The Normalization of Cruelty

[00:00:00] Never Again

[00:00:02] Never Again

[00:00:04] Never Again

[00:00:06] Never Again

[00:00:08] Join Dr. Pius Camau and the Coalition Against Global Genocide, as we journey across the globe, taking a deep look at past, present and impending genocides and mass atrocities.

[00:00:20] Listen to experts who discuss not only the history but also the resiliency and mental health of people who are recovering from these heinous acts.

[00:00:28] Learn how we can move from bystander to active involvement, calling out genocidal acts where you are.

[00:00:36] The Normalization of Cruelty

[00:00:42] Good morning Barbara.

[00:00:44] Good morning Pius. Thank you for the opportunity to speak on this topic.

[00:00:48] Yeah, allow me to first of all introduce you to the listeners. So Barbara Coloroso is an educator, an international speaker.

[00:00:56] The main topics of her work so far has been mainly about bullying and bullies and what bullies can actually do and what becomes of bullies as they continue to do it.

[00:01:12] Yes, thank you. I need to go back a little bit further than my work in bullying. My work began in education and in parenting.

[00:01:24] I was looking at how do we as educators and parents raise young people to know how to think, not just what to think.

[00:01:34] To be willing to stand up for themselves and for others, to speak out and to step in.

[00:01:40] And what conditions need to exist in our homes, our schools and our communities, the climate that needs to exist for that to happen.

[00:01:50] And what do we as parents and educators need to do from the time children are very young?

[00:01:56] Then I went into writing about raising an ethical human being.

[00:02:02] And in looking at that, it came full force back to the difference between conflict, which is normal, natural and necessary.

[00:02:11] And helps young people learn how to handle nonviolently the many conflicts that come into play in their growing up.

[00:02:22] And yet we seem to have conflated conflict with bullying.

[00:02:28] And so I went in depth and wrote a book called The Bullie, The Bullie, The Not-So-Innocent Bystander.

[00:02:35] And William Burroughs said it so beautifully, there are no innocent bystanders.

[00:02:39] What were they doing there in the first place?

[00:02:42] And then I was working and on the board for the Stephen Lewis Foundation.

[00:02:47] And Stephen was an ambassador in Canada to the UN and then appointed to the UN ambassador for AIDS in Africa.

[00:02:56] And he had a board and invited me to be on it.

[00:03:00] And I said, what can I do?

[00:03:01] And I ended up in Rwanda after the genocide of the Tutsis, which is now 30 years.

[00:03:09] April is the celebration or the memorial for that.

[00:03:14] And so when I was in Rwanda working with orphans, I was invited to speak at the university in Butare.

[00:03:23] To speak on bullying.

[00:03:26] And I said, I'm happy to do that with young teachers.

[00:03:31] However, you must allow me to make the connection that is a short walk from hateful rhetoric to hate-fueled crimes to crimes against humanity.

[00:03:45] Genocide is not an unimaginable horror.

[00:03:48] It was thoroughly imagined, meticulously planned, horrifically carried out by people who othered others.

[00:03:55] And you have to understand in Butare during the genocide half the staff helped kill the other half.

[00:04:03] And half of the students were complicit in the death of their Tutsi classmates.

[00:04:10] So to go and speak at that university without bringing up the horrors, and what are the beginnings of that horror, I could not do that.

[00:04:20] And so within hours of leaving there, I got a- my minder, because you had minders in those days.

[00:04:27] My minder got a call from Kagami, the president of Rwanda, and said I wanted to meet with her.

[00:04:34] And so I got to meet with him and he was very curious, because he had brought in experts in conflict resolution to deal with the Genocide-Dares

[00:04:45] and those who had been targeted or lost their families in the genocide.

[00:04:51] And I said, no, it's not about a conflict. You don't sit two people down and say let's work this out.

[00:04:57] Conflict is to war as bullying is to genocide.

[00:05:04] Often genocides are masked with the war.

[00:05:09] The genocide of the Armenians, the genocide of the Jews, we think of World War I and we think of World War II

[00:05:19] and we don't put into perspective what Romeo de Ler, the quote-unquote peacekeeper from the UN,

[00:05:27] discovered that he's supposed to keep the peace, which means as a peacekeeper he remains neutral and partial

[00:05:34] and works for the consent of two parties.

[00:05:37] And he was reminded, and he even talks about hitting his head and said, oh my god, this is a genocide.

[00:05:46] There is no peace to keep.

[00:05:48] So let's do something. Let's go back to the beginning for just a minute.

[00:05:54] So here you are talking about education, you're talking about parenting children.

[00:06:00] What do you think the most important thing for the parents should be?

[00:06:05] I'm going to go.

[00:06:07] And I'll tell you my thinking.

[00:06:10] I mean, I would, for example, sort of think in terms of what's wrong and what's right.

[00:06:15] The differentiation of those two things I think is very, very, very important, I think.

