"All that is necessary for

the triumph of evil . . ."

A sermon by Dave Weissbard

delivered at

The Unitarian Universalist Church

Rockford, Illinois

10/09/05

Our reading is from the book “Defying Hitler” by Sebastian Haffner. The book, which was written in 1939 was only published in 2000. The author who was German, escaped from the Nazi’s in 1939 and started this book as a memoir of how the Nazi’s came to power, but put it aside to do other books and never published it. His son found it after his death and realized what a powerful work it was. It became a best seller in Germany where people still seek to understand how Hitler came to power.

The author was studying to be a lawyer in 1932 when the Nazi’s decided that anyone preparing for the equivalent of the bar exam, had to go to an indoctrination camp. He wrote this about that experience:

What about me? I notice that I have not had occasion to use the word “I” in my story for quite a while. I have used either the third person or the first person singular. . . . That is no accident. It was one of the points – perhaps the point – of what was happening to us in camp that the individual person each of us represented played no part and was completely sidelined. That just did not count. Things were quite deliberately arranged so that the individual had no room to maneuver. What one represented, what one’s opinions were in “private” and “actually,” was of no concern and set aside, put on ice, as it were. On the other hand, in moments when one had the leisure to think of one’s individuality – perhaps if one awoke at night in the midst of the multifarious snoring of one’s comrades – one had a feeling that what was actually happening, in which one participated mechanically, had no real existence or validity. It was only in these hours that one could attempt to call oneself morally to account and prepare a last position of defense for one’s inner self. Perhaps thus:

Well, this will last another four, six, or eight weeks. I have to get through it without drawing attention to myself, then there will be the exams. After that I shall go to Paris, and it will all be forgotten, as though it had never happened. In the meantime, it is a kind of adventure and certainly an experience. There are some things I must never do: never say anything that I would be ashamed of later. Shooting at targets is all right. But not at people. I must not commit myself, or sell my soul . . . Anything else?

Oh dear! It dawned on me that I had already relinquished and lost everything. I wore a uniform with a swastika armband. I stood to attention and cleaned my rifle. But that did not count; I had not been asked before I did it; it was not me that did it; it was a game and I was acting a part.

Only what if, dear God, there was some court that did not recognize this defense, but simply wrote down everything as it happened; that did not look into my heart, but simply noted the swastika armband. Before that court I was in a wretched position. Dear God, where had I gone wrong? What should I say to the judge who asked, “You wear a swastika armband and say that you do not want to. Then why do you wear it?” . . .

I tried another position and my thoughts shifted a little. What if you actually had to do something? Yes, that is the decisive point . . . Would any of us, would I, find a way out if actions were demanded of us? If the war suddenly did break out, and we were ordered into battle, just as we were now – into battle, where we would be required to use our rifles for Hitler? . . Well, would you throw aside your rifle and desert? Or shoot at your neighbor, who only yesterday helped you clean your weapon? Well, would you? Would you?

I groaned and tried to force myself to stop thinking. I realized that I was well and truly in a trap. I should never have come to the camp. Now I was in the trap of comradeship . . .

It is clear that there is something demonic, deeply dangerous, in this widely praised, harmless male comradeship. The Nazis knew what they were doing when they made it the normal way of life for an entire nation. And the Germans, with their lack of talent for individual life and happiness, were so dreadfully ready to submit to it, so willing and eager to exchange the delicate, hard-to-reach fruits of freedom for the juicy, swelling, close-at-hand intoxication of general, undiscriminating, vulgar comradeship.

It is said that the Germans are subjugated. That is only half true. . . . They are under a spell. They live a drugged life in a dream world . . . They think they are scaling high mountains, when in reality they are crawling through a swamp. As long as the spell lasts, there is almost no antidote.

