Seeking Light in the Darkness of Totalitarianism

 

The Intellectualist

@highbrow_nobrow

“The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction and the distinction between true and false no longer exist.” ― Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism

This blog entry is really a follow-up to yesterday's when I paid tribute to Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German Christian whose resistance to the Nazi regime during the 1930s and through World War II resulted in his execution. Many Christians in Germany resisted the totalitarianism of Hitler. at great personal cost, but many more became white nationalists in the guise of Christianity and patriotism. They demonized Jews and Roma and homosexuals with millions dying in extermination camps such as Auschwitz.

Hannah Arendt was a philospher who coined the phrase, "the banality of evil" in her book Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil from 1963. It addressed the acquiesence of Germans such as Adolf Eichman in horrendous crimes because they were told to so.

What is happening in the United States when a tyrant issues pardons to those who attempted an insurrection at the Capitol building yet sends the National Guard to take over American citiies with elected officials and police departments based on false claims? Why are the members of congress abdicating their responsibility and why are those in the National Guard and military "just following orders?" The summary abduction of immigrants by masked ICE agents to incarcerated in miserable detention camps is likely illegal and shocking. Where is justice? Where are democratic rights?

Fr. Brian Strassburger, Sr. Norma Pimentel, and Fr. Louie Hotop are three Catholic leaders on border justice in South Texas.

We know that there is resistance in the Christian community including Roman Catholic bishops doing everything they can to protect vulnerable migrants. Nuns and priests are heroically on the front lines. Still. too many supposed Christians are cheering on the president as though he is the Second Coming of Jesus.

Arendt's observation applies to so many places in the world right now as the darkness rises. Let's continue to pray for the light to prevail, what we as Jesus followers hope will be the Light of Christ.