Jul 9th 2015

Good People, Bad Judgments

by Ian Buruma

 


Ian Buruma is the author, most recently, of The Churchill Complex: The Curse of Being Special, From Winston and FDR to Trump and Brexit. 

NEW YORK – Vidkun Quisling, Norway’s wartime fascist leader whose name has become synonymous with collaboration with evil, lived with his wife in a rather grandiose villa outside of Oslo. That villa is now the Norwegian Center for Studies of the Holocaust and Religious Minorities, a fine transformation of a tainted place.

Earlier this year, I visited the center for a fascinating exhibition on the first independent Norwegian constitution promulgated in 1814. It was a remarkably enlightened and progressive document, composed by learned scholars, steeped in history, law, and philosophy. Some were experts on the Greek classics, others on ancient Hebrew; all were keen readers of Kant and Voltaire.

There is, however, one extraordinary clause: Article II proclaims freedom of religion in the Lutheran state, with the caveat that “Jews shall still be banned from entering the Realm.” This was peculiar, even at the time. Napoleon, defeated in that same year, had secured civil rights for Jews in the countries he had conquered. And just before the clause entered Norwegian law, the King of Denmark had granted citizenship to Jews in his realm.

What is most interesting about Norway’s 1814 constitution is not that it contains this clause, but why. The stated motives of the intellectuals who created it were not racist; they did not assume Jews to be biologically inferior. Rather, the question was argued in terms of culture and faith, with Jewish beliefs and customs deemed incompatible with modern, enlightened Western values.

One of the writers of the constitution, Frederik Motzfeldt, argued that Jews would never assimilate themselves with the people of any country. Another asserted that Judaism encourages its followers to deceive Christians and other Gentiles. Jews, it was believed, would always form a “state within a state.”

The constitution’s writers were undoubtedly aware that Jews had long been persecuted in other countries, but they concluded that it was not Norway’s problem. For Norway, it was best not to let them become citizens at all. Experts in Hebrew culture explained that Judaism and Norway’s constitution were irreconcilable. Mosaic law was, so the experts said, the only constitution recognized by Jews, and so it should be feared, in the way modern critics of Islam fear Sharia law.

So the main issue was religion, not race – though the two could easily be confused. As Håkon Harket, the greatest Norwegian scholar on the subject of the anti-Jewish clause, explains: “Even those who fought for civil rights for the Jews held often an ambition to liberate Jews from Judaism.”

The parallels with current notions about Muslims and Islam hardly need to be pointed out. Now, too, the Enlightenment is often invoked as shorthand for the Western values that are supposedly in danger of “Islamization.” Now, too, people warn of Muslim tricksters, states within states, the impossibility of assimilation, and the necessity for staunch secularists to free the benighted Muslims from their faith.

To be sure, in 1814, there was no Jewish equivalent of the violent Jihadism that poisons relations with Muslims in the West today. Nonetheless, there are lessons to be learned from the Norwegian constitution’s misguided anti-Jewish clause, which, it should be noted, was repealed just a few decades later. Bad judgment can arise even from decent motives, and knowledge (of Islam or of Judaism) is no prophylactic against stupid ideas.

The most important lesson, however, is that it is always foolish – and, indeed, dangerous – to judge people by what we think they believe. To assume that all Muslims think alike because of their religious background, that they have “a mind” rather than individual thoughts, is as big a mistake as to assume to know the minds of Jews, Christians, or anyone else. And to claim that something as diverse, and sometimes vague, as a religious faith can be pinned to a fixed ideological position, because of certain ancient texts, is utterly misleading.

There are populist demagogues in the West who would ban the Koran and prohibit Muslims from immigrating to their countries. They have a following, which might be growing, fueled by the widespread anxiety about terrorism spilling over from the Middle East. But they are not yet in the majority, and the belief that the West is in imminent danger of being “Arabized” or “Islamized” is not quite yet mainstream.

Yet even mainstream politicians, sometimes for the best of reasons, are in danger of making the same kinds of mistakes as the members of the 1814 Norwegian Constituent Assembly. British Prime Minister David Cameron, for example, is aiming to crack down on Islamist extremism by banning the expression of ideas that the government deems to be promoting or glorifying it. People who “reject our values” will be prosecuted, he has declared, “whether they are violent in their means or not.”

Cameron is not a known racist, or a bigot. He is attempting to tackle a real problem: the promotion of violent extremist ideologies. But, while people should certainly be punished for acts of violence, going after people purely for what they think – or, worse, what we think they think – has the air of a witch-hunt.

Cameron is right: “key values” like “democracy and tolerance” are fine things, and they ought to be defended. But it is hard to see how banning ideas, or penalizing those who do nothing more than express them, is the best way to do so.



Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2015.
www.project-syndicate.org



 


This article is brought to you by Project Syndicate that is a not for profit organization.