Last year, I had the privilege of reading a book put together by Jacki Lewis, daughter of Elizanne, sister of Steve, of some of the correspondence between her Aunt Ruth and her grandparents, who were German Jews, during the rise of the Third Reich. Jacki’s grandparents managed to get their son Walt out of Germany to Scotland and then the United States, and then their daughter Ruth to safety in England. They hoped to join them, but that never happened. Kurt died in his bed the night before the Gestapo came for him. Martha died at Auschwitz. It is a compelling story, powerfully and poignantly told in the letters. Jacki has done a sermon from it in her church, and I am looking for an opportunity to have her share it with us.

Reading that correspondence got me asking myself the old questions about how something as brutal as Nazism could have happened in a country as humane and sophisticated as Germany. How could such horrors develop in such an atmosphere?

This summer at Chautauqua, I had an opportunity to view a new documentary called “Theologians Under Hitler” produced by a Methodist minister. It recounts how some of the leading liberal theologians, Paul Althaus, Emanuel Hirsch, and Gerhard Kittel, became enthusiastic supporters of Hitler. Althaus spoke of Hitler as “a gift and miracle of God.” It was ultimately the religious conservatives in the “Confessing Church” who tried to stand up to him.

This Fall, one of the internet sites I visit featured a sermon by Davidson Loehr, a colleague of mine, on “Living Under Fascism.” David referenced a particularly powerful article on fascism by Laurence Britt, that I will come back to in a moment. That got me researching further, which led me to Sebastian Haffner’s powerful book which I highly recommend. Haffner’s book became so popular in Germany, as I noted earlier, because it told the story of his experience of the gradual easing of the German people into Nazism in the period from 1914 and 1933.

Haffner recounted the disintegration of the leadership of the parties opposing Hitler. He wrote:

This terrible moral bankruptcy of the opposition leadership is a fundamental characteristic of the March “revolution” of 1933. It made the Nazi victory exceedingly easy. ;

It was out of this treachery of its opponents, and the feeling of helplessness, weakness, and disgust that it aroused, that the Third Reich was born. . . .

The simplest, and if you looked deeper, nearly always the most basic reason was fear. Join the thugs to avoid being beaten up. Less clear was a kind of exhilaration, the intoxication of unity, the magnetism of the masses. Many also felt a need for revenge against those who had abandoned them. Then there was a particularly German line of thought: “All the predictions of the opponents of the Nazis have not come true. They said the Nazis could not win. Now they have won. Therefore the opponents were wrong. So the Nazis must be right.” There was also (particularly among intellectuals) the belief that they could change the face of the Nazi party by becoming a member, even now shift its direction. Then, of course, many jumped on the bandwagon, wanting to be part of a perceived success. Finally, among the more primitive, inarticulate, simpler souls there was a process hat might have taken place in mythical times when a beaten tribe abandoned its faithless god and accepted the god of the victorious tribe as its patron.

What is frightening about Haffner’s book is that it is easy to see the American people today following a similar path. The “Theologians” film raises the question, “Could it happen again?” to which the answer is frighteningly, “Yes.” The Christian Right today almost echoes the guidance provided by Hitler’s allegedly Christian followers, calling for support of the present administration.

The fifth of the seven principles of the Unitarian Universalist Association identifies our covenant to affirm and promote “The right of conscience and the use of the democratic process within our congregations and in society at large.” While we have a lengthy theological heritage, our religious movement as we know it is very much a product of the American culture. Our religion is rooted in democracy, with all of its liberal beliefs about the place of human beings in society.

The most valid criticism of Unitarian Universalism over the years has been the identification of the difficulty we have in acknowledging the existence of evil. In reaction to traditional Christian teachings of the sinfulness of human nature, Unitarian Universalists have had a tendency to over idealize human beings, and to believe that what we experience as evil is just a product of ignorance that more education would cure. The hunger for power, seemingly limitless greed, the exploitation of others, economic colonialism, genocides, torture – the persistence of these vicious human tendencies, and the failures of good people to stand up to them, suggest we need to grapple a little harder with reality.

