It Startled Me to Read...

It startled me to read Eliade's paragraph on Nazism, on "...how such a pessimistic vision of the end of history could ever have fired even a portion of the German people."

This startled me because that was my exact thought since learning about the holocaust.  How could one man convince almost the entirety of Germany to follow him down such a horrendous path?  How is it possible that so many people became so devoted to the Aryan race and such an outrageously horrible cause?  It wasn't until last November, while in Berlin's German History museum, that I began to see how.

Three of my friend's and I decided to take the weekend away from our studies in Spain to gallivant around in the snowfall of the German Christmas Markets. We spent long nights strolling through the smells of bratwurst and gluhwein, ice skating underneath warm colored lights, and drinking too much beer with new friends in our hostel.  But don't get the wrong impression- during the day we put our historian faces on and took a walking tour of the city (after which we nearly lost all of our fingers and toes to frostbite), and ended the day by ducking into the museums to warm up.  We politely started on the top floor of the History museum, pretending to be fascinated by the old roman artifacts and battles, but consciously working our way quickly down into the 1930s where the answer to Eliade's question lay.

I walked through the years of World War II.  Entering from the more-or-less innocent stages of the beginning, of Hitler's rise to power, the slow scapegoating of the Jewish people, one notices the troubles begin to arise but doesn't think much of it. "It's just propaganda," I thought as I looked at a red, firey, Nazi character rise above the ashes of a city on a poster, "There's always another side to politics, someone will create more powerful propaganda to balance its evil."  But there wasn't.  It was all of these miniscule steps that Nazism took forward, so little that one doesn't give too much worry, until the steps had built and built on top of one another to wobble treacherously, reaching closer and closer that horrible ledge of "ragnarök" (the last battle, or the end of the world, as Eliade translates it), to form this black staircase of complete brainwashing.  There was no other word I could think of to describe it.

And then I was there.  I was standing in the museum room of the Holocaust, of ragnarök, watching citizen after perish before my eyes in the concentration camps.  I whipped my head back around, tears filling my eyes- how did this happen so quickly?  I had literally been standing amongst those first "harmless" years of propaganda just and hour or two before.  How did one man eventually convince the commoner to "give up your old Judaeo-Christian stories, and re-kindle, in the depths of your souls, the beliefs of your ancestors the Germans; then prepare yourself for the last grand battle between our gods and the demonic forces."

He reanimated Germanic mythology, and he did so through complete brainwashing.  I think Eliade's use of the term "pessimistic" is a little too light here, don't you?

This term "brainwashing" was also mentioned in class the other day in relation to the Bible.  Hold up, hold up, I am not trying to relate the Holocaust to the Bible, but merely searching for other places in our world "brainwashing" might exist.  We talked of how the difference between religion and the Bible is thought of by many as the difference between the spirit and authority, of belief and brainwashing.  I would have to say I agree.  Not that I have ever read the Bible (who am I to talk?!), but I have personally seen the difference between an individual who believes in Christianity and an individual who follows the Bible.

It was a day earlier this Spring, in a class where we were having the good ol' gay marriage argument . No one would speak up, so I finally did.  "My brother is gay." I didn't say anything else.

NOW no one would speak up. I tried not to laugh as, when we were asked to go around the circle and each give our individual opinion, everyone answered in favor of gay rights. That is until we reached the end of the circle.  A blonde with a light voice answered a sweet little, "no."

When asked why, she answered simply, "It is clearly written in the bible that man should be with woman. And that's how it should stay."

Killer argument, I thought sarcastically.  I bit my tongue, though, because it was in that moment that I saw a true believer in the Bible.  Not necessarily in Christianity, but in the bible.  Maybe it should be its own religion.  Not that it is a bad or wrong belief, but a belief in which the reader submits to its authority, and yes, allows themselves to be slightly brainwashed.

I think it is a much more beautiful thing when one can think for themselves, outside the lines of authority, and question authority, to create good.  To reanimate the more loving myths of our history.