1) Why the the public ever allow the Nazis or Communists or whoever else to come into power?
2) Why would anyone want to follow such destructive ideas anyway?
And most importantly,
3) Could people like that ever return?
The usual answer back to the first two questions usually referred either to the idea that some people are just evil but most people are good, or that evil men like Stalin, Mao and Hitler and their followers were actually insane and got into power by chance. So the solution was to make sure that only "good" people held on to power.
Since that time, however, I learned about a different reason. It began when I had gotten married, and met my grandmother-in-law for the first time. She is from Inner Mongolia, a province in China, and had the misfortune of growing up during Mao's cultural revolution. She had the double misfortune of being from a well-to-do family, and at a young age seeing her mother dragged away in chains and all of her property seized.
This time, I was not in history class, and for once talking to a real person.
I asked her what people at the time thought of all these events, and why the Red Guard did what they did. The answer absolutely shocked me: "Everyone was cheering. They paraded my mother and all the other rich people down the street while their former employees threw rotten vegetables at them." In other words, the Cultural Revolution, at least in Hohhot, wasn't this chance evil that good people kept a distance from, it was a popular celebration! Concerning the reason why, in the backdrop of the ravages of a war with the Japanese and a civil war, Chairman Mao didn't point to these obvious sources of impoverishment, but instead decided to consolidate power by blaming his opponents and rich people. "It's the rich vs. the rest of us," just like today's popular 99% vs. 1% chants.
The result of this policy, for those unaware, was that the public lived off the seized riches for a year or so, then the wealth ran out and led to widespread famine. A generation later my father-in-law would march in Tiananmen Square and my mother-in-law, staying home since she was with child, had to wait anxiously for his return since the tanks had set up a position in a park across the street, and proceeded to shell the protesters.
This experience led me to a few years of study and introspection, trying to reconcile what I learned in school vs. what I learned in reality. And recently, I began to see the answer to that question:
Ideas Have Consequences
This blog will focus on ideas that we see today, where they have been adopted before, what the consequences are, and alternative directions we could go. For now though, with the understanding that ideas have consequences, I will answer the three questions at the beginning in light of this.
Evil ideas often appear as smart solutions to a problem, but in reality open the door to unintended consequences, which do not manifest themselves until it is too late. The most toxic of all ideas, which I call "I'm right!" can lead people to internally hold evil thoughts until there is an opportunity to act them out.
2) Why would anyone want to follow such destructive ideas anyway?
People do the most evil when they think they are doing the most good. Coming from my Cultural Revolution example, the Red Guard and even many common Chinese thought that the evil they were committing was in fact a triumph of justice. However, the full reality of that evil took years to set in.
3) Could people like that ever return?
Bad ideas still exist, and most likely will exist for as long as their are people to accept them. Any form of good, including the freedoms we here in the West enjoy, requires constant vigilance.
It's going to be a wild ride in the landscape of ideas, but if that's your thing, join me on this adventure! While this particular post is focused on the grave consequences of bad ideas, there will also be plenty of time given to good ones, and how to defend them.
