Extra Post: Shooting of Kajieme Powell Video

I have actually seen this video before, I didn't know the persons name but I definitely saw it once it was released into the media. In the video the man that gets shot, Kajieme doesn't listen to what the officers are asking him to do. Instead he asks the officers to actually go ahead and shoot him if they are going to. His lack of compliance to remove his hands from where they are and make them visible, I believe gave the officers the right to shoot because he was warned. I think it's ridiculously unnecessary the amount of times he was shot. I think they should have realized he didn't pose an actual threat but because of all the shootings that were happening in Ferguson he was angry at the PD.

Relating it to class, I have to say that this definitely makes me think of Jünger as well. I have mentioned in class before how I trip upon the that weird really dark side of the internet that is full of videos of beheadings and other forms of death and torture that have been recorded by people. This is something similar, it is a recording of someone dying right before our eyes. Is it something we need to see? Do we need to have a video of this? Why was it not destroyed after it was recorded? These are all questions that I think have to do with relativity (and I don't mean physics). I think that in our society, over the years we have experienced a lot of police abuse and brutality but once people started recording these situations as proof of the abuse were we able to get SOME justice for some of the incidences. I feel that video has become an essential tool, even a protection for people who fall prey to not only police abuse, but any other crime. It shows irrefutable evidence and can lead to obtaining some justice. Video recording has both allowed us to defend ourselves, understand situations and circumstances of certain events like the Powell shooting but at the same time does reveal the cruel truth of the world. It does become a "cruel way of seeing" because we are seeing the death of another human being. I think this video is a double edge sword either way you look at it. It's good to have this recording because we have proof of unnecessary excessive shooting, but also of a non-compliant person that in a way caused his own death. On the other end of the spectrum we see this horrific event happen right before our eyes at a global scale. Anyone around the world with internet access can click a few buttons and watch someone die. I believe this affects our psyche to some extent and makes us really question society and each other. I believe it makes us see life through a more negative lens. It's not all happy, peace loving and understanding. Violence exists in our backyards and death can be uploaded in a 3 minute video.

I think video specifically coincides more with Jünger than just photography. Like in my last post, I had pictures of suicides but there is something much more heart-wrenching about watching a live recording of someone dying right before your eyes. The self immolating monk actually also has a full color video but I wasn't planning on posting that up. It seems to have a much more graphic effect watching him get set on fire, and watching the monks reaction to what he believe was a self sacrifice to the greater good.

On May 4, 1970 there was a shooting at Kent State, you might recognize this photograph:

 

This photo speaks so much of pain and loss on this day. Neil Young wrote a song called "Ohio" dedicated to the shooting at Kent. We have used technology not only to expose the wrongful doings of others, but also as a coping mechanism. We use it to remember those we have lost and place our hope that it won't happen again. We see the video of Powell, we see the video of Eric Garner wheezing to death and somehow it seems that the learning doesn't sink in. I believe Jünger would consider the lack of understanding and the continuances of this kind of violence as a negative result of film. This would support his "cruel way of seeing" statement perfectly; if nothing is learned from these past mistakes then we are just mindlessly torturing ourselves by standing by and watching each other die at the hands of those who were sworn to protect us. We place our hopes in the future that things like this will never occur but somehow every so often we see another incident and add another victim to the count. The same goes for other school related shootings like Columbine on April 20, 1999 for example, where we have footage of the assailants but the shootings continue to happen. So as I've mentioned, there are both pros and cons to the development of technology and its use in society. There have been both good things and bad things come of it, it depends on what people use it for later on that truly matters. I feel it is as powerful as any other weapon, we can use it to make a positive change or to humiliate and ruin the life of another person like the cruel joke played on the disabled kid who thought he was doing the ALS ice bucket challenged but was actually dumped feces and waste on him. Video has made it possible for these kinds of things to happen, but it has also helped catch the people who committed this heinous crime. This can stir up an entire debate on whether people can truly be trusted to handle these kinds of devices responsibly, or does the government have to step in to regulate and at the same time violate our rights. Just like anything else a video can be turned into a kind of weapon - I don't want to get into that debate though.

Here is the song I was talking about:

11/22: Walter Benjamin "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction

Chosen Passage: 

"The cathedral leaves its locale to be received in the studio of a lover of art; the choral production, performed in an auditorium or in the open air, resounds in the drawing room." - Walter Benjamin

Response:

The passage that I chose from Walter Benjamin's "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" refers to the point in the essay where Benjamin begins discussing how photography has changed art. At this point he used a cathedral and a choral production as examples of art that have been pulled from their environment and placed into a foreign environment such as the studio and drawing room he refers to. This is owed to the reproducibility of these forms of art through photographic and recorded copies respectively. 

