An ideologically driven military state with iconic leadership in which the need for support of that leadership has superseded dissent and ongoing debate will always lead to bad shit happening in the world.

LAST NIGHT, I watched episode 20 “Genocide” of The World at War documentary series. “Genocide” chronicled the genocide of European Jews and contained footage of the death camps, the gassing chambers and the ovens. The Nazis began their genocidal efforts by first digging pits, trucking in Jews and marching them into the pits where they shot them. As the pits would fill up, they lined the Jews up along the edges and shot them so that they would fall backwards onto the pile of dead and dying bodies. Once the pit was full, the Nazis would bulldoze earth back over the top to complete the mass grave.

This technique of execution by shooting proved to be slow, messy and time-consuming. After 2 million had been slaughtered, the Nazis upgraded their killing machine with the gassing chambers and the ovens, which proved to be far more efficient, enabling them to quickly murder 4 million more Jew before the Russians finally breached the Eastern Front and the Nazis fled the camps, leaving the surviving Jews inside the electric barbed fences to die of starvation and disease.

I came away from this with two immediate thoughts: 1) How could it be that this happened? and 2) Never again. Of course, one could write entire books about the many factors that led up to the Holocaust. Many such books have been written. That is not my purpose here. My purpose is to try and quickly get right down to the core of the “how” and the way in which we can ensure maintaining the “never again”.

I believe that at the core of the how was an ideologically driven military state with iconic leadership that had support (whether real or feigned) of the people and quickly silenced any dissenters. These are the essential ingredients. That’s not to advocate that such a combination will always lead to such an evil outcome as the Holocaust. There would always be many other factors that would determine such a hideous outcome. But the potential is always there wherever there is an ideologically driven military state with iconic leadership in which the need for support of that leadership has superseded dissent and ongoing debate. While such a combination may not necessarily lead to a Holocaust scenario, I think it could be argued that nothing good ever comes of it.

Now for thought #2: Never again.

If an ideologically driven military state with iconic leadership in which the need for support of that leadership supersedes dissent and ongoing debate are the underlying ingredients for the how, then not having that is the only way to guarantee the “never again”.

A military state is easily identifiable. Its top priority is the military and not social needs such as education, health care, the environment, etc. A military state will spend most of its annual budget on its military.

An “ideologically driven” military state is also easily identified: its existence is constantly being justified by an ideology, that is, a set of beliefs and doctrines that has permeated the society that supports the military state. These beliefs and doctrines are daily reinforced by a mass media that may or may not be conscious of its complicity in supporting the existence of the military state.

If they do it consciously, we might call it “propaganda”. If they do it subconsciously, we would likely not notice and mistakenly call it “objective reporting”. (We might even go as far as calling it “fair & balanced”.)

An iconic leader is one whose leadership is permeated by symbols, images and myths—not by factual analysis of decisions that have been made or the critiquing of the underlying ideology of those decisions. Supporters of an iconic leader demand support for that leader and despise dissenters. The leadership, in turn, seeks to silence, marginalize or make irrelevant the dissenters’ opinions and often labels dissenters as “threats” (usually to national security).

In short, if we are to maintain the “never again”, we cannot have ideologically driven military states nor succumb to the demands of their iconic leaders and fervent supporters. We must embrace dissent and not see it as threatening but as an insurance against the “never again” being compromised by those who think that our time is somehow different, our cause is righteous and the ideologically driven military state can achieve anything good in this world.

©Scott Dewing