. Rightly, for intentionally killing innocent civilians and prisoners of war is a war crime. Now it is so that much can be said about why soldiers perform war crimes, but in the end soldiers have mortal weapons at their disposal, which they can or are ordered to use in certain circumstances, and this makes that they must be very aware of when and why to kill. In other words, maybe more than any other person a soldier must be a “moral agent”, so a person who is able “to refrain from behaving inhumanely [and who has] the pro-active power to behave humanly.” (Bandura) Following Aristotle in his Ethica Nicomachea, we can also say that a soldier must be a virtuous person who has the professional skilfulness to apply his virtues. A soldier must know what acting morally is and how to act morally. Which moral virtues then must a soldier possess? That’s what Plato tells us, who distinguishes four so-called cardinal virtues: Prudence (the ability to do the appropriate thing at the right time in the right situation), justice, temperance (moderation or self-restraint), and courage.
Now you may think that this is quite abstract and typically comes from the brain of a philosopher in his ivory tower. Then I can tell you that I found the idea that a soldier is a moral agent and the reference to Aristotle and Plato in this context in a textbook on military ethics written for classes of the Dutch Royal Military Academy. Apparently, also for soldiers nothing is more practical than a good theory. One practical problem is, however, that many soldiers don’t realize that they are moral agents and don’t behave that way, with the result of the possibility of war crimes, when soldiers are in situations that easily make them behave immorally. Even then many do behave morally but too many do not, with terrible consequences as we see now in the Russian-Ukrainian war. Nevertheless, war crimes can be prevented. To my mind, the essence of the methods to prevent war crimes and immoral behaviour is making soldiers aware of the problem during their training plus good leadership. The latter means that commanders at all levels must not be only aware of the problem, but they must also be attentive to the problem before, during and after an action. So education and awareness are the essence of preventing war crimes. But let’s look what the textbook on military ethics says about it, which is in fact an elaboration of what I just said. The book mentions four ways to prevent war crimes:
1) Application of national and international wartime offences acts. However, in war situations it is difficult to arrest war criminals; war crimes done by own soldiers are seen as less important; war criminals are often arrested only long after the act; and war criminals usually don’t think of the possibility of being arrested when committing their crimes. So the preventive effect of wartime criminal acts is often insufficient.
2) Education, training, learning skills and doing practical exercises how to apply what you have learned. So soldiers and commanders must be taught and trained to behave morally in difficult situations.
3) Soldiers must learn that it is something special to wear a uniform; that it’s an honour to wear a uniform; and that the crime of one soldier is seen by others outside the army as a crime done by the whole army.
4) Moral character building. Soldiers must learn which values are important to defend and which values the army stands for and he or she must be aware why s/he wants to defend them. The soldier must learn that there are situations in which “there is something worth living for that is more important than one’s own skin”.
Maybe war crimes can never be completely prevented, but they are not natural phenomena. Human beings must learn to behave morally, and they can. 

Source
A.H.M. van Iersel, Th. A. van Baarda (red.), Militaire ethiek. Morele dilemma’s van militairen in theorie en praktijk. Budel: Damon; chapter 2. Quotes are from this chapter.

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Change never comes from the top down. It always comes from the bottom up.

Bernie Sanders (1941-)

