Genocide Prevention in the West and Progressophobia

In an article titled, “Teaching about Perpetrators and the Hidden Curriculum,” I responded to Kofi A. Annan’s call to action for better Holocaust education in our schools (Here). I wanted to return to the idea of genocide prevention because I felt that perhaps the subject was left ambiguous. Of course, genocide prevention is a worthy goal, but we need to be careful about over burdening the curriculum with too many learning objectives. One of the things that I have heard parents crow about for years is, “What is the point of learning (X).” and “Why don’t schools teach more about (Y).” On some level, I can empathize. Maybe we should focus more on teaching young people about credit scores and balancing one’s checkbook, but empathy has limits. Usually, these people don’t even realize that the curriculum is written by elected officials whom they voted for. There are all kinds of meetings and opportunities to express these views and generally speaking, no one really cares. They just like to complain about things and use the excuse that they are too busy to be involved. Kofi Annan’s article, “The Myth of Never Again” got me thinking; “how could we effectively promote genocide prevention?” My response was that education and morality are separate things. I still hold that view, but that doesn’t satisfy the problem of genocide prevention.

A part of me thinks that we are unsuccessful because we handle emotionally charged issues like the Holocaust with kid gloves. I am conflicted because, on one hand, I agree that we should not intentionally hurt anyone’s feelings, but at the same time … I stand with Emmanual Kant when he said, “If the truth kills them, let them die.” I have been thinking about the issue of genocide prevention for some time. I still do not have a conclusive answer. I started thinking: where are the genocides located? A list generated in my head:

• The Holocaust (The Nazis/Europe)
• The Holodomor (The Soviets/Europe)
• The Armenian genocide (The Turks/Europe)
• The Khmer Rouge (Cambodia/ South East Asia)
• The Nanjing Massacre (Japanese/China)
• Rwanda (Hutus/Africa)

The only one of these in a Western country or countries, was the Holocaust. One could argue that the Native Americans faced genocide by the U.S. government, but most of their casualties came from disease and long before the United States was even a county. The United States’ treatment of the Native Americans was horrendous, but compared to our European ancestors, it was more standard than anyone would like to admit. What does that mean for Holocaust and Genocide education in the United States? How does this address Annan’s issue that our educators are ineffective? I can’t help but shake the feeling that there is something wrong with the premise of his question. After thinking about it, I came to question Annan’s assertion that our educators are failing in the first place! I do not see any genocides here, but they are happening right now! We know that the Chinese government is engaging in at least one if not two genocides: The Uyghur Muslims and the Falun Gong. How can people like Annan rate my abilities as an educator and make the claim that we are ineffective when all the violent crime statistics have been on the decline for decades, inclusion is at an all-time high in our culture, there are no genocides on the North American continent, and as I responded, education and morality are separate things. Again, the issue of how we “should” teach about genocide prevention remains.

The prescription for this issue seems to be to enforce more authoritarian measures, filled with objectives, metrics, quotas, and a strong focus on differing identities. One cannot escape the identity politics that are going on in the political world today. “The personal is political,” was a phrase first coined by feminists and then stolen by Communists in the early 20^th century. That is happening right now. People are judged politically on what they eat, what they drive, and everything else that one can imagine. Education is no different. One school of thought is that we need to be more authoritarian in our response. The laissez-faire approach is not fast enough! We need progress now! What these people don’t understand is that progress is like a pendulum or a rubber band. When one side pulls hard in a direction, the pendulum swings back the other way, just as hard. The people hoping to skew the Overton window might not realize that when society is pulled too hard, it is like a rubber band; it snaps. We have all seen what happens when a culture “snaps,” like in the Soviet Union, Nazi Europe, the fall of the Ottoman Empire, the racially divided Rwandans, the Communists of South East Asia, and the racially motivated Pan-Asianist expansion of the Japanese Empire… But aren’t those the same places that I mentioned earlier where genocides were committed?! Authoritarianism and identity politicking beget genocides. If that is the case, then the prescription that both Progressives and Conservatives may be hoping for, is the same poison that will serve as a self-fulfilling prophecy. 

