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14. Berdyaev's
Insight
When we consider
more broadly the theme of inquisitorial antignosticism
or heresiophobia, we cannot help but wonder why it is
that this phenomenon emerges in some countries and not in others,
at one time, and not at another. What is it that conduces to a Grand
Inquisitor? A relatively pluralistic and secular United States in the
last third of the twentieth century would appear not to have been
conducive to a grand inquisition, but much the same could have
been said of the Weimar Republic in Germany just prior to the onslaught
of National Socialism or, for that matter, of the Silver Age of
Russia just prior to the onslaught of Communism. Indeed, there are
quite a few parallels between these periods: all three of them were
characterized by what we might call religious creativity, by all manner
of new religious movements and religious experimentation, and
by a relatively liberal but ineffective state notable for the corruption
it tolerated or encouraged. We would do well to study carefully the
past emergences of the Inquisitorial totalitarian state so that, as the
title of the 1935 American novel had it, It Can't Happen Here.
The totalitarian state emerges as the bastion of certainty after a
period of prolonged and intense uncertainty-it presents the illusion
of total authority, and of global answers. It imposes an extreme
form of order that is, fundamentally, disorder. And it can only enforce
that disorder through an inquisitorial apparatus of spies, informers,
secret police, torture, imprisonment, and murder. The pattern
is depressingly similar: we have seen it again and again, in the
136 THE NEW INQUISITIONS
Soviet gulags and the Nazi concentration camps, in the Communist Chinese
prisons and in countless other, lesser-known venues. The totalitarian
secular
state always ends up manifesting itself in religious persecution. Why?
The
truth is the reverse of what so many anti-gnostics have argued. The
danger
always comes, not from those who fear history-and still less from those
who
critique "progress" -but from those who fear religious and intellectual
freedom,
and who want to enforce on everyone the primacy a literal, historicist
perspective bereft of any hint of transcendence.
It is extremely interesting to see how the currents of anti-gnosticism
and
heresiophobia recur again and again on both the nominal "left" and the
nominal
"right." Once seen in light of heretic-hunting, totalitarian "right" and
totalitarian
"left" reveal themselves as fundamentally similar. Among the analysts
of this dynamic, only one stands out as the most perceptive: the great
Russian
religious philosopher Nicholas Berdyaev (1874-1948). Berdyaev had been a
central figure in the Russian Silver Age of great religious and creative
ferment
during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries-and he was also
a
witness to the ascent to power in Russia of the Communists. From his
vantage
point of exile in France, living among Russian expatriates like himself,
and
informed by his long and deep study of mysticism and of the dynamics of
heretic-hunting, he was able to diagnose the inquisitional pathology
better than
anyone since the prophetic Dostoevsky, whose figure of the Grand
Inquisitor
we discussed in our introduction.
Dostoevsky Revisited
After all, before Nicholas Berdyaev-who was witness to the horrors of
the
Bolshevik revolution and its aftermath, and its most penetrating
critic-it was
Fyodor Dostoevsky who, already in the nineteenth century, foresaw and
warned
against a Communist revolution. Dostoevsky saw that at the heart of the
Communist
endeavor was not "the labor question" but "before all things the
atheistic
question, the question of the tower of Babel built without God, not to
mount to Heaven from earth but to set up Heaven on earth."· Dostoevsky
wrote
that "French socialism is nothing but a compulsory communion of
mankindan
idea which dates back to ancient Rome and which was fully conserved in
Catholicism. Thus, the idea of the liberation of the human spirit from
Catholicism
became vested there precisely in the narrowest Catholic forms borrowed
from the very heart of its spirit, from its letter, from its
materialism, from its
despotism."2 And the export of French socialism with Communism into
Russia
was thus bound, in his view, to create a fanatical atheistic despotism.
