Alone

 

From Page 62 to Page 65 in his book, The True Believer, Eric Hoffer describes how no individual can stand up against the secret police and the torture chamber of the totalitarian monster, but, if he is a member of a rebellion group, he has a chance to survive and defy if he has that group’s cause behind him. This seems disappointing to us, we individualists, but it is realistic: it is hard for the isolated individual to stand up against the system and the mob in regular times, let alone when in the gulag with the torturers playing patty cake on one’s body every other day.

 

The only loner or individualist, that could withstand the torture rack, not confessing, agreeing or telling secrets, no matter how gruesome, or painful the torture, would be an anarchist individuators and few of them have let lived, let alone faced the demonic secret police and all their toys.

 

I will quote from Hoffer and then respond to what he writes.

 

Hoffer (H after this): “The capacity to resist coercion stems partly from the individual’s identification with a group. The people who stood up best in the Nazi concentration camps were those that felt themselves members of a compact party (the Communists), of a church (priests and ministers), or a close-knit national group. The individualists, whatever their nationality, caved in. The Western European Jew proved to be the most defenseless. Spurned by the Gentiles (even those within the concentration camps), and without vital ties with a Jewish community, he faced his tormentors alone—forsaken by the whole of humanity. One realizes now that the ghetto of the Middle Ages as for the Jews more a fortress than a prison. Without the sense of utmost unity and distinctness which the ghetto imposed upon them, they could not have endured with unbroken spirit the violence and abuse of those dark centuries.

When the Middle Ages returned for a brief decade in our day, they caught the Jew without his ancient defenses and crushed him.

 

The unavoidable conclusion seems to be that when the individual faces torture or annihilation, he cannot rely on the resources of his own individuality. His only source of strength is in not being himself but part of something mighty, glorious and indestructible. Faith here is primarily a process of identification, the process by which the individual  ceases to be himself and becomes part of something eternal. Faith in humanity, in posterity, in the destiny of one’s religion, nation, race, party or family—what is that but the visualization of that eternal something to which we attach the self which is about to be annihilated?”

 

My response: only self-actualizing supercitizens, or super-individuals would be made of something mighty, glorious, indestructible, or eternal in order to survive courageously against the modern gulag or current-day SS in China, Iran or wherever.

 

H: “It is somewhat terrifying to realize that the totalitarian leaders of our day, in recognizing this source of desperate courage, made use of it not only to steel the spirit of their followers,  but also to break the spirit of their opponents. In his purges of the old Bolshevik leaders, Stalin succeeded in turning proud and brave men into cringing cowards by depriving them of any possible identification with the party they had served all their lives and with the Russian masses. These old Bolsheviks had long ago cut themselves off from all humanity outside Russia. They had an unbounded contempt for the past and for history which could still be made by capitalistic humanity. They had renounced God. There was for them neither past nor future, neither memory or glory outside the confines of holy Russia and the Communist Party—and both of these were now wholly and irrevocably in Stalin’s hands. They felt themselves, in the words of Bukharin, ‘isolated from everything that constitutes the essence of life.’ So they confessed. By humbling themselves before the congregation of the faithful they broke out of their isolation. They renewed their communion with the eternal whole by reviling the self, accusing it of monstrous and spectacular crimes, and sloughing it off in public.”

 

My response: The average, group-oriented, nonindividuating person has not the sense of powerful, deep self-identity to survive an encounter with totalitarian secret police, but a great soul would, though he would still be tortured and executed; if he lived and survived, he would not be broken by the experience, shattered permanently like would a nonindividuating person of more flimsy identity. Only those who were true believers, or groupists identifying wholly as a belonger in a rival ism or tribe were groupists or nonindividuating individuals that could withstand totalitarian mistreatment.

 

It was chilling to read what Stalin did to the old Bolsheviks, by divesting them of their membership in his Communist Party. By confessing to crimes that they never committed, they regained communion with the Party, and broke out of their isolation and belonged once again before being executed.

 

The morality driving this insane way of treating the old faithful is a spectacular example of altruism-collectivism at its worst, and it is revealed as the demonic moral system that it is, when the chips are down.

 

H: “The same Russians who cringe and crawl before Stalin’s secret police displayed unsurpassed courage when facing singly or in a group—the invading Nazis. The reason for this contrasting behavior is not that Stalin’s police are more ruthless than Hitler’s armies, but that when facing Stalin’s police the Russian feels a mere individual, while when facing the Germans, he saw himself as a member of a mighty race,  possessed of a glorious past and an even more glorious future.”

 

My response: People as individuals, isolated nonindividuators, are unable to stand up to torturing secret police, whereas, as welcomed, valued members of their tribe or cause, they are capable of unsurpassed courage against foreigners in battle—opposite behaviors from the same behavior, remarkable insight from Hoffer.

 

H: “Similarly, in the case of Jews, their behavior in Palestine could not have been predicted from their behavior in Europe. The British colonial officials in Palestine followed a policy sound in logic but lacking in insight. They reasoned that since Hitler had managed to exterminate six million Jews without meeting serious resistance, it should not be too difficult to handle the 600,000 Jews in Palestine. The Jew in Europe faced his enemies alone, an isolated individual, a speck of life floating in an eternity of nothingness. In Palestine he felt himself not a human atom, but a member of an eternal race, with an immemorial past behind it and a breathtaking future ahead.”

 

My response: When the great soul or individuating supercitizen faces enemies alone, or with a group of other great souls supporting him, he acts with courage and resolve all the time. For nonindividuators, as individuals, they cannot withstand secret, totalitarian police, but, as proud, honored members belonging to a tribe or cause, sharing its vaunted identity, they are defiant and unstoppable.

 

Hoffer is not anti-individual at all, but, he is warning that the isolated individual, that does nonindividuated and is group-oriented, in isolation against totalitarian forces, with fold.

 

H: “                                                      46

 

The theoreticians in the Kremlin are probably aware that in order to maintain the submissiveness of the Russian masses there must not be the least chance of identification with any collective body outside Russia. The purpose of the Iron Curtain is perhaps more to prevent the Russian people from reaching out—even in thought—toward an outside world, than to prevent the infiltration of spies and saboteurs. The curtain is both physical and psychological. The complete elimination of any chance of emigration—even of Russian women married to foreigners—blurs the awareness of outside humanity in Russian minds. One might as well dream and hope of escaping to another planet. The psychological barrier is equally important: the Kremlin’s brazen propaganda strives to impress upon the Russians that there is nothing worthy or eternal, nothing deserving of admiration and reverence, nothing worthy of identifying oneself with, outside the confines of holy Russian.”

 

My response: Jordan Peterson has talked eloquently about how life in a totalitarian, nightmare state like Soviet Russia is a culture where lying is the way of life, not just the way of speaking and communicating.

 

What Hoffer writes of above indicated this: the people only hear one point of view—the official, mendacious, version provided in Pravda. They are completely isolated from outside groups, outside narrative, or alternative doctrines. That which is totalitarian is collective, mendacious, isolated and wicked.

 

One could well imagine that the citizens of North Korea are experiencing this type of brainwashing and one message in their pure isolation from the world.