[00:06:20] And what is ethical and not ethical.

[00:06:23] Yes.

[00:06:24] But you take it from there.

[00:06:25] Yes, I will because there are three virulent ages today ripping apart the fabric of our humanity,

[00:06:35] hating other human beings with utter contempt, hoarding me, mine, and more instead of us, ours, and enough

[00:06:42] and harming through lying and cheating and stealing.

[00:06:45] I'm going to take a little digression here.

[00:06:47] I'm a former Franciscan nun, obviously, former with a husband and three kids and three grandkids.

[00:06:53] But during that time, I studied the great theologian Martin Muber.

[00:06:57] And he talks about I am I and you are thou, and we have a common humanity.

[00:07:03] I'm unique and you are unique.

[00:07:05] And we bring to the table that uniqueness with all its gifts and liabilities.

[00:07:12] And the I thou equals community.

[00:07:17] I can't be in community without you.

[00:07:20] I can't separate you, make you other.

[00:07:23] And Archbishop Desmond Tutu said it so beautifully.

[00:07:26] He said we're interconnected, interrelated and interdependent.

[00:07:30] So if we look at those, the hating, hoarding and harming, what are the antidotes?

[00:07:36] And they're very simple.

[00:07:37] And I talked to parents of very young children.

[00:07:40] We have to teach them to care deeply.

[00:07:42] That doesn't mean you like somebody.

[00:07:44] I tell my own students, you don't have to like every kid in this classroom,

[00:07:48] but you must honor their humanity.

[00:07:50] So to care deeply about another human being, to share generously and to help willingly.

[00:07:58] If you are raising young people to do those three things,

[00:08:02] they are less likely to hold somebody in contempt, which is what bullying is about.

[00:08:09] Once I have contempt for you, I could do anything to you

[00:08:14] and not feel shame or compassion because you are less than me.

[00:08:19] So beginning to call others names, for example, a vermin or a cockroach,

[00:08:26] things like that should not be, should not be, should not be, should be curtailed.

[00:08:33] I mean, should not be encouraged at all.

[00:08:35] It needs to be stopped.

[00:08:36] It should be stopped.

[00:08:37] See conflict, you help young people learn to resolve nonviolent.

[00:08:41] Bullying needs to be stopped.

[00:08:44] And we need to say no more, not here, never.

[00:08:48] That was mean, that was cruel.

[00:08:49] And this, whether it's our home or school or community, is safe harbor for everyone

[00:08:55] because once I start to put you into the other category,

[00:09:01] then I can do anything to you.

[00:09:03] I can take a Matthew Shepard, beat him up, time to a fence post, leaving to die.

[00:09:07] And when the two young boys were arrested, they said, yeah, but he was gay.

[00:09:11] Take a James Byrd and Jasper Texum, drag him in the back of a pickup till he's dead.

[00:09:17] And when those three young men were arrested, they said, yeah, but he was black.

[00:09:21] And then I use the example of Renee Burke in British Columbia.

[00:09:28] One of her kids knew about her death before her parents or the police.

[00:09:32] 25 of her normal classmates cheered the three girls on as they broke her arms

[00:09:36] before they drowned her.

[00:09:38] And in court, those three girls were held.

[00:09:40] And those three girls, one of them said, well, I didn't like the sound of her voice.

[00:09:45] Another said she was brown and ugly and fat.

[00:09:48] I didn't like her.

[00:09:49] And another said that not so innocent bystander,

[00:09:52] I was only doing what those girls told me to do.

[00:09:55] All of them complicit in her death because they othered her.

[00:10:00] They said they were, she was less in every genocide.

[00:10:04] There are names given the Armenians were dogs.

[00:10:08] The Jews, Roman, Sinti were vermin and bacteria eating at the fabric of our society.

[00:10:13] Tutsis were cockroaches.

[00:10:16] Rohingya today are still called fleas.

[00:10:19] And now we have people in our own country talking about contaminating the blood.

[00:10:26] These are old, but it's new.

[00:10:29] And we have to take stock of what's happening today.

[00:10:33] And that's why I say it's a short walk to genocide.

[00:10:37] And there are days I feel like we're on a bullet train because we fail to recognize

[00:10:43] that conflict is not the same as bullying.

[00:10:47] You have to be taught to hate.

[00:10:49] There's a, this'll date me.

[00:10:51] You have to be carefully taught.

[00:10:53] There's a song in South Pacific.

[00:10:55] You have to be carefully taught to hate before you're six, seven or eight.

[00:10:58] To hate the people your relatives hate.

[00:11:01] It is a learned behavior.

[00:11:03] Kids don't come out of the womb believing that somebody is less than them.

[00:11:09] It's learned.

[00:11:11] So you just have said something very interesting there.

[00:11:15] That the these stages that we walk through from bullying to the next, to the next, to the next.

[00:11:23] Yes.

[00:11:24] Maybe you can talk about that a little bit.