How dictatorship works. “We” by Zamyatin

Everybody will have heard of Orwell’s novel 1984, published in 1949. Not many people will know Yevgeny Zamyatin’s We. Zamyatin (1884-1937) was a Russian engineer and author. He wrote We probably in 1920-21. It was an implicit critique of the Soviet Union. Although the novel circulated for many years there in literary and other circles, it was not published in Russian before 1988. Its first publication in English was already in 1924.
We can be seen as the first dystopian novel, so a novel that describes a society we don’t want to live in. It had a big influence on later writers of such novels, like George Orwell and Aldous Huxley. It criticized the developments in the Soviet Union in the early 1920s and actually foresaw what would happen in this state, but I think that, just as Orwell’s 1984, it is still relevant and helps us understand what is currently happening in many countries and especially in dictatorships like Putin’s Russia. In this blog, I’ll not summarize the story of the book but I’ll focus on what is nowadays most interesting in the book, namely the way Zamyatin’s society, named the One State, is organized.
The events in the novel take place a few centuries after now. After a two hundred years lasting war the One State is the winner. It is a city state surrounded by a Green Wall, which closes the town off from the wild world, a savage world with wild animals, birds and a lush nature where man is thought to have become extinct (which is not true, as later becomes clear in the novel). Life in the One State is strictly organised according to mathematical principles. Its inhabitants don’t have names but numbers. Also buildings have numbers. The daily schedules of the inhabitants are exactly determined by the state: How late to wake up and go to work; when to take lunch (in a common restaurant at your workplace); when to make a walk outdoors; etc. Only two hours a day can be used at will. People live in apartments made of glass and so everyone, including your neighbours, can see what you are doing. There are curtains, but you must have permission to close them. You get it when you want to have sex with a partner. Then you ask for a pink ticket to meet your partner at home. You can choose your partner yourself, but the state must accept your choice; or the state pairs two people off (but a person can have more partners, for meeting a partner is only for the sex; babies are brought up by the state).
It can happen, of course, that an individual breaks the law. To keep people under control, there is a secret police force, named Bureau of Guardians. For only minor offences citizens can be arrested by the guardians and be punished. Not too serious violations can be punished with the death penalty. The execution of the death penalty is public and then the perpetrator is completely annihilated and nothing of the body remains. A citizen can also report someone to the Bureau of Guardians for breaking the law. Need I add yet that all information is state-controlled?
The head of the state is the Benefactor. He cares for the people and does what is best for them. He is elected once a year at a public meeting. Of course, there are no opposition candidates. You are just supposed to vote for him, and everybody can see that you do (or could see it if you did not). However, once it happens that many people vote against the re-election of the Benefactor. Of course, this is seen as a kind of rebellion, and “[it]t is clear to everybody that to take into consideration their votes would mean to consider as a part of a magnificent, heroic symphony the accidental cough of a sick person who happened to be in a concert hall.” (report 26 in We). These votes are simply not counted. However, this misbehaviour appears to be part of a real rebellion that is going on. The Benefactor and the Bureau of Guardians have already noticed that for some time that there is unrest in the One State. Happily, medical researchers have discovered that the imagination of human beings can be found in “a miserable little nervous knot in the lower region of the frontal lobe of the brain.” (report 31) Once it has been removed, people will become docile and will do everything the Benefactor asks them to do. Removing the imagination of all citizens of the One State will prevent future unrest, and the operation can be simply done by targeting the knot in the brain with X-rays. Therefore, everybody must be treated. And why wouldn’t you agree with being operated? In fact, imagination is a kind of illness and removing it will make you happy. For with your imagination also your desires are gone: “... Desires are tortures, are they not? It is clear therefore, that happiness is where there are no longer any desires, not a single desire any more. What an error, what an absurd prejudice it was, that formerly we would mark happiness with the sign ‘plus’! No, absolute happiness must be marked ‘minus,’—divine minus!” Happiness is where there is nothing, where there are no own thoughts. Then you behave like a machine and execute the orders of the Benefactor obediently and you feel good by doing so. Then you follow Reason.
With his novel We, Zamyatin has foreseen what would happen in Stalin’s Soviet Union, but didn’t he also foresee what happens in all dictatorships, and especially what happens now in his own country one hundred year later?

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Putting myself in the other person's shoes will be difficult if the other person doesn't own a pair of shoes.