BERDYAEV'S INSIGHT 137
Dostoevsky believed that Roman Catholicism as an institutional, temporal
power, represented a form of Christianity as old as Tertullian and
Irenaeus,
one that had abandoned spiritual impulse for earthly power. Because (in
his
view) Roman Catholicism focused on earthly or juridical authority, it
had lost
its spiritual authority, and its natural successor was to be an outright
atheist
socialist despotism. The new socialist or Communist despots would be
like the
Grand Inquisitor in The Brothers Karamazov, and would take on themselves
the "burden" of enforcing upon the whole of society what they deem best
for
it. Of course, in the process, like the inquisitors, they would have to
hunt down
and destroy "heretics" and impose a rigid dogmatic unity on society-they
would have to suppress freedom of conscience or freedom of thought-but
that would be only for the benefit of others. Thus the terrible new
regime would
have at its head antireligious ascetics, fanatics devoted to the new
earthly kingdom.
What Dostoevsky could not have foreseen was how many millions would
die under the new inquisitors of Communism.
But was Dostoevsky right in his fundamental insight: that Communism
had its origin in some aspects of Roman Catholicism? One eyewitness to
the
onslaught of Russian Communism who thought so was Nicholas Berdyaev.
Berdyaev had written already in 1917 that "Dostoevsky prophetically
foresaw
the demonic aspect of the Russian Revolution in The Devils (Besy), [and
recognized]
the demonic metaphysics of revolution in The Brothers Karamazov."3
Yet Berdyaev did not focus exclusively on Catholicism: for him what
matters
is the phenomenon itself-how the fanaticism of heretic-hunting comes
into
being, and what it signifies. Thus, in Berdyaev's view, it is not so
important
whether Communism has part of its origin in Catholicism-what matters,
rather, is the underlying dynamic of heretic-hunting itself. In this
lies Berdyaev's
great insight.
Berdyaev on Inquisitional Psychopathology
The root of the Inquisition, Berdyaev realized, was fanaticism: the
obsessive
reduction of the whole manifold world to one thing. He observed that:
A believing, an unselfish, an intellectual man can become a fanatic,
and commit the greatest of cruelties. To devote oneself without
reservations
to God or to an idea, substituting for God, whilst ignoring
man, is to transform a man into a means and a weapon for the
glory of God or for the realisation of the idea, and it means to become
a fanatic-wild-eyed and even a monster.·
138 THE NEW INQUISITIONS
This was the origin of the Inquisition, and Berdyaev has perhaps the
best
understanding of the psychological dynamics driving the Inquisition of
any
author I have read. He continues:
The inquisitors of old were perfectly convinced that the cruel things
done by them, the beatings, the burnings on the bonfires and other
things,-they were convinced that this was a manifestation of their
love for mankind. They contended against perdition for the sake of
salvation, they guarded souls from the allure of the heresies, which
threatened with perdition. Better be it to subject one to the brief
sufferings
in the earthly life than the perishing of many in eternity. Torquemada
was a non-avaricious and unselfish man, he wanted nothing
for himself, he devoted himself entirely to his idea, his faith; in
torturing people, he made his service to God, he did everything
exclusively
for the glory of God, and in him there was even a soft spot,
he felt malice and hostility towards no one, and he was of his kind a
"fine" man. I am convinced, that such a "fine" man, convinced in
his faith and unselfish, was also Dzerzhinsky, who in his youth was
a passionately believing Catholic and indeed wanted to be a monk.
This is an interesting psychological problem.s
It is an interesting psychological problem, not least because as
Berdyaev points
out, the same dynamic is at work in the Communist dictatorships.
Fanatics require enemies, and if enemies do not exist already, then the
fanatics will manufacture them. Thus develops an atmosphere of witch
hunting.