Carly Sheehan, sister of Casey, daughter of Cindy who is a central figure in the antiwar movement today, wrote this poem:

Have you ever heard the sound of a mother screaming for her son?
The torrential rains of a mother's weeping will never be done
They call him a hero, you should be glad that he's one, but
Have you ever heard the sound of a mother screaming for her son?

Have you ever heard the sound of a father holding back his cries?
He must be brave because his boy died for another man's lies
The only grief he allows himself are long, deep sighs
Have you ever heard the sound of a father holding back his cries?

Have you ever heard the sound of taps played at your brother's grave?
They say that he died so that the flag will continue to wave
But I believe he died because they had oil to save
Have you ever heard the sound of taps played at your brother's grave?

Have you ever heard the sound of a nation being rocked to sleep?
The leaders want to keep you numb so the pain won't be so deep
But if we the people let them continue another mother will weep
Have you ever heard the sound of a nation being rocked to sleep?

My determination not to be passive in the face of evil, not to be “rocked to sleep” as the people of Germany were, led me to this morning’s sermon.

In that article on fascism by Laurence Britt (Free Inquiry Magazine, Volume 23, Number 2 ) I mentioned earlier, Britt looked at seven fascist states: Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, Franco’s Spain, Salazar’s Portugal, Papadopoulos’s Greece, Pinochet’s Chile, and Suharto’s Indonesia (most of which the United States supported). He found fourteen characteristics they shared:

What a terrifying list! I would suggest that we are batting nearly 1000! Let’s consider each of them.

Wartime always brings with it a certain degree of “My country right or wrong,” but it is interesting how the current state of war came about. As has often been the case, it was in response to a cataclysmic event. The Project for the New American Century, which includes many prominent administration figures, had publicly declared that achieving its ends would require a new Pearl Harbor. There are many not on the lunatic fringe who believe that the events of 9/11 were no coincidence. After the lapses in intelligence were identified as culpable for the tragedy and the director of the CIA resigned, the President awarded him the Medal of Freedom for meritorious service to the United States. What is that about?

The result of 9/11 was flag waving and calls for unity unsurpassed in American history. Repeatedly, administration spokespersons have insisted that anyone who questions the policies of the administration is unpatriotic. Anyone who questions whether God wants America to dominate the world is giving comfort to America’s enemies. The President has declared that any nation that opposes us in any way is our enemy.

We knew for a long time that the US Army was training foreign military leaders at the School of the Americas in the use of torture techniques that Americans would never tolerate. That chicken has come home to roost. While scapegoats are sought, there is abundant evidence that the authorization of torture has come from the highest levels of the administration. Just this week, the Senate, in a rare act of courage, voted overwhelmingly to attach an amendment to the military appropriation bill forbidding the “cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment of prisoners” by the US military. The White House angrily declared that the President would veto any such bill that came to his desk. He demands the freedom to torture. He demands the right, in violation of every international treaty, to indefinitely hold prisoner at Guantanamo people whom we consider suspects of being enemies of the United States. We are holding thousands of Iraqis, against whom no charges have been brought, prisoner at Abu Graib.

This President also has demanded the right to suspend the fundamental constitutional rights of any American citizen whom he deems “an enemy combatant” without any proof being required. This is a violation of habeas corpus, due process, and the presumption of innocence. What is most amazing is that a 3-judge panel of the 4^th Circuit Court upheld the administration. Jose Padilla, an American citizen, has been imprisoned now for 3 years and 153 days with no charges having been brought against him and no evidence of any kind having been presented.

Department of Homeland Security, authorized preliminary studies for the rapid construction of a National Detention Center Program (FEMA)-controlled series of detention centers, to be added to the existing 600 units in place."

"The Department of Homeland Security is coordinating with the Israeli corporation, Israeli Prison Systems Ltd., for the expedited construction of several new prison camps. The new internment camps will be located in rural and relatively uninhabited areas throughout the continental United States and Alaska."