The reason I chose this particular passage was because of my previous post with Jünger and his reference to photography as something evil (Professor Murdaco also commented on this on that post I made). As he mentioned, after reading Benjamin, I did see the similarities between him and Jünger ideas on how technology has changed our ways of perceiving reality. While Benjamin doesn't directly refer to this being a negative thing, Jünger does basically outright say it (you can refer to my previous post on that). The point where they agree lies in the fact that technology has changed, and continues to change, everything in terms of how we view the world. The passage that I chose shows the way that something from another place in time and moment can be brought into our present time in our home. This was discussed in the lecture when referring to space and time. However, the primary reason that I chose this passage was because it made me think of a form of art we haven't discussed yet, which is hyperrealism. Hyperrealism is taking the traditional form of art such as painting and drawing and creating a work that looks as realistic as possible, to the point it is hard to distinguish it from a photograph.  

By Elizabeth Patterson

By Paul Cadden

by Juan Francisco Casas

These impressive works of art separate themselves from anything else we have seen by making us question our own perspective and really ask, is this a photograph? When looked in great detail we might see the small details, like the cross-hatching used for the shadowing and realize that it indeed is not a photograph. I've taken an art history class before where we examined the changes in art throughout history from the medieval, through the renaissance. This class we have looked at other forms of art like expressionist and dadaism. Benjamin discusses the different forms of art in the beginning of his essay and the fact that the age of reproduction has devalued them in various ways. Art is appreciated for many different reasons such as dadaism's unique "ugly" take and the work of the renaissance in its efforts to perfect the depiction of the human anatomy while also providing an "awe" element such as Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel work. Ultimately some people will tell you that there is nothing like seeing the real thing. While others might say the complete opposite and tell you it's not what they expected. This is particularly true for Leonardo Da Vinci's Mona Lisa which is a surprisingly small portrait that people can barely get close to even seeing at the Louvre in Paris. In this case people appreciate more the fact that this image is reproduced and can even be enlarged to better appreciate the artwork. The Sistine Chapel on the other hand is an enormous mural painted on a ceiling that one cannot even really imagine the difficulty of this task when Michelangelo was working on it and later on became nearly blind. The point is that overtime we have come to appreciate art for different reasons and sometimes reproduction has not taken away from the art but rather allowed us to appreciate it more because technology has helped restore it. 

Benjamin believes that this is not the case and in fact, photography in particular has devalued art that is produced by other means (hence the long rant at the beginning of the essay). Why would anyone paint a street anymore if you can just take a photograph of it is the question that lies beneath it all. Like the Cathedral in the Studio of an art lover that he mentions in my chosen passage, why find a need to visit it if you can have a photographic reproduction hanging on your wall? No need to spend money or time or effort fighting your way through hordes of tourist when you can enjoy the same exact thing (or not the same thing according to him) in your home. Can you see the negativity and nihilism in this? It is not that we no longer care about these amazing works of art now that we can have them hanging in our dens at home, its that no everyone has the means to tour the Sistine Chapel or stand in an impossibly huge crowd at the Louvre to see some amazing art. Jünger damns photography even more than Benjamin. However their views do intersect in this idea of the fact that photography does change the way we view reality. As I mentioned in my Jünger post, we are allowed to see life as it truly is more through photography than anything else. In the lecture the photograph of the collapsing fire escape made my heart stop for a moment as I see these kids falling into their deaths. Another photograph, and one of my personal favorites is the one below: 

By Robert C. Wiles 

This photograph is a very famous photo captured by Robert C. Wiles right after a girl committed suicide by jumping off I believe it was the observatory floor of the Empire State Building and landing on this car in an almost posed and angelic fashion. Another famous photograph is this: 

   

  

By Robert Browne

The image above was a famous photo taken in the 60's of a monk committing self immolation in protest. Photography such as these create a sense of shock of reality of the world that we see. It captures a moment in time that a painting does not capture nor a drawing can ever capture. It is a real moment in time. Of course at both points of each photograph, photography has advanced much more than when Benjamin was around and today photography has reached even new levels as we can photograph microscopic organisms through microscopes, things unseen by the naked eye. Photography has opened new doors into our consciousness as we now can see beyond what we normally would be able to. It doesn't alter reality but captivates it in a way that was never done before. 

Now going back to Hyperrealism, (I didn't forget about that!) it seems that now we are trying to find ways to create art that embraces photography by trying create art that looks like a photograph such as the water on a windshield by Elizabeth Patterson. Instead of damming photography as replacing art that is done by hand and with effort we are upping our own skills as artist by trying to create something so realistic that it makes us question what it is that we truly are looking at. So going back to Jünger, are we then trying to recreate a "magical possession" through art that looks like photographs? Why are we trying to hard to make everything look as realistic as possible? These are all questions I don't have an answer to but they do make me think about the way reality is perceived. A hyperrealistic artist can most likely recreate the photographs of the two suicides above but what makes these photographs so special is the fact that they were captured in the moment that they occurred, they were not moments conceived by the mind, these are real people in real situations. So sure, I don't believe that photography takes away from the art itself but rather takes away from the experience of the art. We travel thousands of miles to see magnificent things, not because we haven't seen them in countless expensively high-gloss printed books, but because we can to have the experience to see the ceiling Michelangelo stroked his brushes upon, the canvas that shows the tiny cracks of paint from when Leonardo Da Vinci painted and the size that he chose to paint in. Photography can take away from the experience of something but at the same time provide another kind of experience by showing you a moment that a painter or any other kind of artist would not be able to instantly capture. Hyperrealistic art is not of the moment either, that is were we know it is not a photograph but the techniques used are in admiration of what photography is capable of doing. 