Berdyaev rightly held that the Russian revolution represented a kind of
demonic collectivism and fanaticism:
The terrible fact is that the human person for [Russians] is drowning
in a primitive collectivism, and this is nowise a point of excellence,
nor a sign of our greatness. It makes absolutely no difference
whether this all-engulfing collectivism is that of the "Black Hundreds"
or of the "Bolsheviks." The Russian land lives under the
power of a pagan khlysty-like element. In this element, every face is
submerged, for it is incompatible with personal worthiness and personal
responsibility. This demonic element can pull forth from its
bosom no true face, save only the likes of Rasputin and Lenin. The
Russian "Bolshevik Revolution" is a dreadful worldwide reactionary
phenomenon, just as reactionary in its spirit as "Rasputinism" or as
the Black Hundred khlystyism.6
BERDYAEV'S INSIGHT 139
Hence, too, the collectivist fanaticism that marked the Moscow "trials"
of various
Communists, which, Berdyaev observed, "are very reminiscent of
witchcraft
trials. In both the one and the other, the accused confesses to having
criminal dealings with the devil. The human psyche changes little."7 The
basis
for the collective psychosis of fanatical persecutors is always the
same.
The fanatical persecutor becomes obsessed with the need for absolute,
inhuman fidelity to one thing, be it the Church or the State. The
persecutor
does not begin as a persecutor, in general but, rather, as one who sees
enemies
of the collective everywhere. Imagining these enemies, who are seen as
"of the
devil," then turns the persecutor into a devil himself, and as Berdyaev
puts it,
he who "sees all around the snares of the devil ... is always the one
who himself
persecutes, torments and executes."8 He who senses enemies everywhere,
becomes himself the greatest of enemies to others by becoming a
persecutorwho
all the while believes that what he does is actually for the good of the
whole and for the good of others. Thus, the persecutor often takes on an
unctuous
sense of self-righteousness. And, as Berdyaev points out, this
fanaticism
of the persecutor easily passes over into the political sphere, where
"against
the powers of the devil there is always created an inquisition or a
committee
of the common salvation, an omnipotent secret police, a Cheka. These
dreadful
institutions are always created out of fear of the devil. But the devil
has always
proved himself to be the stronger, for he penetrates into these
institutions and
guides them."9
It does not even particularly matter, Berdyaev writes, what the nature
of
the projected enemy is. For a Communist, the enemy might well be other
Communists who are insufficiently fanatical, or the enemy might be
fascistall
that matters is that the world becomes divided into "I" and "not-I."
Thus,
Berdyaev writes, "having allowed himself to come under the obsessive
grip of
the idea of a worldwide peril and worldwide conspiracy of Masons, of
Jews, of
Jesuits, of Bolsheviks, or of an occult society of killers,-such a man
ceases to
believe in the power of God, in the power of truth, and he trusts only
in his
own coercions, cruelties and murderings. Such a man is, in essence, an
object
of psychopathology."lo We see this pathology emerging as an intellectual
tendency
in the works of Maistre and of Donoso Cortes, of Sorel, Maurras,
Schmitt, and Voegelin, but it becomes actualized in the regimes of
Lenin,
Stalin, and Hitler. Ideas-particularly ideas of extirpating imagined
"enemies"
of the collective-can have lethal consequences.
The modern pathology of fanatical persecution (under whichever regime,
"right" or "left") is significantly different than that found in
medieval Catholic
societies, whether under the auspices of the Inquisition or not.
Medieval Cath140
THE NEW INQUISITIONS
olic society, Berdyaev writes, was pervaded by a common deep faith that
offered
at least a basis for some degree of tolerance, whereas modem society
this
common basis is gone, replaced by a cold, militaristic secularism. For
the
modem ideologue, the world is starkly and totally divided into those who
are
intellectually right (us) and transgressors (them). Communists,
fascists, religious
fundamentalists, the religiously "orthodox," all of these are unwilling
to
dispute or argue, but instead cast their opponents as "the enemy." From
this
dynamic arises the persecutorial mind set.
Driving the persecutor or Inquisitor is pride, exactly as Dostoevsky
recognized
and showed with the figure of the Grand Inquisitor. By embracing a
rigid ideology, whatever it is, the ideologue now is able to convince
himself
that he is the possessor of the truth. He is part of the "inner circle,"
the elite
group who are called to take on themselves the burden of policing
society, of
"improving" the human world. Ordinary people, they don't understand, and
so must be coerced, sometimes even tortured or killed "for their own
good,"
so the Inquisitor says to himself. The ideology provides the ego with
the illusion
of stability and authority-"I know the truth, and must enforce it upon
you."