I can find no “authoritative” support for this claim which is mostly circulating in rather extreme circles, but the scary thing is that it does not seem out of character for the present administration, who in authority would ever acknowledge it if it were true. That does not make it true, however. As the Secretary of Defense once said, “The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.”

There are two levels of enemies. One the one hand there are the “terrorists” against whom our President has declared war. Now, they are mostly Muslim, but the President has been very careful to try to differentiate between the “bad Muslims” who are our enemies, and the “good Muslims” who are friends of his family and contribute to American prosperity. Now, some of our “good Muslims” are viewed by their subjects as “bad Muslims” because of political oppression, but we don’t worry about that as long as they demonstrate the proper deference to America’s needs or wants. In fact, the worst Muslim of them all, Saddam Hussein, used to be a “good Muslim” whom we provided with arms and the makings for chemical warfare, until he became a “bad Muslim.”

I sometimes wonder, given the difficulty of our capturing Osama bin Laden, now the worst of the “bad Muslims,” whether he is in actuality an actor paid by us to be the symbol of all that is evil. If he didn’t exist, we would have to invent him in order to focus our hate.

There is a whole other level to this scapegoat business, however. Among the President’s strongest supporters, there is a whole other enemy that is truly responsible for everything that is wrong with America. You know who it is: Us. One need only channel hop through Pat Robertson and you know that the real threat is not outside but inside America – the secular humanists. We are to America what the Jews were to Germany – but I’ll come back to that.

It is clear that the foreign policy of the United States during the present administration has been created at the Pentagon, not the State Department. The United States spends more on its military than all of the rest of the nations on the earth put together. Again, the authoritative Project for the New American Century does not duck the need for an all powerful military to keep the American empire intact. We must be able to crush instantly any state that acts in its own self-interest rather than ours. It’s all there in print [http://www.newamericancentury.org/] – they’re not ashamed of their position.

Linked to this is the determination of the administration to eliminate the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 which forbids the use of the American military against American citizens except in very limited circumstances. This week, the President announced that he might need to use the military to enforce quarantines in case of an outbreak of Bird Flu. The President insisted:

“One option is the use of a military that’s able to plan and move. So that’s why I put it on the table. I think it’s an important debate for Congress to have. I think the president ought to have all options on the table to understand what the consequences are – all assets on the table, not options – assets on the table to be able to deal with something this significant.

Now, this one is tricky. There are strong women in prominent roles in this administration, just as there are in the Bush family. At the same time, the powers behind the administration are clear about the place of women in society. Among the central causes of our social evils, according to them, is our having permitted women to leave the home.

Their attitude toward abortion is a part of this sexism. In their eyes, the primary function of women is to have babies and maintain a home. Abortion, making childbirth an option rather than a destiny, has disrupted their vision of the perfect family. Fascists have historically objected to abortion.

Also high on the fascist agenda has always been opposition to homosexuality which is a threat to their vision of order. There is no question where the administration stands on this issue.

Now, we assume that control of mass media must be heavy-handed censorship, like our shutting down of newspapers in Iraq that dare oppose the American occupation. There are subtler means of control – like imbedding reporters with military units, like keeping reporters dependent upon access to information, like concentrating the control of the media in the hands of those most sympathetic to the goals of the government. It’s called, “self-censorship.”

I came here today because I believe that American democracy is in grave danger. It is no longer possible to ignore the strangeness of our public discourse. I know that I am not the only one who feels that something has gone basically and badly wrong in the way America's fabled "marketplace of ideas" now functions.

How many of you, I wonder, have heard a friend or a family member in the last few years remark that it's almost as if America has entered "an alternate universe"?

