The use of fear as a weapon is nothing new. Not just in war or by totalitarian governments upon their people or by the mafia or by landlords over farmers and peasants in agrarian societies like India, but even in cases as simple as parents disciplining their children or children bullying other children.
What I find interesting (as a study) and, at the same time, horrifying about the use of fear are two things: (a) how this use of fear is endorsed by others, making it legitimate; and (b) how power, and therefore political authority, is exercised by this use of fear to achieve goals.
By the endorsement of use of fear – and violence, which naturally comes with it – I don’t simply mean people in authority supporting and encouraging others to use fear to achieve their goals. No, what I mean is the belief – and the support and encouragement of that belief – that those who use fear and violence as weapons against others are ‘free of all blame’.
In short, the belief that the use of fear and violence is for good. This is where I see the greatest evil.
15 November 2009
07 November 2009
Evil in their blood
Although we tend to single out Adolf Hitler and the Nazis for their evil nature and deeds, we all know that they weren’t the only ones in modern history. In fact, a few years before World War 2, during the Spanish Civil War (1936-39), hundreds of thousands of Spanish people were brutally murdered by General Francisco Franco, the Nationalists and their allies the Falangists.
British author Jason Webster, who lives in and writes about modern-day Spain, in his 2006 book ¡Guerra!, narrates incidents of atrocities committed by General Franco, his Nationalist side and the right-wing Falangists during the Spanish Civil War. Here’s an excerpt:
“In public, Franco used to declare that Republicans with no blood on their hands would be spared. In secret, at Castuera many were murdered simply for having been on the other side. Grouping the prisoners into batches of ten, the Falangists would tie them together around the waist and then drag them to the mine just outside the camp. There they would line them up at the top of the shaft and push them over the edge. Some fell directly to their deaths, others smashed their limbs at the bottom but remained alive. The Falangists finished them off with grenades.”
Most of these deaths were never reported and it is only now that Spanish and world historians are trying to make sense of the killings during the Spanish Civil War. I’ve read accounts by Professor Paul Preston, eminent British historian and an expert on the Spanish Civil War, in which he suggests that the number of deaths – and missing persons – is likely to be tens, perhaps hundreds, of times more than what has been found, reported and documented.
Where does this violence, this cruelty, this evil come from?
Although all is supposed to be fair in love and war, I wonder what goes on in the minds of the people who mastermind these heinous plans and commit these murders in such large numbers. Laurence Rees, in his 2004 book and the BBC TV series Auschwitz: The Nazis & The ‘Final Solution’ (about which I’ve blogged here), gives us an insight into the Nazi mind, describing the coolness with which the Nazis committed mass murders and how inventive they had been in their methods. It seems evil was in their blood.
Perhaps Franco and the Nationalists/Falangists weren’t as inventive as the Nazis in finding ways of killing people, but they did know how to instil terror within their enemies. Both Professor Preston and author Webster cite the example of General Emilio Mola who was Franco’s counterpart during the Spanish Civil War (actually General Mola had masterminded and spearheaded the Nationalist coup against the ruling Republicans before Franco joined him) and led the attack from northern Spain.
Apparently, shortly after instituting martial law in Pamplona in July 1936, General Mola had addressed a group of mayors in the city with these (or similar) words:
“It is necessary to spread terror. We have to create the impression of mastery eliminating without scruples or hesitation all those who do not think as we do. There can be no cowardice. If we vacillate one moment and fail to proceed with the greatest determination, we will not win. Anyone who helps or hides a communist or a supporter of the Popular Front will be shot.”
Jason Webster in ¡Guerra! narrates the story of another Nationalist General, Gonzalo Queipo de Llano, who had mastered the art of radio broadcasts to effectively instil terror in the people of Seville over whom he ruled ‘like a wicked medieval warlord’ in the early years of the Spanish Civil War. Every night he would come on Radio Seville (then under his control) with his announcements and demoralise the town’s people through a series of threats and insults.
But General Queipo de Llano was known for more than his radio announcements. Webster writes:
“Queipo went on to rule his southern territories through a system of fear, terrorizing the people into a state of submission through violence. Mass executions and torture were the norm, soldiers often dragging men out of their homes and shooting them in the street or bayoneting them to death. At night the sound of gunfire ricocheted around Seville as small groups of union leaders, left-wingers or people caught in the wrong place at the wrong time were taken to the outskirts of the city to be shot. Simply having a callus on your hand or a sunburnt face (which suggested you were a manual labourer or farm worker), or had a tattoo or your shirt undone were reasons enough to be imprisoned.”
