EVIL, CRUELTY, AND HATRED IN THIS WORLD, OFTEN WAGED AS A DEFENSE OF THE 'NORMAL"

Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, with a New Afterword by the Author (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, , 1991, 2000) (If you only read one book on this list, please read this one. "Murderous motives in general, and motives for mass murder in particular, have been many and varied. They range from pure, coldblooded calculation of competitive gain, to equally pure, disinterested hatred or heterophobia. Most communal strifes and genocidal campaigns against aborigines lie comfortably within this range, If accompanied by an ideology, the latter does not go much further than a simple 'us or them' vision of the world, and a precept 'There is no room for both of us', or 'The only good injun is a dead injun'. The adversary is expected to follow mirror-image principles only if allowed to. Most genocidal ideologies rest on a devious symmetry of assumed intentions and actions." "Truly modern genocide is different. Modern genocide is genocide with a purpose. Getting rid of the adversary is not an end in itself It is a means to an end: a necessity that stems from the ultimate objective, a step that one has to take if one wants ever to reach the end of the road. The end itself is a grand vision of a better and radically different, society. Modern genocide is an element of social engineering, meant to bring about a social order conforming to the design of the perfect world." "To the initiators and the managers of modern genocide, society is a subject of planning and conscious design. One can and should do more about the society than change one or several of its details, improve it here or there, cure some of its troublesome ailments. One can and should set oneself goals more ambitious and radical: one can and should remake the society, force it to conform to an overall, scientifically conceived plan. One can create a society that is objectively better than the one 'merely existing'--that is, existing without conscious intervention. Invariably, there is an aesthetic dimension to the design: the ideal world about to be built conforms to the standards of superior beauty. Once built, it will be richly satisfying, like a perfect work of art; it will be a world which, in Alberti's immortal words, no adding, diminishing or altering would improve." "This is a gardener's vision, projected upon a world-size screen. . . . Some gardeners hate the weeds that spoil their design--that ugliness in the midst of beauty, litter in the midst of serene order, Some others are quite unemotional about them: just a problem to be solved, an extra job to be done. Not that it makes a difference to the weeds; both gardeners exterminate them. If asked or given a chance to pause and ponder, both would agree; weeds must die not so much because of what they are, as because of what the beautiful, orderly garden ought to be." Id. at 91-92.).

Robert Gerwarth, Hitler's Hangman: The Life of Heydrich (New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 2011) ("Heydrich's life . . . offers a uniquely privileged, intimate and organic perspective on some of the darkest aspects of Nazi rule, many of which are often artificially divided or treated separately in the highly specialized literature on the Third Reich: the rise of the SS and the emergence of the Nazi police state: the decision-making processes that led to the Holocaust, the interconnections between anti-Jewish and Germanization policies; the different ways in which German occupation regimes operated across Nazi-controlled Europe. On a more person level, it illustrates the historical circumstances under which young men from perfectly 'normal' middle-class backgrounds can become political extremists determined to use ultra-violence to implement their dystopian fantasies of racially transforming the world." Id. at xix-xx (italics added). In short, this is a good reminder that, under the right (or wrong) circumstances, it all could very easily happen here. We are not immune. For instance, think about many of the attitudes expressed, and the conduct engaged, by some opposed to immigrants for Latin America or toward Hispanics generally. East Haven, Connecticut. Hazelton, Pennsylvania. Arizona. Alabama.).

Anti-Hispanic Hate Crime Incidents

Source: FBI data

Phyllis Goldstein, A Convenient Hatred: The History of Antisemitism, with a Foreword by Sir Harold Evans (Brookline, Massachusetts: Facing History and Ourselves, 2012) (From Harold Evans's "Foreword": "Oppression is a commonplace fate of minorities. The Jews are hardly unique in this regard: the majority has often had a good cause to feat insurgency. Indeed, Jews, being not visibly different from the rest of the population, are generally exposed to less prejudice than members of more distinct minorities. What I had not appreciated, however, until I read A Convenient Hatred, is how long Jews have uniquely been the subject of campaigns of intimidation and discrimination--since long before the creation of Israel, long before the Holocaust, long before the Spanish Inquisition, even before the Romans crucified Jesus. As striking as the persistence of the pathology is how Jews have maintained their identity, and many of them their faith, in the face of unparalleled defamation and assault. There are heroes in the story as well; more of their stories should be known." Id.).

Erik Larson, In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin (New York: Crown, 2011).

