I’m not sure how many people have read Paul Berman’s Terror and Liberalism (published in 2003), but I thought it would be worthwhile to reproduce a remarkable passage in it in which he talks about how one can go too far in “understanding” one’s enemies. The passage deals with 1930s France, where the socialists were split between a group, led by Léon Blum, which wanted to prepare for war against Hitler’s Germany, and a group, led by Paul Faure, which while not liking Hitler nevertheless wanted to avoid war.
“[Faure and his followers] did not wish to reduce Germany in all its Teutonic complexity to black-and-white terms of good and evil. The anti-war Socialists pointed out that Germany had been wronged by the Treaty of Versailles, at the conclusion of the First World War. The anti-war Socialists observed that Germans living in the Slavic countries to the east were sometimes cruelly treated by their neighbors, and that Germany in the 1930s had every right to complain about its neighbors, and that Germany’s people were, in fact, suffering, just as Hitler said. And, having analyzed the German scene in that manner, the anti-war Socialists concluded that Hitler and the Nazis, in railing against the great powers and the Treaty of Versailles, did make some legitimate arguments – even if Nazism came from the extreme right and was not at all to the Socialists’ taste.
“The anti-war Socialists wanted to know: why shouldn’t the French government show a little flexibility in the face of Hitler’s demands? Why not recognize that some of Hitler’s points were well taken? Why not look for ways to conciliate the outraged German people and, in that way, to conciliate the Nazis? Why not make every effort, strain every muscle, to avoid a new Verdun?
“The anti-war Socialists of France did not think they were being cowardly or unprincipled in making those arguments. On the contrary, they took pride in their anti-war instincts. They regarded themselves as exceptionally brave and honest. They felt that courage and radicalism allowed them to peer beneath the surface of events and identify the deeper factors at work in international relations – the truest danger facing France. This danger, in their judgment, did not come from Hitler and the Nazis, not principally.
“The truest danger came from the warmongers and arms manufacturers of France itself....
“Hitler and the Nazis ranted about the Jews, yes, and the rants were medieval, and the tones of hatred and superstition grated on the ear. Still, the anti-war Socialists wanted to understand their enemies and not simply to dismiss them.... And so, listening to the Nazis make their wildest speeches, the anti-war Socialists, in a thoughtful mood, asked themselves: what is anti-Semitism, anyway? Does every single criticism of the Jews reflect the superstitions of the Middle Ages? Surely it ought to be possible to criticize the Jews without being vilified as anti-Semites. Hitler ranted about Jewish financiers. He was excessive. Still, France’s Socialists were, by definition, the enemies of financiers. Some financiers were Jews. Should Jewish financiers be exempt from criticism, simply because they were Jews?....
“The anti-war Socialists despised Paul Blum [who was Jewish].... And in contemplating his detestable qualities, the anti-war Socialists – not all of them, but some of them – began to feel that, on the Jewish question, just as on several other questions, Hitler was wrong, but perhaps not entirely wrong. Then came the invasion in June 1940.... A majority of the Socialists in the National Assembly, the anti-war faction, voted with Pétain [who advocated that France accept Hitler’s leadership]....
“But, among the anti-war Socialists, a number of people, having voted with Pétain, took the logical next step and, on patriotic grounds, accepted positions in his new government, at Vichy. Some of those Socialists went a little further, too, and began to see a virtue in Pétain’s program for a new France and a new Europe – a program for strength and virility, a Europe ruled by a single-party state instead of by the corrupt cliques of bourgeois democracy, a Europe cleansed of the impurities of Judaism and of the Jews themselves, a Europe of the anti-liberal imagination. And, in that very remarkable fashion, a number of the anti-war Socialists of France came full circle. They had begun as defenders of liberal values and human rights, and they evolved into defenders of bigotry, tyranny, superstition, and mass murder. They were democratic leftists who, through the miraculous workings of the slippery slope and a naive faith in the rationalism of all things, ended as fascists.” [pp. 124-128]
Read the whole passage. In fact, read the whole book.
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