Mind you, these narrations and descriptions of violence and evil are about Spanish men acting against their own countrymen – not against another race or religion as was the case with the Nazis or the Japanese during World War 2. In the Spanish Civil War, and perhaps for many years after (as General Franco continued to rule Spain until his death in 1975), the Spanish tortured and murdered their own kind in hundreds of thousands.
[Citation: 1. ¡Guerra! by Jason Webster, chapters 6-9. 2. Paul Preston: The Crimes of Franco – The 2005 Len Crome Memorial Lecture, delivered at the Imperial War Museum on 12 March 2005.]
British author Jason Webster, who lives in and writes about modern-day Spain, in his 2006 book ¡Guerra!, narrates incidents of atrocities committed by General Franco, his Nationalist side and the right-wing Falangists during the Spanish Civil War. Here’s an excerpt:
“In public, Franco used to declare that Republicans with no blood on their hands would be spared. In secret, at Castuera many were murdered simply for having been on the other side. Grouping the prisoners into batches of ten, the Falangists would tie them together around the waist and then drag them to the mine just outside the camp. There they would line them up at the top of the shaft and push them over the edge. Some fell directly to their deaths, others smashed their limbs at the bottom but remained alive. The Falangists finished them off with grenades.”
Most of these deaths were never reported and it is only now that Spanish and world historians are trying to make sense of the killings during the Spanish Civil War. I’ve read accounts by Professor Paul Preston, eminent British historian and an expert on the Spanish Civil War, in which he suggests that the number of deaths – and missing persons – is likely to be tens, perhaps hundreds, of times more than what has been found, reported and documented.
Where does this violence, this cruelty, this evil come from?
Although all is supposed to be fair in love and war, I wonder what goes on in the minds of the people who mastermind these heinous plans and commit these murders in such large numbers. Laurence Rees, in his 2004 book and the BBC TV series Auschwitz: The Nazis & The ‘Final Solution’ (about which I’ve blogged here), gives us an insight into the Nazi mind, describing the coolness with which the Nazis committed mass murders and how inventive they had been in their methods. It seems evil was in their blood.
Perhaps Franco and the Nationalists/Falangists weren’t as inventive as the Nazis in finding ways of killing people, but they did know how to instil terror within their enemies. Both Professor Preston and author Webster cite the example of General Emilio Mola who was Franco’s counterpart during the Spanish Civil War (actually General Mola had masterminded and spearheaded the Nationalist coup against the ruling Republicans before Franco joined him) and led the attack from northern Spain.
Apparently, shortly after instituting martial law in Pamplona in July 1936, General Mola had addressed a group of mayors in the city with these (or similar) words:
“It is necessary to spread terror. We have to create the impression of mastery eliminating without scruples or hesitation all those who do not think as we do. There can be no cowardice. If we vacillate one moment and fail to proceed with the greatest determination, we will not win. Anyone who helps or hides a communist or a supporter of the Popular Front will be shot.”
Jason Webster in ¡Guerra! narrates the story of another Nationalist General, Gonzalo Queipo de Llano, who had mastered the art of radio broadcasts to effectively instil terror in the people of Seville over whom he ruled ‘like a wicked medieval warlord’ in the early years of the Spanish Civil War. Every night he would come on Radio Seville (then under his control) with his announcements and demoralise the town’s people through a series of threats and insults.
But General Queipo de Llano was known for more than his radio announcements. Webster writes:
“Queipo went on to rule his southern territories through a system of fear, terrorizing the people into a state of submission through violence. Mass executions and torture were the norm, soldiers often dragging men out of their homes and shooting them in the street or bayoneting them to death. At night the sound of gunfire ricocheted around Seville as small groups of union leaders, left-wingers or people caught in the wrong place at the wrong time were taken to the outskirts of the city to be shot. Simply having a callus on your hand or a sunburnt face (which suggested you were a manual labourer or farm worker), or had a tattoo or your shirt undone were reasons enough to be imprisoned.”
Mind you, these narrations and descriptions of violence and evil are about Spanish men acting against their own countrymen – not against another race or religion as was the case with the Nazis or the Japanese during World War 2. In the Spanish Civil War, and perhaps for many years after (as General Franco continued to rule Spain until his death in 1975), the Spanish tortured and murdered their own kind in hundreds of thousands.
[Citation: 1. ¡Guerra! by Jason Webster, chapters 6-9. 2. Paul Preston: The Crimes of Franco – The 2005 Len Crome Memorial Lecture, delivered at the Imperial War Museum on 12 March 2005.]