The nihilism that underlines the thoughts of both Jünger and Benjamin are quiet obvious and in a way it is a small scale revolt towards technology. A revolt is when people fight to change things to a prior point in time while a revolution is more about changing something into something else, something new. Jünger and Benjamin seem to want to go back in time in a way, before technology of reproduction existed, they want to retain the experiences of art and moments as they are rather than accepting photography as a positive revolutionary invention that will allow us to capture moments for future generations to learn about. 

11/15 On Pain

Chosen Passage: 

"Photography, then, is an expression of our peculiarly cruel way of seeing. Ultimately, it is a kind of evil eye, a type of magical possession. One senses this very clearly in places where a different cultic substance is still active. The moment a city like Mecca can be photographed, it falls into the colonial sphere (p. 40)." - Ernst Jünger, "On Pain"

Response: 

The reason I chose this passage that was also part of the lecture is because I actually completely agree with it. This passage is talking about the way photography is one of those technological advances that has changed the way we perceive pain and how it has affected people on a globalized scale. At this particular point the discussion has already turned to the "objectification" of people, like the dehumanization I've discussed previously. Photography has definitely added to this change of perception because, as Ernst mentions, it has basically desensitized people to accept horrific events without so much attachment in order to deal with the emotional trauma that follows it. This passage speaks truth when he refers to photography Mecca and having that become part of the colonial sphere. I can honestly say I never thought about it that way but every time someone takes a photo of something that is meaningful or of any importance, such as the holy site of Mecca, or even photographs of indigenous un-contacted tribes, it does become a form of colonization. We cross the boundaries of comfort for those people just to capture a moment in a photograph (as an anthropologist in training - this is a huge no-no). Yet at the same time if we don't see these things and people then we would never really grasp and understanding of them. It's almost like choosing the lesser of two evils.

Going back to the lecture and Totalitarianism photography does share it's importance in trying to drive out the nihilism in people to allow them to be function cogs of society. Everyone has a job to do and everyone needs to deal with the realities of life outside of this job and within this job to become efficient. We suppress pain by coming face to face with it and accepting it as a part of reality. I can contribute by saying that the internet, one of the greatest technological advances of all time has given birth to a new type of mentality that is completely desensitized from the horrors of the world. It only takes a few clicks before you end up in that really dark part of the internet that hordes video archives of people being mutilated, self mutilation and even death (such as decapitation and all other sorts of things). People have even developed a sort of gore fetish where they get some kind of pleasure out of seeing blood and mangled body parts because it's something not everyone can handle. So this idea of living a meaningless life changes by becoming desensitized. The meaning of life changes and is accepted as being a part of death as an equal counterpart. At some point we will all stop existing, everyone eventually dies, one way or another and having these kinds of photographic proof of that allows for an acceptance of death. People accept it and no longer fear it because they can say they have seen some of the worse scenarios that can play out. They might even consider themselves so lucky to not be those unfortunate ones. Photography then does capture us in a way by allowing us to see what would otherwise be considered taboo. We cross the borders of no return once we become exposed and for some it provides a sense of superiority for being able to "handle" watching those kinds of things. People then become boastful and feel as if they can take on the world they live in. Photography has flipped the script of Nihilism in this sense. It has changed people from allowing to wallow in misery and force the exposure of the horrors of life to being forced to see these things as a type of reform of mind.

Totalitarianism requires submission. People need to understand their function in society and work in society by leaving behind these emotions that tie them down to a possible mental breakdown about how terrible the realities of life are. To be a function human being you need to accept life as it is and realize that there are many things you cannot control and there is nothing you can do. People find it much easier to be told what to do than have to think for themselves - it takes the guess work of out life. It reminds me of the prison mentality - being institutionalized. People who are released, after years and years of being in prison, find it hard to adapt to every day life and holding down a job for this reason. There was no guess work when they were in the prison, day time, night time, breakfast, lunch and dinner, physical activity and so on - everything was provided in a scheduled manner. In the outside world they would need to make all of these things happen for them, they would need jobs to provide those meals, and clothes and other utilities necessary for living in society. It's interesting the way that Totalitarianism holds to some one these qualities but makes people break out of that prison mentality and accept their life as a cog in society. You gotta do, what you gotta do.