Here is my answer to “How can we teach Genocide prevention more effectively?” I say, “Teach the facts!” If we teach the objective facts, the problem will take care of itself. I believe that is what has happened. We know that interventionalist campaigns do not work. The D.A.R.E program led to an uptick in drug usage among teens, suicide prevention initiatives lead to higher suicide rates wherever and whenever they are implemented, and no one can dispute that education does absolutely nothing to prevent violent crimes. A thief, a murderer, and a rapist, all know what they are doing is wrong. As a liberal and an educator, I want to blame it on education, because then there is an easy answer. Just teach better!! I just don’t think these issues are related and imposing authoritarian measures in the pursuit of faster progress is a recipe for regression.

The alternative to the interventionalist/authoritarian view is that we are doing a respectable job of teaching genocide prevention. We could do a better job, especially if our educators were more specialized in the field, but advances are being made in that direction already. The lessons from history about discrimination and atrocity are sinking in. There is a litany of statistics that support this view, but people insist that we are failing. I suspect that people are misinformed by a news media that is more focused on sensationalism than distributing the facts. That is the only explanation that I have for how people can be so ill-informed. They honestly believe that it is more dangerous for children today than it was in the 90s when child abductions happened over twice as often, or in the 70s when unsupervised children played with glass Click-Clacks (Clackers) and sharp metal Lawn Darts. It could be the case that people would succumb to the nihilists’ expectations, but everyone is just pacified on their cell phones, and they are too busy to hate each other enough to act. I don’t like that answer and I suspect that it is what Steven Pinker calls, “Progressophobia,” in his book, Enlightenment Now. Bill Maher echoes this idea on his show “Real Time with Bill Maher (Progressophobia). Maher explains, “That’s the phrase coined by Steven Pinker to describe a brain disorder that strikes liberals and makes them incapable of recognizing progress.” I have read Pinker’s book and it would be better explained as the fear that if we recognize progress, we will for some reason, feel that we have done enough and stop progressing. I think that might explain how many feel about genocide prevention. We have made progress, but we choose not to see it because if we acknowledge our victories, we fear that they will stop or revert backward.

Unfortunately, I am still not satisfied with that answer. I was looking for something more constructive. I found it in our reading about the Viner Trupe in Lithuania. We do a poor job of conveying how the Jews resisted the Nazis, what resilience means, and the very real destruction that they faced. As a student in high school I remember, ignorantly thinking, “Why didn’t the Jews just shoot the Nazis when they came for the roundups?” I have heard that sentiment echoed on all levels of education. “Why didn’t they …” Frankly, people cannot believe the state that the Jews were in and they have no context for it. Perhaps if we taught more about totalitarianism, people would understand the struggle that the Jews faced with the Nazis. As an experiment, every semester, I ask my students if they know anything about the Holodomor. They never do. All they know about Communism is that there was a revolution in Russia in 1917, a German philosopher wrote a manifesto, the Cuban missile crisis, the space race, and a wall fell in the late 80s. All these things are true, but what about the real history of authoritarianism? I have had high school and college level students say things like “Communism is a great idea. We should be like that, then everyone would be equal.” In this regard, I agree with Annan, there is a failure in our education system.

I believe that we should use an interdisciplinary approach. We can use the Holocaust as a springboard to teach about the nature of genocide. Such courses would deliver the genocide prevention that people are looking for. Maybe we forgot what Benjamin Franklin said when asked about our new government, “A Republic if you can keep it.” If we fail to teach these lessons, as Thomas Jefferson warned, “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.” That kind of thinking came from the Enlightenment. The answer to the approaching authoritarianism can be found in the lessons learned from the Enlightenment: the individual is sovereign, diversity is our strength, and what Supreme Court Justice, Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. said, “Your right to swing your arms ends just where the other man’s nose begins.” These are basic ideas, but if we want to prevent genocide, we should focus more on teaching about authoritarianism, racism, and identity-driven politics, without, “progressophobia.”

Bibliography

Annan, Kofi A. “The Myth of ‘Never Again.’” The New York Times, June 17, 2010. https://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/18/opinion/18iht-edannan.html.

Maher, Bill. “New Rule: Progressophobia | Real Time with Bill Maher (HBO).” YouTube, June 11, 2021. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fB9KVYAdYwg&t=1s&ab_channel=RealTimewithBillMaher.

Pinker, Steven. Enlightenment now: The case for reason, science, humanism and progress. London: Penguin Books, 2019.

Walsh, Andrew. “Teaching about Perpetrators and the Hidden Curriculum.” AndrewSWalsh.com, June 16, 2023. https://andrewswalsh.com/teaching-about-perpetrators-and-the-hidden-curriculum/.