But underlying all of this is a great uncertainty, an anxiety that the
ideology
and the persecutions and the trappings of power only serve to mask.
Totalitarianism of the Left and of the Right
During the mid-twentieth century, it was commonplace for communists and
fascists to each accuse the other of being totalitarian, and to defend
their own
group's authoritarianism as merely a regrettable lapse, but not at all
representative
of its very nature. As a result, relatively few scholars regarded
communism
and fascism as different versions of the same fundamental phenomenon
of totalitarianism. And, indeed, as late as the early twenty-first
century, one
sees scholars struggling with the implacable truth that both communism
and
fascism are variant forms of totalitarianism, that both commit crimes
against
humanity itself. Why is it so difficult to regard totalitarianism in
terms of its
dynamics? The answer is ideology.
Consider, for instance, scholars in a collection of articles on
Stalinism and
Nazism. In a case study of Romania, a Romanian author acknowledges that
of
course "Nazism was a criminal system against humanity, denounced
worldwide."
But, she continues, "Communism also was and still remains a criminal
regime against humanity. If the entire world today condemns Nazism to
the
point of continuing the search for those who served it, it is impossible
to
explain why the same thing is not being undertaken with regard to
CommuBERDYAEV'S
INSIGHT 141
nism."ll Yet it proves extremely difficult for even the author of this
particular
article to "accept a parallel between the two types of totalitarianism."
12 Obviously,
there were social and organizational differences between Stalinism and
Nazism-that isn't the point.
The point is rather that those on the right tend to vilify communism,
whereas those on the left vilify fascism, instead of recognizing that
the fundamental
phenomenon in both cases is ideocracy. Ideocracy-or rule based on
the enforcement of ideology through an apparatus of centralized state
terrordescribes
both communism and fascism. Both have a rigid state ideology that,
while hostile to the various forms of organized religion, itself bestows
a quasireligious
certainty on its adherents. And it does not matter if those adherents
"really" believe the ideology-it suffices only that they fervently
pretend to believe
it, just as Czeslaw Milosz pointed out in The Captive Mind. But the
worst
are those Eric Hoffer termed the "true believers," those who identify
wholly
with the ideocracy and thereby inflate their egos with it-they become
the
fanatical adherents, the informers and the murderers.
Yet behind the murdering functionaries are those who generate the
ideology
itself. Thus, it is revealing that a scholar of political science
devoted to
what he deems "political realism," concludes that despite their apparent
differences,
ultimately Lenin and Schmitt have a great deal in common. Both are
"contemptuous, genuinely heartless, and, at times, genuinely cynical.""
Politics,
from this perspective "behind" both left and right, is simply a matter
of
violence in the service of domination. Thus, "those who apply
substantial force
to their fellows get compliance, and from that compliance they draw the
multiple
advantages of money, goods, deference, and access to pleasures denied to
less powerful people."" In short, underlying all politics of both the
"left" and
the "right" is only the struggle for domination through violence-based
power,
and so, according to this view, political theorists should abandon moral
or
philosophical evaluations of politics, thus becoming merely the
explainers of
totalizing power. IS Such a "realist view" leads, of course, directly to
the gulag,
the torture chamber, and the mass grave.
In the end, it is true that designations such as "right" or "left,"
"fascist" or
"communist" or, for that matter, "corporatist" are not anywhere near as
important
as what underlies them: that is, the degree to which a regime manifests
the fundamental characteristics of a totalitarian ideocracy. These are
the dynamics
whose origins are to be found in the Inquisition, but that were refined,
industrialized, and brutalized further in the twentieth century: the
dynamics
of the secret police and informants, of surveillance and of constant
fear; of
secret trials and of the absence of habeas corpus protections or other
civil liberties
or human rights; of indefinite detention of dissenters or "heretics"
142 THE NEW INQUISITIONS
in gulags or concentration camps; and, finally, the dynamics of
industrialized
murder of millions, whether through mass starvation or outright
slaughter
(murder even if it is given the juridical patina of the cold word
execution). What
is it that makes all this inhumanity possible?
