I suppose if you’re going to post about Gandhi, the Jews, Nazi’s, and especially GOP Presidential candidates, you’d better expect some pretty passionate responses. After scanning the comments from the post (and yes, together with SM Intern, deleting some of the more inflammatory and personally insulting), I thought it would be interesting to spend more time on a central question — Was Gandhi Anti-Semitic when he recommended that “The Jews” “offer themselves to the butcher’s knife?”

Guiding Light or “Useful Idiot”?

The short answer is “no” but the question presents a particularly clear example of a classic political / moral divide — do we judge Gandhi’s position based on Intentions or Consequences?

Yesterday’s NYT details research which provides a bit more scientific basis to a divide philosophers have grappled with for centuries –

“…there are at least two systems working when we make moral judgments… There’s an emotional system that depends on this specific part of the brain, and another system that performs more utilitarian cost-benefit analyses…”

Gandhi’s intentions were absolutely NOT anti-Semitic. As the original post noted, “Jews were his friends”… he consistently prescribed the same strategy for Europeans as well as Indians & Jews… etc. In his heart of hearts, it’s clear from reading any of the linked material that Gandhi really did believe he was helping the Jews in the best way he knew how….. Heck, *he* probably believed he was pro-semitic. And for many, that’s the final litmus test.

<

p>The problem however, is whether good intentions let him off the hook when the consequences of his prescription are practically the perfect opposite. The glaring holes and leaps-of-faith in his policy would have undoubtedly led to an even easier extermination job for Hitler and his anti-Semitic ilk. Although it was the Soviets who took the technique to evil-brilliant heights (and to a much smaller extent, modern Jihadi’s), one can envision a hypothetical Nazi agent provocateur hired to spread Gandhi’s diatribes to the Jews (or any other Untermensch) just to speed things along. (how’s that for Machiavellian? )

So by which measure do we judge him? And how can this case be so spectacularly conflicted? Well, in part it goes back to that old Mind vs. Body debate….

Continue reading →

Former Senator, occasional actor, and potential GOP presidential contender Fred D. Thompson recently delivered a radio address titled “Gandhi’s Way isn’t the American Way” (mp3 here; transcript here).

To Be or Not To Be, That Is the Question

Thompson’s address responds to peace protestors carrying signs asking “what would Gandhi do?” & he cames out swinging against the question –

..At what point is it okay to fight dictators like Saddam or the al Qaeda terrorists who want to take his place?

It turns out that the answer, according to Gandhi, is NEVER. During World War II, Gandhi penned an open letter to the British people, urging them to surrender to the Nazis. Later, when the extent of the holocaust was known, he criticized Jews who had tried to escape or fight for their lives as they did in Warsaw and Treblinka. “The Jews should have offered themselves to the butcher’s knife,” he said. “They should have thrown themselves into the sea from cliffs.”

There’s an old saying that had the Brits been Nazi’s, Gandhi would’ve been a lampshade. Macabre as the humor might be, it underscores a key reason for Gandhi’s success with passive, non-violent resistance – it depends on your opponent’s moral code as much as your own. The problem here however, paraphrasing Thompson, is that Gandhi’s enemies aren’t America’s enemies.

Still, Gandhi’s direct statements about the Jews was a bit startling to me and worth some googling around…

---

Another They’d be dead but at least they’d have the moral high ground…guy who was also likely surprised by Gandhi’s determination to prescribe his strategy to the bitter end (well, for the Jews at least) was one Louis Fisher. He asked Gandhi to clarify his position which he did rather unequivocally –

Louis Fisher, Gandhi’s biographer asked him: “You mean that the Jews should have committed collective suicide?”

Gandhi responded, “Yes, that would have been heroism.”

If Nature made it, it’s gotta be Good, right? “Charles Darwin found the grisly life histories of Ichneumons incompatible with the central notion of natural theology…“

They’d be dead but at least they’d have the moral high ground? That’s comforting. Clearly we’re speaking of a rather different brand of “heroism” than the 300 Spartans – it’s not death that separates the two but rather, the preceding act of physical surrender.

It’s clear that when considering the age old problem of mind-body duality, Gandhi entirely favors the mind at the expense of recklessly discarding the body. Sticks and stones may break his bones but homey’s still not gonna give you the time of day and that’ll make you, his enemy, sad. Eventually. But perhaps only after 6 millionth casualty. Or if you run out of sticks & stones.

“Evil” in his sense thus comes from too much application of volition via the body and not enough going with the flow of nature. And in this orgy of nihilism, Gandhi found nobility and a “joyful sleep” which he implored the Jews to partake in –

…suffering voluntarily undergone will bring [Jews] an inner strength and joy….if the Jewish mind could be prepared for voluntary suffering, even the massacre I have imagined could be turned into a day of thanksgiving..to the godfearing death has no terror. It is a joyful sleep to be followed by a waking that would be all the more refreshing for the long sleep.

Lest we accuse Gandhi of anti-semitism we must first note that, in a manner echoed by our modern day Mel Gibson’s and Michael Richards‘, Gandhi assures us that not only does he sympathize with the Jews, but that some of his best friends are Jewish –

My sympathies are all with the Jews. I have known them intimately in South Africa. Some of them became life-long companions. Through these friends I came to learn much of their age-long persecution.

…didn’t believe Ichnuemons existed in Human Nature too…

Further, his commitment to lying prone at the wolf’s maw wasn’t unique to the Jews — he had a similar prescription for the whole of continental Europe engulfed in WWII –

“I would like you to lay down the arms you have as being useless for saving you or humanity. You will invite Herr Hitler and Signor Mussolini to take what they want of the countries you call your possessions…

“If these gentlemen choose to occupy your homes you will vacate them. If they do not give you free passage out, you will allow yourselves, man, woman and child to be slaughtered, but you will refuse to owe allegiance to them.”

Oh yeah. Let the Gestapo torture & kill you but refuse to owe them allegiance. That’ll show ’em. Needless to say, you can put me on Fred Thompson’s side on this particular debate.

Still, the world does occasionally need Gandhi and his modern-day sign-toting adherents…. Putting aside their well-intentioned blinders towards human nature, I agree that peace more than has its place as does a firm aversion to the carnage of war. I just wish they’d put more energy into getting their message in front of these guys first.

Continue reading →