By Abbie Conant
A while back, I discussed the work of philosophers and
theologians in postwar Germany who analyzed Nazism and how it could be useful
in understanding and combatting Trumpism.
Especially valuable are the writings of the theologian Dietrich
Bonhoeffer who was murdered by the Nazis in the Flossenbürg Concentration Camp
on April 9, 1945.
In his essay, “After Ten Years” from his book “Letters and
Papers from Prison,” he famously explained that social and political discourse
is defenseless against stupidity and that the only recourse is liberation from
the forces creating the stupidity.
Bonhoffer wrote that evil generally has at least some elements
of a rational mind that can create internal and/or external doubt, but
stupidity is out of reach of reason or meaningful self-reflection:
“Stupidity is a more dangerous enemy of the
good than malice. One may protest against evil; it can be exposed and, if need
be, prevented by use of force. Evil always carries within itself the germ of
its own subversion in that it leaves behind in human beings at least a sense of
unease. Against stupidity we are defenseless.”
Bonhoffer explained that stupidity lives in an imaginary world
removed from reality.
If facts contradict that world, they are simply discounted and
ignored, and often met with violence:
“Neither protests nor the use of force
accomplish anything here; reasons fall on deaf ears; facts that contradict
one’s prejudgment simply need not be believed — in such moments the stupid
person even becomes critical — and when facts are irrefutable, they are just
pushed aside as inconsequential, as incidental. In all this the stupid person,
in contrast to the malicious one, is utterly self-satisfied and, being easily
irritated, becomes dangerous by going on the attack.”
Bonhoffer concludes, “For that reason,
greater caution is called for than with a malicious one. Never again will we
try to persuade the stupid person with reasons, for it is senseless and
dangerous.”
Bonhoffer goes on to examine the nature of stupidity, that it is
not a lack of intellectual ability, but rather a mind that has been subverted,
broken, and constrained by propaganda:
“If we want to know how to get the better of
stupidity, we must seek to understand its nature. This much is certain, that it
is in essence not an intellectual defect but a human one. There are human
beings who are of remarkably agile intellect yet stupid, and others who are
intellectually quite dull yet anything but stupid.”
Bonhoffer explains that this form of socially induced stupidity
is created by a loss of independent thought and the immersion in collectives.
We see this with our binary political parties, the echo chambers of social
media, militaristic slogans, propaganda, and partisan radio and television.
Bonhoffer explains that people subjected to this collective dehumanization
become capable of mindless evil and without the capacity to understand or
question what they are doing:
“The fact that the stupid person is often
stubborn must not blind us to the fact that he is not independent. In
conversation with him, one virtually feels that one is dealing not at all with
a person, but with slogans, catchwords and the like that have taken possession
of him. He is under a spell, blinded, misused, and abused in his very being.
Having thus become a mindless tool, the stupid person will also be capable of
any evil and at the same time incapable of seeing that it is evil. This is
where the danger of diabolical misuse lurks, for it is this that can once and
for all destroy human beings.”
Bonhoffer explains that since reason cannot appeal to stupidity,
the only recourse is to liberate stupidity from the forces creating it:
“Yet at this very point it becomes quite
clear that only an act of liberation, not instruction, can overcome stupidity.
Here we must come to terms with the fact that in most cases a genuine internal
liberation becomes possible only when external liberation has preceded it.
Until then we must abandon all attempts to convince the stupid person.”
When the Reagan administration eliminated the fairness doctrine
for our public airwaves, and deregulated cable media, it opened the gates to
forms of radically partisan politics that eventually created the social and
political stupidity about which Bonhoffer warned. He also warned us that the
only solution is liberation from the radicalizing social forces that create
stupidity. The changes needed are fairly obvious, but the real challenge is to
create the political will for these changes in a society that has moved beyond
reason and whose political system is no longer genuinely functional.