25 October 2009
Is man good or evil?
Danny Archer: So you think because your intentions are good, they'll spare you, huh?
Benjamin Kapanay: My heart always told me that people are inherently good. My experience suggests otherwise. But what about you, Mr. Archer? In your long career as a journalist, would you say that people are mostly good?
Danny Archer: No. I'd say they're just people.
Benjamin Kapanay: Exactly. It is what they do that makes them good or bad. A moment of love, even in a bad man, can give meaning to a life. None of us knows whose path will lead us to God.
This oft-quoted dialogue from Edward Zwick’s 2006 film Blood Diamond (starring Leonardo DiCaprio as Danny Archer and Basil Wallace as Benjamin Kapanay) is rather poignant. Poignant because, though the dialogue reveals to us the dichotomy of human nature, good and evil, it doesn’t leave us with any answers as to what is man’s inherent nature. Perhaps because there is no simple single answer to the question: Is man good or evil?
This question, I’m sure, has given many of us sleepless nights – especially if we’ve recently experienced unexpected behaviour of goodness or evil from people close to us whom we’ve judged to be of contrary disposition. That was exactly my experience in watching Neill Blomkamp’s film District 9 a couple of months ago. However, in Blood Diamond and District 9, our predisposition to good and evil – or, rather, who is good and who is evil – is made clear by the films’ stories and the films’ directors.
But, what if life was not so clear to us? How would we respond to good and evil then?
These questions made me think about a book I had read in my childhood (I, later, saw the older version of the film made on the book as well). The book was William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, first published in 1954. Lord of the Flies narrates the story of a group of marooned British schoolboys when their plane crashes on a deserted island – and the consequences thereafter when the boys fight for their survival in the jungle, making up their own rules as they go along, guided by their instincts.
What unfolds in Lord of the Flies is a sort of morality play, with different characters in the story assuming different roles of good or evil, or somewhere in between, defining a conflict between civilisation and savagery, reason and impulse, good and evil. However, unlike Blood Diamond or District 9, Lord of the Flies and its author Golding do not offer a simple answer or explanation or outcome of good winning over evil. On the contrary, Lord of the Flies suggests that evil comes easily to man. And that, the instinct for evil is far more basic and far stronger than the instinct to do or be good.
Benjamin Kapanay: My heart always told me that people are inherently good. My experience suggests otherwise. But what about you, Mr. Archer? In your long career as a journalist, would you say that people are mostly good?
Danny Archer: No. I'd say they're just people.
Benjamin Kapanay: Exactly. It is what they do that makes them good or bad. A moment of love, even in a bad man, can give meaning to a life. None of us knows whose path will lead us to God.
This oft-quoted dialogue from Edward Zwick’s 2006 film Blood Diamond (starring Leonardo DiCaprio as Danny Archer and Basil Wallace as Benjamin Kapanay) is rather poignant. Poignant because, though the dialogue reveals to us the dichotomy of human nature, good and evil, it doesn’t leave us with any answers as to what is man’s inherent nature. Perhaps because there is no simple single answer to the question: Is man good or evil?
This question, I’m sure, has given many of us sleepless nights – especially if we’ve recently experienced unexpected behaviour of goodness or evil from people close to us whom we’ve judged to be of contrary disposition. That was exactly my experience in watching Neill Blomkamp’s film District 9 a couple of months ago. However, in Blood Diamond and District 9, our predisposition to good and evil – or, rather, who is good and who is evil – is made clear by the films’ stories and the films’ directors.
But, what if life was not so clear to us? How would we respond to good and evil then?
These questions made me think about a book I had read in my childhood (I, later, saw the older version of the film made on the book as well). The book was William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, first published in 1954. Lord of the Flies narrates the story of a group of marooned British schoolboys when their plane crashes on a deserted island – and the consequences thereafter when the boys fight for their survival in the jungle, making up their own rules as they go along, guided by their instincts.
What unfolds in Lord of the Flies is a sort of morality play, with different characters in the story assuming different roles of good or evil, or somewhere in between, defining a conflict between civilisation and savagery, reason and impulse, good and evil. However, unlike Blood Diamond or District 9, Lord of the Flies and its author Golding do not offer a simple answer or explanation or outcome of good winning over evil. On the contrary, Lord of the Flies suggests that evil comes easily to man. And that, the instinct for evil is far more basic and far stronger than the instinct to do or be good.