[00:11:26] I talk about in my genocide book, Extraordinary Evil, about the stages of genocide.

[00:11:35] Yes.

[00:11:36] But I want to go back to how it relates to bullying,

[00:11:39] which I must say there are people who disagree with me that I would ever use the terms as if they were the same.

[00:11:48] I'm not saying they're the same.

[00:11:50] And I believe those who would say, but you can't conflate bullying with genocide is the failure to understand the

[00:11:59] horrors of being targeted by another human being.

[00:12:03] The pain of the injury when it's physical bullying, along with the pain of the insult, the humiliation and degradation other human beings feel

[00:12:13] when they're being physically harmed by people who see them as less than them.

[00:12:19] But I would also caution in that's why when you mention words, there's an addict.

[00:12:23] Sticks and stones may break my bones.

[00:12:25] Words will never hurt me.

[00:12:26] It's a lie.

[00:12:27] It's an absolute lie.

[00:12:29] And the researcher who wrote the book The Ethics of Memory researched with functional MRIs people who have been physically tortured.

[00:12:39] And he found out that in that physical torture there were two pains they experienced that showed up in different parts of the brain.

[00:12:47] The pain of the injury and the pain of the insult, which often isn't given enough attention.

[00:12:53] He decided to think about, well what about people who were quote unquote only verbally tormented or isolated the three forms of bullying, verbal, physical and social,

[00:13:07] shunning, rumor, gossip and exclusion.

[00:13:09] And what he found was that in verbal and social bullying there is no pain of the injury.

[00:13:17] They're not physically injured.

[00:13:19] The pain of the insult that their bodies and minds felt were greater often than the pain of the insult from the physical.

[00:13:31] The physical bullying, the pain of that injury often fades unless they're severely injured.

[00:13:37] The pain of the insult does not.

[00:13:41] So for us to say, oh he only called her a name, ignore it, avoid them.

[00:13:47] You ask a child to ignore being called vermin or being called a rat or being called a fag or being called a slut is that pain of the insult.

[00:14:02] And the more we allow that to happen, the more the person who has targeted changes.

[00:14:08] They begin when you say ignore.

[00:14:11] Lack of wrote the book Don't Think of the Elephant.

[00:14:13] Would you just think of an elephant?

[00:14:15] So we say ignore it.

[00:14:17] It eats at them.

[00:14:19] So now let's look at those scenes from the tragedy.

[00:14:24] The first one is where you dehumanize other human beings.

[00:14:30] And in that dehumanization what we want to be sure to recognize, and I'm looking for my notes on that so I get them exactly right,

[00:14:40] the dehumanization where you classify somebody and symbolize.

[00:14:46] Gregory Stanton now has expanded it to ten stages.

[00:14:52] And I talk about six scenes from a tragedy and interwoven in all of those.

[00:14:57] They're not stages, they're processes.

[00:15:00] And this is a tragedy that we are witnessing.

[00:15:04] And a genocide is the horrific tragedy.

[00:15:08] But it didn't start, it didn't just start.

[00:15:12] All of a sudden we decide we're going to slaughter a group of people.

[00:15:15] We set the stage for that very carefully.

[00:15:19] We're going to go back to the bully.

[00:15:22] This particular mentality or character.

[00:15:27] So he builds a group around him.

[00:15:31] And what happens after that?

[00:15:34] First of all we have to look at different kinds of bullies.

[00:15:37] We often hear people say something must have happened in their life.

[00:15:42] They were targeted or they were harmed.

[00:15:46] And I believe in many situations of people who became bullies.

[00:15:51] That is true.

[00:15:52] I've been bullied before.

[00:15:53] Yes, however that's not always true.

[00:15:56] I talk about the high status social bully who has been raised to believe that they are better than.

[00:16:03] Special.

[00:16:04] And that they're unique in their own way.

[00:16:07] And that those other people are less than them.

[00:16:11] And they're raised to believe that.

[00:16:14] And so I would say, yes they may be damaged in lots of ways.

[00:16:20] But we fail to look at that star player in high school.

[00:16:25] Oh he wouldn't do that to somebody else.

[00:16:28] He might.

[00:16:29] Or she might do that.

[00:16:31] So looking at the bully, bullies don't tend to do this all by themselves.

[00:16:36] And that's where William Burton talked about the trap of comradeship that had come from Sebastian Haftner and Defying Hitler.

[00:16:47] He said there are no innocent bisoners.

[00:16:50] What were they doing there in the first place?

[00:16:52] So what were they doing?

[00:16:53] What did you have on the bully circle or the trap of comradeship?

[00:16:58] Those leaders who act as instigators, planners or perpetrators are all three.

[00:17:06] You have a and I'm most familiar with the genocide in Rwanda with the man who ran the radio station and played music that constantly reminded people to a very lively tune that Tutsis were cockroaches.

[00:17:22] And those songs were sung as people machete human beings to death.

