First real lesson; or "Stephen Fry, Nazis and Anakin Skywalker"

Hi, welcome to the second week of the Guide. And I already feel exhausted.

This entire week for me was a cycle of eat-school-eat-sleep-repeat. But there wasn’t enough sleep. Arriving at my second TOK class, I felt like falling asleep. Luckily, our first task, making a mind map for language, was colorfull and interesting enough to keep me awake until the teacher reached the important part: Stephen Fry.

No, she actually showed us a video of him talking about power of words (and if you don’t know who he is, I’ll assume you went to Mars to save Matt Damon for a while). His main example was the National-Socialist Work Party of Germany (AKA Nazis), and how they used slurs such as vermin, rats and similar to present Jews (and others) as lower-class beings. More precisely, Jews were in the fourth class of people by Nazi classification (yes, you do make a classification when planning ethnic cleansing, apparently), and were blamed for Germany’s defeat in World War One, the Great Depression and many other things. Basicaly, if something happens, Jews did it. Famine? Jews did it. Disease? Jews did it. Bayern Münich loses a match? Guess who did it. A meteor falls? Probably Jews again.

Now, imagine listening to it since primary school. You would probably want to get rid of Jews, right? Well, that was the Nazi plan, and also the plan of everybody who ever waged a war or commited war crimes. Rwandan genocide was also mentioned as a prime example. Make your opponents lesser beings, and you will be supported. Like that quote: “All evil in this world stems from the belief that some lives are worth less than others.” Pretty true, right?

Oh, it didn’t get any prettier. She showed us a trailer of a movie named “Hannah Arendt”. Heard of her? She was a German-Jewish philosopher who was a reporter during the trial of Adolf Eichmann (I guess not many people have heard of him, though). She coined the term “banality of evil”: when regular, normal people do horrible things simply because they are, so to say, “stupid”, only following orders. Her claim caused controversy, but since I took psychology in IB program, I can actually relate to that, in a way.

Presenting Stanley Milgram, social psychologist from Yale. He made an experiment where he had one participant administer electric shocks to another (who was, in fact, acting) under orders of somebody who was seen as a figure of authority. Milgram was influenced by Arendt’s book, both as a psychologist and as a Jew. He was denied a position on Harvard for this unethical experiment, but he proved Arendt’s theory.

See, any of us could do things like that, in case enough propaganda and psychology is used. And since I live in the promised land of Balkans, I’m pretty sure we will see another war here. Nationalism is okay, in certain boundaries, but what the politicians here are doing is the same thing Nazis did. And all the talk on war crimes and genocide and Haag trials… Honestly, the sooner all three sides admit that they all have commited war crimes, the better. The breaking of Yugoslavia was a bloody mess where everyone took what they could, encouraged by demagogues. One author even named Serbian government during the war years fascist.

That is another problem of the modern world: too many perspectives. One almost wants to be ordered what to do. It drives me crazy, like little children who were fighting: “He started it!” “No, HE started it!” What is the truth? That is a question I want an answer to, even more than “How do I know what I know?” Maybe I’m too pessimistic and it is a mistake to write this, especially since it will be on my IBO registry profile, but… I will take the risk of looking like young Anakin Skywalker in the Prequels (feel free to comment “I don’t like sand” if you think like that)

So, after this long spilling of my mind on this virtual page, I’ll make myself some black tea and enjoy.

You should enjoy too. World still has a chance to surprise even the pessimists like me (foreshadowing the next post). Also: treasure hunt at my school!

See you next time. And remember to bring a towel 😉