RICHARD: In his classroom lecture Hitler’s Ideology, Jordan Peterson put pages of my book a screen, went through five pages and spent five minutes discussing metaphors I had presented based on analysis of Hitler’s writings and speeches.
Hitler's central metaphor was that of the Jew as a disease within the body of the German people. He described the Jew in these terms from the beginning of his political career to its conclusion. The Jew, for Hitler, was a bacterium in the body of Germany, indeed in the body of mankind. To save the nation and world, it was necessary to destroy Jewish bacteria.
Jews were conceived, like bacteria, as cells living within the German body, but making no positive contributions to this body. Rather, Jews were the cause of a disease within this body, the negation of the German body. The metaphor of the Jew as bacteria had a profound symbolic meaning. Jews, in Hitler’s mind, were selfish individualists, human beings who lived within nations, but made no positive contributions to the nations in which they lived. They were like bacterium within a human body, dangerous cells threatening the life of this body. Hitler believed the German nation was suffering from a disease. He identified Jews—the Jewish virus or bacterium—as the source or cause of this disease.
Hitler believed Jews were incorrigible. They could not be reformed or converted. Their hostility toward Germany and other nations was genetically given. They could not help being who they were. Hitler believed he had discovered or uncovered the fundamental nature of the Jewish people: their inability to assimilate into a national body; their will to destroy this body. The only “solution” to the Jewish problem was—extermination. Only in this way, Hitler believed, could the Jew’s profound negativity and will to destroy be eliminated—once and for all.
This is the passage which you read in my Newsletter, David, which led you to initiate this conversation:
“The purpose of political violence is not killing but getting others to die. Political violence is undertaken in the name of an ideal considered sacred by a leader or members of a given society. Willingness to kill testifies to the reality and power of a sacred ideal. The proof of the pudding is in the dying.
“The fundamental objective of political violence is getting others to die in the name of one’s own society's sacred ideal. The people who must die are those who don't fully embrace this sacred ideal, oppose the sacred ideal, or whose own ideals contradict or negate one’s society's sacred ideal. The others who must die may be people of another society, but also members of one's own society.
"The Islamic phrase, “Death to the non-believers,” crystallizes the idea contained within this passage. The purpose of political violence is to destroy people who do not believe in the ideal which is sacred to one’s own society. Violent acts seek to kill off or destroy disbelief, understood to be embodied within a certain class of people."
My understanding contrasts with those who believe that human violence occurring in the political domain is rooted in our genes; a form of “biological aggression.” The Allied attack at Normandy (June 6, 1941) illustrates how I conceptualize political violence. The soldiers and sailors who got out of boats as the allied forces attacked Germans on the coast of France were not expressing an aggressive instinct or desire to kill. Quite the contrary, by virtue of their attack, many of the soldiers and sailors became sacrificial victims, giving up their lives in the name of liberating Europe from the Nazis.
The idea that young men are “naturally aggressive” is refuted by the military institution of basic training. Young men (and young women as well) go through arduous disciplinary process whose purpose is to enable them to overcome their unwillingness to commit acts of violence. “Kill, kill, kill” is the chant of the drill instructor. These eighteen-year-olds must be persuaded to overcome their timidity; to be convinced—brainwashed into believing--that they are bad motherfuckers.
Of course, men in the civilian world commit violent acts. But these men are considered criminals, often mentally ill. Unlike the violent acts of soldiers, civilian violence is not viewed in a positive light. No one would claim that Jeffrey Dahmer’s acts—cutting people up and putting their body parts in a refrigerator—were manifestations of “male aggression.”
Political violence generated by military institutions is of an entirely different genre. Shooting guns, dropping bombs, launching artillery shells, etc. has little to do with the violence of individual human beings. It’s a societal thing. This seems obvious. It’s actually quite ridiculous to compare violent acts committed by civilians in everyday life with violent acts committed by military organizations. Or with violent acts committed by societal groups in the name of an ideology.
Violence undertaken by armies in war has little to do with the personality of the soldier. The social role of the soldier requires that he shoot guns, drop bombs, launch artillery shells, etc. Isn’t it strange that some evolutionary theorists attribute these kinds of violent actions to the biological or psychological proclivities of individuals? Acts of political “aggression” occur based on the will of a nation, embodied in the military. Nation-states delegate to soldiers the task of committing violent or aggressive actions.
And if women were allowed to participate in combat, what would we call violent acts which they committed? Female aggression? Of course not. The woman is performing aggressive acts because she is a soldier, acting at the behest of her nation.
Basic training is required—for men and for women—to overcome the human tendency not to engage in acts of violence whose intent is to harm other human beings. In warfare, individuals from one country attempt to produce bodily harm upon individuals from another country. Acts of violence or aggression are performed in the name of or for the sake of one’s nation.
DAVID: From the perspective of the collective spirit of a nation or psychological state of being a part of a nation: Is there a difference in the meaning of the death of a soldier versus the death of a foreign combatant?