[00:17:28] And he was extradited finally from Canada to stand trial.

[00:17:33] He said, but I didn't kill anybody.

[00:17:36] But he was one of the instigators.

[00:17:38] The hatred and vile comments that he made on the radio and the music that he played.

[00:17:45] He was part of the genocidal group, genocidaires.

[00:17:49] Then you have the planners.

[00:17:51] And there was meticulous planning that goes into the final stage of genocide.

[00:17:59] And then you have the actual perpetrators who without any mercy or any deep caring can cut a baby out of a pregnant woman and then slaughter them.

[00:18:12] I mean, to be able to do that.

[00:18:14] And you say, well, they are horrible human beings.

[00:18:18] And I go back to the most powerful movie today, The Zone of Interest where Haas, a Comedant in Auschwitz actually had a wall built and a beautiful home.

[00:18:34] And on the other side of that wall were the Alhans.

[00:18:38] And he actually lived there and lived a very quote unquote normal life with the death going on.

[00:18:49] And it wasn't that he didn't know it was going on.

[00:18:53] Did he work in the crematoriums also?

[00:18:57] He was a Comedant of Auschwitz.

[00:18:59] So he walked in and out.

[00:19:00] So he did, yeah.

[00:19:02] And they used Jews to do the gardening and Roma and Sinti to bring the laundry.

[00:19:09] And his wife looked at the fur coat that was taken from the people on the other side of the wall and the like.

[00:19:20] So these were people you would have a party with.

[00:19:24] And yet these are ordinary human beings committing extraordinary evil.

[00:19:32] And what we need to look at is that's the first group in the center of the Trafford Comeranship are people they have targeted.

[00:19:42] Who and it can be any group today.

[00:19:46] And it can be any group in the past.

[00:19:48] We can look to previous genocides and see that there's really no justification to single out this group of human beings in their full communities and say they deserve to die.

[00:20:05] So they need help.

[00:20:07] The henchmen are the ones who do the bullies bidding.

[00:20:10] But those are not people who were raised to be genocidaires.

[00:20:16] They were raised to do the police.

[00:20:19] They were raised to not think for themselves.

[00:20:23] They were raised to not think critically.

[00:20:26] They were raised to fit in.

[00:20:28] I give the example in my bullying lectures of the high status social bullying saying to all the other girls at 15, I don't like the new girl.

[00:20:38] You want to be in my group?

[00:20:39] Don't eat lunch with them.

[00:20:41] And they want so badly to fit in that group that they will actually put their backpack down so that the girl who's new can't sit there.

[00:20:53] And you say but that's nothing like slaughtering people know, but it's a short walk when you can go along to get along as the henchmen right below them are the active supporters.

[00:21:06] Those are the ones knowingly building the crematoriums knowingly setting up the barricades to lock in toothies knowingly as one Archbishop did invite them into the church where they felt safe and then open the doors for the who teach and said that so there's the active supporters.

[00:21:29] Then right below them are the passive supporters who often will take pictures of it or in the case in Rwanda.

[00:21:37] They're the ones on level four where they stole the tin roofs after that family had been slaughtered.

[00:21:45] I didn't do it.

[00:21:47] It wasn't me.

[00:21:48] I just took the roofs.

[00:21:50] They are complicit in the genocide.

[00:21:54] At the very bottom is an ugly group which in genocides often involve the international community.

[00:22:01] But in homes and schools it's that disengaged on look who turns a blind eye and say all boys and be boys girls just want to be mean as part of growing up.

[00:22:11] Oh, as we did during the genocide of the toothies calling it ethnic rivalry.

[00:22:17] Got to have a conflict is we going on for generation.

[00:22:20] No, this is different.

[00:22:23] We have to recognize that but they turn a blinds eye.

[00:22:26] It can happen in the school yard.

[00:22:27] It can happen in our homes.

[00:22:29] It can happen in our communities.

[00:22:31] It can happen on a global scale on the upside is the potential witness.

[00:22:37] That is the person who was raised to act with integrity and civility and compassion.

[00:22:45] But they're afraid of the point.

[00:22:47] They're afraid if they step in, they'll be next or afraid if they step in will make it worse for the targeted person.

[00:22:52] Or they're simply afraid.

[00:22:55] Now those are valid reasons.

[00:22:58] However, they know in their heart and being that what's going on is not right.

[00:23:06] They're afraid.

[00:23:08] So what happens is called cognitive dissonance.

[00:23:11] They begin to justify.

[00:23:15] Well, they deserved it.

[00:23:18] Or he's not my friend.

[00:23:20] Or look, the person doing this is my friend.

[00:23:24] We have dinner together.

[00:23:26] I mean, he hasn't done anything to me.

[00:23:29] And when you do that enough.

[00:23:34] Whoa, the headache you were having, the pain in your gut you're having is gone away.

[00:23:39] And they then become a part of what Sebastian Hafter called that trap of comradeship.