The present executive branch has made it a practice to try and control and intimidate news organizations: from PBS to CBS to Newsweek. They placed a former male escort in the White House press pool to pose as a reporter - and then called upon him to give the president a hand at crucial moments. They paid actors to make make phony video press releases and paid cash to some reporters who were willing to take it in return for positive stories. And every day they unleash squadrons of digital brownshirts to harass and hector any journalist who is critical of the President.

What kind of coverage did the mainstream media give to the opposition to the war in Iraq and what has been the level of reliability of the information they have presented on the war itself? Two weeks ago, something like 200,000 of our fellow citizens went to Washington to speak their minds. What kind of coverage did they or their cause receive in the media? The few mentions made were of the extremists and little of the people like us.

Last year, when MoveOn.org, a liberal organization, tried to purchase paid advertising to oppose an administration proposal, the networks refused to sell it time because the ads were controversial. They did start to run ads from the administration on the same issue. MoveOn objected and the government ads were removed. The administration objected and its ads were put back on, with no opportunity for the opposition. Tell me our media are not controlled.

We have finally been released from the daily color change from yellow to orange to red to orange, but national security is certainly on the top of the agenda in the minds of most Americans whose fear is reinforced daily.

We have not heard much about the executive order the President issued three months ago creating the National Security Service, a branch of the FBI that now works entirely under the President’s authority and is not answerable to Congress. It has been likened to the KGB and the East German Stasi.

This is so obvious that it hardly requires comment. The declared goal of the president’s strongest supporters is the creation of a theocratic state in America, much like that of the ayatollahs in Iran. They know what God requires of us all and they insist they must be free to bring about the Kingdom of God on earth.

It has now come out that the President himself, when he met with Abu Mazen, the Palestinian Prime Minister and Nabil Shaath, his foreign minister in June of 2003, told them that:

I’m driven with a mission from God. God would tell me, George, go and fight those terrorists in Afghanistan’ And I did, and then God would tell me, “George, go and end the tyranny in Iraq. “ And I did. And now, again, I feel God’s words coming to me. “Go get the Palestinians their state and get the Israeli’s their security, and get peace in the Middle East.” And by God I’m gonna do it.

The corporate, political and religious right have converged, led by a president who, in his own disdain for science, reason and knowledge, is the most powerful fundamentalist in American history. And radicals on the Christian right are now the dominant force in America’s governing party. They control much of the U.S. government and are on the verge of having it all. Without them the government would not be in the hands of people who don’t believe in government. They are culpable in upholding a system of class and race in which, as we saw last week, the rich escape and the poor are left behind. And they are on a crusade against government “of, by, and for the people” in favor of one based on Biblical authority. So the Grand Old Party-the GOP-has become God’’s Own Party, its ranks made up of God’’s Own People “marching as to war.”

And then there is the testimony of General Boykin who testified that the President was obviously not elected by a majority of Americans, but was appointed by God And General Boykin was promoted to Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence.

There is no question but that the major corporations have been making out like bandits under the present administration, not that they were doing badly before. Just this week, the majority party forced through an indefensible welfare bill for energy companies that many Republicans were loathe to support.

The President’s comments on Creationism are, of course, only the tip of the iceberg. There is the growing movement for the removal of liberal professors from America’s campuses because of the way in which they are poisoning the minds of our students. The National Endowment for the Arts must be sacrificed for the cause of the elimination of the repressive estate tax on the super rich, and of course, NPR and PBS are elitist and must go.

A few years ago I preached several sermons on James Gilligan’s seminal work on Violence. It is Gilligan’s contention that we are programed to fear the thieves in the social class below us as a way to distract us from how we are being robbed daily by those above us. Have you stopped at a gas pump lately?

America, as you well know, has by far the highest percentage of its citizens incarcerated of any nation on earth. There is a message there.

● "In selecting a nominee, I've sought to find an American of grace, judgment and unwavering devotion to the Constitution and laws of our country. Harriet Miers is just such a person," [the President] said. "I've known Harriet for more than a decade. I know her heart. I know her character."

