How Demagogic Political Leaders Fail

It’s a good week to be talking about demagogic political leaders, who think they are god-empowered to rule in ways oppressive and cruel, come to fail.

In fact, for me anyway, it’s been impossible to think about anything else.

There’s the Parasha – with Pharoah refusing to let my people go. Actually, even that phrase doesn’t cut it. Pharoah who plotted, wilfully, the genocidal murder of every boy born to the Israelites in Egypt. Pharoah fails, even if there was pain and destruction that came before that eventuality.

There’s the echoes of 80 years ago – Monday marks an extraordinary anniversary – the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau and the images of skeletal survival and mass death that flood my mind are intercut with flashes of footage from the Nuremberg rallies and invective filled speeches of Hitler, Yemach Shemo v’Zichro. And Hitler failed, even if there was pain and destruction that came before that eventuality.

Then there’s this last week and the news from across the pond; when a day that was supposed to be about the conventions of the democratic transition of power of the greatest democracy in the World, were marred by a Nazi salute and a President who didn’t seem to care at all for the conventions of the democratic transition of power; a leader who suggested he was selected by God to provide his particular brand of leadership.

My mind has darted back to 2016 review in the New York Times that caused quite a stir at the time. Michiko Kakutani, the Pulitzer Prize lead book critic for the NYT, wrote about a biography of Hitler by Volker Ulhrich. I’d already read the Ulhrich book before I heard about the review. It’s chilling, as you would expect. But Kakutani didn’t seem to be reviewing the book when she wrote, this

“How did Adolf Hitler—described by one eminent magazine editor in 1930 as a “half-insane rascal,” a “pathetic dunderhead,” a “nowhere fool,” a “big mouth”—rise to power in the land of Goethe and Beethoven? What persuaded millions of ordinary Germans to embrace him and his doctrine of hatred? How did this “most unlikely pretender to high state office” achieve absolute power in a once democratic country and set it on a course of monstrous horror?”

Some have focused on the social and political conditions in post-World War I Germany, which Hitler expertly exploited — bitterness over the harsh terms of the Treaty of Versailles and a yearning for a return to German greatness; unemployment and economic distress amid the worldwide Depression of the early 1930s; and longstanding ethnic prejudices and fears of "foreignization."

Mr. Ullrich, like other biographers, provides vivid insight into some factors that helped turn a "Munich rabble-rouser" — regarded by many as a self-obsessed "clown" with a strangely "scattershot, impulsive style" — into "the lord and master of the German Reich."

Everyone felt Kakutani was reviewing the Republican Presidential Candidate at the election three weeks after her review was published, the eventual winner of that, and now again, election President Donald Trump.

To be clear, I don’t think Trump is a genocidal mass-murderer-in-waiting. But I am terrified. Uhlirch’s biography of Hitler shows brilliantly how a rabble-rousing self-obsessed clown who can tap into longstanding ethnic prejudices, fears of "foreignization" and the experience of economic distress can build power from people at every level in society; from the poorest who feel such a leader is on their side despite all evidence to the contrary, to the industrialists willing to kowtow, or looking to turn a quick buck or thinking they will escape being tarred by the association with a demagogue.

Pharoah, of course, is resolutely afraid of, in Kakutani’s phrase, “foreignization,”

Hinei Am Bnei Yisrael Rav V’Atzum Mimeinu

“Behold the Israelite people are too numerous and mighty for us. Let us deal shrewdly with them, otherwise in the event of way, they may join our enemies in fighting against us and rise from the ground.”

Not that there was any evidence of our ancestors plotting against their host nation. Joseph, of course, was the person who led Egypt through its time of famine. But let’s facts get in the way of an opportunity to milk longstanding ethnic prejudice.

I always find the opening of the Book of Exodus chilling in its evil, particularly the deliberation of the evil. It’s always made me reflect on the Holocaust and the antisemitism that has greeted out people before and since, and the hatreds vested against so many other minorities and divergencies and differences.