[00:23:45] Where they begin to act as an unthinking group.

[00:23:48] And they give up their own sense of self responsibility for their deeds.

[00:23:55] And they are co-opted into this group.

[00:23:58] Now what would do that on a larger scale?

[00:24:03] I'm afraid we're seeing this right now in our own country.

[00:24:06] We are seeing people using slogans.

[00:24:11] People wearing certain pieces of clothing that would identify them.

[00:24:16] Carrying certain flags, having certain songs that they sing.

[00:24:21] And they're becoming what Sebastian Hafter called that trap of comradeship with the group think.

[00:24:31] And it doesn't matter once you've fallen into that group think whether it's in a bullying scenario.

[00:24:38] Or hate crimes that are being perpetrated.

[00:24:42] Or the full blown act of genocide.

[00:24:46] In all of those, what we see in there is that it didn't just happen.

[00:24:54] And that there's a collection of people believing that what I'm doing is right.

[00:25:01] And once they believe that they do not when they listen to something that would contradict them.

[00:25:07] Or is news they don't want to hear, they dismiss it.

[00:25:13] It must be fake news.

[00:25:15] It must be a lie.

[00:25:17] And so once we fall into that trap.

[00:25:20] And this can be very bright intelligent human beings who get caught in that trap.

[00:25:27] And if you look on the characters in that trap of comradeship.

[00:25:32] Those henchmen and active supporters play a very vital role in convincing the others to go along with the act.

[00:25:42] So in essence then after the formation of this initial group.

[00:25:50] I think there's a number of things that happened.

[00:25:53] One of them for example was the young kids who go to maybe to the same school.

[00:26:01] Or they form groups for example.

[00:26:04] They form cliques.

[00:26:08] They dress in the same way, they sing the same songs.

[00:26:12] And attempts to sort of brainwash them.

[00:26:16] It's not even kind of like brainwashing it is brainwashing.

[00:26:19] It is brainwashing.

[00:26:21] They get brainwashed to believe that this is the way.

[00:26:25] And everyone else and this is the key when we're going on that steps to genocide, the walk.

[00:26:34] When we're on that walk.

[00:26:36] Once I believe that those others don't belong here.

[00:26:42] Our vermin they're eating at the fabric of our society.

[00:26:48] They're poisoning our blood.

[00:26:50] Then it allows me to take babies away from their parents at the border.

[00:26:56] It allows us to do cruel and inhumane things to that other because they aren't human.

[00:27:06] With a vermin.

[00:27:07] And well, and if you look at what tends to happen is we put them in such horrible conditions.

[00:27:13] And I'll go back to the Holocaust.

[00:27:15] We shave their heads.

[00:27:17] We dress them in striped outfits or misfitting clothing.

[00:27:23] We didn't feed them well.

[00:27:24] So when you saw them, you're more likely to not have that empathy or compassion.

[00:27:31] You see the-

[00:27:32] You look at them with disgust.

[00:27:33] Yeah.

[00:27:34] And that disgust allows us to do ugly, ugly things.

[00:27:38] Now that doesn't always happen.

[00:27:40] I mean the Tutsis were hunted down.

[00:27:44] And the genocide happened within a hundred days.

[00:27:47] So there wasn't that time to make them look horrible.

[00:27:54] They looked just like your neighbor because they were your neighbor.

[00:27:57] They were your neighbor.

[00:27:58] And in that whole happening what did happen though beforehand was that dehumanization.

[00:28:08] They are cockroaches.

[00:28:09] What do you do to cockroaches?

[00:28:11] You kill them.

[00:28:13] And so it doesn't necessarily mean that they have to look the part of being yuck, that we

[00:28:21] need to get rid of them because we here in our country today people saying that they

[00:28:30] are vermin.

[00:28:31] They are discussing their disease.

[00:28:36] And you look at them and they're your neighbor.

[00:28:39] And you say what?

[00:28:41] The skin color, your race, your religion, your gender, your physical or mental ability.

[00:28:46] What makes a hate crime different than any other crime is criminal bullying.

[00:28:50] We dehumanize another human being.

[00:28:53] And once I have done that you become collateral damage like the Murray building in Oklahoma.

[00:29:01] Those little babies in the daycare were collateral damage.

[00:29:07] Going back to a potential witnesses because I think I find those very interesting.

[00:29:15] In that for example with Hitler the potential witnesses were there.

[00:29:22] They saw what was going on and yet they didn't sort of go against Hitler at all.

[00:29:31] They were afraid.

[00:29:32] They were afraid and some of it was very much justified because they too were hung up in

[00:29:38] the streets as a warning and alike.

[00:29:41] And yet the power of thing in every genocide that I studied there was individuals and

[00:29:49] small groups of people who resist, who stood up, who spoke out, who rescued people.

[00:30:01] And that's where when I get into raising an ethical human being I say to my university

[00:30:06] students is there ever a time to lie?

