Parallels Between the Taliban and the Nazis

We study the fascist dictators of the early 20th century in a very simple-minded way. When we read about them in our World History book it truly makes them along with all of their ideas seem like: history. In our country, and specifically where we live, we see no trace of these ideas. But, the truth is that these ideas are still present in the modern world. The Taliban in Afghanistan are a modern example of a fascist group. By living in the United States and learning so much about the destruction that these reigns of dictators caused, it is clear to us that these ideas are not only morally wrong, but also unproductive. In the U.S. we are lucky to be able to practice a number of freedoms. We have a very powerful, stable, and democratic government. It would be nearly impossible for a fascist group to turn Americans off of the democratic government and on to them. In countries such as Afghanistan, it is the polar opposite. For many people, the Taliban seems very attractive. The government is unstable and distrusting. The Taliban provides a stable set of laws and an alternative to the unorganized and unproductive government. Sound familiar? In early twentieth century Germany, the economic troubles combined with the unstable government made the Nazi movement look promising. Both groups started and gained followers in the same manner. Many of their ideas are also very similar. They both value the traditional lifestyle of woman in the home (demonstrated by the story of the girls getting acid thrown in their faces when attempting to attend school) and violence and fear to gain followers. The Taliban have not gone as far as the Nazis, trying to limit the world to one race, but who's to say that eventually they won't. When we look back and learn about the enormous amount of terror that the Nazi party bestowed upon the world, we have to remember that history has a way of repeating itself. Let's not forget that at its early stages the Nazi party was simply regarded as an overthrowing of the communist government.  To paraphrase a character in Cabaret: They will overthrow the communists and then we will take over. Who's we? Germany.

Similar Tactics to Power

My first reaction to the film was that it was a really sad situation, yet it is amazing the people are still holding strong and fighting back to the oppression by continuing their education. Looking back on it, you can really see the influences that fascist groups have over human psychology. The Taliban seem to use fascist tactics that have been used throughout the past to gain support at the same time as instilling a sense of fear and power. They have been trying to be the new totalitarian form of government through forcing people to conform to their radical views and have taken rash and quick momentary actions, such as throwing acid in girls faces and creating mass chaos. Although they seem to be a shady, unidentifiable group with no single leader, they have definitely used similar tactics as the nascent Nazi group when they rose to power. The Nazis were originally seen as a hoodlum gang, rather than a form of government. They gained support because Germany was suffering from the bad economy due to the aftermath of the war. They were able to steadily gain support through propaganda which convinced much of the youth. By taking control over the newspapers and other forms of communication, they were able to spread their ideas, scapegoating Jews, and creating xenophobia. These were all major contributing factors in their rise of support. Also, studies have shown that when a group does something that would normally be seen as unjust, people are much more likely to follow along because no one else is acting out. (group behavior) By creating a single ideal and mindset that many people conformed to, the Nazi party was able to take control of Germany. The Taliban too have been using similar tactics to gain support. They are primarily using fear to force people to conform to their leadership and their fundamentalist ideals. Their control over many parts of the middle east has greatly taken a toll on these countries economy and more importantly, their future generations. Hopefully the Taliban will be stopped and the millions of innocent people who are living in fear can get the education and the peace that they deserve.

The Price of Going to Class

At Menlo, the price of going to class is registered in dollars.  In Afghanistan, the price of going to class is your life.  We have the luxury of riding in cars or on trains to school.  Everyday thousands of women across Afghanistan travel miles by foot to get to schools.  Along their routes, they face the dangers of Taliban.  The only dangers we face are of street cameras catching us running a red light or making an illegal u-turn. Conditions in Afghanistan are frightening. Women are burned with acid, like Shamsia Husseini.  Her face was injured so badly that she was forced to leave the country to get it healed.  Posters, or Propaganda, are place on Mosques and on buildings saying "Don't let your daughters go to school." Afghani women face these problems because of the Taliban and their fundamentalist take on Islam.  The Taliban consider women as lesser beings, just as the Nazis did with the Jews.  These two examples of persecution are strikingly similiar.  While the Taliban may not have the same organization or power that the Nazis did, they certainly still believe in persecuting those who they view as lesser beings.  The Nazi party had to be completely crushed in order to stop the persecution.  The same has to be done for the Taliban.  We had them cornered in 2003, but we let them slip away. And now, they have begun to rebuild and regroup.  President Obama told us of his plans to redeploy troops from Iraq to Afghanistan.  He must come through on this promise for it is our duty, as Americans, to help those in the face of persecution.  It always has been and it always will be.  We can't allow a price for going to class.

