I find myself resonating with a lot of his sentiments here. In all of the calls for Nuremberg II, I have been tempted to ask why exactly did Nuremberg I happen, and what exactly did it accomplish? If a coalition of foreign powers had invaded and conquered the USA in 1870, might they have been equally appalled at our genocide of indigenous peoples and have convened similar trials? Was Nuremberg really an ideal example of justice for evil actions, or was it specifically designed to humiliate the losers of a long and bitter war? Is Nuremberg II really what we should be aiming for, or can we step out of the cycles of hatred and counter-hatred, oppression and punishment, and transcend the tendency toward dehumanization?
"Similarly, something primal lurks beneath the rationale for punishing the architects of pandemania, the calls for a Nuremberg II, and so on. The rationale is about deterrence and “holding people accountable.” The ideal is “never again.” But are we immune to more savage impulses masquerading as ideals? The lust for revenge, the desire to dance triumphantly over a humiliated enemy? Can we distinguish rational measures against a recurrence of genocidal madness from the madness itself? The madness which seeks to control evil by projecting it onto a sacrificial victim whose removal from society cleanses evil from the world?"
"Did Nuremberg I prevent a recurrence of genocidal madness? Did the perpetrators of the Rwandan massacres pause to think, “Hold on, if we slaughter a million people we will be punished?” Come on. The purpose of Nuremberg was not deterrence. It was a sort of theater. It was an attempt to affix onto a few individuals culpability for an unspeakable, mystifying, and therefore all the more terrifying crime. True, those individuals stoked the furnace of anti-Semitic hate and rode it to power, but they did not invent the fire, and could not have carried out the Holocaust in the absence of a kind of collective madness, whose symptoms range from howling bloodlust to cowed acquiescence. It is the same madness that fueled the witch hunts and other horrors. It is indeed, as the word Holocaust implies, an all-consuming inferno. The hysteria of the mob is a terrifying force. It is primal, animal. It defies sense and reason. Yet the way we try to corral it into a narrative, through performances like Nuremberg, feeds its underlying fire. That fire is the meta-pattern of dehumanization. It is the energy of hate."
Eisenstein - The Mask of Derision
I find myself resonating with a lot of his sentiments here. In all of the calls for Nuremberg II, I have been tempted to ask why exactly did Nuremberg I happen, and what exactly did it accomplish? If a coalition of foreign powers had invaded and conquered the USA in 1870, might they have been equally appalled at our genocide of indigenous peoples and have convened similar trials? Was Nuremberg really an ideal example of justice for evil actions, or was it specifically designed to humiliate the losers of a long and bitter war? Is Nuremberg II really what we should be aiming for, or can we step out of the cycles of hatred and counter-hatred, oppression and punishment, and transcend the tendency toward dehumanization?
https://charleseisenstein.substack.com/p/love-is-unconditional-trust-is-not
"Similarly, something primal lurks beneath the rationale for punishing the architects of pandemania, the calls for a Nuremberg II, and so on. The rationale is about deterrence and “holding people accountable.” The ideal is “never again.” But are we immune to more savage impulses masquerading as ideals? The lust for revenge, the desire to dance triumphantly over a humiliated enemy? Can we distinguish rational measures against a recurrence of genocidal madness from the madness itself? The madness which seeks to control evil by projecting it onto a sacrificial victim whose removal from society cleanses evil from the world?"
"Did Nuremberg I prevent a recurrence of genocidal madness? Did the perpetrators of the Rwandan massacres pause to think, “Hold on, if we slaughter a million people we will be punished?” Come on. The purpose of Nuremberg was not deterrence. It was a sort of theater. It was an attempt to affix onto a few individuals culpability for an unspeakable, mystifying, and therefore all the more terrifying crime. True, those individuals stoked the furnace of anti-Semitic hate and rode it to power, but they did not invent the fire, and could not have carried out the Holocaust in the absence of a kind of collective madness, whose symptoms range from howling bloodlust to cowed acquiescence. It is the same madness that fueled the witch hunts and other horrors. It is indeed, as the word Holocaust implies, an all-consuming inferno. The hysteria of the mob is a terrifying force. It is primal, animal. It defies sense and reason. Yet the way we try to corral it into a narrative, through performances like Nuremberg, feeds its underlying fire. That fire is the meta-pattern of dehumanization. It is the energy of hate."