[00:30:12] And it's not to get your friend out of not writing just a assignment or anything.

[00:30:18] If you're writing a Jew in Nazi Germany you lie through your teeth.

[00:30:22] And what it is is deep caring.

[00:30:25] I'm going back to the deep caring.

[00:30:27] If our ethic is rooted in the must to relieve somebody else's suffering and wishing them

[00:30:32] well then that supersedes the rule.

[00:30:39] If the rule is not rooted in deep caring then we must, it's a must, not a should

[00:30:46] or a not based on your faith tradition or how you were raised.

[00:30:51] And it's not, well he's my friend.

[00:30:53] You often heard in movies about the Holocaust.

[00:30:57] Well he's my friend.

[00:31:00] He's Jewish.

[00:31:01] He's my friend.

[00:31:02] He's my sister.

[00:31:03] She's my sister-in-law.

[00:31:06] She's a friend.

[00:31:07] So yeah.

[00:31:09] And so they make exceptions in their minds because they saw these people as human.

[00:31:15] But the rest of them we got to get rid of them.

[00:31:19] And so that group is a troubling group to me, the potential witnesses because I do understand.

[00:31:26] It is hard to stand up and speak out.

[00:31:29] There was three young men in, I think it was Oregon that stood up to a man who was

[00:31:37] targeting a young Muslim on the bus.

[00:31:41] Two of them died.

[00:31:42] They were not.

[00:31:43] And yes.

[00:31:44] Yeah.

[00:31:45] And so I heard, survived.

[00:31:47] It's interesting to me because I'm a special educator.

[00:31:50] Is that yet autism?

[00:31:53] And he said how could I not do that?

[00:31:57] That's that must to relieve somebody else's suffering.

[00:31:59] He said how could I not?

[00:32:03] And others have said I could not live with myself.

[00:32:06] Had I not rescued somebody, had I not made false documents for somebody, the Chinese

[00:32:13] man who even after China said come back home kept stamping passports and papers for Jews

[00:32:21] to escape.

[00:32:22] And he lost everything when he went to China.

[00:32:26] He lost his position, his pension.

[00:32:29] And when he was dying, his daughter said was it worth it?

[00:32:32] And he said I only wish they could have saved more.

[00:32:35] That is not the potential witness.

[00:32:37] That is that fourth character in all this.

[00:32:40] The witness resister defender.

[00:32:42] I call them brave hearted.

[00:32:43] Some people call them upstanders.

[00:32:47] I like to call them brave hearted for a reason.

[00:32:50] It takes an awful lot of courage, bravery to risk your own life to rescue people, to stand

[00:32:59] up for someone who's being targeted, to be a witness, to be able to write about it

[00:33:07] and to sneak pictures out as Morgenthau did, to get all of that out knowing that many people

[00:33:17] didn't believe them.

[00:33:20] So to be brave hearted the heart is that deep caring.

[00:33:25] So you're courageous and you care deeply about other human beings.

[00:33:29] They are not others.

[00:33:31] They are part of our community.

[00:33:35] That's so important that we raise young people to not allow that.

[00:33:40] And I'm often asked the interesting thing with that is what about those potential witnesses

[00:33:45] who have not gone through all the excuses but are deeply troubled by the fact they didn't

[00:33:51] act?

[00:33:53] When I was studying and trying to write a book, which I have not successfully done yet,

[00:33:58] called Uncommon Goodness of Ordinary People in the Face of Extraordinary Evil.

[00:34:04] The number of people who did rescue people I found two different groups.

[00:34:08] One the individuals that did it right away didn't question their actions, just knew they must

[00:34:16] do this.

[00:34:18] But the second group was a fascinating group and I would put Schindler in this group who

[00:34:24] when they saw others doing it it gave them courage.

[00:34:29] When they surrounded themselves with people who had been othered and got to know these human

[00:34:35] beings and cared deeply about them.

[00:34:38] Schindler also said I wish I could have saved more.

[00:34:42] He wasn't there at first, it was an industrial complex, he was going to make money, but he

[00:34:47] came around.

[00:34:49] And I see that in the schoolyard where when one person is willing to go sit with

[00:34:54] the new girl, one person in the locker room is willing to say back off, leave him alone.

[00:34:59] That it is not uncommon for those who were potential witnesses to say well if he can do

[00:35:06] it I can too.

[00:35:08] So that's where the hope is, is that if we can stop it when the verbal bullying, no

[00:35:13] more not here never that was mean, that was cruel.

[00:35:16] But that means we have to as a society today be willing to call it out.

[00:35:21] I think of Ruth Bader Ginsburg when she wrote for the first time ever an article warning us.

[00:35:31] She's Jewish, she lost relatives in the Holocaust, she warned us in 2016 what could come and boy

[00:35:41] was she lambasted for getting political.

[00:35:46] It was so important that must to speak out about it and say hello red flag here.

