privilege and forgiveness

I don't normally read Bitch, Ph.D., though my experience with it has been that it's an excellent blog well worth reading. But I've come across this post on Ted Kennedy and privilege:

Because the thing about being privileged is that hopefully it gives one *security*. It's actually a *good* thing to have privilege. Ideally--and it seems to me that, as social thinking animals, this should be the goal--privilege gives one not just personal advantages but also the security to be gracious, to empathize, to be kind.

Particularly in the wake of watching The Reader that's been on my mind. I'm not sure quite what the relationship -- necessary or sufficient, or maybe just helpful? -- between privilege and the ability to forgive is. But The Reader brings to my mind all of my insecurity about the Holocaust, and maybe that is part of the problem. Others who find it easy to forgive Nazi guards might investigate what it is that enables them. (And who are they to forgive?)

In the comments, there's a link to MJ Rosenberg on Kennedy, who I normally don't read because I don't find him compelling. (I tend to agree with him on policy, but find his reasoning offensive.)

The mindless jingoism of his colleagues was not his way (nor is it John Kerry's) and when he addressed the Israeli-Palestinian issue, he was compassionate and even-handed. He was not your standard "liberal on everything but Israel" type.

That's particularly interesting given how Jewish organizations are lionizing Kennedy as a friend of Israel. It's not that Kennedy wasn't willing to criticize Israeli policy, but he was willing to empathize with Jews and shape his criticism to ensure he didn't threaten Jews' security as he did so. So, so often, it's assumed (often by Rosenberg, for instance) that criticism of anti-Israelism is aligned with the right-most tendencies in Israeli society -- as if Jews had no reason to feel insecure, as if security was a non-issue.

But if Kennedy could criticize Israel, that doesn't mean, as so many anti-Israelists would have, that anyone can criticize Israel without having to worry about being antisemitic. Instead, it proves that being called antisemitic for criticizing Israel isn't simply for having criticized Israel.

I'm about to watch Forgiving Dr. Mengele, available instantly at Netflix. It's the un-The Reader.

The Reader -- far worse than I'd imagined

Wound up seeing it Saturday night. Had no desire, but Soo put it on our Netflix queue for some reason. It was for worse than I'd imagined.

Look at just the first 10 seconds of this trailer. A wealthy Jew in a large Manhattan apartment that must cost several million, handsomely appointed with art and furniture. A stern look on her face, arms and legged crossed. She's closed off and in control. A German, played by Ralph Fiennes, is bent over with his elbows on his knees. He's embarrassed and doesn't know quite how to begin his plea. The contrast is made even more striking by two shots missing from the trailer. Her face is shown in extreme close up, cutting off the top of her head and bottom of her chin, so that she dominates the screen. The camera cuts quickly back to Fiennes, palpably smaller, fragile. A very powerful Jew and a very meek German. The Jew, in this case, is a Holocaust survivor, and Fiennes is there to represent a Nazi guard. It's hardly typical of survivors that they are rich (even for those who have written memoirs), or for their Nazi guards to have been illiterate. An even greater inversion: the guard has committed suicide, but here the survivor continues on without any noticeable effects. She speaks of the sentimental value of a tea tin, not of fear and death. In order to elicit sympathy for the poor, unfortunate Nazi guard who was just a victim of her illiterate circumstances -- and how could an illiterate understand the moral weight of mass murder? -- the film inverts everything.

Though the intention isn't to trample on the memory of the Holocaust, by such inversions the film recreates the very same arguments about powerful Jews and weak Germans that led to the Shoah. Humanizing the Nazis is important firstly because the Holocaust didn't need monsters. Human beings with human failings and only good intentions so far as they could understand were enough.

In fact, my mother spent some time in Germany a little bit after the time of the film's trial. Germans were still very much in denial, convinced that "ordinary Germans" were completely unaware. The film is, in that simplest of ways, without having to resort to selecting unrepresentative cases, inaccurate. It assumes the moral weight of the Holocaust needs only allusion, but it was and is still debated. Not only are there still deniers of the crudest kind, but also those who wish to lock the Shoah in the distant and best forgotten past, who don't want to deal with the implications or how to make this world safe for Jews. Without a real, honest, and cutting portrayal of the suffering its heroine knowingly caused, The Reader cannot earn for her or for itself the redemption and sympathy it seeks.

Inglourious Basterds

Saw it last night. Enjoyed it. One of the major concerns of reviewers was that it was too violent, even sadistic. But for several reasons, including a cameo by Mike Myers, it's just too hard to take the film seriously enough for that charge to really stick. Some very real moments, like the inclusion of Emil Jannings, who really was awarded the title "Artist of the State" by Goebbels, ground the film in just enough fact to mean something beyond fantasy, but it was self-consciously an exercise in fantasy. Or, as some people have less generously offered, Tarantino is a parody of himself. For the same reasons, my concerns about portraying Jews as vengeful, a long-established stereotype that dominated my thinking about the film since I first heard of it, didn't seem significant.