I think people should understand that life isn't just some 9-5 job. I think people need to understand what is happening in the world and accept their limitations in terms of bringing change to something no one is trying to change. Like the Sentinelese tribe from the North Sentinel Island who over the years have been declared the most hostile uncontacted tribe in the world, it took several deaths and show of complete rejection of the outside world before it was officially declared to never receive contact by enforcing a three-mile exclusion zone (reference below). There are some things people simply cannot change and they need to understand that is okay. We are not part of a Totalitarian government but everyone still has jobs to do that allow society to continue moving. The expulsion of nihilistic thought is hard to do and Ernst tries to rationalize pain as something that can be manipulated if the right pieces are in place. However, this is also something unrealistic because people are constantly trying to control every aspect of their lives, emotions towards daily lives and politics is not something that can be easily manipulated. People are set on their ways sometimes and acceptance of that is also part of our reality.



Reference: Sentinelese Article          

11/8 Nazism

Night and Fog

As I recently mentioned in my last post Night and Fog demonstrates a lot of different perspectives on Nazism in Germany. The scene that I chose I think is pretty obvious since I also discussed it last week. The scene is the part of the film (second link) where the S.S Officers are put on trial and deny fault in the atrocities they carried out on behalf of their superiors and personal decisions.

In this scene, several officers are put on trial and the simply state they are not responsible for the crimes against humanity they are being accused of. The narrator follows up by asking the simple question, "They who is responsible?" The reason I chose this particular scene despite having so many other options that show the true horrors of the Holocaust is because this scene speaks to me in more than one simple perspective. It also makes me question why, and how evil like this tend to exist in the world. This scene supports the article I discussed in my last post as well; It shows the fact that the S.S Officers did not believe what they were doing was wrong because no one was reprimanding them for their actions. It wasn't until outside forces finally brought down Hitler and the Nazis that shame fell upon all those who supported this heinous cause. As discussed in the lecture there were many factors that brought about the rise of Nazism in Germany and everything fell together in pieces that basically made these events inevitable. That does not excuse the fact that no one was aware of the level of violence that would come of it, or the fact that this turned out to be a full blown genocide meant to eliminate anyone that didn't fit the aryan criteria. 

This scene made my thoughts go a step deeper by analyzing how it is that these S.S Officer could have functioned. I do believe that some officers truly didn't consider themselves at fault and placed blame on their commanding superiors that provided them with orders. I also believe many lied and were fully aware of their actions as well as were proud of their job and hate towards anyone that wasn't like them - especially jews. However, the evil that sits at the root of these events I believe go further into the psyche of the officers. I believe that there is a certain mindset that needs to be so terribly engrained that allows someone to starve, decapitate and to put it simply, kill another human being that they have no relation to. I believe there is a level of dehumanization that goes into their mental training when they were working their shifts at these concentration camps. I believe they went beyond breaking the spirit of these people - they dehumanized them. By dehumanize I mean treat them in such a way that they don't consider the jewish people, the disabled people or anyone else they picked up to cargo them out to concentration camps, human. In the film they also showed what they did with the bodies of the people. They had warehouse sized rooms filled with hair. They bulldozed bodies into ditches just as they would piles of trash and they hacked up the bodies, piling their heads into baskets like vegetables in time of harvest. They harvest. They harvest skin for books and other items, bones for hair brushes, tooth brushes, bodies for soap and so on. To consider making objects out of human remains doesn't sound like something a rational person would do. In reality, this is all irrational. The idea that you can look at person and say they are nothing like you, despite the fact that they clearly are, it's sicking. The officers changed the appearance of these people by shaving their heads and starving them to death. This was the first step. They them their material belonging that they carefully chose to keep, their clothes and their hair - they made sure to make them look as inhuman as possible. Amongst each other it would be difficult to tell these starving bodies apart but for the SS officers it was easy for them to set themselves apart and do what they thought they had to do. They broke these people both in mind and spirit to carry out their task. It wasn't that just Hitler was this amazing charismatic leader that was going to place Germany at the top of the global power game. It wasn't just that he stepped in at just the right time, and declared himself Die Fürhrer. It wasn't just that people had lost hope in humanity as Nihilism spread. It was the fact that this was a thoroughly calculated task of genocide against everyone that wasn't of the aryan race. Jews in particular, much like in most of history were used as the scapegoats. The ones that were to take the blame of Germany's recent stroke of perpetual bad luck. 

Someone needed to pay the consequences of what was happening to Germany. Someone needed to make these people feel better - to rid of them of this sense of meaninglessness towards life. Someone needed to make things better. That was the role of the victims. That was the purpose their lives served. They gave these officers a sense of duty to the country. They were doing these things for the greater good and they were getting rewarded. They dehumanized these people so that they could see them as objects that could be processed into something else. The destruction was internal and became external as politics became more involved, and ways of disposing the bodies with more quickness became an issue. These officers are to blame. Always have, always will be. They can't simply be excused as being brainwashed, and not knowing at all what they were doing. There is a level of consciousness that goes into all of this. It is impossible to tell if higher ups specifically asked them to shoot babies in the air or throw a piece of bread at a group of starving people and watch them tear each other apart despite being fathers, mothers, brothers and sisters. There are certain things as describe to Eli Wiesel's book Night and demonstrated in Night and Fog that one would think it's an act of the individual and not a command. 

