Short Take: If Kafka Wrote Satire

In a column about some entertainer holding no interest for me, the New York Times’ Michelle Goldberg begins with a curious reference.

In a sketch on the German comedy show “Browser Ballett,” a man in a Nazi uniform, replete with jackboots and a red swastika armband, is marching down a street in 1933 when another man hisses, “Nazi.” The Nazi, aghast at the insult, confronts him.

“When you’re running out of arguments it’s easy to play the Nazi card,” says the Nazi. He continues, “Just because someone doesn’t share the mainstream opinion he isn’t automatically a Nazi.” Flustered, the other man replies: “But being a Nazi is already mainstream. You National Socialists already have the power.” To which the Nazi, with a condescending grin, says: “Oh, I forgot. In your world everyone is a Nazi.”

From this anecdote, Goldberg draw a conclusion.

It’s a perfect satire of how the modern right operates. The right-winger starts with a bigoted provocation and, when criticized, defaults to aggrieved claims of persecution and accusations of oversensitivity. He revels in the power he’s amassed even as he poses as a victim.

And, of course, based on that satire, Goldberg is absolutely right. The problem is the same satire could be performed in the exact opposite way and be similarly correct. Replace the Nazi (I blame Godwin for this) with a person wearing an ordinary business suit who says that hard work is a virtue. Replace the man in the doorway with a person in a Che t-shirt, tats and purple hair who mutters “racist” as he walks by. See how that works?

The view from one end of the spectrum toward the other dictates which “lens” is more real to you. Goldberg isn’t wrong about what she decries. It’s just that her view is from the left looking right, and from that perspective. She uses this gimmick to condemn a celebrity of questionable mental health for his flagrantly anti-Semitic statements.

Like Goldberg, as has been the case since Tom Lehrer sang about National Brotherhood Week, I share her concern the Jews have been a convenient whipping boy for pretty much every radical excuse for Jewish hatred. At the same time, I refuse to be blinded by self-interest to the fact that this isn’t a problem with only the right or only Jews. This has become the ordinary rhetoric of the unduly passionate, whether right or left, and wins plaudits from each tribes sycophants, as if that makes anyone who isn’t part of their tribe want to change their mind and sign up.

When or whether the angry activists of either side will recognize their reliance on self-serving anecdotes to justify their illiberalism and intolerance, I don’t know. But for those of us caught in the crossfire of warring fascists, if we don’t reject this lie, recognize it as the  self-serving bullshit it is, and do what we can to stop its spread among the unduly passionate, things will only get worse. We might not have the ability to make it better, but we can stop it from getting worse, even if we’re the target of invective from both right and left for failing to bow to their orthodoxy.