Dialogue with Evil

Anyone who doubts that Nazi ideology is alive and well needs to read the chilling interview with Horst Mahler in Vanity Fair. The left-wing terrorist turned Nazi greets his interviewer – the (Jewish) television personality Michel Friedman – with the Hitler-Gruss and then goes on for 10 pages with his elaboration of the global Jewish conspiracy, which currently has Germany (and the US) in its grip.  I have to hand it to Friedman for seeing this interview through to to end and not just walking out. What disturbed me was that Mahler is obviously a highly intelligent man, but truly believes in the crazy stuff he says. Friedman does succeed in getting Mahler to talk about his father, who committed suicide out of despair over Hitler’s demise.  So that could provide a clue to Mahler’s psycho-biography.

Both Vanity Fair and Michel Friedman have been criticized for this interview.  Henryk Broder, the neo-conservative columnist at Der Spiegel, views Friedman as Mahler’s useful idiot who allows himself to be used to get maximum publicity for his sick ideology. Friedman, Broder asserts, is motivated by pure vanity:

Martin Luther King wäre nie auf die Idee gekommen, sich mit einem Ku-Klux-Klan-Häuptling zu einem Gespräch zu treffen, weder privat noch öffentlich. Denn er war klug und er hatte einen Begriff von Würde. Michel Friedman ist nur eitel und merkt nicht einmal, wie er benutzt wird. (Martin Luther King would never have agreed to meet  with a Ku-Klux-Klan leader for a conversation – either publicly or privately.  King was smart and had a sense of dignity. Michel Friedman is only vain and doesn’t even realize how he’s being used.)

Okay, I’ll concede that Michel Friedman is no Martin Luther King. On the other hand, I think Friedman (and Vanity Fair) show some degree of courage in conducting this interview and exposing views that are probably not that uncommon.  The only way to neutralize extremist ideology is to confront it head-on.  It is counterproductive to make it taboo and to sweep it under the table.  Here I agree with Harald Martenstein in his column in the Tagesspiegel:

In Germany there is no confrontation with right-wing extremism; instead people run away from it. If you really do it, if you confront right-wing extremism, you often get into difficulties in Germany. … This conceals an irrational fear of the apparent omnipotence of right-wing extremist line of argument. It seems that the mere voicing of Nazi slogans has the power to cast a spell over the masses. It also seems many of us fear ourselves, because those who really want to confront an idea must first let it into their head. All this works to the advantage of the Nazis, whose mythical greatness as a media taboo stands in weird contrast to their intellectual weakness.

The only thing I disagree with is that after the interview Friedman filed charges against Horst Mahler for using the Hitler-Gruss and for Holocaust denial – both of which are illegal in Germany.  As Martenstein points out, by making something taboo – or illegal – you are only lending it power and legitimacy it doesn’t deserve.