Project Syndicate brings original, engaging, and thought-provoking commentaries by esteemed leaders and thinkers from around the world to readers everywhere. By offering incisive perspectives on our changing world from those who are shaping its economics, politics, science, and culture, Project Syndicate has created an unrivalled venue for informed public debate. Please see: www.project-syndicate.org.

Should you want to support Project Syndicate you can do it by using the PayPal icon below. Your donation is paid to Project Syndicate in full after PayPal has deducted its transaction fee. Facts & Arts neither receives information about your donation nor a commission.

 

 

Browse articles by author

More Essays

Mar 8th 2024
EXTRACT: "This study suggests that around 10% of people diagnosed with dementia may instead have underlying silent liver disease with HE causing or contributing to the symptoms – an important diagnosis to make as HE is treatable."
Jan 28th 2024
EXTRACT: "Health disparity is a powerful weapon in the savage class warfare otherwise known as neoliberalism. (In 2020, the RAND Corporation did a study of the transfer of wealth over the last several decades from the working-class and the middle-class to the top one percent. Their estimate is a staggering $47 trillion – that is how much the “upward redistribution of income” cost American workers between 1975 and 2018.) Neoliberalism is a brutal form of labor suppression, which uses health as a means of maintaining and reproducing a condition in which wealth is constantly being redistributed upwards, and the middle-class is kept in a constant state of fear of sinking into the ranks of the poor. Medical expenses are the leading cause of bankruptcies in America – and that’s according to the American Bankruptcy Institute. The ballooning costs of healthcare serve to maintain a system marked by morally unacceptable health inequity and injustice."
Jan 28th 2024
EXTRACT. "But living longer has also come at a price. We’re now seeing higher rates of chronic and degenerative diseases – with heart disease consistently topping the list. So while we’re fascinated by what may help us live longer, maybe we should be more interested in being healthier for longer. Improving our “healthy life expectancy” remains a global challenge. Interestingly, certain locations around the world have been discovered where there are a high proportion of centenarians who display remarkable physical and mental health. The AKEA study of Sardinia, Italy, as example, identified a “blue zone” (named because it was marked with blue pen),....."
Jan 4th 2024
EXTRACT: ""Tresors en Noir et Blanc" presents 180 prints from the collection of the Musee des Beaux-Arts de la Ville de Paris, also known as the Petit Palais.  The basis of the museum's print collection is 20,000 engravings amassed by a 19th-century collector, Eugene Dutuit, " ----- "This wonderful exhibition, the tip of a great iceberg, serves to emphasize how unfortunate it is that the tens of thousands of prints owned by the Petit Palais are almost never seen by more than a handful of scholars who visit them by appointment.  Nor is the Petit Palais the only offender in this regard,....."
Jan 4th 2024
EXTRACTS: "And that is the clue to Manet’s work. He paints painting, regardless of his subject: he paints the medium itself, it as if he is constantly reminding us that this is a painting," ..........."This is a new conception of painterly truth at play here, a new fidelity to truth. Manet is the Kant of painting because he initiates a similar kind of “Copernican revolution” – we do not see the world as it is but as we are. " -------- " Among the most remarkable but unfamiliar of Manet’s work on display are those depicting the bloody aftermath of the Paris Commune of 1871.There is no question regarding Manet’s condemnation of the Versailles government’s actions following the defeat of the Commune, when some 25,000 Parisians were gunned down, including women and children."
Dec 27th 2023
EXTRACT: "Think of our brain like a map. When we’re young, we explore all corners of this map, sending out connections in every direction to make sense of our environment. Before long, we figure out basic truths – such as how to secure food, or where we live – and the neurological paths that make up these connections strengthen. Over time, a network emerges that reflects our unique experiences. Regions we re-visit often will develop established paths, whereas under-used connections will fade away. ---- Conditions such as addiction, chronic depression and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) are characterised by processes such as repetitive negative thinking or rumination, where patients focus on negative thoughts in a counterproductive way. Unfortunately, these strengthen brain connections that perpetuate the unfavourable mental state."
Dec 14th 2023
EXTRACT: "While no one was looking, France has become a melting pot of European peoples. Its neighbors have traditionally been welcomed, and France progressively turned them into French boys and girls in the next generation."
Dec 4th 2023
EXTRACTS: "Being rich is essentially about having more stuff in general, including bigger houses." "..... if SUVs had not become widely adopted largely as a status symbol for the global middle classes, emissions from transport would have fallen by 30% over the past ten years. For the largest class of SUVs, six of the ten areas of the UK registering the most sales were affluent London boroughs like Kensington and Chelsea."
Nov 11th 2023
EXTRACT: "By using these “biomarkers”, researchers have discovered that when a person’s biological age surpasses their chronological age, it often signifies accelerated cell ageing and a higher susceptibility to age-related diseases." ----- "Imagine two 60-year-olds enrolled in our study. One had a biological age of 65, the other 60. The one with the more accelerated biological age had a 20% higher risk of dementia and a 40% higher risk of stroke."
Nov 6th 2023
EXTRACT: "We are working on a completely new approach to 'machine intelligence'. Instead of using ..... software, we have developed .... hardware that operates much more efficiently."
Nov 6th 2023
EXTRACTS: "When people think of foods related to type 2 diabetes, they often think of sugar (even though the evidence for that is still not clear). Now, a new study from the US points the finger at salt." ...... ".... this type of study, called an observational study, cannot prove that one thing causes another, only that one thing is related to another. (There could be other factors at play.) So it is not appropriate to say removing the saltshaker 'can help prevent'." ..... "Normal salt intake in countries like the UK is about 8g or two teaspoons a day. But about three-quarters of this comes from processed foods. Most of the rest is added during cooking with very little added at the table."
Oct 26th 2023