Perhaps the way in which we Jews are most responsible for the ills that have befallen our people is that we introduced the idea of a scapegoat to Western Civilization – a goat onto which the sins of the people could be transferred, a goat which could be sent away over a cliff and out of mind out of our care – that’s a Biblical idea too. I’m not sure it worked then, I’m totally sure it won’t work now.

So what helps, what brings demagogic leaders down?

Courage, Shifra/Puah (Edith last week), Moses – even despite his aral sefataim, even though he didn’t want to, was prepared to face down Pharoah. The good news is  that courage breeds courage. The first time you stand up to power feels harder, the second time easier. The reverse is also true; the more one kowtows and performs obeisance to the corrupt and dishonestly powerful, the harder it becomes to ever say, ‘no.’

Don’t accept the unacceptable Lo Lhitragel, when Moses goes to the Children of Israel, they are unable to hear the call to freedom, mipnei avodah kasher v’kotzer ruach. Have to keep teaching ourselves not to accept what is popular as what is right. I think that’s the point of coming to Shul – to prick our tendencies to become habituated to the unacceptable. Had the priv of teaching a passage from our founder Rabbi, Louis Jacobs’ book on Jewish Values. Talking about the relationship between what is popularly seen as acceptable and what is truly holy, Rabbi Jacobs wrote this, in 1960;

            One of the besetting faults of our age is the cult of personality glorification, ignoring the character which personality conceals. A charming manner [is] sufficient to veil inner depravity. This can hardly be the Jewish ideal.

 

Hope & Faith – the world is not, I think, doomed. Nor has it ever been. The collection of good is greater than the collection of evil. Very easy to become pessimistic, faith should buttress us against miserablism. Science too. Prof Steven Pinker, enlightenment now,  “For all the problems we have today, the problems of yesterday usually were worse,” “Things really have gotten better [and] not by themselves; it’s taken human effort and human ingenuity and human commitment.” But we can do that.

Dark sermon, sorry. With the exception of this magnificent BM, been a bit of a dark week.

Humour – Rudolph Herzog, the cabaret artists, some Jewish, many queer who were prepared to mock and strip away the pretensions of almost divine power Hitler was prepared to welcome. Tough to do, but incredibly powerful. How do you take away from someone who seems so powerful their power, mock them. Something in the Rabbinic tradition of this. Something in the great tradition of Jewish humour of all ages.

There’s a piece of this visible in this week’s parasha.

The plague of blood opens with God telling Moses to go to the river Nile in the morning when Pharoah is coming out of the water. What, the rabbis ask, is Pharoah doing in the Nile in the morning?

  לִנְקָבָיו; שֶׁהָיָה עוֹשֶׂה עַצְמוֹ אֱלוֹהַּ וְאוֹמֵר שֶׁאֵינוֹ צָרִיךְ לִנְקָבָיו, וּמַשְׁכִּים וְיוֹצֵא לַנִּילוּס וְעוֹשֶׂה שָׁם צְרָכָיו (תנחומא):

to pee, for he had made himself godlike saying he did not need to go to the toilet, so when he woke, he would go out to the Nile to perform his needs. — [from Mid. Tanchuma, Va’era 14; Exod. Rabbah 9:8]

And that’s when God strikes back, when Pharoah is trying to get in a quick, unseen, pee, turning the water of the Nile red with blood. That’s a way to strike back at a bully with pretensions of godly grandeur. Take from ‘em the dignity of being able to cruise around in their chariots as if they transcend the rules of a normal human. We need the brave clowns, even, dare it be said, the slightly cruel humourists who push their fingers into the ribs of genteel society in ways that feel awkward. Clowns reveal truths more dainty souls fail to expose. It has always been thus.

And it will take all of this,

Humour, faith, courage and that eleventh commandment – lo lhitragel to lead us from these dark times into freedom.

Shabbat Shalom