I have also read the Banality of Evil mentioned in the lecture and it tackles this same issue of consciousness in ones actions and who is to blame for what happened. It addresses the fact that the people committing these atrocities were regular people and not evil geniuses or anything that might look out of the ordinary. These were people, just like everyone else who went off on the wrong footing and landed in a very dark place. These are people that look like anyone else walking down the street who were also hauling dead bodies out of cargo trains to incinerate those who didn't survive. These were people listening to Hitler's words, reading Mein Kampf, and feeling as if the world was against them. The support of extremely wealthy companies and affluent people, as discussed in the lecture also helped provide a sense of security on their actions. They can't possibly think they're doing something wrong when such "great" people praise their work and efforts to changing the world. 

Going back to my chosen scene, I chose it because it incorporates the way that the people of Germany were broken. They were broken mentally and emotionally due to the horrors of war they had to witness. The millions of deaths and the idea of a Godless world that would allow things like this to happen and have them take the blame. The Nihilistic attitude was running at its all time high right before Nazism grabbed the reigns and tried to direct these people into a place false salvation. There is no salvation. This scene also made me think ahead. It made me think of the aftermath of the war and the downfall of Hitler. It made me think about the consequences and the wrath of hate people felt after finding out the true horrors of the Concentration Camps. It made me think of the people that are out there today who still believe in Hitler's vision of a world rid of anyone but them. It made me think of the Nihilism that continues existing even within our own society as we ignore the genocide currently occurring throughout the world and in places people definitely know about like North Korea. It made me realize that people always seek someone to blame and someone to take responsibility but it should be us taking responsibility. 

So when the Narrator ask "Who then, is responsible?" 

Humanity is. 

We find endless ways to destroy ourselves on a daily basis. It doesn't get more Nihilistic than that.       

11/1: Max Weber: Politics as a Vocation

"The administrative staff, which externally represents the organization of political domination, is, of course, like any other organization, bound by obedience to the power-holder and not alone by the concept of legitimacy, of which we have just spoken. There are two other means, both of which appeal to personal interests: material reward and social honor. The fiefs of vassals, the prebends of patrimonial officials, the salaries of modern civil servants, the honor of knights, the privileges of estates, and the honor of the civil servant comprise their respective wages. The fear of losing them is the final and decisive basis for solidarity between the executive staff and the power-holder. There is honor and booty for the followers in war; for the demagogue's following, there are 'spoils'--that is, exploitation of the dominated through the monopolization of office--and there are politically determined profits and premiums of vanity. All of these rewards are also derived from the domination exercised by a charismatic leader." - Max Weber, Politics as a Vocation (pg. 3)

Response:

     The passage that I chose from Weber talks about the domination that a charismatic leader holds over their administration and everyone involved politically speaking. More specifically it discusses what it is that these worker bees have to profit from by being obedient and allowing themselves to be submissive to their leader. Weber sums it up really well when he writes "there is honor and booty for the followers in war". In this statement he explains that the reason people allow there to be a dominant power is because there is personal gain. As mentioned in the lecture, Weber basically predicted the uprising of a fascism that requires a leader to hold these qualities of charism and domination.

        The reason I chose this passage was because it directly links up with Adolf Hitler and the rise of the Nazism in Germany. Before I ever really understood the factors that led to the Holocaust I always wondered as to why people allowed themselves to be persuaded by Hitler to eliminate an entire race of people. I questioned what kind of people these were and where was this hate rooting from that allowed such a tragedy to flourish and soak Europe in the blood of the innocent. I am fully aware of the fact that there has been plenty of revolutions and wars and other such tragic events in other countries (Stalin for example) but the Holocaust has always been looked at as one of the worst of the worst. So to really understand the rise of Nazism we need to analyze who the leader was and what allowed him to basically brainwash himself an army of followers. It starts at the root of the matter, and that is in the politics. We need to understand Hitler as a political figure that rose to power quickly after his assignment as Chancellor and his seize of opportunity after the death of Reich President Paul von Hindenburg. The opportunity laid before him, and as mentioned in the lecture, using Article 48 he legally became a dictator. Weber understood that this was something that would happen however, I don't think he could predict the future and could say who would rise to power, in which way or what would be the outcomes. Weber understood the signs and the conditions that would allow for something like this to happen. He understood that a leader needed to understand how the politics worked in order to seize control of it. He understood that through violence one gains control, because people need to both love and fear their leader to some extent. Hitler had the charismatic quality Weber describes as being an essential part of a rise in a dominant power. Hitler also had a staff of people that hung on his every word and believed what he said to not only be true, but what was best for the future of Germany. Hitler rationalized the irrational and he did this by motivating a broken nation through a unified nationalistic identity. It was time for the "great"(aryan race) to rise from the ashes and cleanse itself from the "wretched" (everyone that did not fit the perfect aryan criteria) that were holding them back. Hitler's staff must have been handsomely rewarded for their unwavering allegiance to the rise of Nazism by partaking in the "spoils" as Weber says.

