The recent horrific events that took place in Charlottesville last week brought to mind some questions I have wondered about before, regarding ideological reform. I’ve thought of this when I look at how differently I view race and social justice from my parents, and many Singaporeans in their generation. Theirs is a nonchalant apathy; a pragmatic outlook to resource distribution that, whilst unaggressive, normalises the marginalisation of many groups in our society. People have called me idealistic when I went back to school three years ago, with the aim of understanding how to reform mindsets. “Impossible. You can’t change a culture just like that, in one generation.” That’s partly true, things change only when there’s a need for something.
But when there is an overwhelming need, things do change. Let’s look at a society where it happened: Germany. I’ve always been amazed by how German society went from the emblem of democracy under the Weimar Republic, to totalitarian racist under Hitler, and now a place with one of the most open and fair immigration policies. Anti-semitism was denormalized just ten years after the war ended. Each of these changes was preceded by an impetus– first, economic strife that enabled people to start looking for a scapegoat or turn a blind eye. And then losing the war and having to answer to the world with the promise to develop moral responsibility for the mess it created.
But what is the actual experience of having to switch your ideology? Even if one wasn’t totally sold by the Jewish problem and didn’t hail total allegiance to Hitler, they still had to adjust to new norms that forbade spouting anything racist, and which imposed a whole new connotation to their political lexicon. And how does one learn to feel guilty for doing something they felt was justified? All this, while having lost loved ones at war, and having recent enemies living in your neighbourhood. Perhaps they are linked.
Could switching world views be a way to deal with shock and grief– maybe a new narrative to start over? How about when they teach the next generation? It must be hard for parents to assert authority while admitting to very young kids that they did shameful things.
I’m interested in learning about this mindshift and about all the emotions that involved.
So I decided to interview some German people– friends, friends or family of friends. This will be an ongoing series to understand these experiences. It will form a multidimensional picture of the psychological journey of personal reconciliation, the re-wiring of morals, and dealing with your children growing up with starkly different world views (and having to accept that as the correct ones). I hope to also learn about denazification policies and the psychological propaganda campaign under the backdrop of the Cold War. I learnt in the Topography of Terror museum in Berlin that the intensifying geopolitical tension meant that allegiance to the Western Bloc was prioritized over prosecuting war crimes– many war criminals were pardoned. Did people grow up trying to put out of their mind the knowledge that anyone they pass on the street could have been a murderer and got away with it? Or did this fact remain hidden till it was far enough behind in history to be that relevant in our daily lives? All these questions point to an amazing feat of social engineering.
If you grew up in Germany and have stories to share or if you know people who have gone through the war that would talk to me, please reach out to me!
I will keep adding new interviews into this post. You can scroll down to read them, or click on the links to get to specific ones.
18-8-17 Interview #1: CHRISTINE Kruizenga, 57