An Inspiration to All

Tomorrow, I have a lab report, a paper, and a test. For the past three hours, I have sat at my desk, complaining to myself about how tomorrow is going to be a bad, stressful day. It's amazing how I'm giving the oppurtunity to complain, the privilledge to have such a academic day. Forget the fact that we go to an unbelievable school with extraordinary resources. Reading this article in Upfront and watching the video about Malala made me realize that they're are hundreds of thousands of girl who sit at home and dream about being in my position. Not only should I be grateful to have the chance to learn and get the level of education I am getting, but that I don't have to worry about being shot or having acid thrown on me on the way to school. For girls like Malala, her work is something to look forward to; her life is what is on the line.
We've been studying the fascist governments of Italy, Germany, Russia, and Japan. Fascism is defined as a dictatorial and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization, usually including obedience to a political leader and harsh ways of approaching the task at hand. I can't say whether I believe the Taliban are fascist or not. I am not fully educated on their beliefs on government, but their actions signal that they are semi-fascist. While it does not seem that they have the leadership or organization of a party like the Nazis or Mussilini's Italy, they take similar approaches as the leaders of the nations above. Through unjustified violence and hatred, they maintain power out of fear. In that short video we watched in class, we could see that more than half the girls didn't show up for school because the Taliban said not to over the radio. But education is too important to not have. None of these fascist movements overall have done much good and in no way are they permitted to take away one's rights, let alone education. Girls risk their faces and their lives everywhere. This dedication should never be denied, but looked up to.

Suppressing Education is the Way to Keep Our Society the Same

In Afghanistan, the Taliban is going to extremes to keep girls out of school. Spraying acid on the faces of girls walking to school and ordering that girls stay away from schools—or else—are horribly normal occurrences. The idea is this: keep 50% of the population uneducated and that many more people will have no choice but to follow you. Mahmood Qadari, the headmaster of a girls' school in Afghanistan that was attacked by the Taliban, says, "Education is the way to improve our society." Education is a powerful force. Unbiased education gives students a chance to form opinions, while at the same time they are taught to express feelings and opinions with clarity and poise. It is obvious why the Taliban are so against girls attending school. Individual minds are irritating and dangerous, who wants more of them to deal with?
Although neither boys nor girls spend as much time in school in Afghanistan as the equivalent age range here in the US, on average girls in Afghanistan go to school for just over a third as many years as the boys. Boys, on average, attend for only 11 years. The Taliban practice a fundamentalist version of Islam, and this is blamed for the suppression of women's rights—rights that are considered basic and inborn in the US. It is naturally easier for the Taliban to oppress women, because that is what society has been doing since gender divisions were first recognized. It's easy to say "we must follow the rules of our religion", but in no religion should it say that one group is inherently better than another, and especially not that this "inferior" group should be punished for pursuing something as natural as knowledge.

For another opinion on girls' education in Afghanistan, click here.

Education: The Ability to Choose

Most of us wake up every morning to the sound of a beeping alarm, and we realize that we have to get up and go to school again. We get to school, and we moan and grumble about how boring our classes are, how we just want to go home and sleep, and how we wish we had no homework. We see education as something that is forced on us and that while it is useful, it is tedious and requires too much effort. But it has always been something readily available to us; there are so many sources that we have access to from which we can gain knowledge, like libraries and the internet. Because of this, we never really learned the value of our education.

But then we hear about the lives of people around the world, people like the girls in Swat Valley, Pakistan, who do not have this widespread access to knowledge. And we realize how lucky we are. They are not encouraged to learn like we are; in fact, the opposite occurs. The Taliban militants, who have taken control in several areas of Pakistan, pour acid on them and destroy their schools to discourage girls from getting an education – a basic right that we should all be guaranteed to. Instead of encouraging progress, they are using their religion, a fundamentalist interpretation of Islam, to keep what they believe are the traditional and therefore better ways.

The only reason I can see for this is that they are afraid of what women getting an education would mean and the changes that would arise. They are afraid that they would no longer be able to exert control over the people, since there are more people that are educated and not clueless, and educated people are much harder to control than the clueless that will just accept whatever they say. But they are also afraid of change and of progress. Women receiving an education creates a huge change in their society, and they fear this change.

This fear of new or different things is something that has caused many conflicts through history, like the treatment of Jews in Nazi Germany. The reason Hitler was able to gain support on the idea that Jewish people were not human was because the rest of the people in Germany did not understand them. The Jewish people practiced a different religion and had different beliefs and a different lifestyle. Many of the them were not as hard hit by the Depression, which probably caused some resentment among the other Germans. Because of their lack of knowledge about them, the Germans agreed with Hitler and alienated them. But perhaps if they tried to understand the Jewish people rather than persecuting them for being different, people would have stood up to Hitler rather than ignorantly following whatever he and the media said.