      I have previously taken a course that analyzes evil. What it was and how do we determine what evil is by looking not only at different written works, movie productions but also at historical events such as the Nazi Regime and the Holocaust. I was able to gain an important perspective on the way things were being interpreted by the Hitler's followers and his staff in command. Usually we look at works and accounts from survivors of the Holocaust or people who fought against it and even saved lives, but not so much as the people who truly took a part of the events as a Nazi. One of the things that I learned was from a reading titled "Blueberries, Accordions and Auschwitz: The evil of thoughtlessness by Jennifer L. Geddes" was exactly what Weber is discussing in Politics as a Vocation, the rewards of being a good "soldier" so to speak. In this reading we gain a perspective on what happens to "good" Nazi's. "Good" SS officers were sent to summer camps as rewards for their so called good work. In this reading there are photographs that show these people enjoying blueberries, playing accordions while laughing and smiling. They don't look like people that were grabbing dead infants by the ankles and throwing them into piles of other dead bodies. The don't look like people that were shooting infants for target practice, or prisoners in the back of the head and definitely not sending people by the hundreds into gas chambers. The look like happy, relatively average people. The article is actually about the way that Nazi's were doing their job and being rewarded for it creating a sense of ignorance of their wrong doings of "thoughtlessness". There was no thought process involved in their actions. They followed commands sent down from their superiors who rewarded them based of their performance. Sounds like the average job? You do good, you get rewarded. However, analyzing this in deeper level we see the way that these soldiers couldn't possibly think that what they were doing was wrong because they were being rewarded for it. It's like anything else in life, if you have a dog that rips up your couch and you give it treats despite this behavior, the dog will not be conditioned into stopping this behavior because it is not being chastised for it. If you reprimand the dog when it does do this, and not give it treats and maybe even place it in the corner for 10 minutes as a punishment then the dog will be conditioned to avoiding this behavior already familiar with the unpleasant consequence. People work the same way. If you don't tell someone what they're doing is wrong, the won't think it's wrong. These people were not only reinforced that their actions in the camps should be praised through rewarding trips but their superiors and the everyones charismatic Führer also reinforced that everyones actions was for their greater good. Germany had already suffered a terrible blow in WWI taking all the blame for everything, followed by the Great Depression they were demoralized and broken until Hitler eventually stepped in as their "ray" of hope to rebuild a broken nation into something they thought would be great. These people did not see killing their prisoners as a senseless act of violent genocide, they did not see these people as people (that is an entirely separate discussion). Weber understood that if you give rewards and if you can talk your way into the minds and emotions of people you can gain dominance over them. The passage I chose links up to Hitler's charisma and to the way he knew how to manage his people. Keep them happy also meant keeping their loyalty. Even when put on trial, SS Officers claimed no responsibility for their actions although they were CLEARLY at fault just as much as the commanding officers above them that gave them the orders(I am not sure if this was in the Night and Fog film I saw that I know we will see later in this class!). Their loyalties collapsed when Hitler collapsed and everything came crumbling down in a domino effect. As soon as they were faced with true punishment for their actions and they had no defense against the world's criticism and chastising accusations they were no longer smiling, laughing or thinking that what they were doing was wrong.

All of this ties back to Weber and Nihilism. The view of the world as being a place where through it all there really is no light at the end of the tunnel so one must learn to live by understanding the way things work (in Weber's case, the way politics works). Through all the horror seen by this First World War it is easy to understand that one can lose themselves in the disturbing reality of life. Weber wanted something he failed at obtaining but he predicted almost exactly what the outcome would be if the cards were laid out right, and they where and Hitler and Nazism rose. Even the idea of dominion over a people as a charismatic leader holds a sense of nihilism because people are willing to give up what they believe is right, separate themselves from reality to be efficient worker bees that reap the benefits later on (this was mentioned in the lecture, Weber's discussion on the disconnection that makes people good followers of dominant leaders). The lack of personal agency and allowing oneself to be driven by the desires of others and eliminating our own sense of morality seems nihilistic in the sense of what are you really but just a mere puppet? In the grand scheme of things everyone eventually dies but it seems that giving up yourself to that extreme to a charismatic leader is an early way to call it quits, especially when you are then punished for your actions by execution or life imprisonment. Weber truly was brilliant and understood the inner workings of politics well enough to know that man is mans greatest enemy.  








For those interested here is the article I was talking about: Blueberries, Accordions and Auschwitz

10/25: The Weimar Republic

Assignment due 11/1:
Interpret meaning and explain your choice


First Part Choice


"Article 51 (9)

In case the Reich President is unavailable, he is briefly substituted by the Reich Chancellor. Is it a presumably longer lasting situation, his substitution has to be regulated by a Reich law. The same applies in case a presidency ends prematurely, until the next election is held."


