Baldwin×Orwell

full transcript

1. 00:00
   Verashare moment

   You're with Reborn Radio. Coming up: James Baldwin sits down with George Orwell for TITANS. The subject — How a Republican state lawmaker tried to let Holocaust deniers hijack history lessons.
2. 00:13
   James Baldwinshare moment

   We've just received word from New Hampshire. A Republican state legislator has been working with a German Holocaust denier to influence how the Holocaust is taught in schools. There was a bottle of baby oil involved, which apparently raises questions I don't want answered.
3. 00:27
   George Orwellshare moment

   Baby oil?
4. 00:28
   James Baldwinshare moment

   That's what the report says. The lawmaker was trying to let these people—people who deny the murder of six million Jews—hijack history lessons. In American schools.
5. 00:39
   George Orwellshare moment

   Well. The thing about denying the Holocaust is that it requires you to believe that thousands of witnesses are lying, that mountains of documents are forged, that the Nazis themselves—who were rather proud of their work—were all mistaken about what they'd done. It requires, in other words, a conspiracy so vast and so perfect that it makes belief in Santa Claus look reasonable.
6. 01:07
   James Baldwinshare moment

   And yet here we are.
7. 01:08
   George Orwellshare moment

   Here we are. A man with legislative power trying to insert this into the curriculum. Which means he either believes it or finds it useful to pretend he does. I'm not sure which is worse.
8. 01:24
   James Baldwinshare moment

   I know which is worse. It's worse when they believe it, because then you're dealing with a mind that has made peace with unreality. When they're cynical, at least there's still a mind in there somewhere. When they believe it, the mind is gone.
9. 01:37
   George Orwellshare moment

   You're more generous than I am. The cynic who spreads lies for power is doing more immediate damage than the fool who believes them. The fool might be converted. The cynic has already chosen.
10. 01:51
    James Baldwinshare moment

    James Baldwin: Maybe. But I've watched this country for sixty-three years, and I can tell you that the lies white Americans tell themselves about their history are not random. They serve a purpose. If you can deny the Holocaust, you can deny anything. Slavery. Lynching. What's happening right now.
11. 02:09
    George Orwellshare moment

    Quite right. The point of denying the Holocaust isn't really about the Holocaust at all, is it? It's about establishing that objective truth doesn't exist. Once you've managed that, you can say anything. Two plus two equals five, war is peace, the camps never existed.
12. 02:31
    James Baldwinshare moment

    And once you can say anything, the powerful can do anything.
13. 02:34
    George Orwellshare moment

    Yes. That's the game. In my time, we called it totalitarianism. You seem to have rebranded it.
14. 02:41
    James Baldwinshare moment

    We call it a lot of things. But it's the same sickness. This legislator in New Hampshire—what do you imagine he tells himself? Does he think he's protecting free speech? Does he think he's standing up to some imaginary elite?
15. 02:54
    George Orwellshare moment

    Oh, certainly. That's always the line, isn't it? We're just asking questions. We're just encouraging debate. As if there's something to debate about whether the death camps existed. As if the proper response to 'Did the Holocaust happen?' is anything other than 'Yes, you bloody fool, and here are the photographs.'
16. 03:15
    James Baldwinshare moment

    But the photographs don't matter to him. The testimony doesn't matter. The survivors don't matter. What matters is that there's a narrative he wants to protect, and the Holocaust is inconvenient to it.
17. 03:28
    George Orwellshare moment

    What narrative would that be?
18. 03:30
    James Baldwinshare moment

    The one where white Christian civilization is always innocent. Always the victim. Never the perpetrator. If you admit that white Europeans built factories of death, that they turned murder into an industrial process, that they did this within living memory—well. Then you have to ask what else they might be capable of. What else they might have done.
19. 03:51
    George Orwellshare moment

    And that question leads to uncomfortable places.
20. 03:55
    James Baldwinshare moment

    It leads to America. It leads to the question of how this country was built and who built it and who paid the price. It leads to the question of whether the people running New Hampshire right now have anything to be proud of.
21. 04:07
    George Orwellshare moment

    So the Holocaust denial is actually about American history.
22. 04:10
    James Baldwinshare moment

    Everything is about American history when you're American. These people know that if you can teach children to doubt the Holocaust, you can teach them to doubt anything. You can teach them that slavery wasn't so bad. That Jim Crow was necessary. That the police are always right. The Holocaust is just the test case.
23. 04:28
    George Orwellshare moment

    It's a test case because it's the one atrocity that even Americans admit was wrong. If you can crack that, everything else falls.
24. 04:38
    James Baldwinshare moment

    Exactly.
25. 04:39
    George Orwellshare moment

    Which brings us to the question of what's to be done. Because I assume this legislator will say he's been misunderstood, that he was only trying to ensure balance, that he respects all viewpoints. They always do.
26. 04:54
    James Baldwinshare moment

    Of course he will. And the people who should be outraged will say we need to have a conversation. We need to understand his concerns. We need to reach across the aisle. Meanwhile, he's working with Nazis.
27. 05:05
    George Orwellshare moment

    Literal Nazis, if this German fellow is who I think he is.
28. 05:09
    James Baldwinshare moment

    Literal Nazis. And we'll be told that calling them Nazis is unhelpful. That it's inflammatory. That we need to be civil.
29. 05:16
    George Orwellshare moment

    Civility is a weapon the powerful use against the weak. When someone is trying to teach children that the Holocaust didn't happen, the civil thing to do is call him a liar and remove him from office.
30. 05:29
    James Baldwinshare moment

    But that won't happen. Or it might, if enough noise is made. But next year there will be another one. Another state, another legislator, another bottle of baby oil or whatever strange detail makes the story briefly viral. And we'll go through this again.
31. 05:45
    George Orwellshare moment

    You're saying we've already lost.
32. 05:47
    James Baldwinshare moment

    I'm saying we've been losing for a very long time. This isn't new. The willingness to lie about history, to protect power, to sacrifice truth for comfort—that's as old as power itself. What's new is that they're not even pretending anymore.
33. 06:02
    George Orwellshare moment

    Yes. That is new. In my day, they still felt the need to pretend. They'd lie, but they'd be embarrassed if you caught them. Now they simply don't care.
34. 06:12
    James Baldwinshare moment

    Because they've realized that their people don't care. The voters who put this man in office will hear this story, and most of them won't be bothered. Some will think it's a hit job. Some will think the Holocaust is exaggerated. Some will just shrug.
35. 06:27
    George Orwellshare moment

    And the ones who are bothered?
36. 06:29
    James Baldwinshare moment

    The ones who are bothered have been bothered for years. We've been watching this happen in slow motion. Every time you think you've hit bottom, someone brings a shovel. This is just today's shovel.
37. 06:40
    George Orwellshare moment

    That's a grim place to leave it.
38. 06:42
    James Baldwinshare moment

    I didn't make it grim. The state legislator working with Holocaust deniers made it grim. I'm just naming what I see. That's all I've ever done.
39. 06:51
    George Orwellshare moment

    Fair enough. Name one more thing, then.
40. 06:53
    James Baldwinshare moment

    What?
41. 06:54
    George Orwellshare moment

    Name what happens if we stop paying attention. If we let this become normal.
42. 06:59
    James Baldwinshare moment

    Then we'll deserve what we get. And our children won't forgive us.