[00:35:55] This is not the past, this is right now and look where we're at today.

[00:36:02] So which is a couple of things.

[00:36:08] What comes to my mind is somehow we seem to have this memory, memory that we have

[00:36:15] in us about the ills and bad things that have been done to us in the past.

[00:36:21] And people seem to want to revenge that which was done to them.

[00:36:26] Oh it's a very common emotion to revenge and yet having worked with people who rescued

[00:36:34] other human beings or who stood off.

[00:36:41] In Rwanda I went to graves of people who tried to rescue people and gave their lives.

[00:36:49] And I also talked to people the most impressive ones for me were young children who at their

[00:36:56] elementary years rescued an entire family of Tutsis by hiding them in a field and feeding

[00:37:05] them.

[00:37:06] And when I got to meet them as young adults I said to them my goodness your parents were

[00:37:12] on level four they stole the tin roofs and stuff, level four genocide and yet you did that.

[00:37:17] And it was fascinating to me I said that was very courageous and the young boy said

[00:37:24] but he was my classmate not even my friend.

[00:37:27] But the one child in that family was my classmate and I said where did you spend most of your

[00:37:32] childhood with grandpa?

[00:37:36] Where grandpa if anyone would call a Tutsi a cockroach he came down on them and he

[00:37:44] warned his grandchildren never dehumanize another human being they are like us.

[00:37:51] So that parental influence the grandparent even though the mom and dad had not impressed

[00:38:00] that on them grandpa had had a tremendous influence.

[00:38:04] And so we have to surround ourselves with people who are willing to raise a generation

[00:38:09] who are not intolerant of the other.

[00:38:14] I'm concerned I have to say with some bit of pride but also intrepidation that my

[00:38:21] genocide book was briefly banned in Canada you know to be willing to do it and be willing

[00:38:28] to speak out about it but I look at the number of banned books today what were you afraid

[00:38:33] of you know and you look at go back to Nazi Germany where they had book burning huge book

[00:38:40] burnings.

[00:38:42] Where's our collective memory of now?

[00:38:46] We can look at the horrors of the past but we have to look now and I go back again to

[00:38:51] Jonathan Glasser who gave the talk at the Oscars.

[00:38:56] I get the Oscars am I saying you know about the zone of interest which took people back

[00:39:03] when he talked about ambient genocide and that has stuck with me because ambient

[00:39:11] means it's in the background it's white noise.

[00:39:13] What is going on today cannot be white noise.

[00:39:17] When we look at what's happening in our homes our schools our communities in the global community

[00:39:23] are we willing to be that fourth character to speak out at cost to us?

[00:39:30] So one thing I would like you to talk about maybe because you began there just the other

[00:39:37] Catholic church.

[00:39:39] So I would like you to talk about just a few things a few a few centers or whatever about

[00:39:46] what the church what Christianity can teach this current generation.

[00:39:57] Because my feeling essentially is that authentic love authentic love I mean what Jesus said

[00:40:04] above all love your neighbor in the same way you love yourself.

[00:40:09] I mean I separate the church as an institution from because in my ethics book just because

[00:40:18] it's not wrong doesn't make it right.

[00:40:20] I wrote three paragraphs on religion after my experience in Rwanda when I looked at the

[00:40:28] people who were on trial for level one genocide every faith tradition was represented but one.

[00:40:35] Which one was was the minority religion in Rwanda which were Muslims at that point.

[00:40:41] Yeah they had rescued people they had risked their own lives.

[00:40:47] However I saw in every faith tradition people who got killed or successfully rescued people

[00:40:55] who stood up to the genocide there's and yet there were people on level one genocides

[00:41:02] with the hierarchy in all those other faith traditions who were complicit in the planning

[00:41:09] and execution of that genocide.

[00:41:12] So in my three paragraphs I wrote that religion is neither sufficient nor necessary to raise

[00:41:18] an ethical human being it can be a vessel or a tomb a weapon or a tool.

[00:41:24] It's how it's used if that faith tradition others others we should be alarmed.

[00:41:32] And that belief if it if it puts people outside of this embracing community which we are we

[00:41:40] have been in every faith tradition doesn't other people.

[00:41:47] Yeah and that's essentially what I wanted you to say.

[00:41:52] Well I'm glad because that's how I feel very strongly.

[00:41:57] You know you hear of this new Christianity what do we call them nowadays.

[00:42:04] White nationalists but evangelical nationalists it's a bad rap for evangelicals really

[00:42:12] because it is not none of that other than white.

[00:42:16] Yeah exactly and I mean Jesus Christ I mean somebody we all admire tremendously

[00:42:24] you know because he was right I mean so many things that he said you know I don't think

[00:42:29] I don't think they really are disciples of Christ at all.

[00:42:34] Again I go back to it's neither sufficient nor necessary no matter what title you put on it.