RICHARD: I don’t think so. It’s part of the same dynamic: dying for the cause. The enemy is compelled to die for one’s own nation’s sacred ideal. And one’s own soldiers too may die in the name of supporting one’s nation’s sacred ideal. This may seem like an unusual way of putting it, but it is only another way of saying that soldiers die for their country. In either kind of death, the death of the enemy soldier or the death of one’s own nation’s soldier, the sacred ideal is the causal factor; what justifies and facilitates the violence; allows it to occur.
Two-hundred-million people died in the Twentieth Century as a result of collective forms of violence—war and genocide—undertaken by national groups. Nations are killers. Why are nations killers? Why do we give nations the right to kill? Yet in spite of the fact that nations are killers, our killer nations are beloved. We love our countries. This is a paradox. Why do human beings have such a strong, positive attachment—why do we love our countries so deeply—in spite of the fact that slaughter is undertaken in the name of these entities? How did it come to be that beloved objects are also killers?
DAVID: So there's no distinction in your understanding between combatants dying and your own soldier dying in a war.
RICHARD: We can take this idea even further by suggesting that one of the central objectives of national policies is to induce soldiers to sacrifice their lives; to die for their countries. Period!
Here’s an excerpt of what Oliver Wendell Holmes said in his Address— “The Soldier’s Faith”—presented on Memorial Day, May 30, 1895, at a Meeting called by the Graduating Class of Harvard University:
I do not know what is true. I do not know the meaning of the universe. But in the midst of doubt, in the collapse of creeds, there is one thing I do not doubt, that no man who lives in the same world with most of us can doubt, and that is that the faith is true and adorable which leads a soldier to throw away his life in obedience to a blindly accepted duty, in a cause which he little understands, in a plan or campaign of which he has little notion, under tactics of which he does not see the use.
T The term “adorable” gets me every time I read it. To reiterate: Holmes is saying that a faith is true which leads a soldier to throw away his life in obedience to a blindly accepted duty, for the sake of a cause or campaign which he little understands, using tactics of which he does not see the use.
Holmes declares, in short, that it is “adorable” for a soldier to die for his country. This idea is tough to swallow. But doesn’t it express the essence of warfare? Is it not the duty of a soldier to go into battle at the behest of his nation, even if this means he will be wounded or killed? What’s more, Holmes suggests, it’s valuable for a soldier to throw away his life even if he doesn’t know what he is dying for. Phew.
The idea of dying in war, we may theorize, is considered a good thing because it elevates the nation; makes one believe there is something superordinate to concrete human existence. Dying might occur in the name of this cause or that cause. It really doesn’t matter at all. What counts is the willingness to die.
DAVID: How does death itself elevate the nation? How does a soldier going off to die produce a sense of transcendence? What is the actual connection between this event and the elevation of the nation's body and sense of purpose?
RICHARD: This is a great way of phrasing the question, David. It’s important to understand the dynamic whereby human beings become willing to suffer injury or to die for an abstract entity
DAVID: Okay, so the idea that someone would die for the nation helps remind people who believe in the nation's existence that their national identity means something because someone was willing to let their body be destroyed for it.
RICHARD: Let’s focus on the concept of sacrificial death by comparing soldiers to terrorists, specifically the suicide bombers that were responsible for the 9/11 attacks at the World Trade Center. Let's look at the perpetrators. People tend to forget that their bodies too were in the rubble at the World Trade Center along with the bodies of others who died. Don't we forget this? It wasn’t just Americans that died. The terrorists died too.
What was the motivation? The terrorists were willing to die for an idea or entity that they worshipped, Allah, just as soldiers may die for their countries. So, the concept of sacrificial death has a broad applicability. What is the meaning of this mechanism?
The fact that people are willing to die for an idea or entity makes people scratch their heads and wonder to themselves: There must be something they are dying for. If people are willing to give their lives for an idea or entity, there must be something to this idea or entity. Death confers reality upon that which people die for. We feel no one would be crazy enough to die for nothing. So, dying—not killing—is the significant variable in warfare, and the purpose of political dying is to bring into being the idea or entity that people are dying for.
R RICHARD: I’ve done a great deal of research and writing about the Egyptian pyramids, those extraordinary structures which began to be built around 3500 BC. The pyramids may be understood as a sacrifice. It took about thirty-years to build each one. Think of how many man-hours were consumed in conceiving and consummating this project. It was all done for the pharaoh and the pyramid itself—the phantasy of immortality that the pyramids symbolized and embodied. Think of how rich and well-off the Egyptian people could have been if they hadn’t devoted so much time and energy and resources to creating and building pyramids. Think of it.
On the other hand, perhaps building monumental, useless structures—the pyramids being only one example—constitutes the foundation of civilization. Projects like this transformed human beings from people living in small groups on the African veldt—to becoming different kinds of human being.
DAVID: What you're saying gives evidence to the idea that this is not something done from some kind of Darwinian survival mechanism. Yes, because there's nothing Darwinian survival about building giant pyramids for people.
RICHARD: The pyramids embody what it means to be a human being. We are the only species that devotes a significant amount of time and energy to imagining that it is possible to be immortal; and constructing projects that embody this phantasy or desire. To be a human being is to dream of living eternally. No other animal builds its existence around this phantasy.