The Betrayal of Humanity
When we look back at the emergence of totalitarianism in the twentieth
century,
we cannot help but be struck-just as Nicholas Berdyaev was struck-by
how similar are the dynamics of religious fanaticism and political
fanaticism.
Both for the religious adherent and for the political devotee, the ego
becomes
inflated by the sense of certainty: "I" become infallible by way of
identifying
with a particular fixed set of dogmas and with the division of humanity
into
friends and enemies, us and them. "Our" side is always right; "their"
side is
of the devil, so fundamentally wrong that one can only detest them. Once
one
acquiesces in such a view, one is well on the way to becoming a
persecutor, be
it religious or political.
Keyto this transformation into a persecutor is a set of doctrines that
one
holds to be absolute or universal truth: thus everyone else is made into
an
unbeliever, or a traitor. Initially, these doctrines might be attractive
as a set of
convictions that conveniently explain the world as it is; but the more
pervasive
the political or religious system and the more charged it is with an
atmosphere
of fear, the more adherents feel they have to prove that they are more
certain
than others, that they are the real guardians of truth. It is only a
short step
from this to the belief that one's duty is to impose the doctrines on
everyone
else, and that such an imposition is for "their own good," or for the
"good of
society." From this point, it is not far to persecuting the recalcitrant
and, in the
frenzy of persecution, only a small further step to rationalize even
mass murder
under the guise of "the greater good."
Not always visible in this process is that it entails becoming inhuman.
By
definition, the doctrines become more important than other people or
indeed,
than the world: gradually, one becomes a functionary in an insane
system,
insane because it is divorced from fundamental humanity, from basic
human
kindness. Some people go along with an insane system because they don't
have the courage to resist, but many become convinced by it. These are
true
believers who don't see what they are becoming, often because they have
been
rewarded with "promotion" and "responsibility" to enforce "the truth"
upon
others. And it is much easier to see the mote in others' eyes than to
see what
BERDYAEV'S INSIGHT 143
is lodged in one's own. There are always apologists for an inhuman
system:
there are apologists for the Inquisition, apologists for Stalin, no
doubt apologists
for Pol Pot. But the apologists cannot explain away the torture
chambers,
the bonfires, and the mass graves, the outward signs of total inhumanity
in
the name of "purifying" humanity.
The totalitarian system is predicated upon paranoia and division. Other
people are projected to be "the enemy," and therefore, in the name of
the
system, must be ferreted out and exterminated. Thus the basic goodness
of
human life-love of family, love of locale, love of friends and
neighbors, love
of one's religion-is tainted and finally ruined by ever-growing terror.
No one
knows any longer whom to trust. The Inquisition at least was relatively
limited
in scope, but, in the twentieth century, the advent of totalitarianism
expanded
paranoia society-wide, and made possible the objectification and
extermination
of whole groups of people: peasants, Jews, gypsies, intellectuals,
"class traitors,"
and on and on.
Really, the totalitarian systems of the twentieth century represent a
kind
of collective psychosis. Whether gradually or suddenly, reason and
common
human decency are no longer possible in such a system: there is only a
pervasive
atmosphere of terror, and a projection of "the enemy," imagined to be
"in our midst." Thus society turns on itself, urged on by the ruling
authorities.
The effect of such a collective psychosis is to strengthen the power of
the
authorities, and in particular of the figurehead leader, who becomes the
one
thing stable in society as an infernal incarnation of the doctrines.
Even in the
early twenty-first century, some Russians were still nostalgic for the
"man of
steel," Stalin.'G True believers in such a system (fanatics) find in it
an easy
identity-what they believe to be truth itself, even though it is in fact
a conglomeration
oflies-and so they are willing, indeed, eager and proud to betray
not only their basic humanity but even life itself.