Shaun Gallagher

Power and Violence. Hannah Arendt

One of the most interesting books by Hannah Arendt is her On Violence. It’s a little book but it gives you many insights that apply to the political developments in the world and especially now to the Russia-Ukraine War. Most important is part II, where Arendt analyses the concepts of power, strength, force, authority and violence. These concepts are often used as synonyms, so Arendt, but then one ignores their subtle distinctions in meaning, which can make you blind to the realities they correspond to. (p. 45) Once you have become aware of these distinctions, they are very helpful to understand complex political events, like the Russia-Ukraine War. Before I’ll give you Arendt’s interpretation of the concepts just mentioned, first a quote: “The extreme form of power is All against One, the extreme form of violence is One against All.” (p. 42) Keep this in mind, when you go on now.
“Power”, so Arendt, “corresponds to the human ability not just to act but to act in concert. Power is never the property of an individual; it belongs to a group and remains in existence only so long as the group keeps together. When we say of somebody that he is ‘in power’ we actually refer to his being empowered by a certain number of people to act in their name. The moment the group, from which the power originated to begin with … disappears, ‘his power’ also vanishes.” Power needs legitimacy in order to be accepted. This can be by legal institutions or, for example, because a majority silently stands behind the person in power.
While power refers to the many, strength is an individual capacity. “[I]t is the property inherent in an object or person and belongs to its character, which may prove itself in relation to other things or persons, but is essentially independent of them. The strength of even the strongest individual can always be overpowered by the many, who often will combine for no other purpose than to ruin strength precisely because of its peculiar independence.” So, a boxer is strong by his training, but he can be overpowered by ten persons who individually are less strong but together they are.
Force is often seen as a synonym for violence but Arendt reserves it for “the force of nature” or “the force of circumstances”, so “to indicate the energy released by physical or social movements.” I think that you can also say that force refers to the intensity of violence.
Authority can be invested in persons and in offices. “Its hallmark is unquestioning recognition by those who are asked to obey; neither coercion nor persuasion is needed.” Authority requires respect and “[t]he greatest enemy of authority, therefore, is contempt, and the surest way to undermine it is laughter.”
“Violence, finally,” so Arendt, “is distinguished by its instrumental character. … [I]t is close to strength, since the implements of violence, like all other tools, are designed and used for the purpose of multiplying natural strength.”
Arendt stresses, however, that in practice these distinctions are rarely sharp and that the borders between the concepts can be vague.
Although power and violence are different phenomena, they often go together, so Arendt. Power can be destroyed by violence (massive use of artefacts, like killing and mass murder) but violence can never turn into power. Also this remark by Arendt is interesting: “To substitute violence for power can bring victory, but the price is very high; for it is not only paid by the vanquished, it is also paid by the victor in terms of his own power.” For instance, too much violence can undermine its (alleged) justification and by this the power of the user of violence, because people turn against him. (see for the quotes, etc. pp. 43-54)
Arendt’s concepts and ideas, as just expounded, can be used to understand philosophically what is going in Ukraine, and why Putin’s invasion has failed to a large extent and why Ukraine has held out so far. Here are some hints for your analysis:
- Putin and his generals apparently thought that Zelensky and his government didn’t have power; i.e. that the Ukrainian people or too many of them didn’t stand behind them and that especially the Russian speaking population was on the side of the Russians. However, the Ukrainians just massively supported their government: Zelensky and his government had by far more power than Putin & co. expected.
- The Ukrainian army was stronger than its adversary expected. It had better weapons than expected and got even better weapons during the war; its unity and morality were better; its strategy and tactics were better than expected and also better than the Russian unity, morality, etc.
- The Russian army is prepared to use very forceful arms during this war, leading to the destruction of cities and villages and to many civilian victims.
- The authority of Zelensky and his government was not only recognized by the Ukrainians but also by almost all countries in the world and especially by the western democratic countries. This led to a massive international support for the Ukrainians, resulting in the massive sending of weapons and humanitarian aid.
- Although the Ukrainian government had power (and authority), Putin & co. expected to be able to destroy it by the use of violence, which didn’t come true by such factors as just mentioned and by other factors as well. Russia reacted by using more violence, but just this can undermine its “justification” of this war, and by this Putin’s power, if not the power of the whole regime.
This first tentative analysis alone shows how powerful Arendt’s concepts are. I leave it to you to use them for a thorough analysis of what’s going on, in the southeast of Europe and in politics in general.

Random quote

All wars have been begun for stupid reasons, but the ruins are not stupid.