Peter Lonerich, Heinrich Himmler,translated from the German by Jeremy Noakes and Lesley Sharpe (Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press, 2012) (The platform of certain early twenty-first century Republican candidates for public office echo aspects of Himmler: "Apart from the pursuit of politically and ideologically defined enemies of Nazism--communists, Jews, Freemasons, Christians--and the preventive combating of crime, which was becoming increasingly part of 'labour deployment', during the years 1936-9 the Chief of the German Police was preoccupied above all with the regulation of sexual activity, that is to say, the fight against abortion and homosexuality." "Himmler made clear the extent of his commitment to this in January 1937 in a speech at the start of the German Police Day. This was a propaganda weeks in which the population was asked to support the work of the defenders of law and order under the motto: 'The Police are Your Friends and Helpers.' Himmler stated that 'homosexuality and the widespread practice of illegal abortion' were 'plagues', which 'would inevitably lead any nation into the abyss'. The police were, however, already involved in the 'merciless pursuit of these abominations'. In the spring of 1937, at a workshop in Berlin, he declared that in the future he would judge the effectiveness of the police according to their success in the fight against homosexuality and abortion." "For Himmler the fight against these two 'plagues' was an important personal concern. He told the Council of Experts on Population and Racial Policy on 15 June 1937: 'I have actually spent days and nights pondering about these two matters, which are among those of greatest concern to me. For someone who is normal and decent it's not that easy to look into these things and try to explain them. I have asked myself the question: is this the reason why our nation is no morally debased and bad?'" Id. at 231. "If we consider Himmler's empire and the plans and utopian fantasies he developed in their entirety, it is also evident that he had amassed a potential for destruction that far exceeded the catastrophes that Nazism itself actually caused: for the systematic murder of the European Jews, with which above all the name Himmler is connected today, was not in his eyes the ultimate goal of his policies but rather the precondition for much more extensive plans for a bloody 'new ordering' of the European continent." Id. at 748. Also, see Jacob Heilbrunn, "Pathological Ambitions," NYT Book Review, Sunday, 1/8/2012.).Robert McKim &

Jeff McMahan, eds., The Morality of Nationalism (Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press, 1997) (From the backcover: "The resurgence of nationalist sentiment in many parts of the world today, together with the erosion of national barriers through the continuing rapid expansion of globalizing technologies and economic structures, has made questions about nationalism more pressing than ever." " Collecting . . . works by some of the leading moral and political thinkers of our time, . . . this important volume seeks to illuminate nationalism from a moral and evaluative perspective rather than to provide policy prescriptions or predictive analysis. With discussion of issues such as the ideal of national self-determination, the permissibility of secession, the legitimacy of international intervention, and tolerance between nations, The Morality of Nationalism contains both pro- and anti-nationalist argument and concentrates throughout on matters of deep ethical and political significance. To what extent should people be permitted to act on the basis of loyalty to those to whom they are specially related? Are there benign forms of nationalism? Should liberal repudiate nationalism? What value should we attach to cultural diversity?").

Kristen Renwick Monroe, Ethics in an Age of Terror and Genocide: Identity and Moral Choice (Princeton & Oxford: Princeton U. Press, 2012) ("I thus became conscious of what should have been obvious all along: the themes found in the Holocaust resonate with other periods of genocide, other instances of ethnic cleansing, other acts of prejudice, discrimination and group hatred, and animosity, just as they resonate with other instances of compassion, heroic altruism, and moral courage. The psychological forces at work during the Holocaust partake of the same political psychology underlying other political acts driven by identity. The same need for affirmation, and the relation such validation can have to group identity and to those who are different, lies at the heart of other important political behavior, from prejudice and discrimination to sectarian hatred and violence on the one hand and forgiveness, reconciliation, and amazing acts of grace on the other." Id. at 4.).

Eyal Press, Beautiful Souls: Saying No, Breaking Ranks, and Heeding the Voice of Conscience in Dark Times (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2012) (From the bookjacket: "Fifty years after Hannah Arendt examined the dynamic of conformity in her seminal account of the Eichmann trial, Beautiful Souls explores the flip side of the banality of evil, mapping out what impels ordinary people to defy the sway of authority and convention. Through the dramatic stories of unlikely resisters who felt the flicker of conscience when thrust into morally compromising situations, Eyal Press shows that the boldest acts of dissent are often carried out not by radicals seeking to overthrow the system but by true believers who cling with unusual fierceness to their convictions." "On the Swiss border with Austria in 1938, a police captain refuses to enforce a law barring Jewish refugees from entering his country. In the Balkans half a century later, a Serb from the war-blasted city of Vukovar defies his superiors in order to save the lives of Croats. At the height of the Second Intifada, a member of Israel's most elite military unit informs his commander that he doesn't want to serve in the occupied territories." "Drawing on groundbreaking research by moral psychologists and neuroscientists, Beautiful Souls culminates with the story of a financial industry whistleblower who losses her job after refusing to sell a toxic product she rightly suspects is being misleadingly advertised. At a time of economic calamity and political unrest, this deeply reported work of narrative journalism examines the choices and dilemmas we all face when our principles collide with the loyalties we harbor and the duties we are expected to fulfill.").