It Can Happen Here
How is it that some countries escape totalitarianism, whereas others
fall prey
to it? Although some conservative critics of Roosevelt's administration
claimed
that the New Deal constituted de facto fascism in the United States, in
reality
the United States clearly did not become totalitarian during the
twentieth century.
17 Nor, for that matter, did England, or Switzerland, or many other
countries,
even if they shared some common cultural features with Germany, Italy,
or Russia. How is it that Cambodia fell prey to a Pol Pot, whereas some
other
144 THE NEW INQUISITIONS
Far Eastern nations did not? In the end, the answer lies with the
presence of
particular charismatic figures-or with a small cadre-who seized and
consolidated
power.
Of course, there are a variety of other factors to consider. Chief among
them is the existence of a governmental system of checks and balances.
As
long as there is a balance of power among opposing political parties and
between
branches of government-and so long as there is genuine freedom of
the press-it is unlikely that totalitarianism could take hold in a
society. But it
is possible, as the case of Germany certainly shows. The Weimar Republic
included all of these political dimensions, albeit in a form eroded by
economic
collapse and by what we might call parliamentary paralysis. Yet as soon
as a
National Socialist party took power, it systematically began eliminating
its competition
as well as a critical press. The existence of checks and balances only
works as long as political opposition and genuine dissent is possible.
What underlies the ascent to power of Lenin and later Stalin, as well as
Hitler and even to a lesser extent Mussolini-not to mention Mao or Pol
Potis
violence. There is no intrinsic reason why such an ascent to power could
not be accomplished in the United States or any other country-it is a
matter
of a confluence of factors. There must be a central ideology of secular
or religious
millennialism that encourages believers to imagine that by killing
people
today, a better future lies just around the corner. It helps also if
there is a
preceding socioeconomic disaster, so that people are predisposed to, on
the
one hand, look for scapegoats, and on the other, to imagine a better
future if
only the scapegoats were removed. But there also must be a charismatic
ideologue
to act as the movement's impetus and center.
Thus every totalitarian regime has had its dictator, with whom the
regime
is virtually synonymous. Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, Mao, Kim Jong 11:it is
the cult
of the "strong man," of the "great leader" who becomes the focal point
of the
entire system. One could speculate that an hierarchic structure with a
single
man at its center is somehow necessary so that the impersonal and
horrific
can be "normalized" and imagined as service to the father-figure of the
dictator.
A totalitarian leader draws on the ancient instinct to follow the wise
man, but
the instinct is perverted, so that the society moves inexorably toward
the rationalization
of monstrosities and horrors. The totalitarian "great leader" is a
secular caricature of a combined religious leader, a pope, and a
monarch, a
king. But whereas ideally the latter are governed by an overarching
religious
ethos that constrains them to protect subjects, the dictator in a
totalitarian
system is under no such constraints-indeed, quite the opposite.
Totalitarian
power accrues primarily from scapegoating and from violence.
And so, it can happen here. What is more, it is in the nature of things
BERDYAEV'S INSIGHT 145
that, once a totalitarian state takes hold, it is extremely difficult to
dislodge it.
"Dislodging" such a state requires a vantage point from outside it, and
the very
nature of the totalitarian state makes dissent a crime-indeed, a form of
heresy.
Not for nothing did Maistre refer to the dangers of "la secte" to his
imagined
total state-and not for nothing did Lenin, immediately upon seizing
power,
target competing religious groups and traditions in Russia. In the
totalitarian
state, exactly as Milosz pointed out, dissent is heresy-and nothing is
so feared
by authoritarians as freedom of choice, authentic freedom.
Totalitarianism can
take hold anywhere that fanatical ideologues can take sufficient power
to prevent
freedom of choice or expression. As the Inquisition had it, so, too, say
the
totalitarians: one is free to choose, as long as one doesn't even
breathe aloud,
let alone acknowledge the alternative choices. But that, of course, is
not freedom
at all.
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