Boris Cyrulnik (1937-)

Hannah Arendt on War

Statue on the Mort Homme Hill near Verdun remembering the
 fallenFrench soldiers there in the Battle of Verdun (1916).
"They didn't pass", as the text on the monument says.

“The first essential step on the road to total domination is to kill the juridical person in man. This was done, on the one hand, by putting certain categories of people outside the protection of the law and forcing at the same time, through the instrument of denationalization, the nontotalitarian world into recognition of lawlessness; it was done, on the other hand, by placing the concentration camp outside the normal penal system, and by selecting its inmates outside the juridical procedure in which a definite crime entails a predictable penalty.”
(Hannah Arendt The origins of totalitarianism. San Diego, etc.: Harvest Book, Harcourt, 1976; p.447).                                                                          

Currently we live in turbulent times. An already two years lasting world-wide pandemic still makes victims. It seems gradually to fade away (but maybe it will return; you never know), but now we are startled by a sudden war between Russia and Ukraine. This war is not just a local or regional conflict as they happen to take place, then here and then there (which is already bad enough), but the possibility exists that it will lead to a world war that even can result in a nuclear war, with all its devastating consequences. In these turbulent times, especially because it happened so suddenly (for who had expected that a war would break out in Europe?), people are looking for explanations. Then it is only one step to ask: What does Hannah Arendt tell us? Didn’t she live in a time that in many respects was not too different from what we experience today? For then we saw a dictator who attacked his neighbours looking for Lebensraum (“space to live”), now we see a dictatorship that has invaded a neighbouring country pretending to look for “security” (and both strove or strive for power, of course). And this dictatorship will certainly stretch its arms to other neighbours as well, if it will be successful in the present war (happily, it is not). Although we don’t find in Arendt’s work a real explanation of what it is going on now (for times have changed), nonetheless it can help us understand the present situation and draw our attention to important aspects.
Take, for example, the quotation at the top of this blog. Arendt refers there to the concentration camps in Nazi-Germany and the former Soviet Union. The quotation is not only striking because it seems to describe what has been happening in Russia during the past twenty years, but also because it refers to the same geographical place: Then the Soviet Union, now Russia. It is as if history is repeating itself, ten years after the dissolution of the USSR. In order to make an end of the chaos in Russia during the first years after this event, Putin came to power. Gradually he tightened his grip on the country until he had become the dictator he is today. One way to do so was “killing the juridical person in man” as Arendt calls it: Opponents were put aside by false accusations and sent to prisons or concentration camps, or they were murdered. Boris Nemtsov and Alexei Navalny are clear examples of such victims. But listen, Putin, Arendt warns you: “Nothing is more characteristic of the totalitarian movements … than the startling swiftness with which [their leaders] are forgotten and the startling ease with which they can be replaced.” (ibid. p. 305)
Or take this quotation from Arendt’s The human condition (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1958/1998), which I changed a little for editorial reasons: In modern warfare men go into action and use means of violence in order to achieve certain objectives for their own side and against the enemy. In these instances, speech becomes “mere talk”, simply one more means to the end, whether it serves to deceive the enemy or to dazzle everybody with propaganda; here words reveal nothing, so Arendt, p. 180. Don’t we see this also in the present war? The “truth” about the war in the Ukraine in the “official” media in Russia is a case in point. Here facts have become fake, or “alternative facts”, as some call it. For instance, just a little point, the war is called a “special operation” (which is a striking case of Orwellian newspeak). But we see this fear of what is real in a sense also in the Western countries, for why else has a TV sender like Russia Today been forbidden? Because they tell too much fake news, of course, but isn’t it an essential point in a liberal democracy that fake can be checked against facts by everybody and not only by an authority? In war, there is a fear of truth.
Hannah Arendt did not directly write about war (although she did write about violence), but her works are still relevant when we want to understand how wars come about and what is happening then. Arendt developed her ideas in a time that democratic and dictatorial systems clashed, first Nazi-Germany and the western democracies in the Second World War and then the latter and the Soviet Union in the Cold War. Such clashes still happen, unfortunately.