Bullies on the Block - Blog# 24 - 15 November 2019

Museum of Communism - Prague - August 2019

As the dust settles from our visit to Prague and our cruise down the Danube, I bring you a visceral, not just an intellectual reaction to the bullies on the block of Central Europe. The mood was first captured in Nuremberg, with predictable nausea over Nazi atrocities. But less expected historical gems were found in two venues in the Czech capital of Prague: the Museum of Communism, and a photographic exhibit commemorating the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Iron Curtain.

First, if you will, allow me to briefly digress down history lane. Czechoslovakia was born as a nation in 1918, following the demise of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in World War I. The Habsburg Monarchy had been formed way back in 1273, and the leader of the House of Habsburg was also empowered as the Holy Roman Emperor from 1438 until 1806. The Habsburg monarchy was formally unified as the Austrian Empire in 1804, and as the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1867. It comprised a huge swath of central and eastern Europe, including current day Austria, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, many components of the former Yugoslavia, and portions of Romania, Poland, Italy and Ukraine. Prior to its demise, this empire had two main hubs, Vienna and Budapest. How magnificent it was near the end of our trip, cruising east on the Danube, from one to the other. They are just an overnight cruise apart, and encapsulate a dozen buckets of history.

My personal angle on this history dates back to high school, at Calasanctius in Buffalo, where I was taught by Piarist priests, who had escaped the Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956. Thinking back, I rue my adolescent ignorance, for with the advantage of experience, I would surely have petitioned my Headmaster to organize a Hungarian 20th century history class, taught by the Piarists who were there. As a side note, if you like a good historical novel, check out The Bridge at Andau by Michener, detailing the ‘56 invasion, and the escape route into Austria.  We sampled Austria in Vienna, then curved around the Danube bend to the south, into Hungary. An hour past dawn, in perfect light for your photoholic narrator, we cruised between the resplendent architecture that lines both sides of the Danube, in Pest on the left bank, and sunlit Buda off starboard. 

Budapest - August 2019

The Hungarian government was complicit in its own demise, aligning with the Germans in World War I, and, hoping to regain lost territory, with the Nazis in World War II. 430,000 Hungarians constituted the largest nationality in Auschwitz, and only a quarter of Hungarian Jews survived the Holocaust. Mutual double-crossing amongst the Hungarians, Germans and Soviets left Hungary under control of the Germans in 1944, and the Soviets in 1945, and for 44 years thereafter. As for Czechoslovakia, it became a nation after its territorial boundaries were redrawn in 1918 following the defeat of the Germans, but its success was short lived. Just twenty years later, in 1938, the Nazis claimed the Sudetenland regions, and in 1939, overtook the Bohemian and Moravian regions of Czechoslovakia, while Slovakia became “independent” as a Nazi puppet state. Freed from the Germans by the Soviets in 1945, reunified Czechoslovakia was soon re-enslaved by the Soviets, after a Communist coup d’etat in 1948. Dubcek’s liberalization was crushed by a Soviet invasion in 1968, and the Czech/Slovak people remained under the communist yoke until the Velvet Revolution of 1989, when Gorbachev allowed Soviet satellite states to rebel and pursue their independence.

At the Prague photo exhibit celebrating the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Iron Curtain, the centerpiece was a large screenshot of Mikhail Gorbachev with George Bush the Wiser, proclaiming the end of the Cold War. Surrounding it were dozens of gigantic photo posters of 1989 police/protestor confrontations in Czechoslovakia, Poland, East Germany, Hungary, and Bulgaria. We couldn’t help thinking of Trump and Putin, and how these aggressors pale in the shadows of their predecessors.

Soon thereafter, we visited the Museum of Communism, also in Prague. The opening scene is viewed from the bottom of a tall stairway, where the only visible sight above, beyond the mountain of stair steps, involves three words capturing the sequence of communism: Dream – Reality – Nightmare. To put it mildly, the Czechs are not fond of the Russians, while the Germans are an older enemy. Visiting Central Europe repeatedly struck me as a lesson in political bullying. It felt as if I was stuck in between two aggressive neighbors, one German, one Russian, who were constantly maneuvering to take over my house, and sometimes each other’s as well. I could easily identify with Poland. Under the heading of counting your blessings, a fortunate accident of birth deposited me in 1950 USA.

