Freedom of expression can be severely curtailed by taboo zones in any country, outruling, sometimes also outlawing the unspeakable.\u00a0 Sexuality was, and still is in some places; but today that freedom has become–for many–an obsession to speak.\u00a0 Some still feel repressed, others become obsessed, still others feel aggressed upon.\u00a0 Taboo zones are in sensitive areas.\u00a0 But after some time, many probably feel relieved.\u00a0 The unspeakable has become speakable, normalized.<\/p>\n
But most seem to agree that some taboo zones should remain: the sacred<\/em>, overstepped, e.g., with Mohammed caricatures, and private life<\/em>.<\/p>\n However, the fight for freedom of expression was not about sex, to peer into the private lives of others or to step on the sacred.\u00a0 The freedom is among our most cherished human rights for reasons of power, and the lack thereof.\u00a0 We have freedom of expression, like the right of assembly to challenge the powerful and promote the powerless.\u00a0 Democracy is based on the use of words–not money, not bullets–to change the public power equation.\u00a0 Politics.\u00a0 Libel limits the freedom to speak about the private; respect the freedom to step on the sacred.<\/p>\n Generally, freedom of expression is expanding and taboo zones are shrinking.\u00a0 An example is how freely monarchy is talked about in the UK, and presidential campaign candidates in the USA; today.<\/p>\n Religion is in the twilight zone<\/em>.\u00a0 The organizations of faith, synagogues, churches, temples, mosques may no longer be taboo, but to step on the divine or sacred texts is sacrilege and personal faith is private. These borders have moved in the past and may move in the future.<\/p>\n Shoa is in the twilight zone<\/em>.\u00a0 To Germans and Jews all over, to an Europe high on perpetrators and victims, and to USA, shoa<\/em> borders on the religious, the transcendental. To break taboos is sacrilege<\/em>.\u00a0 But shoa<\/em> was also power, politics by other, unheard of means.\u00a0 And politics is not sacred.\u00a0 Not to break some taboos is undemocratic<\/em>.<\/p>\n The taboo zones regulating the shoa<\/em> discourse in general and the Israel discourse in particular, can be crudely formulated as follows:<\/p>\n This D<\/u><\/strong>ualist-M<\/u><\/strong>anichean perfect evil fighting perfect good is a key archetype in the Occident, defined as the civilization spanned by the Abrahamic religions.\u00a0 God and Satan fighting for the souls and the Final Judgment. And on earth A<\/u><\/strong>rmageddon, the final battle, there being no alternative.\u00a0 Dialogue with evil is meaningless.\u00a0 This DMA<\/strong> syndrome is a form of understanding<\/em>, a deep-culture text with a bipolarity easy to understand, leaving no doubt about the right stand.\u00a0 Ambiguities, alternative forms, yin\/yang, are worse than crimes: sins, sacrilege.<\/p>\n Statements in the taboo zones are not judged by correspondence with facts, or how they are used, but as deviations from taboo norms.\u00a0 If anti-Semites, or (neo-)Nazis, have said something similar, guilt by association<\/em> warrants the use of those labels, possibly followed by sanctions like disinvitations, boycotts, social exclusion, etc.<\/p>\n Statements in the taboo zones are interpreted as hatred of Jews and as naziphilia; as emotions, not thought like analysis-forecasts- remedies; but outright rejection of any academic or social legitimacy.<\/p>\n From regulating the discourse–how to speak–there is but a short step to regulating the paradigms–how to think.\u00a0 Thus, “has no equal” means “cannot be compared with anything”.\u00a0 Comparisons relativize both suffering and evil, trivializing them to matters of degree.[ii]<\/a>\u00a0 “Unique” sees shoa<\/em> as a universe with one element, itself; to be documented to deepen compassion for innocent suffering and abomination at evil. Being unique there is nothing to learn beyond shoa<\/em> itself as an archetype for evil against innocence with massive killing.