So, I ask you to think about the role education plays in your life. You can still grumble about going to school but don’t take it for granted. Education frees us from our ignorance; it allows us to understand others and helps destroy prejudices, reducing the fear we all have of the strange and the different. It basic right that we are all entitled to. If everyone was able to get an education, everyone would be able think for themselves and to choose their own actions. They would not follow the media as blindly as we have done in the past. As someone who is able to receive an education, it is our job to make sure that everyone else has the same choice. Today, little is being done for these girls in Swat Valley and around the world who are fighting for an education. So I ask you do you want a world that is still susceptible to being led by their fear like the world during World War II, or are you willing to do something to change that by fighting for equal education for all?

If you are interested in other opinions about what can be done to improve the situation in Pakistan go here

Who is in Control

To me, a lot of what is and has been going on has to do with who is in control over who and how they are using that to their advantage.  For example, Hitler tried to influence and use/control the youth of Germany as a big part of his supporters.  He could target the youth because they are at a time in their life where they are wondering who they are and are forming their own opinions and therefore can be influenced if good opportunity presents itself.  For younger people, it is really important to be accepted into a group so that you are not alone.  The Nazi party presented that opportunity.  The opportunity for the younger people to be with other people who all share the same leader and ideals.  Young People are also the future, (like the song "Tomorrow belongs to me" in the movie Cabaret that we watched) and if you can manage to control them, then you have a huge step up in controlling the future.

 

Similarly, the Taliban recognize that the younger people, girls included, are the future, and if they go to school and get an education, they can pose a threat to the Taliban whether through education of others, or becoming organized against them.  You can already see this from the New York Time documentary where the girl was speaking out against the control that the Taliban has over their school-going.  They are trying to establish their power by showing that they will carry out their beliefs/orders that the girls shouldn't be in school.  As we have seen so much throughout history, the powers usually try to make an example out of someone so as to warn the others.  The girls though have taken this warning and basically stepped on it refusing to stay at home.

Both Hitler and now the Taliban were trying to contain the people that they were controlling making sure that there could not be anything that could lead to future uprisings or threats to their power.  Both groups used fear and weren't afraid of things getting a little messy.  The difference now from Hitler though, is that the girls have shown a tremendous strength and most have gone back to school instead of living in the contained fear.  Fear only works on the weak-spirited, and these girls back in school are showing that they are determined and could very well be the threat that the Taliban is trying to get rid of.

"Are you a man, or are you a mouse?

It is easy, when sitting in the comfort of your cushy armchair or in a beautifully maintained classroom, to proclaim that you would do the "right thing" if faced with two morally difficult choices. Sadly, the "right thing" is more often than not the least practical option to take. Unconvinced?

Paint a picture in your mind, for a moment. You are no older than 40. You are sitting in jail, convicted of a death-penalty felony (pick a card, any card.), and are scheduled to be executed tomorrow. This is a twisted society- peace officers, government officials, and people of that nature are allowed to do as they will. A particularly twisted judge offers you a decision: You can kill an innocent on the street and get out of jail with a clean record- free to partake in the sweet freedom of life again, or you can refuse... upon penalty of your death and the death of every member of your immediate family.

What would you do? This is only a hypothetical situation, but pretend for a moment that it is true. Would you sacrifice one innocent to protect those who are close to you, or would you sacrifice yourself and your entire family for one innocent? So I ask again: What would you do?

Indeed, in Maus, one must sympathize with the mouse who gives away Vladek's location to the Nazi's. He did it perhaps to protect himself, or his family. A part of this is not because the mouse was of low morals, or was a crook only looking to make a quick buck. It is because we, as animals, have an instinct of self-preservation- of survival. We prioritize survival in social circles that increase in size. There is oneself, then there is one's family, then there is one's close relations, and et-cetera.

Now, I am not trying to convince you that moral failings are totally acceptable; at this point in our evolution, morals and ethics have become so ingrained in our mental makeup that they can compete with our natural instinct of survival.

I just want you to keep in mind that when judging people based on their actions, consider that people think and act differently under stressing conditions than they would at peace. Things in the world are not definite black and white. They are various, multitudinous shades of grey. We are only human, and to err is human. In times of war, such as Maus, we err quite often.

Things are all relative- relative to place, time, situation, emotions, other things (which, too, are relative).

* * *

". . . Grant me the Serenity

to accept the things that I cannot change;
Courage to change the things I can;
...and Wisdom to know the difference."

