We recently read in The Washington Post that men in Afghanistan are regretting that they did not stand up sooner for the rights of their wives and daughters, now that the Taliban is imposing severe standards of dress and conduct on them.
Duh.
That’s the oldest regret there is when it comes to oppression:
“First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out — because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out —because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out — because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me — and there was no one left to speak for me.”
— Martin Niemöller, Lutheran Pastor
Niemöller was initially a Nazi supporter … until the Nazis began to target the Lutheran Church. Once they come for you, it is too late. Start worrying when they come for your neighbor.
But here’s the trick. You can’t just leave it to the “opposition” to speak up. Of course they are going to speak up. And they will get tuned out.
It’s the loyal supporters who need to speak up early. Theirs is the voice that makes a difference and, as I explain in my new book “To Stop a Tyrant,” they can apply the “brakes” to toxic behavior. Here’s the interesting news: They can do this while still supporting the leader if he or she accepts the boundaries of communal decency.
Take Anna Kilgore. It was she who filed a police report blaming Haitian immigrants when her cat went missing. Whoops.
Miss Sassy was found several days later in Kilgore’s own basement. But the Republican presidential and vice presidential candidates were already using the story to whip up anti-immigrant fever.
What to do? Kilgore is a Trump supporter. Because her cat story is already uber-public, this could make the candidate she is supporting look bad. Despite this, what does she do? Anna Kilgore sends an apology to her Haitian neighbors.
In Yiddish there is an expression for that: being a mensch. A mensch, while literally meaning “a man,” colloquially means an ethical person who does the right thing.
We need “menschkeit” (the quality of being a mensch) in every walk of life, on both sides of the political aisle. Ideally, this comes from our political leaders. But let’s not depend on them. We, the political followers, have the power to do what is right and — let’s go out on a limb here — the moral obligation to do so.
A colleague of mine is famous for asking, “How many people did Adolf Hitler kill?” Her answer: none.
There is no evidence of Hitler ever having pulled the trigger on a single person other than himself at the very end. Who did kill the millions of prisoners in extermination camps? His followers who did not stop his frothing hate speech early enough to avoid their own horrible complicity, while they still could.