 Imagine instead that we were born in 1918 Germany, at the end of World War I, enduring the impact of reparations imposed by the Treaty of Versailles. The German version of the Great Depression follows, fueling escalating resentment toward democratic and socialist forces blamed for the loss of the war. The right wing is revived, radicalized, and vomits racist accusations of Jewish conspiracies. As a child you absorb this worldview, and are then conscripted into the German Army at age 18, in 1936. It’s easy to make choices in the rear-view mirror, but if you were at ground zero as an adolescent in 1936 Nuremberg, what would you have chosen? Your country has been devastated, and is rising from the ashes as a powerhouse once more. Your parents take you amongst the masses at the uplifting Nuremberg rallies at Zeppelin Field. Peer pressure commands you to take your place alongside your brethren in the German Army. Under these circumstances, would you have resisted? Our basic choices in response to danger are fight, flight, or freeze. You either chose flight and left Germany (unlikely as a late adolescent unless you were Jewish and following your parents), got destroyed by the Gestapo trying to fight the momentum of the Nazi war machine, merged your fighting spirit with the cause of German nationalistic revival, or reluctantly froze and took your place as a cog in the German war machine. How would you have reacted as an 18-year-old, without your current wisdom of experience, and without a glimpse of the coming atrocities leaving six million Jews in the ground?

We prefer to think of Nazis as a reflection of German character. Surely it couldn’t happen here. But a glance into the political mirror reveals that the Jew has become the Muslim or the Mexican, various newer versions of The Other, used to drive age-old, us-against-them divisive politics. A solid third of our populace embraces the racist, ultra-nationalistic, anti-democratic politics of our leader, eschewing rather than celebrating the diversity that formed and strengthened our nation. We have a choice: focus on the similarities that bind us together, as humans, or on the differences that divide us and fuel our persecution of The Other. The differences are seductive, allowing us the turn our fears into anger, and direct our animosity toward scapegoats. Yes, it could happen here, or anywhere. Is it? Try this sidebar.

Are political and military bullies much different from neighborhood and classroom bullies? What is a bully, and how do we allow ourselves to be led by them? What is the emotional currency of bullies? They prosecute anger, hatred and prejudice from on high, while inducing fear and shame in the scapegoat below, sometimes in a crowd, with hesitant bystanders aplenty. Otherwise they attack privately, where their extremes can be concealed. Bullying involves an imbalance of power. As children, bullies use their power, derived from some combination of physical strength, popularity, and embarrassing information. Bullying is verbal via meanness, physical via intimidation or assault, or social by intentionally damaging the target’s relationships or reputation. It goes beyond mere conflict and disagreement, as its purpose is to harm and humiliate.

Bullying peaks during middle school, though grade-school children are already adept at verbal aggression via name-calling. Trump’s verbal bullying involves habitual insults hurled at opponents, such as loser, baby, nothing, crazy, wacky, sleepy, crooked, slime ball, low I.Q., etc., as if he never graduated from a middle-school locker room. Bullying often involves three role players: perpetrators, victims, and bystanders. Bullies are often victims in other contexts, for example, at home where abusive parents intimidate or humiliate them. Their fear and shame is bottled, and then exported onto vulnerable peers. Bullies are enabled by lack of intervention by bystanders, who may be quiet and fearful of abuse themselves, or may vicariously act out their own shame by egging on bullies. The failure of Republicans to stand up to Trump’s bullying allows him to remain safely insulated from consequences, confident in his support from his base. From this angle, the impeachment proceedings can be viewed as a referendum on dictatorship and bullying versus democracy. Political bullies often rely on the support of their military. We sit confident that a Hitler or Stalin could never take over here at home. But Trump has a penchant for loyal, corrupt cronies. In the nightmare scenario, a few well-placed generals and admirals could conceivably support his declaration that the 2020 election had been rigged, resulting in a coup or civil war between our polarized citizens. We prefer to believe that it could never happen here, but central Europeans will tell you otherwise.