Kanye West famously said “I like Hitler”. He also said more:
“I see good things about Hitler also. I love everyone. Jewish people are not going to tell me you can love us, and you can love what we’re doing to you with the contracts, and you can love what we’re pushing with the pornography. But this guy that invented highways, invented the very microphone that I use as a musician, you can’t say out loud that this person ever did anything good, and I’m done with that.
This is, of course, insane. But there is a method to the madness, a signal in the noise. It is this: the implications of never forgiving Hitler are nasty.
Hitler did evil of a particularly noxious sort. It’s not just that he aroused the passions of the hearts of millions to serve his purposes, it’s also how he bent science and reason into doing so much harm. It’s like if someone got it into their head to fully manifest the meaning of the word infernal, an ultimate perversion of ordinarily good things.
We do, however, have to let him go. Because to not do so would be to grant validity to the idea of anger, resentment, outrage, even hatred, because Hitler would always remain a valid target for these sentiments. And to believe these sentiments are good and beautiful is just poison.
We don’t, of course, consciously think that of these sorts of emotions. But unconsciously, we do think outrage can be good and proper, else we would just have collectively tut-tutted or smirked at Kanye. Few would attempt to mount a defense of hatred and outrage, so what is the point of allowing them to exist in your soul? Can you really look inside you and call your outrage beautiful, regardless of its cause? What is the point of carrying around ugly things in your head?
To forgive Hitler is not a fundamentally novel idea, but it hasn’t sank into the consensus yet. Even so, Eva Kor, an Auschwitz survivor, did it. And in a sense, so did World War II veteran Kurt Vonnegut in The Sirens of Titan: a segment of the novel features Martians who are hypnotized into invading Earth. Their invasion is pathetic and swiftly crushed, so pathetic that the Earthlings are ashamed of what they did and the memory of the Martians becomes part of a new religion. That is a way forward for forgiving Hitler and the Nazis: not to see them as evil, but as sick and deluded. Because the sick are a target of pity, not of outrage.
Ah, but I say these words, and even as I say this, I sense a smirk in me at what I myself am saying. It is just a smirk: I cannot question it, I cannot reason with it, I can only amplify it and see what it has to say. And here it is:
Oh silly, don’t you see? We must have hatred, we must have outrage, or else, where would we be?
And once said, it dissolves. Everything arises and passes away if you will let it. Did you smirk too at what I have said? What did your smirk have to say?
And can you tell me that it was a good thing?
I have a lot of sympathy for the view that when you peel away all the outer layers of defence mechanisms and reactivity, what remains under the surface is love - so that rather than *trying* to love and forgive per se, the business of life is removing whatever isn't love until all that remains is love. The more you rest in confidence and peace, the more you forgive others' evil actions by default for the simple reason that they can't hurt you any more. On that level there is no "us" and "them", just one being who can't possibly not love itself, because it is love.
Sounds very nice and mystical, but is it achievable in practice? 1 or 2 people seem to have gotten there alright. I'm nowhere near it, but it's my guiding ideal.