Bellicose Victimhood

What’s the difference between hate and bigotry? Well, hate is[*] an intense disaffection for a person, a group of persons, or even an idea or ethic, usually one putatively entertained by such a person or group of persons. Bigotry, on the other hand, a handmaiden, perhaps even a child, of hate, is an obdurate refusal to consider any information that might mitigate, explain, even possibly justify, an object (defined above) of hate.

But what do you call such bigotry when it is forcibly imposed on others who share space (geographic, social, national) with the bigot, meant to suppress, if not the proscribed thoughts, then at least the utterance of any such thoughts? When the bigot says not only, “I refuse to hear commentary that opposes my own position in the matter,” but further, “You may not utter any opinion, nor even ask any question, that might oppose my own position in any way”?

The blanket term for such diktats is “censorship,” but I think that term a bit weak for capturing the spirit I wish to delineate. Censureship, a word my spell-checker rejects, could imply the practice of defaming any person seen to express a disapproved viewpoint on a particular matter, so let this neologism serve for the concept of “censorship with extreme prejudice,” something that in the past included burning at the stake, for many heretics such as Jan Hus. Today, perhaps, it might entail only the denial of The Brooklyn Commons as a venue in which to present one’s ideas.

Censureship is a practice as ancient as human thought, and even might be seen within one’s own internal mental discipline, as in (so I occasionally say to myself): “I should be a worse person if I allowed myself to entertain this idea.” Censureship only really matters as it is committed by one person upon another, but even there it might be practiced under what might be called a contract of one kind or another such as, perhaps, a marital contract.

But there remains the larger scope—the scope of those who might approach the bistro (my term) of The Brooklyn Commons in search of stimulating discussion of important subjects on which one might consciously or otherwise seek new perspectives, such as the destruction on September 11, 2001 of two large buildings in Manhattan (that’s very near The Brooklyn Commons). On the sidewalk of that hallowed venue (for causes that appealed to Jews, who constitute much of the neighborhood’s demographic), we see a noted demonstrator named Priscilla Grim holding a small, neatly lettered sign reading “Our oppression is not up for debate.”

Well! I’m so sorry to hear you (or you all, or your grandparents, or people your grandparents’ age and religion) are, or were, oppressed. I’ll use a little context that I developed through assiduous research to infer that Grim is referring to remarks made by, or attributed to, that day’s speaker at The Commons, Christopher Bollyn, which have been interpreted to imply something like: (a) (the) Jews were not as oppressed (or killed) as much as we hear they were during the late Holocaust; (b) the Germans were not the sole perpetrators of the injustices therein encompassed; and/or (c) the accounts of all this unpleasantness, which have been wildly exaggerated, have been used to justify or cover up similar crimes on the part of Israel, the “Jewish homeland” in the Middle East. I’m drawing much of this from the Star of David that Priscilla drew on her sign. The speaker’s subject would not seem obviously to touch on these matters, but Bollyn in fact propounds a suspicion that events of 9/11 occurred with the complicity, or at least at the behest of, Jewish/Israeli agents, so there is a connection, sort of.

But Bollyn’s accusations regarding 9/11 still have nothing to do with matters of the oppression of Jews, unless his suspicions themselves be regarded as further extensions of such “oppression.”  Maybe Grim was merely trying to stoke up opposition to Bollyn’s appearance/utterances on the strength of tribal identification, for which there is indeed much potential there in Brooklyn.

The key word in the seven-letter sign Ms Grim carries is “debate,” both a verb and, as used here, a noun. The second-most-key word is “oppression.” Then comes the pronoun, “our.” So, “we” are, or have been, “oppressed,” and this matter is not “up for debate.”

We (here, the universal “we”) may not debate who was oppressed (perhaps the Jewish star suffices to settle that matter, to the exclusion of other groups). And of course, we may not debate why they were oppressed. We may not, I suppose, debate how they were oppressed (exclusion from civil-service jobs, professional regulations limiting them to the clientele of their co-religionists, etc.), we may not debate who oppressed them (Poland refusing to endorse the passports of its Jewish expatriate citizens in 1938 when they returned to acquire such endorsements), and we may not debate what was done to them by their various oppressors (German, Polish, Hungarian, Rumanian, Russian, Baltic), whether that be extermination, enslavement, deportation, or whatever.

All this seems to me rather bellicose,  or—might I say?—oppressive. Seven words encompass a great deal—a great deal that we might know, or learn, or imagine, regarding what our ancestors did to each other, and why, and how, and when, and where, or even did not do that they are accused of doing, or having suffered, if only we are indeed allowed, or even encouraged, to debate such matters. But Ms Grim, it would seem, will have none of this. May we not debate such things? Among ourselves? With you? With yours, whoever they might be? In public? At The Brooklyn Commons?

The Inquisition in seven words. It is, in its way, eloquent. It is a picture, in which one can read seven words. But it is worth thousands upon thousands of words. Consider the words, if you prefer words for thinking about such things. Or, if not, just consider the idea. Either one should deliver you to the conclusion: “Something wicked this way comes.”

Very wicked, indeed. Resist this. Fight this. Everything is up for debate. Including our own respective cherished notions. And theirs. This is where equality begins.

[*] I’m making all this stuff up. I’ve been using (American) English for over 70 years at this point (and, of course, having it used on me), and I’m relying on this experience for what I’m proclaiming here. Use it or reject it as you will, depending, if you like, on your sympathy for the other things I say, much of which I’ve also made up (I’ll try to alert you, but it gets pretty deep at some points).