Response:

This article from the first part of the Weimar Republic's Constitution explains what would happen if the Reich President is unable to fulfill his duties and has to temporarily or indefinitely step down from his office. According to this article the Reich President is to be replaced by the Reich Chancellor. Anything the Reich Chancellor plans on doing while the Reich President is unable to be in office is monitored by the Reich Law. This is also the same case if the former Reich President is officially out of office and a new Reich President is to be elected up until that moment. The reason I chose this particular article is because I wanted to understand better what were the powers the Reich President and the Reich Chancellor had. I also wanted to know what would happen if the Reich President were to completely step out of his position. As discussed in todays lesson we do not have a Chancellor in our governmental system, we have a President and Vice President. If the President cannot fulfill his duties the Vice President steps in to take his place as the new president. In the Weimar Republic the Reich Chancellor seems to have authority almost equal to that of the Reich President with its own limitations of what he can and cannot do. It is not mentioned here that the Reich Chancellor is to definitely replace the Reich President if something were to happen, although he does become a step in until a new election is held and a new Reich President is chosen. This made me think of Adolf Hitler and the way he took over when the former Reich President Hidenburg died. As discussed in the lecture Hitler then proceeded to eliminate the Reich President position completely by fusing the two offices to create his own new title as Fürhrer. He changed the meaning of what his position was by calling himself a "Leader" rather than a "Reich President". Usually Leader is a word I would associate with someone that is benevolent, someone that doesn't chosen to necessarily become a leader but is appointed by his followers. Hitler did not encompass any of this. We all know about the Holocaust. He calls himself a leader the same way Napoleon crowned himself King post the French Revolution. He gave himself a good title that people are familiar with. Nobody automatically thinks that a leader will be a bad leader. Leaders, to me, are usually pretty empathetic, they think of themselves as one of the struggling "regular people" of society. A person who doesn't choose to have all the awesome power that they have. Hitler...no. None of this. He gave himself this image of this caring authoritative figure by eliminating the intimidation behind the title and simplifying it. A Leader sounds less threatening and intimidating that Reich President or Reich Chancellor. This article reveals to me the weakness of the Weimar Republic and its inevitable downfall. It shows me the huge crack that Hitler managed to slip through and crown himself Die Fürhrer. The crack Hitler slipped through was the fact that they did not specify that the Reich Chancellor or any other authoritative figure in absence of the Reich President is allowed to make changes that affect the position being held. I believe Hitler saw that as his opportunity. They did not say he couldn't change the title of Reich President to Fürhrer, much less say he couldn't fuse offices to his benefit which allowed him to change his position making the Reich Presidential and Chancellor position null and void. I am sure we will cover more of the Nazi Era later on in the semester, I don't know enough about it to go too deep.  


Second Part Choice

"Article 136

Civil and civic rights and obligations are neither conditioned nor limited by the exercise of freedom of religion. The exercise of civil or civic rights, the admittance to public offices are independent of religious confession.
Nobody is obliged to profess his religious confession publicly. Public authority may only ask for religious affiliation as far as rights and obligations derive or an officially decreed census requires. Nobody may be forced to participate in a religious act or festivity, to join in religious practices or to swear a religious oath formula."

Response:

This article from the second part of the Weimar Republic Constitution discusses a separation of Church and State with its own limitation. According to this article, religious freedom is granted to people and it does not influence if they want to hold public office. It goes a step further by explaining that people are not to be profiled by their religious beliefs and that information is kept private unless required by the census. It also states that nobody can force you against your will do participate in any religious acts, celebrations or other practices. Nobody can force you to say any kind of prayer that has some religious affiliation either. The reason I chose to look into the religious aspects covered in the Weimar Republic's Constitution is because it was discussed too much in the lecture. As discussed in the lecture this part of the Constitution is modeled by our American Bill of Rights which declares what rights as American citizens we have. Our Bill of Rights is vaguely simple by simply stating we have a right to freedom of religion covered in the First Amendment. The Weimar Republic's Constitution, however, seemed to find the necessity to specifically disassociate civil and civic rights from freedom of religion. It states what authoritative figures could do and what people are not obligated to do and how this might affect someone wanting to take a public office. I found this to be a very thorough way of telling people that they have religious freedom and that the government can't do anything against you because of that personal choice. This also brought me back to thinking about the future Weimar Republic and the rise of the Nazi. Hitler made great strides to engrave the idea that Jews were to blame for the misfortunes of Germany and their people. During what I like to consider his "Reign of Terror" Hitler and his officials allowed the profiling of their own people, "weeding out" the Jews to set them up in fortified ghettos and monitoring them like cattle before sending them to slaughter once the concentration camps were up and running. The jews that were identified were give different forms of identification which singled them out (you should be familiar with the star the had to wear). Hitler thoroughly violates this article when he becomes Die Fürhrer. It seems to me that he was hell bent on doing whatever he wanted. His title as Fürhrer was simply a title, to me, Hitler deceived everyone and actually became this tyrannical König (King). He not only stepped in and changed the government (as I mentioned in the above article response) but he also redefined what it mean to be German, to be a "worthy" human being. Eventually (and I only know very little of this from going to the Holocaust Museum in DC this summer) there was a set standard on what to look for. Not only was it blonde hair and blue eyes, but it was right down to the structure of your face that made you a true German. You needed to be a healthy (non-disabled, physically or mentally) on top of all that, other wise, even if you fit all the other criteria you were to be eliminated to prevent the "soiling" the gene pool for future German generations. Tying this back to my article choice, the Weimar Republic was weak. It was weak in the way they tried to make democratic nation out of Germany. Not to mention Germany wasn't really Germany for a while but a bunch of city-states. As briefly discussed in the lecture this would make Germany only well aware of how independent government systems work which they incorporated into the Reichsrat. To me it doesn't seem like there was ever any unity in Germany. Eventually post World War II, Germany became East and West Germany (Berlin Wall) followed by one unified country in the 90s.  They tried hard to copy this democratic government we live in but tried to make their own twists on it that did not benefit them at all, it's like bad plagiarism. They tried to give people freedom of religion only to have Hitler completely tear into that by persecuting the jews and anyone else that wasn't considered to be part of the supreme Ayran race. This article demonstrates the wishes (of a democratic republic) that the Weimar Republic was not able to uphold with the death of Hidenburg and rise of Hitler. In a way it also foreshadows, by specifically describing the limitations and abilities of the authoritative figures, what reformations Hitler was going to make by starting a genocide.        