16 October 2009
Evil against the ‘other’
One aspect of Neill Blomkamp’s film District 9 (see my previous blog) that intrigued me was the question of man’s willingness and capacity to do evil. Not just evil against the ‘other’ (depicted, in the film, as the aliens or the ‘prawns’), but also evil against a member of one’s own tribe – that is, another human being (the film’s protagonist, Wikus van de Merwe).
Of course, in District 9, at the moment of evil, the human in question was, perhaps, not entirely human. For, Wikus van de Merwe, after exposure to an alien fluid, was biologically (that is, genetically) transforming into a ‘prawn’. So, perhaps, at the moment of evil, Wikus van de Merwe had become the ‘other’... and the treatment meted out to him by the humans was justified.
But, was it? Was that how it worked?
When I look at the recent spate of bombings and killings (and even beheadings) that are taking place in my own country, India, as well as in neighbouring Pakistan, I am, once again, troubled by the question of man’s willingness and capacity to do evil... to his fellow men. Because, it’s here, in our daily lives, that I see no ‘real’ difference between the ‘self’ and the ‘other’.
But, that’s not how it seems. In defence of their actions, I suppose, the men of evil in question here can justify themselves: in India, the Maoists defending the rights of the farmers and the peasants against a (still active) feudal system and oppression; and, in Pakistan, the Taliban and its allies protesting against the government’s inability to run its own country peacefully, without foreign intervention.
Is this justification enough to destroy innocent human lives? In the minds and the hearts of the Maoists in India and the Taliban and its allies in Pakistan, apparently, it is. For, to the Maoists, the Taliban and their like, those who are not with them in their struggle are considered the ‘other’. And, any evil against the ‘other’ is a logical end in itself.
Of course, in District 9, at the moment of evil, the human in question was, perhaps, not entirely human. For, Wikus van de Merwe, after exposure to an alien fluid, was biologically (that is, genetically) transforming into a ‘prawn’. So, perhaps, at the moment of evil, Wikus van de Merwe had become the ‘other’... and the treatment meted out to him by the humans was justified.
But, was it? Was that how it worked?
When I look at the recent spate of bombings and killings (and even beheadings) that are taking place in my own country, India, as well as in neighbouring Pakistan, I am, once again, troubled by the question of man’s willingness and capacity to do evil... to his fellow men. Because, it’s here, in our daily lives, that I see no ‘real’ difference between the ‘self’ and the ‘other’.
But, that’s not how it seems. In defence of their actions, I suppose, the men of evil in question here can justify themselves: in India, the Maoists defending the rights of the farmers and the peasants against a (still active) feudal system and oppression; and, in Pakistan, the Taliban and its allies protesting against the government’s inability to run its own country peacefully, without foreign intervention.
Is this justification enough to destroy innocent human lives? In the minds and the hearts of the Maoists in India and the Taliban and its allies in Pakistan, apparently, it is. For, to the Maoists, the Taliban and their like, those who are not with them in their struggle are considered the ‘other’. And, any evil against the ‘other’ is a logical end in itself.
22 September 2009
District 9 busts the myth of good and evil
This year, from an unexpected quarter of the world, comes a film that takes head-on, and then shatters, the myth of good and evil. That film is District 9 and it comes from South Africa. What’s more surprising is that District 9 is a sci-fi thriller that deals with aliens on Earth; but, interestingly, steers clear away from the United States (the favourite invasion ground among aliens) to take its roots in, and over, Johannesburg.
District 9’s director, Neill Blomkamp, adopts an ingenious news broadcast-like technique to tell us the story, jumping cuts and cameras and viewpoints here and there to give his film-viewers the feeling that everything is happening in real-time. If that isn’t enough, Blomkamp keeps the adrenalin flowing with suspense, action and an incredible skill in storytelling.
Early on, in the mid-eighties, we learn that a huge alien spaceship arrives over Johannesburg and becomes immobile, perhaps due to a technical fault. A mission, when sent up to the spaceship, finds a huge population of weak and undernourished aliens, and rescues them by bringing them back on Earth. These aliens, which look like large prawns on land and are given that nomenclature by humans, are quarantined in a colony of their own just outside Johannesburg. This colony is District 9.
Twenty years later, with a total failure in integration between the humans and the prawns, matters come to a head between the two populations, and the South African government decides to relocate the prawns farther away from Johannesburg. It enlists the services of a large multinational company, MNU, which is also the second-largest weapons manufacturer in the world. When MNU forces, led by a mild-mannered Wikus van de Merwe (played by South African actor Sharlto Copely), enter District 9 to inform the prawns about their forced relocation and serve them eviction notices, things get out of hand.