Indeed, there are things that we must do quite often that we detest, yet there are no other choices. This we must understand.

~ ~ ~

With that final parting note, I bid you so long, and good night.

~Kevin Ji

P.S.: The movie Valkyrie is an interesting twist. Klaus von Stauffenberg, a Colonel in the German military, plans to kill Hitler to "do the right thing" and save Germany from destruction.

A Lesson to Learn

At Menlo, and at other institutions around the world, History is not only studied to learn about our heritage, but to learn about the mistakes of the past, and how not to repeat them. Right now in the Swat Valley in Pakistan, people are being discriminated against, and their basic rights as humans - the rights to education, free speech, and buy goods, for example - are being taken away. This has happened so many times before in history, every time with bad consequences, yet little has been done right now by the outside world to stop this phenomenon.

While the situation in Swat is not as grave as it has been in the past (for example, when Jews were being discriminated against, and later put in concentration camps during the Holocaust), it is still noteworthy. Thousands of girls are now not able to go to school because of the Taliban; next to nothing has been done to ameliorate the situation. Yet, we know what is going on. In the video we watched, the family had a computer, and thus the means to let people know about their situation via the internet. Also, the New York Times, and other newspapers, I assume, have extensive coverage of the situation. However, just now is president Obama suggesting that we give Pakistan some military aid to combat the Taliban, and Congress, instead, is suggesting that we give them non-military aid. If the Pakistani government is unable to control a region 90 miles from its capital, it is obvious that what they require most is military aid. Then why are we so hesitant to provide it?

We need to dust the relative defeat in Iraq off, and get back on our feet to help these girls in Pakistan get to school without being violently attacked by Taliban fighters. We need to learn from past mistakes in history to avoid any more harm being done to Pakistan, and moreover, we need to realize that these girls are people, too, just like us, who want the brightest future possible, but who live in a world of violence and danger, and are unable to attain their hopes and dreams.

Girls Just Wanna have Fun...and Learn

The Taliban do not have the right to prevent girls from receiving an education in Afghanistan. The girls in Afghanistan have done nothing wrong to receive such punishment. The Taliban have their own vision on what things should be like. When something or someone goes against their vision, they force what ever it is to make it fit. In the girls in Afghanistan's case, they had acid thrown onto their faces to prevent them going to school. Although this had life altering affects on this group of girls, they continued to go to school a year later anyways. That is what they should do because they should not be cheated out of an education just because the Taliban decided that they shouldn't have one. Also, I believe that the Taliban are afraid of what women can do if they receive an education. This is like how in the past, when slaves weren't allowed an education so they wouldn't become too smart. This is what the Taliban is doing to the girls in Afghanistan. The girls have all the right to learn just like the boys if they want to.

The Price of Going to Class

Imagine your daily routine. Wake up, eat breakfast, take the train, get to school, complain about work, go to lunch, play lacrosse, go home, eat dinner, do homework, and go to sleep. We often complain about how horrible our lives are until we consider the lives of others. Specifically, we read an article about girls in Afghanistan who were told not to come back to school, but returned anyways because of their desire to learn. 11 girls and 4 teachers were attacked by 10 Taliban militants who were employed to throw acid on the faces of these courageous women. Can you imagine going to school and being brutally attacked? These men, The Taliban, are afraid of young women learning to read and write. Shamsia Husseini said, being brutally attacked by the Taliban and receiving many scars, "The people who did this to me don't want women to be educated. They want us to be stupid things." I don't understand how anyone could be so brutal and vile. The Taliban are some of the most powerful men in Afghanistan and they are afraid of young women. What would our society be like without women and allowing them to get an education? Education has come a long way in the U.S. but it also faced hardships along the way. Including mandatory public education, integration of women in education, and finally the integration of blacks and whites in school during the Civil Rights Movement. I believe that the Afghanistan government needs to rid the Taliban from their beautiful country. They are corrupting the education for women and bringing violence to the country side. This situation reminds me a lot of the one in Germany in the early 1930's. After Hitler was appointed chancellor of Germany, the Nazi party was now the official party of Germany. History teachers often ask, "Why even study history?" And one of the main responses is that we need to learn from our past mistakes. And I believe that this point relates to the current situation in Afghanistan and even Darfur. In the past there have been brutal homicides such as the Holocaust and the Armenian Genocide. Other governments should step in and rid the Taliban once and for all. During the Holocaust the U.S. knew what was going on in Germany and didn't step in while millions of Jews were being slaughtered. When they finally decided to join in the war effort it was too late; the damage had already been done. Now it may only be schoolgirls and teachers, however the Taliban could spread and there presence could affect the entire world.