Probably every reader has heard or read about the famous Stanford experiment, where students played guards and prisoners and their behaviour quickly became so brutal that the experiment had to be stopped. The usual interpretation of this is that the worst in every human being is hidden. It is difficult to judge the experiment itself, since no detailed description has survived and the experimenter himself, the psychologist Philip Zimbardo, published the report so late that it is not entirely certain what is authentic testimony and what is the result of later reflection. So the safer interpretation is that if we allow the worst things to happen in a group, there will almost always be someone who takes advantage of it. And if that someone is publicly rewarded for their abhorrent behavior, the pattern of behavior will spread.
That is why it is so critical that every society and every group has a set of mechanisms that discourage certain behaviours and reward others. This applies to totalitarian and despotic states, but also to the most democratic societies, or even to groups of friends. These mechanisms run the scale from simple astonishment (by which we imply that this or that is unusual) to kindly smiles, aggressive ridicule… to the most brutal torture for betraying a primitive tribe.
That is why it is so critical that every society and every group has a set of mechanisms that discourage certain behaviours and reward others.
Such a system of control is related to the overall world view of a given civilization, to its basic values, and also to various taboos. If the value system breaks down, so does the ability to encourage certain behaviors and discourage others.
Taboo Nazism
Part of that framework, as used by modern Western civilization, is the obsession with Nazism. Regardless of arguments about whether it was left-wing or right-wing, we see Nazism as an absolute evil. Auschwitz and other extermination camps represent something so horrific that it is virtually impossible to joke about it, and impossible to make light of the regime in any way. Even young children know that the swastika is taboo.
That is also why, for decades, comparisons with Nazism have been treated very sparingly. People in the West never compared Stalin to Hitler, and later they did not compare Brezhnev to him. And from the other side, there was no suggestion that Ronald Reagan, for example, was the new Hitler. The Americans did not compare Fidel Castro to Hitler, and the Communists did not compare Augusto Pinochet to Hitler. Hitler and his Nazism are taboo. Something that inspires irrational fear. Something so extraordinary that it can’t be dragged into ordinary arguments.
The Americans did not compare Fidel Castro to Hitler, and the Communists did not compare Augusto Pinochet to Hitler. Hitler and his Nazism are taboo.
This is not just to avoid another Auschwitz, but as part of a value system that prevents less horrible wrongs and crimes. And it is also a manifestation of the perception that Nazism is a problem for our Western civilization. That it is something to which we are vulnerable. Many Arab Muslims have no problem sympathizing with Hitler outright, and the Chinese seem to be indifferent. It is not their problem, just as the cruelty of the ancient Aztecs is not our problem.
In times of aggressive mob rule
It’s just that the mechanism that discourages the bad and encourages the good sometimes breaks down. Often where there is a sharp class conflict and each side is trying (more or less consciously) to undermine the value system of the other, and where such attacks can logically lead to damage to the whole framework of civilization.
We saw this to a lesser extent in the Czech lands in the 1990s, when ostentatiously dishonest behaviour began to be rewarded. Huge state assets were privatised and this created incredible opportunities. It’s not just that someone got hold of big money and the courts were not enough for him (such cases happen in all eras), but that he is considered highly respected and is photographed by statesmen and media celebrities, that already distorts the whole system. Dishonesty is a source of prestige. Flamboyance.
But back to Nazism. For decades that taboo worked and helped hold our value system together. Occasionally, some rebellious youngster wanted to be against everyone, so he’d get a picture of Adolf Hitler on his just. He might as well have been promoting cannibalism, but that wouldn’t have mattered so much. Perhaps the repression of such post-pubescent excesses was excessive, and perhaps historians’ debates were unnecessarily restricted, but overall it worked.
It’s just that sometime around the turn of the millennium the genie was let out of the bottle. The imperial West needed to quickly manufacture a nationalist movement in Ukraine and needed to manufacture it to be stridently anti-Russian. This is not easy at all. Russian and Ukrainian cultures are intertwined. For many generations they had such close relations that it was difficult to tell the ethnicities apart. On top of that, there is a tremendous closeness in language and culture.
This, after all, is a typical feature of mob behavior, and today’s elites are nothing but an aggressive, irrational mob.
In such a situation, completely fringe groups calling for a revival of the Nazism of the 1940s and glorifying the Nazi murderer Bandera came in handy. Perhaps even this Bandera could be managed somehow – admiring his opposition to the Soviet Union while condemning his anti-Semitism and murder of minorities. After all, others, on the other hand, celebrate Stalin as the victor of the war and condemn the gulags. But this would have to be handled very sensitively and responsibly. And words like “responsibility” do not belong in the vocabulary of a society in the acute phase of class conflict that Western societies are going through. Indeed, responsibility for consequences refers to the fact that even when parties compete or war against each other, there is some common ground. And for today’s Western elites, there is no common ground – only a desire to destroy the opponent at any cost, regardless of the consequences. This, after all, is a typical feature of mob behavior, and today’s elites are nothing but an aggressive, irrational mob.
