Chronicles of cruelty: No barbarism without poetry

When the basic pact that holds society together is crumbling, which appears to be happening worldwide, wild rumors and conspiracy theories proliferate. Even, or especially, when the message is obviously nonsensical, it can evoke deep-seated fears and prejudices.

A perfect example of this, which I have noted previously, occurred in late August 2023, when a priest known as “Father Anthony” ceremoniously doused holy water on a 26-foot-tall statue of Stalin in Russia’s Pskov region. Though the Church had suffered during the Stalin era, he explained, “thanks to this we have lots of new Russian martyrs and confessors to whom we now pray and are helping us in our Motherland’s resurgence.” This logic is just a step away from claiming that Jews should thank Hitler for creating the conditions that allowed for the State of Israel. If that sounds hyperbolic, or like a bad joke, consider that some Zionist extremists close to the Israeli government openly advocate exactly this position.

To understand the success of such perverted argumentation, we should first note that, in developed countries, unrest and revolts tend to explode when poverty has ebbed. The protests of the 1960s – from the soixante-huitards in France to the hippies and Yippies in the United States – unfolded during the golden age of the welfare state. When people are living well, they come to desire even more.

One must also account for the surplus enjoyment that social and moral perversion can bring. Consider the Islamic State’s recent attack on Crocus City Hall in Moscow, in which 144 people were killed. What some call a terrorist attack others call an act of armed resistance in response to the massive destruction wrought by the Russian military in Syria. But whatever the case, something notable happened after the attack: Russian security forces not only admitted to torturing the suspects whom they had arrested; they publicly displayed it.

“In a graphic video posted on Telegram,” writes Julia Davis of the Center for European Policy Analysis, “one of the detained had his ear cut off and was then forced to eat it by one of his interrogators.” No wonder some Israeli hardliners look to Russia as a model for dealing with arrested Hamas members.

Russian officials did it not just to deter potential future attackers, but also to give pleasure to fellow members of the tribe. “I never expected this from myself,” writes Margarita Simonyan, a Russian propagandist who heads the state-owned media outlet RT, “but when I see how they are brought into the court crooked, and even this ear, I feel extremely satisfied.” Nor is this phenomenon confined to Russia. In Tennessee, some lawmakers want to restore public hangings (from trees, no less) for those who receive the death penalty.

Where do such acts end? Why not just bring back the pre-modern practice of publicly torturing alleged criminals to death? More to the point, how can “normal” people be brought to the point where they would enjoy such sadistic spectacles?

The short answer is that it requires the unique power of some kind of mythic discourse, religion, or poetry. As the reluctant Nazi fellow-traveller Ernst Junger explained, “Any power struggle is preceded by a verification of images and iconoclasm. This is why we need poets – they initiate the overthrow, even that of titans.”

One finds poetry playing an important role in Israel. On March 26, Haaretz ran a story explaining “how Israel’s army uses revenge poetry to boost morale.” An anthology published by the Israel Defense Forces includes poems that “express a desire for vengeance and paint the combat in Gaza as a religious war.” In an October 13 announcement soliciting submissions, the IDF invited potential contributors “to embark on a poetic journey and reignite the great Israeli spirit,” so as to “raise the spirit in wartime.”

Apparently, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s references to Amalek (the Jews’ biblical enemy in the Torah) after October 7 were not enough. They needed to be supplemented by modern verse. Or perhaps Netanyahu’s biblical reference conveyed more than he wanted to say. After all, according to the Old Testament, when the wandering Jews reached the hills above the valley in Judea where the Amalekites lived, Jehovah appeared and ordered Joshua to kill them all, including their children and animals. If that is not “ethnic cleansing,” the term has no meaning at all.

It is worth remembering that Germany was known as the land of Dichter und Denker (poets and thinkers), before its turn toward Richter und Henker (judges and executioners). But what if the two versions are more similar than they appear? If our world is gradually becoming a world of poets and executioners, we will need more judges and thinkers to counter the new tendency and regain our moral footing.

Slavoj Zizek, Professor of Philosophy at the European Graduate School, is International Director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities at the University of London