On the other hand, there were several things that were worthwhile. Or perhaps could have been with more attention. An early speech by the "Jew Hunter" explains a particular sort (or aspect) of antisemitism. (It's early enough in the film that I don't really think of it as a spoiler. On the other hand, there are, naturally, later parts of the movie this scene relates to, which I am concealing.) This clip is shortened from what's in the film. In it the Jew Hunter explains that Germans are like hawks while Jews are like rats. Missing from that clip, however, is his explanation for why he's so good at hunting Jews. Unlike most Germans, he doesn't think it's a bad thing to be like a rat, and so he's able to think like a Jew. He goes to great lengths to compare rats to cute and cuddly squirrels to explain that there's nothing really wrong with rats -- before offering that "You don't like them [rats/Jews]. You don't really know why. You don't like them. All you know is you find them repulsive." So it isn't really that Jews are necessarily bad or even different. The Jew Hunter is the same. But not. Jews and the Jew Hunter are as alike as rats and squirrels. "Except for the tail, they even look alike."

And it really can't be that Jews are different. Even for the Nazis who went to such great lengths to explain why Jews are different, the laws they implemented went to great lengths to make it so that Jews were different. "Jews" (as the Nazis defined Jews, rather than how various German individuals would have identified) were forced to wear yellow stars, not because of difference, but to make difference. It's not Jewish difference that frightens; it's similarity. Or specifically, uncanniness. Most people have probably heard of the uncanny valley. So long as robots are obviously robots, we have no problem, but as they become too similar, we reject them as grotesque. And many antisemites have great love for Jews so long as Jews are oppressed, but they recoil at Jewish liberation.

The same is at work when Aldo carves a swastika (same spoiler disclaimer as above - it's an early moment) into a Nazi. After the war, he'll take off the uniform and become like everyone else. But even in a revenge fantasy, isn't there a real difference between an Nazi and a Jew?

On the other hand, like most Tarantino films, I don't think any theme is really carried through. There's a moment here and a reprise there. The analysis of this one moment (though there are many interesting moments and one or two elements I'd particularly like to discuss, but that really would be giving too many spoilers) shouldn't be taken as the suggestion that there's really anything heavy about the movie -- perhaps in a few years I'll return and decide -- or not -- beyond Tarantino's claim that Jews deserve an uncomplicated fantasy of killing Nazis. On that score, it delivers pretty well.

The FBI has some explaining to do

This is disturbing. Previously, the SPLC has provided evidence that white supremacist Hal Turner was an FBI informant.

Assistant U.S. Attorney William Hogan told U.S. Magistrate Judge Martin Ashman on Tuesday that... Turner’s relationship with the FBI had ended “some time ago,” according to The Associated Press. A spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Chicago had no additional comment.

Now, he's claiming the FBI trained him to be provocative. One of the examples of his provocations from the article:

He wrote in Internet postings the same month that the Illinois federal appeals judges "deserve to be killed" because they issued a ruling that upheld ordinances in Chicago and suburban Oak Park banning handguns. He included their photos and the room numbers of their chambers at the courthouse.

I'm not in the habit of believing white supremacists when they claim the sky is blue, but I still think the FBI owes us all a lot more than a "no comment" this time.

Amos Kenan

Ameinu posts an open letter from 1968 by Amos Kenan. An excerpt:

I am used to being called a traitor by local patriots. During the Six Day War, in June 1967, the battalion I served in was ordered to supervise the demolition of four Arab villages: I considered it my duty to desert from my unit, to write a report of this action, and to send the copies to the General Staff of the army, to members of the government and to Knesset members. This report has been translated and circulated in the world as a proof of Israel's crimes.

But permit me to conclude the story. The action I undertook was in flagrant violation of any military law. I have no idea what would have happened to a Red Army soldier were he to violate national and military discipline in such a manner. After returning to my unit, I was ordered to present myself—I, in rank a private—before the general commanding all the divisions on that front. He told me that he had read my report, and considered it his duty to inform me that what had occurred was a regrettable error, which will not recur. Deep in my heart I disbelieved his statement that this was only a mistake. I was convinced that whoever ordered such an action did not expect such resistance from within—the men of my battalion refused to carry out the order—and was alarmed at the impression such an action might create abroad. But I was glad that he found it necessary to announce that this was only an error. I asked him how he intended to ensure that the 'error' will never recur. On the spot he signed an order permitting me free movement in all occupied territories, so that I could see with my own eyes that such an action had not recurred.

But since then, in all the peace-papers in the world, my report about the destruction of villages has been reprinted over and over again, as if it happened only yesterday, as if it is happening all the time. And this is a lie. It is like writing that witches have been burnt at the stake in England—omitting the date. I hereby request all those who believed me when I reported a criminal act, to believe me now too. And those who do not believe me now, I hereby request to disbelieve my former report too, and not to believe me selectively, according to their convenience. I should also add that the town of Kalkiliya, which began to be demolished during the writing of my report, is now in the process of being rebuilt, after the expelled inhabitants have been brought back.

Mazel Tov, Mis Amigos

On the 1961 album Mazel Tov, Mis Amigos, an all-star lineup of New York jazz musicians mashed up Jewish and Latin styles under the fake name Juan Calle & His Latin Lantzmen. Before a tribute concert this weekend at Lincoln Center, composer and pianist Arturo O’Farrill and music historian Roger Bennett join us to tell the "only-in-New-York" story of a Latin and African-American ensemble that recorded songs like "Havah Nagilah (Cha-Cha)."

Listen to the show at WNYC. One interesting question raised repeatedly is why this collaborative music has been so thoroughly forgotten.

This is not anti-Zionism

Hordes of Jewish families in Buenos Aires headed downtown to celebrate the 61st anniversary of the state of Israel, an event sponsored by the city.

But the afternoon, in May, was interrupted when about 30 young men and women began wielding sticks amid the dancing and singing, leaving 10 wounded and the Jewish community shocked.