Ordinary Insanity
by
Charles Lamson
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Suppose that instead of running amok, people carry on politely and calmly. What could be wrong with this? After all, is this not what most of us are taught to do. Yes, and most of the time it is fine that we do. Unfortunately, we can get so used to being so polite and calm that we failed to be outraged by horrific things going on around us. Nazi Germany is the most often cited twentieth-century example. Millions of people were killed in concentration camps, while most Germans went about their business without protest. How can we understand this complacency?
In Germany, as in other nations, the government claimed the right to use violence to control people within its borders. The German government, like other governments, collected taxes and used this wealth to build means to do violence (by creating police forces, armies, spying agencies, weapons, and so on). Germans relied on this government to protect them from outsiders, to keep internal order, and to give them a feeling of belonging to a special group. Before and during World War II, most German people thought their government was doing these jobs reasonably well, or at least not so badly as to inspire a mass revolt.
Think of the German government (its employees, the rules by which it operated, and the resources it possessed) as an instrument for doing the will of those who controlled it. When the Nazi rulers gained control of the German government, they gained control of an organization that was equipped with (or had the legitimacy to gather and employ) vast resources of people, information, money, and weapons. It would have been hard for unorganized dissenters to resist such an entity.
The German government was also highly bureaucratic. Like any such organization, it had many rules and policies, and layers of management, for keeping people under control. It was thus hard for people to challenge their bosses, or even to find out what was going on. If you have had much experience working in large bureaucratic organizations, you know the problem.
Even when people began to see what was going on. most felt powerless and afraid to do anything. People who worked in the government and military bureaucracies - people who morally opposed the mass murder that was going on in the concentration camps - could justify their failure to protest by saying, "I'm not killing anyone. I'm not pulling the trigger. I'm just doing my job." After the war, many of the Nazi leaders who were charged with crimes against humanity defended themselves by saying, "I was only following orders." If those who actually killed could invoke this defense, imagine how much easier it was for people far from the killing to do so.
Looking back, the Nazi regime seems monstrous and insane. We wonder how anyone could have supported it, directly or indirectly. But again, consider the context.
After losing World War I, many Germans had feelings of injured national pride. Many were also angry about the terms under which they were forced to surrender in World War I. The German economy was faltering (in the context of a global recession in the 1930s), and many people worried about their jobs and income. So it was, that many people were angry, resentful, and insecure - and confused about who was to blame.
In this context the Nazis offered appealing messages: Other nations were to blame for limiting Germany's ability to recover from World War I; Jews, communists, homosexuals were to blame for weakening Germany from the inside, and Germans were a naturally superior people, who if given a fair chance, could again build a great nation. These messages reinflated national pride, and gave people easy answers to resolve their fears and anxieties.
We should also remember that once the Nazis gained control of the German government, they gained great power to shape people's thoughts and feelings. They used the government to make and control the news, to spread propaganda, and to stifle dissent. Many German people were thus at the mercy of the Nazi government, when it came to knowing what was going on in their country and in the world. As in any nation-state, the government in Germany was a powerful tool for creating social reality.
If you have stayed with me through this unpleasant example, you might be wondering what is the point of all this? Is it to show why the German people got caught up in acts of great evil? Yes, that is part of it. The more important point, however, is not about Germany in the 1930s and 1940s. It is about how we live here and now.
We still live in a world of nation states, none of which is truly democratic, and all of which have governments that can be captured by those seeking power for their own benefit. The governments of these nation-states are capitalist, which means that many people are likely to feel insecure about their jobs and income. There is also still plenty of racism to fuel scapegoating. Conditions, thus, remain ripe for holocausts to happen.
In Conclusion
Perhaps you think, "All this is true, so it is fortunate that we live in a country with a benevolent government." That is certainly a comforting illusion. Being sociologically mindful, however, we will try to look at matters in a larger context, and consider how things appear to Iraqis, Vietnamese, Nicaraguans, Cubans, Chileans, Guatemalans, and the citizens of other countries that have been invaded, bombed by, or otherwise forced to obey the wishes of those who run the U.S. government. We might also want to consider the perspectives of Native Americans, who can tell us something about the benevolence of the U.S. government.
*SOURCE: THE SOCIOLOGICALLY EXAMINED LIFE, 2ND EDITION, 2001, MICHAEL SCHWALBE, PGS. 94-96*
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