During the operation, Wikus becomes accidentally infected by a mysterious alien fluid from a canister which he confiscates from a prawn. A genetic metamorphosis sets in in Wikus, and he slowly, and then rapidly, begins to turn into a prawn. When his metamorphosis comes to the MNU’s notice, MNU jumps at the unexpected opportunity of using a part-human-part-prawn to learn how to use prawn weaponry which they were, so far, unable to do as the weapons are genetically coded to prawn bio-technology.
As MNU scientists and doctors prepare to cut him open for medical experiments, Wikus escapes from MNU’s grasp and is then on the run as a fugitive. Rejected by his own people (including his wife) as a freak, Wikus hides in District 9 and ends up befriending a prawn leader when the prawn leader suggests that it can reverse Wikus’ metamorphosis if it could go back up to the spaceship hovering above Johannesburg. To make this possible, says the prawn, it requires the mysterious fluid in the canister which is in MNU possession. So, the two of them attempt to get that mysterious fluid back from MNU headquarters.
Scorched by Wikus’ daring mission to attack MNU headquarters and escape again, MNU soldiers step up their chase. Wanted alive for his unique bio-technological importance, Wikus is now hunted not only by the MNU, but also by the Nigerian mafia ruling District 9. The Nigerians believe that if they eat Wikus’ flesh, his alien powers will be transferred onto them. So begins a hunt for Wikus… right until the gruesome end of the film.
Although disturbing to watch and, in places, heart-wrenchingly emotional, this is where District 9 excels. Director Blomkamp turns the concept of good and evil on its head, showing us the predatory nature of humans and the greed that resides within us. The viewers of District 9 end up believing that being human is, perhaps, not such a good thing after all.
District 9’s director, Neill Blomkamp, adopts an ingenious news broadcast-like technique to tell us the story, jumping cuts and cameras and viewpoints here and there to give his film-viewers the feeling that everything is happening in real-time. If that isn’t enough, Blomkamp keeps the adrenalin flowing with suspense, action and an incredible skill in storytelling.
Early on, in the mid-eighties, we learn that a huge alien spaceship arrives over Johannesburg and becomes immobile, perhaps due to a technical fault. A mission, when sent up to the spaceship, finds a huge population of weak and undernourished aliens, and rescues them by bringing them back on Earth. These aliens, which look like large prawns on land and are given that nomenclature by humans, are quarantined in a colony of their own just outside Johannesburg. This colony is District 9.
Twenty years later, with a total failure in integration between the humans and the prawns, matters come to a head between the two populations, and the South African government decides to relocate the prawns farther away from Johannesburg. It enlists the services of a large multinational company, MNU, which is also the second-largest weapons manufacturer in the world. When MNU forces, led by a mild-mannered Wikus van de Merwe (played by South African actor Sharlto Copely), enter District 9 to inform the prawns about their forced relocation and serve them eviction notices, things get out of hand.
During the operation, Wikus becomes accidentally infected by a mysterious alien fluid from a canister which he confiscates from a prawn. A genetic metamorphosis sets in in Wikus, and he slowly, and then rapidly, begins to turn into a prawn. When his metamorphosis comes to the MNU’s notice, MNU jumps at the unexpected opportunity of using a part-human-part-prawn to learn how to use prawn weaponry which they were, so far, unable to do as the weapons are genetically coded to prawn bio-technology.
As MNU scientists and doctors prepare to cut him open for medical experiments, Wikus escapes from MNU’s grasp and is then on the run as a fugitive. Rejected by his own people (including his wife) as a freak, Wikus hides in District 9 and ends up befriending a prawn leader when the prawn leader suggests that it can reverse Wikus’ metamorphosis if it could go back up to the spaceship hovering above Johannesburg. To make this possible, says the prawn, it requires the mysterious fluid in the canister which is in MNU possession. So, the two of them attempt to get that mysterious fluid back from MNU headquarters.
Scorched by Wikus’ daring mission to attack MNU headquarters and escape again, MNU soldiers step up their chase. Wanted alive for his unique bio-technological importance, Wikus is now hunted not only by the MNU, but also by the Nigerian mafia ruling District 9. The Nigerians believe that if they eat Wikus’ flesh, his alien powers will be transferred onto them. So begins a hunt for Wikus… right until the gruesome end of the film.
Although disturbing to watch and, in places, heart-wrenchingly emotional, this is where District 9 excels. Director Blomkamp turns the concept of good and evil on its head, showing us the predatory nature of humans and the greed that resides within us. The viewers of District 9 end up believing that being human is, perhaps, not such a good thing after all.
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