<\/p>\n Whereupon the shoa<\/em> archetype is used for two violent conclusions:<\/p>\n Shoa<\/em> is used to justify violence and<\/em> to rule out conflict resolution as outside the archetype.\u00a0 What is needed for violence are parties defined as innocent and evil, headed by a leader, a Milosevic, a Hussein, a bin Laden, a Gaddafi, a Assad, a Putin cast in the Hitler role.[v]<\/a>\u00a0 The military intervention has names like R2P, “right\/responsibility to protect”, and “humanitarian intervention”.\u00a0 To some, this gives Jewish suffering a meaning; to others, Nazi atrocities serve to justify more violence.<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Alternative: intensive and informed search for solutions.<\/em><\/p>\n In the same vein taboos on anti-Semitism are generalized to taboos on anti-Americanism and anti-Islamism, with parallels to shoa<\/em>.<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Alternative: the freedom of thought and expression for solutions.<\/em><\/p>\n To confine major 20th century phenomena, Nazism<\/em>-dictatorship-WWII –shoa<\/em>-genocide to taboo zones has unacceptable consequences.\u00a0 Worse than a crime against freedoms of expressions and thought it is stupid. The more catastrophic the events the more we need free analysis, and the taboo rules map neither the past, nor the present, nor the future.<\/p>\n What does the [1]-[6] discourse remind us of?\u00a0 Of Nazism, only reversed: Aryans are all good, non-Aryans, and Jews in particular, all evil, contaminating Aryan purity.\u00a0 The Nazi term for Armageddon, the final battle, strongly driven as they were by this D<\/strong>ualism-M<\/strong>anicheism-A<\/strong>rmageddon script, was Endl\u00f6sung<\/em>, the final solution.\u00a0 No alternative, no dialogue, no trauma conciliation or conflict resolution possible.\u00a0 The discourses are each other’s negations; their common ground is DMA.<\/p>\n The [1]-[6] discourse is also DMA.\u00a0 Respecting taboos is good, breaking taboos is evil.\u00a0 Evil is anti-Semitism\/neo-Nazism, good are those who identify them and denounce them.\u00a0 Dialogue, ambiguity, etc. are warnings that the taboos have not been fully internalized.<\/p>\n The thesis is not that they imitate each other, that Jews and Germans merely reverse the Nazi script and play it back on anti-Semites\/neo-Nazis.\u00a0 Rather the thesis is that all three share the same Occidental deep culture syndrome.\u00a0 Thus, DMA may be one<\/em> root of Nazism in general, shoa<\/em> in particular and of other phenomena.[vi]<\/a>\u00a0 To raise that question, however, we had to compare.\u00a0 And rejection of the Nazi DMA syndrome may lead, by comparison, to doubts about the other two.<\/p>\n We are right in the center of the problem.\u00a0 On the one hand there are understandable taboos.\u00a0 On the other hand there might be something to learn, for more constructive approaches than military intervention.\u00a0 For that, questions have to be asked that may already break taboos.\u00a0 To think about DMA, concrete examples are needed.\u00a0 They do not have to be shoa<\/em>-related.\u00a0 But shoa<\/em> shouts: Understand me!\u00a0 Shoa<\/em> is politics, shoa<\/em> is sacred, making understanding problematic for three reasons.<\/p>\n Phenomena have to be described<\/em>.\u00a0 Subject: perpetrators, object: victims, verb: exterminate.\u00a0 But attributes, adjectives, adverbs, are needed for understanding.\u00a0 The problem with [1],[3] is that only good attributes are permitted for the former and only evil for the latter. Jews and Germans are pure in their innocence and evil.\u00a0 Even to say that such humans do not exist, never have, and never will, is taboo.<\/p>\n Understanding is equated with justifying<\/em>.\u00a0 But understanding is about what is and is not; justifying is about right and wrong.\u00a0 States of affairs are subsumed under something more general to understand; an act is seen as good in itself or leading to something good (autotelic vs heterotelic) to justify.\u00a0 Both are based on logical validity.<\/p>\n There are strong emotions involved<\/em>.