● Contracts to an Alaskan company with no experience but Republican connections, to install trailers in Louisiana at twice the going rate.

As I said, you could suggest that we are batting 1,000 on the fascism scale. It would be easy to throw up our hands, declare “all is lost,” and crawl under the nearest rock, awaiting the arrival of the National Security Service to take us away to prison camps.

I entitled this sermon, “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil . . .” from the quotation attributed to Edmund Burke, “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.” The problem is that no one who uses this quotation from Burke ever indicates where or when Burke said it, probably because he never did. But he should have. The silence of good people may not be all that is required, but it certainly helps the triumph of evil.

If we accept that fascism will triumph, it probably will. It might triumph even if we oppose it, but if we do not, its victory is certain. It is a self-fulfilling prophecy.

For us to oppose it, it is essential that we understand what we are up against. It is not “compassionate conservatism,” it is a revolutionary change in the American system which seeks to install a particular interpretation of the Jewish and Christian scriptures in place of the Constitution of the United States.

As I look back on the conflicts and clamor of our boisterous past, one lesson about democracy stands above all others: Bullies-political bullies, economic bullies and religious bullies-cannot be appeased; they have to be opposed with a stubbornness to match their own. This is never easy; these guys don’t fight fair; “Robert’’s Rules of Order” is not one of their holy texts. But freedom on any front-and especially freedom of conscience-never comes to those who rock and wait, hoping someone else will do the heavy lifting.

Christian realism requires us to see the world as it is, without illusions, and then take it on. Christian realism also requires love. But not a sentimental, dreamy love. Reinhold Niebuhr, who taught at Union Theological Seminary and wrestled constantly with applying Christian ethics to political life, put it this way: “When we talk about love we have to become mature or we will become sentimental. Basically love means …… being responsible, responsibility to our family, toward our civilization, and now by the pressures of history, toward the universe of humankind.”

One of the quirky places my research led me was to a small newspaper in Wiscasset ,Maine which runs columns by Christopher Cooper, an articulate local resident. On September 15^th, he wrote a column attacking the President, and particularly Barbara Bush for her comments in Houston.

It was widely circulated and Cooper received a lot of feedback, some of which was not surprisingly hostile. He later reported that when he and his wife went out for dinner:

Our hostess said she felt the need to do something beyond complaining, do something more effective than crying. I said I didn’t send money to anybody, I didn’t march or petition. My wife stood on a bridge and witnessed against the war and I commend her for it, but that’s not my style and I doubt any passing motorist changed his mind for her effort. I said I thought the best thing anybody could do was to take what opportunities each life, each day, each human interaction offered to speak a decent, humane, informed truth. Talk to your postmaster, your neighbor, your family. Don’t let the universal default sentiment of "Support The Troops" stand in its surrogate role of "Support The President."

All we have is our voices and our bodies. Few of us will risk our lives for truth or decency, and not just because of fear or lack of strength, but because there is no opportunity for me here on a crumbling country road in Maine to attack Donald Rumsfeld with a fence post or to force Barbara Bush at the point of an electric prod to live for a week with one of the poor black families she thought were enjoying such a good deal in the shelter.

But we can risk our reputations. We can put our comfort on the line. We can say, loudly, in the October sunshine outside the store or post office, "President Bush is stupid, incompetent, uncaring. Condoleeza Rice is a liar. America is reviled the world over for evil done in our name, with our money, with our acquiescence." Our neighbors will object. Many will not listen, others will argue, still others may shun us.

One of the interesting recent books addressed the issue of “The Tipping Point.” Who can anticipate when one more person speaking out will be the one who will make the difference? The answer is, we never know ahead of time, nor do we always know after the fact. But it is our belief that each one makes a difference. Perhaps this sermon pushes you to speak out. Perhaps your speaking out affects two other people. All we know for certain is that if we do nothing, we will not have helped, we will not have lived up to our responsibilities as citizens in a democracy, and if we lose it, it may be our fault.