 

In 1904, Emile Bernard visited Paul Cezanne in Aix.  He wrote of a conversation at dinner:

Sep 11th 2023
EXTRACT: "Many people have dipped their toe into the lazy gardener’s life through “no mow May” – a national campaign to encourage people not to mow their lawns until the end of May. But you could opt to extend this practice until much later in the summer for even greater benefits. Allowing your grass to grow longer, and interspersing it with pollen-rich flowers, can benefit many insects – especially bees. Research finds that reducing mowing in urban and suburban environments has a positive effect on the amount and diversity of insects. Your untamed lawn won’t only benefit insects. It will also encourage more birds, such as goldfinches, to use your garden to feed on the seeds of common wildflower species such as dandelions."
Aug 30th 2023
EXTRACT: "Eliot remarked that Shakespeare's greatness not only grew as the writer aged, but that his development became more apparent to the reader as he himself aged: 'No reader of Shakespeare... can fail to recognize, increasingly as he himself grows up, the gradual ripening of Shakespeare's mind.' "
Aug 25th 2023
EXTRACTS: "I moved here 15 years ago from London because it was so safe. Bordeaux was then known as La Belle au Bois Dormant (The Sleeping Beauty). It's the wine capital of France and the site of beautiful 18th century architecture arrayed along the Garonne river." ---- "What’s new is that today lawlessness is spreading into the more comfortable neighborhoods. The favorite technique is to defraud elderly retirees by dressing up as policemen, waterworks inspectors or gas meter readers. False badges including a photo ID are easy to fabricate on a computer printer. Once inside, they scoop up most anything shiny as they tip-toe through the house."
Aug 20th 2023
EXTRACT: "The 1953 coup d'etat in Iran ushered in a period of exploitation and oppression that has continued – despite a subsequent revolution that led to huge changes – for 70 years. Each year on August 19, the anniversary of the coup, millions of Iranians ask themselves what would have happened if the US and UK had not conspired all those years ago to overthrow Iran’s democratically elected leader."
Aug 18th 2023
EXTRACT: "Edmundo Bacci: Energy and Light, curated by Chiara Bertola, and currently on view at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice, is the first retrospective of the artist in several decades. Bacci was a native of Venice, a city with a long and illustrious history of painting, going back to Giorgione and Titian, Veronese and Tiepolo. As a painter, he was thoroughly immersed in this great past – as an artist he was determined to transform and remake that tradition in the face of modernity and its vicissitudes, what he called “the expressive crisis of our time.” That he has slipped into obscurity affords us, at the very least, an opportunity to see Bacci’s work essentially for the first time, without the burden of over-determined interpretations or categories."
Aug 12th 2023
EXTRACT: "Is Oppenheimer a movie for our time, reminding us of the tensions, dangers and conflicts of the old Cold War while a new one threatens to break out? The film certainly chimes with today’s big power conflicts (the US and China), renewed concern about nuclear weapons (Russia’s threats over Ukraine), and current ideological tensions between democratic and autocratic systems. But the Cold War did not just rest on the threat of the bomb. Behind the scientists and generals were many other players, among them the economists, who clashed just as vigorously in their views about how to run postwar economies."
Aug 5th 2023
EXTRACT: "I have a modest claim to make: we need Bruno today more than ever. This is because he represents an intellectual antidote to the prevailing ideology of today which tells us that we are doomed to finitude, which comes down politically to the assertion that there is no alternative to the reign of global capitalism. Of course, Bruno did not know about capitalism, globalization or neoliberalism. What he did know however is that humanity is infinite. That we are limited only by our own narrowness of vision."
Jul 26th 2023
EXTRACT: "We studied 55,000 people’s dietary data and linked what they ate or drank to five key measures: greenhouse gas emissions, land use, water use, water pollution and biodiversity loss. Our results are now published in Nature Food. We found that vegans have just 30% of the dietary environmental impact of high-meat eaters. The dietary data came from a major study into cancer and nutrition that has been tracking the same people (about 57,000 in total across the UK) for more than two decades."