10/11 M

Assignment due 10/18


The scene that I chose from M is towards the end of the film after Mr. Beckert has been captured by the gang of Beggars and is being given a pseudo trial to determine his fate after killing all those children. In this scene Mr. Beckert is trying to explain himself and what feels. He expressively explains that the murders he commits are events he does not even remember. He claims that voices of torment speak to him and that a "shadow" follows him around, this shadow is himself, but a different side of himself that is essentially evil. This side of him torrents him as well as the voices of the parents of his unsuspecting victims and the victims themselves. It is only when he finally kills that the voices spot and he reawakens unaware of his actions. He is then shocked when he sees posters talking about the crimes he has committed. His claim stands as these murders not being his fault because he was unaware of his actions. The reason I chose this particular scene is because of the way that Mr. Beckert explains his take on the situation. You can see the distress in his eyes and body language when he describes his torment and you can see the sick pleasure of an almost euphoric state when he explains that it all ends when he finally gets a kill. His eyes roll into his head and he almost savors the feeling of the moment in his mind. After that moment passes his body language demonstrates defeat and almost sadness because its over and now he is brought back to the reality of the situation. This ties into our lecture and how Mr. Beckert follows this Freudian idea of death drive, or this beyond instinctual feeling of doing something but unconsciously in order to cease the suffering he feels. He unconsciously commits these murders by explaining that he has no recollection of them just the feeling of when it happens, and it ends his torrent and suffering when the voices finally stop after he commits those murders. Mr. Beckert, from his expression describing the feeling of the murder is almost euphoric as if he as reached some kind of Nirvana. The Nihilism then lies within the actions of Mr. Beckert, his day to day life holds no satisfaction, it holds no purpose and he commits heinous crimes that make the parents of the victims truly question if there is any divine justice. This is supported by the way the film ends when the parents, although being told that the criminal was apprehended and will be punished for his crimes find no peace of mind. The are still suffering from the fact that although the murderer will be dealt with their children still won't return home. Nothing can replace the emptiness and horrible feeling of losing their children. Mr. Beckert also represents nihilism by the way he "comes down" from his moments of High after the murderers are committed or he gets sucked into reality. The first instance of this was not in the scene I chose but from an earlier scene where Mr. Beckert spots a child's reflection in a mirror in a store. The look of sick pleasure crosses his face at the thought of murdering the child and then he is immediately brought back to what would be considered from his perspective, a sad reality. People like Mr. Beckert are trying to find outlets from their mundane lives and although he is portrayed as a mentally unstable person, he was stable and tactical enough to know how to lure his victims and stalk his prey in an almost primal way. He is reverting back to this Freudian idea of the death drive, where this action is beyond just instinct and it is tied to his nature of being. I might be completely wrong but I feel the need to tie this into A Clockwork Orange (the film) by Stanley Kubrick based off the novel by Anthony Burgess. In a Clockwork Orange the protagonist seeks pleasure outside of his mundane life by committing crimes with his gang of thug friends. SPOILER ALERT (In case you want to see it) In one scene in particular the main character and his gang manage to lie their way a couple home where they take the man of the house hostage and beat him. They take the mans wife and rape her in front of him all while he sings to the happy tune of "singin in the rain".  In this moment I see a parallel between Mr. Beckert and the main character of A Clockwork Orange. Mr. Beckert was also singing a happy tune (or at least in a happy way) when he lured his victims. Much like A Clockwork Orange this happy tune turns out to be the downfall of the criminal. Both of these individuals are seeking something beyond themselves to create a sense of pleasure and to end their own suffering. As the death drive is described it is ironically a self destructive act, in both these cases it is self destructive because they are caught (however the end is quiet different in a clockwork orange).


If you are interested, and don't mind spoilers, here is the scene from A Clockwork Orange