\u00a0 Add to the enormity of the Jewish trauma, with shame of being vulnerable and stigmatized and fear of repetition, the immense German trauma of having traumatized others, with guilt and fear of retribution.\u00a0 Taboos serve as a pact: let us protect the taboo discourse as a joint project, and leave it at that.<\/p>\n Emotions should be respected.\u00a0 They are deeply rooted in deep realities.\u00a0 But so should the need to understand and learn from shoa<\/em>. Hence a question of weighing for and against, of proceeding with care.\u00a0 Thus, Mohammed caricatures is an expression and<\/em> insult the believers. This calls both for freedom of expression and<\/em> for freedom not to be insulted. And<\/em> for an exploration of the line, or zone, between them.[vii]<\/a><\/p>\n Conflict, violence, solution, peace are all highly emotional.\u00a0 But they have in common something very helpful for thought, speech and action: all four are relations<\/em> between<\/em> the parties, not attributes<\/em> of<\/u> the parties.\u00a0 They are between, not within.\u00a0 It takes two to tango, and at least two to have a conflict (if within one, then that party is somehow split into two).\u00a0 Within<\/em> matters, but the conflict incompatibility is between<\/em> the goals the parties have. So also violence, solution, peace: all between.<\/p>\n Hence, look less at the parties and how they can be changed and more at relations, and how new relations can be created.\u00a0 Conflict studies lift diagnosis-prognosis-therapy from the level of attributes of the parties to the level of their relations.\u00a0 The focus is not on blaming the parties, but maybe the relations between the parties.<\/p>\n However, to talk of relations between Jews and Germans, beyond the discourses of Jewish suffering and German atrocities, is already highly contentious.\u00a0 To define the conflict and identify solutions is impossible without breaking some taboos.\u00a0 As also for the relations between Nazi Germany-Austria and the rest of Europe-USSR-USA in the context of half a century and two World Wars.\u00a0 Yet it has to be done.<\/p>\n Thinking feeds on comparison.\u00a0 We note differences, similarities, over time, and draw our conclusions.\u00a0 If phenomena unfold, the same way it is due to similarities; if in different ways due to differences.\u00a0 And we cannot leave the biggest elephants in the broken porcelain shop out of these explorations untouched by free thought and speech.<\/p>\n Those key phenomena in 20th century Europe call for three types of exploration: explanatory, preventive, <\/em>and constructive<\/em>.\u00a0 To explain we have to identify causes and conditions that produce or contribute to those phenomena.\u00a0 To prevent we have to remove or modify the causes or conditions identified; and-or add something positive.\u00a0 Prevention N is closer to negative peace, like focusing on conflict resolution and trauma reconciliation, and Prevention P closer to positive peace, like focusing on cooperation and harmony.<\/p>\n These are all thought experiments.\u00a0 What could have happened if, history in the subjunctive, not in the indicative mode; conjectures that may be more or less compelling, counter-factual[viii]<\/a>, virtual[ix]<\/a>, alternative history.\u00a0 The conclusion may be that the two phenomena were avoidable, unavoidable or, more likely, somewhere in-between.<\/p>\n But more important than exploring this terrible past is what the explanatory and preventive approaches to the past can teach us about the present and the future.\u00a0 We have to generalize from the two cases, maybe to dictatorships and genocides in general, or whatever we focus on.\u00a0 Certainty is beyond our reach, but not constructive approaches.\u00a0 Taboos against learning from the past are like taboos against learning from cancer, being too emotional; knowledge might serve to spread it.\u00a0 The task is to turn taboos into constructive, peaceful discourses.\u00a0 The exercise has a name: rationality<\/em>, summarized below:<\/p>\n Table 1:<\/strong> A general overview of themes for free exploration<\/strong><\/p>\n\n
\n
\n