[00:42:39] If you are not walking the talk and talking the walk and that's what I talk to parents about

[00:42:44] if you're not walking the talk and talking the walk then your children will not be

[00:42:49] those witnesses resistors and defenders willing to stand up for that young kid in the play

[00:42:55] art or in the locker room or in the lunch room.

[00:42:58] So I ask you how do you treat hired help how do you treat somebody moving through

[00:43:03] the grocery store a little slower than you'd like them to.

[00:43:06] How do you treat somebody your new neighbor who looks different.

[00:43:11] It has a different faith tradition speaks the different languages their first language

[00:43:15] eats different foods sensor child to school with different foods are the children say that awful food

[00:43:22] or have I taught my children this is their variety is so beautiful in our lives and how do you treat

[00:43:29] the bigoted relative at the family gathering. We all have bigoted relatives they're on the family

[00:43:35] tree some aren't on the tree yet they're on the bread they aren't on the branches

[00:43:38] they're right there at the dinner table spewing bigoted comments thinly disguised as jokes

[00:43:43] can your children hear you saying I'm bothered by that or that's racist or that's sexist

[00:43:48] or that's bigoted when all the other relatives roll their eyes and say

[00:43:53] what can't you take a joke not that kind. And you know your children are seeing that

[00:44:00] and you know you've had an impact when you walk back in the dining room and everybody shuts up

[00:44:04] but you also have an impact when your mother is now upset with you for ruining the dinner

[00:44:09] not Uncle George but you and she says but Uncle George is old let me tell you I'm 76

[00:44:16] age is no excuse for bigotry and intolerance can you say to your your mother who's upset with you

[00:44:23] in front of your children I want my children to know it doesn't matter what age you are

[00:44:29] that those are bigoted comments and I don't want them spoken that they are mean and cruel

[00:44:35] that's part of being a good parent that's part of being a good educator and community people

[00:44:42] when somebody says something and you know we have this freedom of speech yes I get it

[00:44:48] it never should dehumanize another human being and if you do that you are othering them and

[00:44:53] we're on that short walk. Yes yeah well unfortunately in this DNA so the way things are I mean we

[00:45:02] almost allowed to say anything that we want to say and we do have places where we say those things

[00:45:08] that we are going to say we have television stations we have newspapers that say those things

[00:45:15] just like the radio in Rwanda exactly it's not different it's the same repeating the same

[00:45:22] pattern you know which the pre-genocide genocidal the phase before the genocide

[00:45:31] is more or less the same we seem to repeat the same pattern. Greg Stanton put a beautifully

[00:45:39] in genocide watch he's one of the leaders in the field today and the beauty of his work is he

[00:45:45] recognizes the beginnings of genocide happening in our world today and sets warnings out and says

[00:45:53] we need to be concerned and once we have other people then we're on that slippery slope and

[00:46:02] yes it is not the same as bullying but bullying is where it begins that contempt for another human

[00:46:08] being and once we have that contempt we can do anything and we feel justified and then we get

[00:46:15] that collective groupthink we get a group of people and we shut out any other noise in the background

[00:46:22] that would tell us this is not accurate this is not true they are not vermin these are human beings

[00:46:32] and to warn people that's why I think it's critical that we teach this next generation

[00:46:37] to thank critically and how to care deeply share generously help willingly

[00:46:42] and if you don't mind I'd like to just read from the Robert Lifton who is also

[00:46:50] a great researcher in human condition there's no inherent human nature that requires us to kill

[00:46:56] our main we have the potential for precisely that behavior of the Nazis or of some kind of more

[00:47:03] altruistic and cooperative behavior we can go either way and I think that confronting these

[00:47:09] extreme situations is in itself an act of hope because in doing that we are implying and saying

[00:47:17] that there is an alternative we really can do better and I would add must do better must do better

[00:47:24] yeah following that maybe you should try and be a bit more hopeful maybe as we do what we need to

[00:47:31] do I think we have to be assured that we can make a difference and that Margaret means that

[00:47:38] you know we we think that a small group of people can't make a difference she said indeed it's the

[00:47:43] old thing that ever has absolutely absolutely well I mean it's it's it's wonderful to sort of

[00:47:48] know that we have the the solution and the answers to some of these things that we see around us

[00:47:54] happening around us but we cannot be neutral we have to be participants I have two participants

[00:48:02] yes and we have to recognize that it is not ambient it's not white noise what's going on today in

[00:48:09] Gaza what happened in Israel what's happening in the famine in Sudan that we have to say wait a

[00:48:17] minute what can I do and we we can get overwhelmed I can't do anything and we can't do that we

[00:48:23] can't lose hope yes we have to say is it donating is it standing up if I'm a writer can I write about

[00:48:29] it indeed can I speak out and also look every day to see what's tainting our thinking and what is

[00:48:38] polluting our culture yeah well thank you very much it's been a pleasure thank you

[00:48:44] the never again podcast is presented by the coalition against global genocide and its mission to educate

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